The Disraeli-Yuma Series Spacecraft

Earth's First Step to the Stars

During the centuries since the dawn of human history, humanity had dreamed of the stars. It had wondered what they were, wondered whether they harbored life, wished to travel to them. But the wish was denied humanity by the laws of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, neither of which allowed the vast distances between the stars to be crossed in times less than decades. In the latter decades of the 20th century, Newton and Einstein gave way to Disraeli and Yuma, who gave humanity its first step to the stars, steps that would later be overshadowed by the grand leaps that Cochrane would allow. During the 21st century, humanity was able to leave its home system through the use of Disraeli and Yuma's "Spinner" drive system. The Spinner system was able to generate a wormhole through which a ship could travel. The Spinner unit itself could generate no thrust; that was entirely the product of the inertial motors of the ship. Thus a ship could develop speeds approaching that of light using fairly conventional thrust systems.

Wormholes: Basis of the Spinner

The principles behind this early system are based on wormhole theory developed in the late twentieth century prior to the Eugenics War. As developed, the theory allowed for the creation of wormholes: tunnels through spacetime which crossed normal space in much shorter distances. A wormhole has two throats, which may be vast distances apart in normal space, but much closer together in wormhole space. Wormhole theory suggests that a wormhole is the gravitational equivalent of an atmospheric cyclone. A cyclone is a rotating air mass (a vortex) associated with a low pressure center. A wormhole is a space-time vortex which forms in association with a rotating singularity (black hole). More specifically, an open wormhole must form from a rotating ring of hyperdense matter. To make a black hole it is necessary to create a concentration of mass-energy in a very small space. The classic Einsteinian E=mc² relationship allows this to be accomplished using either energy or matter. In 1993, Avram Disraeli and Sadami Yuma produced the beginnings of a practical basis for creating wormholes as part of their Grand Unified Theory. Unfortunately, portions were lost in the Eugenics War and had to be reconstructed afterwards. It wasn't until 2018 that a workable prototype system had been constructed using an existing DY-210 spaceship as the prototype testbed.

Spinner Development

For their power source, these starship drives used fusion reactors similar to those now powering starship impulse drives. Because of the vast power output difference between fusion power and antimatter power, such systems were capable only of speeds barely approaching that of light. The measure of the intensity of the warp produced in these systems is the Hyper-acceleration Factor (HF). The HF is related to the 'depth' of the wormhole the starship could create, which is determined by the mass-energy pumped into the wormhole and the rate of spin it is given when it is created. The HF is multiplied by the real-space speed of the fusion motor in order to find the actual speed of the Spinner ship as it travels through space.

Although powered only by a trio of fusion reactors, their power was used for both the thrust engines and for the wormhole spinner. The DY-220 system, as well as the more advanced DY-series spacecraft, used their respective energy sources to power a mass collector. This unit funneled mass and energy into a vortex serving as the focus for the creation of the wormhole. The process can be viewed as the creation of a singularity, a mini-black hole, under controlled conditions. Instead of creating an actual singularity, which would be a literal dead end for space travelers, a ring of hyperdense matter is produced to create the needed wormhole. One problem with wormholes is that they tend to close up as soon as they open, before anything could get through them. Their throat needs to be propped open by some form of exotic matter which would generate tremendous forces against the walls of the throat while ignoring the ship traveling into the hole. WIMP matter was what was needed. Weakly-Interacting Massive Particles are a class of matter in which the particles interact weakly with particles of 'normal matter.' It's as though there's a shadow universe all around us which contributes much to the mass of the universe, but virtually ignores it - doesn't interact by means of any of the forces we interact with a great deal: gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces. The spaceship's designers reasoned that, if its massiveness can be made to interact with the fabric of space to provide the tension to keep the wormhole open, it could work for a wormhole-based warp system.

The length of the wormhole, and thus the apparent increase in speed of the spaceship, is determined by the amount of matter condensed into the WIMP ring, the rate of spin of the ring, and its electrical and magnetic charges. Once initiated, the WIMP ring is given an electrical charge. This causes the particles to repel one another, expanding the diameter of the ring as the drive continues to add matter to the ring. Once expanded to a critical diameter, force fields around the spaceship maintain the throat while the ship slips inside the wormhole. Once within, impulse engines provide thrust for the ship as it makes passage of the wormhole. Without the mass collector to sustain it, the wormhole throat collapses behind the ship, leaving it inside the wormhole. The mass collector acts as a sort of hyperspatial crowbar to open the wormhole for the ship's passage. Its only way back into normal space is the other end of the wormhole, which is opened by the mass collector when the ship has (theoretically) reached the region of its destination.

Outline of the Disraeli-Yuma Spacecraft Series