History Main / CasualInterstellarTravel

In real life, so far as we can tell, interstellar travel is an epic undertaking. The distances involved are vast, and so for a timely journey, your speed must be equally colossal. To accelerate a ship to near light-speed and then to decelerate it again would necessarily require a huge quantity of energy. Not to mention the fact that, at those speeds, the tiniest dust particle becomes a deadly hazard. And if anything goes wrong, you're stuck hurtling through the depths of space with no chance of being rescued and no hope of escape. Although the popular idea of the speed of light imposing a kind of universal speed limit upon your travels is a misconception, you can forget maintaining any connection to your home planet; if you did ever decide to return after zipping around the galaxy, you would find that [[TimeDillation centuries had passed with everybody you knew long dead and gone]]. Not a prospect for the faint of heart.

In real life, so far as we can tell, interstellar travel is an epic undertaking. The distances involved are vast, and so for a timely journey, your speed must be equally colossal. To accelerate a ship to near light-speed and then to decelerate it again would necessarily require a huge quantity of energy. Not to mention the fact that, at those speeds, the tiniest dust particle becomes a deadly hazard. And if anything goes wrong, you're stuck hurtling through the depths of space with no chance of being rescued and no hope of escape. Although the popular idea of the speed of light imposing a kind of universal speed limit upon your travels is a misconception, you can forget maintaining any connection to your home planet; if you did ever decide to return after zipping around the galaxy, you would find that centuries had passed with everybody you knew long dead and gone. Not a prospect for the faint of heart.

** One limitation seems to be the dependency on specific [[HyperspaceLanes hyperspace routes]]. With a good route, you're quite capable of getting from one end to the galaxy to the other in no time. Without one, you're stuck with slower, more roundabout methods. It's probably best to assume when there are inconsistencies, they were using different routes. It's also established that an entire third or so of the galaxy is essentially off-limits because no hyperspace routes have yet been discovered for it.

** Completely averted in ''The Literature/BlackFleetCrisis'', and to a lesser extent the book ''[[Literature/TheCorellianTrilogy Showdown at Centerpoint]]'', which put the reader's perspective into civilian craft without the support of massive interstellar corporations, governments, militaries, or criminal syndicates. These ships are slow, have about as many creature comforts as a minivan, and are regulated enough that any trip would require planning. Other sources mention that many citizens of the galaxy never see the other side of their own planets, let alone anything beyond the stars. Many characters have noted that visiting hundreds of worlds really means setting down in a starport, exchanging cargo, grabbing a bite, and heading out. In short, interstellar travel may be abundant, but it is not casual let alone comfortable to anyone below the elite, which happens to include all the protagonists.

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' is a good example. All three subtropes of FasterThanLightTravel are present; [[HandWave "Hetch Drive"]] is dirt cheap and available to everyone, [[RandomTeleportation "Starburst"]] (which is faster but somewhat random) is available to [[LivingShip Leviathans]], but [[OurWormholesAreDifferent wormholes]] - which act as a metadimensional PortalNetwork - can only be utilized with the assistance of {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s, which they [[YouAreNotReady don't give lightly]] for [[ApocalypseHow really]] [[WeaponOfMassDestruction good]] [[RealityBreakingParadox reasons]].

** Covenant FTL technology is much more refined, despite being merely inferior copies of [[{{Precursor}} Forerunner]] technology. In ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'', [[VoiceWithAnInternetConnection Cortana]] compares human Shaw-Fujikawa FTL drives and the Covenant ones to a blunt instrument and a scalpel, respectively. Human ships almost literally punch a large hole in space/time into slipspace. The power requirements are enormous. Covenant drives cut a tiny slit in space, which massively reduces their power costs, vastly decreases their travel times, and allows them to exit slipspace with pinpoint accuracy. It's also heavily implied that humans could easily improve on the Covenant tech if they got their hands on it. Every Covenant ship captured in the novels gets conveniently destroyed before it can be brought back for study... until around the ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' era, anyways.

** The ''Void Trilogy'', set 1500 years after ''Pandora's Star'', has a lot more spaceships. There are commercial spaceships, the Commonwealth Navy, and private spaceships. Think of them as [[SpaceIsAnOcean like ships nowadays]]: the biggest and most efficient are company or government owned, but there is a significant number of leisure yachts.

[[Film -- Live-Action]]

* Surprisingly averted in ''Franchise/DragonBall'', despite the series being ''very'' light on scientific accuracy. It takes Vegeta and Nappa a year to get to Earth, Bulma estimates that (even with the best man-made ship) it would take thousands of years to get to Namek, and, even with an advanced alien’s ship, that particular journey takes at least two months. This is later done away with when Goku learns how to teleport (as long as he can "sense" some life energy at his destination, distance is irrelevant), and whatever method it is that Whis and his ilk use to travel through space, which can cross entire universes in less than an hour.

* In ''The Essential ComicBook/SilverSurfer'', a villain wants to prove to Shalla Bal that Norrin Radd (the Surfer) is dead in order he can move in on her, so they pop across to Earth in his ship. Come to think of it, how did he even know where to go?

* Attempted and failed with ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'' in the story "The Astro Smurf". In both the comics and the cartoon episode, Astro Smurf/Dreamy attempts to travel to the stars by using a Smurf-made rocket ship where pedal power operates a propeller at the bottom of the rocket. Unfortunately, try as he did, the main character of the story was unable to get the rocket off the ground. The rest of the Smurfs decide to make Astro Smurf/Dreamy believe that the rocket was fixed and now works by taking him on a FauxtasticVoyage to another planet which turns out to be the inside of an extinct volcano and disguising themselves as Schlips (Swoofs in the cartoon show). It was repeated in the cartoon show story sequel "Dreamy's Pen Pals", except that the Smurfs simply transformed the village into the Swoof Village by using stage props, but Brainy had cut corners on completing the complex formula for transforming the Smurfs into Swoofs, so they ended up changing back into Smurfs a bit too soon.

** In [[ComicBook/SupergirlRebirth "The Killers of Krypton"]], Supergirl builds her own faster-than-light spaceship to reach and navigate around the edges of the galaxy in a ridiculous lapse of time.

[[folder:Film]]

* The existence of technologies enabling this is actually a plot point in ''[[FanFic/SovereignGFCOrigins Origins]]'', a MassiveMultiplayerCrossover between ''Franchise/StarWars''[=/=]''Franchise/MassEffect''[=/=]''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}''''[[spoiler:[=/=]Franchise/{{Halo}}'']]. Specifically, the stardrives which allow it are actually opening [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace windows into a very bad place]], permitting [[spoiler:Flood]] from an AlternateUniverse in which [[spoiler:the Flood won against other life and mingled with Reapers]] to enter where the heroes call home...

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Paula von Gunther ends up creating a teleportation device, and Diana uses it to travel to Venus and beyond at a snap.

* ''VideoGame/DawnOfWarSoulstorm'': The game takes place over a star system made of four planets. Where Dark Crusade allowed you to jump from province to province once you had the starport, Soulstorm had a Warp Storm preventing planetary jumps and forcing you to use the PortalNetwork instead (and had a region bonus that lets you move faster through your own terrain).

** ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'' depicts travel between various points in the Andromeda Galaxy as taking mere hours, and even SpacePirates are capable of traveling all the way to Earth (though the trip is still implied to be rather inconvenient). The sequel establishes that the one limiting factor is that going into hyperspace is physically taxing on living organisms, so there's an upper limit to how many jumps you can take in one go before you have to spend some time in normal space recuperating.

* ZigZagged with ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'': most of the time is averted... [[VoiceWithAnInternetConnection One]] even explains to Paperinik that even traveling to somewhere relatively close as Venus would take a long time with Earth tecnology. Even aliens far more advanced as the [[ProudScholarRace Xerbians]] and the [[ScaryDogmaticAlien Coronians]] have to use cryo-cells to travel between galaxies, as it takes decades ( and [[TimePolice Lyla]] confirms that human spaceships still have the same limitations in the XXIII century). There are only two exceptions: unfortunately, one of them are the [[PlanetLooters Evronians]], who freely travel the universe to devour other races' emotions and then turn them into obedient zombies; fortunately, the other is [[PhysicalGod Xadhoom]], who mercylessy hunt them down in revenge for what they did to her people.

* ZigZagged with ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventure'': most of the time is averted... [[VoiceWithInternetConnection One]] even explains to Paperinik that even traveling to somewhere relatively close as Venus would take a long time with Earth tecnology. Even aliens far more advanced as the [[ProudScholarRace Xerbians]] and the [[ScaryDogmaticAlien Coronians]] have to use cryo-cells to travel between galaxies, as it takes decades ( and [[TimePolice Lyla]] confirms that human spaceships still have the same limitations in the XXIII century). There are only two exceptions: unfortunately, one of them are the [[PlanetLooters Evronians]], who freely travel the universe to devour other races' emotions and then turn them into obedient zombies; fortunately, the other is [[PhysicalGod Xadhoom]], who mercylessy hunt them down in revenge for what they did to her people.

Some stories use a [[PortalNetwork teleportation network]], while others simply decide that ships capable of traveling thousands or millions of times the speed of light are available to every Tom, Richard, and Harry via HyperspaceLanes.

** Also averted during ''VideoGame/MassEffectAndromeda''. One mission reveals the kett have to use sleeper ships to get from their area of Andromeda to the Heleus Cluster, and it's implied that even when the kett do get around to calling for reinforcements, it will take some time for them to get there.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays it straight and averts it.
** Played straight with [[PortalNetwork Mass Relays]], which are capable of transporting a starship hundreds to thousands of light years instantaneously. Because all ships have element zero drive cores, you could take off from Earth, travel to a colony world thousands of light years distant to visit a friend, and make it back to Earth in a ''single day''.
** Averted when it comes to ''non''-relay FTL travel. Without the mass relays, the civilian ships make about 12 LY per day (military ships might be faster, but it's never specified). You also need an [[{{Unobtanium}} Element Zero]] drive core. Plus, you have to discharge the drive regularly, which must be done on the surface of a planet or in a strong magnetic field. Otherwise, the core releases the gigawatt equivalent of a rub-your-shoes-on-the-carpet-and-touch-the-doorknob static discharge. This is invariably lethal.

** FTL travel starts off being relatively slow for humans (about 4 LY/day), but also pretty cheap. And since the UNSC has mastered terraforming, most of the UNSC's colonies are within about a month's travel. In the years after the end of the Covenant war, humanity's FTL capabilities have improved substantially, at least for its most advanced ships.

** His small spaceship is the straightest example. Rick frequently uses it in his adventures with Morty and Summer, and they often leave, go to completely different planetary systems, and return home in it by the end of the same day. So far, it hasn't been shown how Rick cuts down the travel time to be so short, and the actual speed of the ship is never stated; presumably, Rick is using some form of his portal technology mentioned below to teleport the majority of the way.

** Also, in the ''ComicBook/XWingSeries'', interstellar travel certainly is easy for the protagonists, who are part of the New Republic military and have military ships, including single-pilot snubfighters, which can go into hyperspace. ''Wedge's Gamble'' features the Rogues infiltrating Coruscant as civilians on various different qualities of bulk transport. In ''Wraith Squadron'' the Wraiths go undercover as various tourists, specifically as tourist stereotypes which customs officials see all the time. An aged and exiled but still liquid senator and his bodyguards buying transportation in the same small private shuttle as a failed test pilot with a long-suffering wife and three absolute hicks is seen as completely unremarkable. Those same hicks fit into the mold of yokels who have blown their entire savings on a single trip to a more civilized world.

* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' is a good example. All three subtropes of FasterThanLightTravel are present; [[HandWave "Hetch Drive"]] is dirt cheap and available to everyone, [[TeleportersAndTransporters "Starburst"]] (which is faster but somewhat random) is available to [[LivingShip Leviathans]], but [[OurWormholesAreDifferent wormholes]] - which act as a metadimensional PortalNetwork - can only be utilized with the assistance of {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s, which they [[YouAreNotReady don't give lightly]] for [[ApocalypseHow really]] [[WeaponOfMassDestruction good]] [[RealityBreakingParadox reasons]].

* In ''Literature/LuciferStar'' by Creator/CTPhipps, the Spiral (Orion's Arm) is a place that depends on CasualInterstellarTravel. Almost every planet is interdependent on other planets with only a few being self-sufficiently. Trillions of tons of cargo are shipped from one world to the next every day in the same way as a standard planet due to the existence of jumpspace as well as a wholly integrated spacer culture. An ApocalypseHow happened centuries ago when interstellar space travel was briefly rendered impossible.

* A dire situation that required Ben and Johnny to get from Earth to Reed and Sue on Mars was mentioned to take too long before Reed explains he developed "space folding" technology that drastically cuts transit time. They use it in a later arc to travel to a different galaxy within hours.

* Anyone with a ''GreenLanternRing'' in ''Creator/DCComics'' can pretty much sling themselves across the entire universe with no thought to time, food, water or even bathroom requirements.
** This gets invoked in a cross over with ''Franchise/StarTrek'': Multiple lanterns (green and otherwise) end up in that universe after fleeing Nekron. Eventually they figure out that Oa exists even here, but the Enterprise isn't actually capable of crossing the distance required. With their rings being too low on power to make the trip, they had to engineer a creative solution to get there in a different manner.

* In ''{{Literature/Animorphs}}'', the Andalites are like this thanks to their knowledge of z-space, the negative space that let them pop in at one point and out at another--although Z-space is notoriously unpredictable and always shifting. The Yeerks stole the tech and have equivalent capabilities.

** "Literature/TheLastQuestion": The second scene involves FTL through [[SubspaceOrHypserspace hyperspace]], an invention by the Planetary AC computers which allow humans to colonize new worlds. This, along with immortality, begins to cause new issues as the population of the galaxy is increasing rapidly. The fourth scene has EnergyBeings of mankind which can [[SmallUniverseAfterAll traverse intergalactic distances]] with only the effort of their minds.

* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' sports at least one use of this almost every episode. While not every ship has FTL capabilities, most modern ones are outfitted; civilian and military. The FTL drives are used to skip across space for reasons such as: running away from offenders ({{Ahem}}, [[spoiler:CYLONS]].), scouting out areas of space, or just quicker travel. Granted, the ships that didn't have FTL were quickly destroyed in the genocide.