Campaign:NHNE/General/M-Drive

While the principles of the M-Drive were known to Sol the ability to manufacture these was not really available until after 111 and commercially viable instances weren't built immediately. The manufacture of comfortable drives only came when they were combined with the local invention - the Inertial Compensator - after the 233.

The M-Drive consists of two main parts:

• Particle Generator
• Particle Convertor or Thruster

The former of these components generates the exotic matter particles that provide the thrust as they interact with the "nearest" major body's distortion of J-Space. The Particle Converter (a.k.a Thruster) is the grid that forces the particles to degrade back into real-space providing thrust in one direction and the blue-glow of a pseudo-Cherenkov radiation caused by their having to slow to the speed of light as they do so.

The need for a thruster plate means that specific impulse that then moves the ship is centred on, and acts normally to, that plate and must be aligned through the ship's centre of gravity or the ship will start to spin uncontrollably. The use of multiple plates allows better control and greater stability.