Starship

A starship is a spacecraft equipped with a jump drive. Please note that very early STL starships did not employ FTL drives, but the greatly enhanced travel speed means that any sophont species with the technology employs it in these times.

• q.v. spaceship.

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Please refer to the following AAB library data for more information:

• Starship
  • Starship Types
    • Bulk Cargo Trader
    • Far Traders
    • Fat Traders
    • Jumpliners
    • Jump Tankers
    • Ship Tenders
    • Warships
  • Speed of Travel
    • FTL
    • NAFAL (STL)
• Jump Drive
  • Jump Drive Key Resources
    • Lanthanum
    • Zuchai Crystal
  • Jump Drive Lore
    • Droptanks
    • Jump Bridge
    • Jump Damper
    • Jump Dimming
    • Jump Drive History
    • Jump Projector
    • Jump Space
    • Misjump

Description (Specifications)

Typically, such a ship includes large percentages dedicated to fuel, for jump drive requires a huge investment in energy to accomplish the transition to jumpspace. This limits the available space for other uses, severely in the case of ships able to jump long distances, or rejump repeatedly (which is a lifesaver if you can afford the space). Some ships greatly enhance capacity without sacrificing safety by mounting external tanks to the ship known as droptanks.

• Please see Civilian Starship Types or Military Starship Types for more information.

Astronics

What avionics are to aircraft, astronics are to starships.

Jump Drives

Please see the article Jump Drive for more information.

History & Background (Dossier)

The first interstellar ships, while crude in light of more modern FTL jump drives, nevertheless have revolutionized every sophont society that developed them. Two motivations tend to drive the push for interstellar travel:

• 1. Colonization (population pressure)
• 2. Curiosity (exploration)

Some sophont species tend to also be driven by a fear of the unknown, a third common motivator. And yet others possess a religious, ideological fervor to bring their ideas and philosophies to the rest of Interstellar space, a fourth common motivator.

• 3. Fear (paranoia)
• 4. Belief (proselytism)

The K'kree, for example, while driven by several factors are strongly motivated to bring an ethos of vegetarianism to Charted Space.

Starship Representative Sampling

• Battleship (Military)
• Cruiser (Military)
• Far Trader (Civilian)
• Free Trader (Civilian)

References & Contributors (Sources)

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Classic Traveller Library Data (N-Z)
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science