Kimber Drive

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General-purpose Kimber FT logo used c.4005

The Kimber Drive is the name of the near lightspeed acceleration technology used by interstellar starships, with the term being a brand name formerly trademarked by the now long-defunct Kimber Future Technologies.

Common Kimber drives can reach speeds of ~99% the speed of light, with advanced drives reaching a current maximum of 99.5%. Before being used, all objects aboard its host ship must be securely fastened, including passengers’ limbs and etc, lest they be subject to flinging about the ship at near light speeds. Passengers aboard near-lightspeed craft are normally put into suspended animation and frozen in travel gel or Utility Fog to avoid this. Advanced biotechnological processes are also used to keep a subject alive while in this near-massless state.

A key feature of the drive the Barrach-King bubble, which relies on gravity manipulation to create a region of distorted spacetime around a starship, protecting the craft from collisions during near-light transit by way of diverting matter around the craft (in a metaphorical sense, like a fish swimming through water).

Due to time dilation, people aboard ships using Kimber drives at full speed experience time between 14.106 to 9.987% of its usual value.