Spacecraft of the Silver River

WIP: Spacecraft are an essential part of commerce and even simple travel in the Silver River Arm. Unlike many sci-fi settings, it is rare for single individuals to own true spacecraft, i.e. those capable of interstellar travel between star systems. This is due to both the fact they are incredibly expensive, to the point only corporations and governments can really afford them, as and that most of these craft require crews in the tens of thousands to maintain as well as the fact they eat through fuel and energy at incredible rates. At best, a citizen can hope to own what is called a planethopper, a small craft made for intersystem travel between planets. But even these are expensive, and more akin to luxury supercars than the typical private starship seen elsewhere.

Most civilian travel instead occurs via Starliners, corporately owned spacecraft that are usually less luxurious than one might imagine as they are more akin to a passenger jet than a cruise liner. They do hold hundreds of passengers, but usually in cramped quarters like a sleeper car on a train. Luxurious starships of any kind are incredibly rare, as they are difficult to maintain in any proper fashion. Even state-of-the-art military spacecraft are frequently claustrophobic, even more so than civilian craft due to less of a need for comfort.

The primary means of interstellar travel technologically speaking is what is commonly known as the Shift Drive. Essentially a wormhole generator, it rips open a hole in the fabric of reality to allow quick and easy travel between two locations in space. This takes extremely large amounts of fuel and energy as well as generating large amounts of heat, as one might expect. Generally, a ship can only perform one jump before needing to stop to dump heat, recharge the Shift Drive itself, and potentially even refuel. However, the distance a Shift, as the process is referred to as, can vary. It can be between two close systems, or from one side of the Silver River Arm to the other. The only limit on distance is how much fuel a ship can carry and how much its heatsinks can contain before having to be dumped.

TBD: History of interstellar travel, use of starships by each government, corporate versus private starships, starship manufacturers, and the methods behind space combat.