Kovel jump drive
The Kovel jump drive, Kovel drive, Kovel stardrive, or slingshot drive was invented by Edward M. Kovel in 3159, though it was only used experimentally until its first commercial use in 3162. It was based on the Halfen Stardrive, but with a number of improvements added. The biggest improvement (which directly affected all the other improvements) was the slingshot anchor (the discovery of which is discussed in "Slingshot"). Kovel was able to successfully use the same technique used by Starkind to establish an anchor at the far end of the wormhole, then use that anchor to pull the starship through. This reduced the effective time of wormhole transit from several seconds to near-instantaneous.
The slingshot anchor, by reducing the time of the transit, reduced the disorienting after-effects of wormhole jumps on humans and halfen so that they generally passed within a few seconds. Prior to Kovel's improvements, the effects could last up to several minutes. This significantly reduced the stresses placed on the ship and the drive itself to near zero, practically eliminating the chances of catastrophic hull breach or drive failure during jumps. A Wheeler–Feynman handshake is used to perform a Cramer transactional interpretation on a quantum mechanical level, thereby avoiding paradoxes that might occur otherwise.
The drive was first commercially introduced in 3162 at the Piram Shipyards in the Naya Piram system. Since introduction, it has become the de facto standard within the Ohlakhira Shufteim, and even the Halfen have used it exclusively since 3165. The continued improvement of the drive is supported heavily by the Interstellar Cataloguing and Exploration Service. It is smaller than the Halfen Stardrive, which made it feasible for much smaller ships to make use of wormholes without being carried by larger ships. The smallest ship known to have a Kovel jump drive is 40 meters in diameter.