There are romantic, humanocentric types that foster the idea that human beings are the universe's most adaptable intelligent species. This is an outright lie. Humanity is not particularly adaptable when compared to other species. Nor do we have any claim to being an particularly intelligent species. There are intelligent races out there that are smarter, stronger, more adaptable, and much more advanced.
So how is it that we do so very well when compared to those "better" species? I for one have a biased answer: we get around very well. Yeah, you'd expect a pilot come up with that answer. Let me explain what I mean.
When we first started colonizing other solar systems, humans used a type of faster-than-light travel called a sling engine. We still use these today for enormous vehicles. The sling enigine worked with a fixed worm-tunnel called a Gelmer field that led to an alternate plane called slingspace. A permanent gate had to be set up on both sides of the field in order to make a round-trip. But one-way fields could be used to send drones to build a return gate, thus making intergalactic travel possible.
After a mere half-century, we came up with the hyper-engine. Faster than sling engines when used in lower mass spacecraft, hyperspace travel allowed humans to jump around the galaxy without the need for a Gelmer field. The side effects of gravity interdiction and time distortion were small enough to encourage the abandonment of the sling-engine.
Red-warp engines came next. At the time, humanity was the fastest known species because of red-warp. The use of red-warp, also called hex-warp ("hex" as in "curse"), was extremely dangerous and only militaries regularly used red-warp travel. Red-warp travel caused permanent insanity in one in a 100,000 humans, and the rate was much higher for other species. Starcraft with mixed crew could not use the hex-warp engine. Even today, red-warp is the fastest method of travel for large distances about a quarter galactic diameter.
Today the immersion engine is the most popular way for humans to travel. Immersed space was actually a sub-plane of hyperspace. But to work, immersion points had to be found. Here's the trick for finding immersion points: only human beings can sense them, and electronic instruments can only guess where immersion points exist. As safe as hyperspace travel.
Sensing immersion points can be learned to a certain point in some people. More often than not, good immersed-space pilots have an innate ability that seems to be genetic. People like myself can sense immersion points at a distance of a half solar diameter. Electronic instruments lead you in the right direction, but it takes a human navigator or pilot to find the immersion point's exact location. Really good pilots can sense the difference between different immersion points and pick the one that will facilitate faster travel.
So this is how humanity staves off extinction. We can get around the universe very quickly and very economically. No other species can travel through hex-space with any type of safety, and no other species can find the best immersion points. For this, we get to claim a future as a species despite the best efforts of aliens bent on wiping us out.
Next Chapter >> 22: Expansion of First Fleet
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interesting
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