Halfen stardrive
The Halfen stardrive was the stardrive in use by the Halfen during the events described in "Lagrange Two, Lagrange One, Do You Copy?". The first version of the drive was created between 23,000 and 30,000 years prior to those events. While it effectively allowed the Halfen (and other races) to transit the wormhole system, it had a number of side effects on humans that the Halfen (or humans) had been unable to address.
How it works
The Halfen stardrive works by creating a quantum tunnel from the departure wormhole sphere to the destination wormhole sphere. This reduces the gravitic stresses caused by the warping of gravity within the wormhole sphere, allowing the starship to travel through generally unscathed. The drive size is dependent on the size of the ship; Larger ships require larger drives.
Side effects
There were two main side effects on humans of the Halfen stardrive:
- With each transit, there was a small (about 0.003 chance) the stardrive would suffer a catastrophic failure, almost always resulting in the destruction of the ship using the drive (as well as other ships nearby). The Halfen considered this an acceptable chance, and regular maintenance of the stardrive helped prevent such failures from occurring.
- Humans within the sphere of influence of the stardrive tended to feel severely nauseous and unable to focus for several minutes after wormhole transit. While this wasn't necessarily a problem most of the time, it could cause loss of ships and life if transiting to an unknown or hostile system.
Both of these issues were almost entirely eliminated when the Halfen stardrive was replaced by the Kovel stardrive.