Interstellar Communications

One of the biggest issues the commonwealth and other interstellar planetary spanning empires have is communications. It would take 4 years to send a speed of light message from the nearest star back to Sol, and another 4 years to get a reply. Which is totally impractible. Experiments with other methods of communication are still ongoing but for now the British Royal Mail Hermes system is used.

The Hermes drone is a EGdrive powered saucer with a multitude of communications and memory storage. They run regular routes between star systems carrying emails and other electronic data in secured, encrypted data banks,

The process

  • The Hermes drone receives the outgoing data package from the local control station.
  • When the inbound Hermes drone arrives the outgoing drone departs.
  • Accelerating at full velocity of nearly 100g for half the journey and flipping over at the midway point and decelerating for the inbound journey.
  • Once the drone is within communications range of the destination control station it starts to transmit its data.
  • The destinations outbound drone departs.

Although this isn't the fastest system it is the quickest yet developed. Busy routes can have multiple Hermes drones whereas some beginning colonies may have only one drone. 

Many exploration scraft have Hermes drones onboard which they use to update Discovery Command back on Sol. Hermes drones are also sent to unexplored systems to await the exploration scraft when they arrive. This is particularly important to scraft on 'grand tours'.

A great advantage to the Hermes drones is that they don't have to move to the inner planets of a system but rather, they can sit in the outer system awaiting their communications signals.

Future Systems

At the moment the Hermes communications system has proved to be effective. There are many Hermes drones with multiple drones on busier routes. This system is expected to continue for many years yet.

Future systems currently in development are;

  • Point-to-Point systems using quantum entangled pairs. At the moment these are few in number and not easily produced.
  • Tachyon stream communication. This has proved effective in the lab with simple FTL communications being passed between the two testing labs.
  • Gravity wave manipulation. It has been noted that gravity waves appear almost instantaneously. This would give instant communication across interstellar distances. If it can be developed effectively.

Copyright RSF