Faster-Than-Light engine
From Stargate Wiki
| Faster-Than-Light engine | |
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Faster-than-light travel |
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- "Faster-than-light, yet not through hyperspace."
- — Nicholas Rush
Faster-Than-Light engines, often shortened to FTL, is a type of faster-than-light engine system developed by the Ancients for use on Destiny and the seed ships.
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Overview
Components
The FTL engines aboard Destiny consist of 16 separate modules however the system can function with 15 and possibly less. The design on the seed ships may differ. (SGU: "Sabotage")
Function
The FTL engines are capable of propelling the ship faster-than-light without entering hyperspace. The FTL engine requires the protection of a shield to ensure structural integrity and stability of the ship. The shield encases the ship, and any shuttles properly docked with the ship, without this protection any objects in close proximity will be vaporised. If the shield fails during transit the ship will be damaged or possibly destroyed and if the shield power is below 5% the FTL engine will be incapable of being activated. (SGU: "Earth", "Divided")
The engines must remain active for four hours and inactive for a minimum of three hours or the drive will incur damage and possibly irreparable damage. The drive will disengage when an incoming wormhole connects to the Stargate onboard the ship, this only to nine-chevron addresses. There is a glitch in the FTL technology that its systems are unable to compensate for unknown variables such as gravity wells which cause the drive to shut down prematurely. When the FTL engines engage and disengage, it temporarily disrupts the Long-range communication device. (SGU: "Air, Part 1", "Earth", "Faith", "Lost", "Resurgence", "Deliverance")
History
When the Destiny expedition arrived on Destiny and the Stargate shut down, a mysterious sound and vibration occurred which led the expedition to wonder what it was, it wasn't until Dr. Nicholas Rush discovered the observation deck did they find out that the ship was traveling faster-than-light yet not through hyperspace. The crew had no control over the core systems such as the FTL engines. Later it was known that the shuttles had to be docked with the ship to be taken into FTL. (SGU: "Air, Part 1", "Darkness", "Divided")
A glitch in the technology was later discovered when the ship prematurely dropped out of FTL when it came close to the gravity well of an unknown system that was not in the ships database. When leaving the galaxy, one of the FTL modules was sabotaged and exploded, dropping the ship out of FTL. This engine segment was removed to increase the functionality and efficiency of the remaining modules. When a Lucian Alliance team invaded the ship and caused it to drop out early, the shield power had to be diverted to block radiation from a Binary pulsar so the ship could re-enter FTL. (SGU: "Faith", "Sabotage", "Incursion, Part 1", "Incursion, Part 2", "Intervention")
The ship soon came upon a Stargate Seed ship and later found out that it had the same type of FTL engines installed that allowed it to travel so far. A seed ship docked with Destiny and extended its shields around Destiny and took it into FTL. When it was discovered that the Berzerker drones had blockaded every viable recharge star in the galaxy the entire crew went into stasis so the ship could have enough power to complete an FTL jump out of the galaxy and onto the next one. (SGU: "Awakening", "Resurgence", "Gauntlet")
Gallery
 Destiny enters FTL |
 Destiny travels through FTL |
 The view from inside |
 An engine module explodes |
 Inside the engine area |
 The engine module is removed |