Dr Forbidden, head of DDS ResearchI thought it would be beneficial to state where we are right now with respect to the (still new) worm drive technology and how we are integrating it into our systems.
First of all some brief introductory notes on how worm drives work. Unlike traditional hyperspace drives which drive a ship faster than the speed of light through the subspace barrier of space-time, worm drives literally generate a tunnel straight through space-time allow near instantaneous transportation between 2 points in space (which are currently about 5 light years apart). The tunnel or worm hole is generated by the worm drive and requires precise geometry and calculations for the ship in transit. This is a very involved process as we have to be exact with the geometry, even being off by a nanometre can cause severe health problems for the crew, and any more can result in the destruction of the crew due to having to precisely navigate through the various radiation layers and levels of space time. Therefore we can't just fit a worm drive to any old ship, it has to be to a ship form that we have calculated geometry for.
(By the way external damage to a ship can cause changes to the geometry needed and preclude a safe worm jump even if the drive is working however when we calculate geometry we build in enough tolerance so minor external damage can still be accommodated.)
So far the following ship types have been cleared for worm drive use:
- Type 35 (both Panther and Indy)
- Type 41 (Isometric and Freedom), Type 43s still require some changes due to differences in the ship dimensions.
- Type 46 (though not with a ground attack module)
- Type 95X research ship
Examples of all these classes have either got or have had work drive fitted at some time. We are aiming to clear the Type 43 MCS, the Type 37 HCS and the Type 15 bomber by the end of 2112. As the Dinos have already calculated the geometry for their own Dinomark XTs we have geometry for the Type 47 already (the Dinos supplied it with the drives they supplied) though have no plans yet to fit drives to them.
At the time of writing there are 12 ships in the fleet fitted with a worm drive, mostly Dino supplied W1As though our production line is now established and we aim to build 9-10 of our own drives this year. They are complicated things to build unfortunately and, as they are Dino technology, there is a lot of learning and engineering integration that we need to do. By 2113 i am confident we can get production well into the "teens" and beyond. This does mean though of course the retrofitting older ships will not take place on a large scale for some years yet though we have enough for new ships coming online this year (though at the moment just Type 35Bs will be getting the drives).
I hope these notes have helped illuminate where the DDS is with respect to worm drives at the moment.
