Interstellar Travel

Interstellar travel in the Star Frontiers setting can be canonically accomplished through one of two methods, depending on the ruleset being used; Alpha Dawn presents a hyper-simplified system where one light year equals one day of travel, which is extremely simple to use, but has no in-universe explanation for the relationship. On the other Hand, Knight Hawks details how ships can travel faster than the speed of light; unfortunately, this method (entering "The Void" upon reaching 1% the speed of light) is incompatible with the method presented in Alpha Dawn, since the same velocity must be achieved regardless of the distance of travel, meaning that traversing one light year does not take up significantly more time than traversing 15 light years.

Knight Hawks

The discovery that allows the members of the four races to expand beyond their home worlds and enter the Frontier was purely accidental; it occurred when spaceships were developed that could accelerate to a velocity of about 12 million km per hour (1% of the speed of light): at this velocity, a unique reality of space becomes apparent: in defiance of all previously accepted laws of physics, a ship will disappear from the space known as "the universe" and enter a hyperdimensional region called "the Void."

Time is very distorted in the Void, and space does not seem to exist at all. If a ship decelerates slightly while in the Void, it will emerge into the "real" universe at some point far distant from where it left normal space. By carefully coordinating the ship's direction of travel with the length of time the ship spends in the Void (usually 3 to 15 seconds), a navigator can "jump" his ship into the vicinity of another star.

Although this process of jumping through the Void allows ships to cover immense distances in very short times, jumping still takes several days. Most of this time is spent accelerating to jump speed and then decelerating at the other end.

Jump Limits

Theoretically, a ship can jump any distance across the Void. The limiting factor is the precision needed in the pre-jump calculations. When a ship jumps more than 15 light-years, there is a 10% chance per additional light-year that the ship will misjump. If the astrogator is risk-jumping, this probability is subtracted from his chance to guide the ship safely.

Jump Navigation

Plotting a jump takes 10 hours of calculation per light year of distance between systems; these calculations must be made before the ship starts boosting towards its destination.

Acceleration to Jump Velocity

Commonly known as "transiting" or "boosting", ships accelerate at a steady 1g, generating artificial gravity throughout the ship, and after the jump, turns over and decelerates at a steady 1g, again generating artificial gravity throughout the ship.

The velocity needed to enter the Void is 12,000,000 kph (3,333,334 m/s).

• At 1g (9.90665 m/s/s) it takes 94.42 hours to reach void velocity (4.72 Standard days).
  • At 1g, it will take little under 9.5 Standard days to cross ANY interstellar space; from 1 LY to 15LY. This in addition to the time needed to plot the course.
• At KH game scale, it takes little over 3:20 minutes to reach void velocity at 1 ADF.
  • At KH game scale, even chemical drive ships can easily reach Void velocity.

Alternative Hex/Turn Size/Length

• 6 km Hex / 10 min turn = 1 ADF = 1g