Quantum Subspace Tuner

The Quantum Subspace Tuner is a method of faster than light travel that exploits the the entangled state of two atoms to propel a ship through space without the effects of time dilation.

With the discovery of subspace, it was quickly realized that this region of the fabric of the universe did not impose the cosmic speed limit of c, the speed of light, on matter that managed to force its way into this sub dimension of space time. The major obstacle to harnessing this quirk in space time was the creation of a propulsion method that not only granted a ship access to subspace, but also allow the ship to navigate to the intended destination while "invisible" to normal space.

The solution lay in the entangled states of two atoms. Spooky action at a distance implied that two particles, not matter the distance in regular space, shared information about their states and spins. Scientists exploited this by entangling two guide post atoms, placing one in orbit around the Earth, and the other in orbit around the the Moon.

A probe equipped with a short distance QST then tuned into subspace, expanding the information link between two atoms to envelop the craft in the subspace field. This field was generated by vibrating the entire craft in the frequency of the information link of the two atoms and then, when enough power was applied, the field broke, and tuned the craft to the destination atom in orbit around the Moon. This can be illustrated by compressing an ordinary spring with a model of the ship wedged inside the spiral, of the spring and then letting the spring go, releasing its energy and carrying the ship along for the ride.

This came with a tremendous drawback. The power required to vibrate an entire vessel for human travel across interstellar distances into subspace would be extremely large. Ships of this size utilizing a QST drive would need to be miles long, with reactors the size of several city blocks and tuning cores that spanned the length of the vessel. With the evolution of Synthetic life, this became a more imaginable engineering project.