| 1 | ->'''Shepard:''' You traveled all the way home to walk your sister to school.\ |
| 2 | '''Ashley:''' It was only a dozen light years. Like a day's cruise. It's not like I was going to Earth or something. |
| 3 | -->-- ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'' |
| 4 | |
| 5 | 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 [[TimeDilation centuries had passed with everybody you knew long dead and gone]]. Not a prospect for the faint of heart. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | In some SpeculativeFiction settings, interstellar travel is depicted as expensive and at least moderately time-consuming, being mostly limited to governments and major commercial operations. But that's not here. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | With this trope, interstellar travel is no more complex than booking a flight is today. In some cases, it's the equivalent of driving a car down a paved road. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Some stories use a [[PortalNetwork teleportation network]], while others simply decide that [[FasterThanLightTravel ships capable of traveling thousands or millions of times the speed of light]] are available to every Tom, Richard, and Harry via HyperspaceLanes. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | This is usually part and parcel of stories that [[{{Planetville}} treat planets like towns]]; interstellar voyages are thus little more than like intercontinental flights or at worst, [[SpaceIsAnOcean like crossing an ocean]] in a steamship. If the [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale Sci Fi Writers Have Any Sense Of Scale]], then the scale of civilization surpasses our one planet easily. And probably mocks the [[MundaneDogmatic Mundane Manifesto]] while it's at it. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | This is usually done deliberately; works that use it err on [[SlidingScale/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness the softer side of science fiction]]. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Related to ConvenientlyClosePlanet. SisterTrope to CasualInterplanetaryTravel. Beings capable of ShiplessFasterThanLightTravel are not uncommon in such settings. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | Contrast GenerationShips, where interstellar travel to another planet takes an entire generation due to ships being slow-moving. |
| 20 | ---- |
| 21 | !!Examples: |
| 22 | |
| 23 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[folder:Animation]] |
| 26 | * ''Animation/HappyHeroes'': Planet Xing has a train system that travels through space to other planets, but makes it to destinations as fast as a normal train ride would, with how far planets are from each other not being considered. |
| 27 | [[/folder]] |
| 28 | |
| 29 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 30 | * Variation in ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'', which has Casual ''[[TheMultiverse Interdimensional]]'' Travel. It looks and acts just like your typical Casual Interstellar Travel, complete with {{Cool Starship}}s traveling through what looks like hyperspace, only they don't have to worry about RealLife distances between planets and tend to teleport people down to the surface rather than leave hyperspace and land. It's mostly done through [[ScienceFantasy magic]]. The "casual" part is subverted, since only SufficientlyAdvancedAlien individuals with magical powers can casually travel interdimensionally, regular Earthlings [[TheMasquerade don't even know]] of the existence of magic and other worlds. Even these individuals need to get permission from the [[TheFederation Dimensional Administration Bureau]]. |
| 31 | * In the {{hentai}} OVA ''Bondage Queen Kate'', traveling to the far reaches of the galaxy is portrayed as being no more taxing than visiting another country is for humans today. The desert planet of Dune is known as a popular tourist destination. |
| 32 | * If ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'' is any indication, the colony fleets of ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' are a rather unconventional example. [[FasterThanLightTravel FTL travel]] via Space Folding is possible, but has large energy requirements and is unpredictable. Travel between stars however, is casual, and quite comfortable actually, since ''Frontier'' takes place on what is essentially a fleet of ''island-sized'' domeships containing huge sprawling metropolises, small oceans, green fields forests and farmland [[JustForFun/RecycledINSPACE In SPACE!]] It's actually likely that the Frontier's citizens have a higher standard of living than the people of Earth, since the planet itself is recovering from a space war. |
| 33 | * In one episode of ''Literature/DirtyPair'', Kei and Yuri decide to stop off on a planet, on [[RaceAgainstTheClock their way to a dinner date]] on another planet, because they have a ''nice shopping mall'' there. Another depicts commercial interstellar space travel as more or less resembling modern airlines. |
| 34 | * 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 kin use to travel through space, which can cross entire universes in less than an hour. |
| 35 | * While ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'' does not actually feature this trope, Midoriya mentions that a famous person once said that if not for the emergence of Quirks (i.e. superpowers), which resulted in society being disrupted and many scientists studying them instead of other pursuits, society would be advanced enough that people would be able to vacation on other planets. |
| 36 | * Subverted in ''Literature/LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'': Though large fleets move through space with seeming ease, it does take quite a bit of time. Reinhard's flight from Urvashi to Fezzan is stated to take three weeks. |
| 37 | ** It is also stated that the logistical cost of building and maintaining such fleets is enormous: The Empire has several gigantic fleets and artificial worlds/fortresses that would make [[Franchise/StarWars Emperor Palpatine nod approvingly]], but at the price of leaving many of its planet underdeveloped; the Free Planet Alliance does not fare much better: the constant state of war is taking the best engineers and the most apt workers away from civilian life, not counting the huge amount of resources spent on maintaining the Alliance's fleets: Fezzan is the most prosperous planet in TheVerse precisely because it does not have to spend so much of its resources to build and maintain huge starfleets. |
| 38 | * ''Anime/AKB0048'': Thanks to the dualium, or in 0048's case, the Kirara Drive, traveling from star system to star system is about as difficult as a plane ride from one part of a country to another. |
| 39 | * ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'': Thanks to the Terminal is this an ordinary thing. Traveling to space is Gintama's version of traveling to Hawaii. Taken to the extremes in the apparent final arc where Gintoki and crew travel to space and back very often, so often that it's confusing. |
| 40 | * ''Manga/TwilightStarSuiAndNeri'': Thanks to significant leaps in technology for over five centuries, casually travelling from Earth to other planets is now akin to a real-life commercial air travel, as commercial spaceships have become commonplace. |
| 41 | [[/folder]] |
| 42 | |
| 43 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 44 | * 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. |
| 45 | * ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': 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. |
| 46 | * ''ComicBook/TheSmurfs'': Attempted and failed 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. |
| 47 | * ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'': ZigzaggedTrope. The Mega Cities have explored and colonized much of space beyond the solar system and have regular contact with alien civilizations. It seems to depend largely on the type and quality of spaceship you're using that determines how long the actual journey is, since there are also {{Generation Ship}}s. |
| 48 | * ''Franchise/GreenLantern'': |
| 49 | ** Anyone with a Green Lantern Ring can pretty much sling themselves across the entire universe with no thought to time, food, water or even bathroom requirements. |
| 50 | ** 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. |
| 51 | * Although ComicBook/{{Galactus}} can teleport, he usually utilizes starships to cross the universe comfortably and quickly. |
| 52 | * ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': |
| 53 | ** Kryptonians can travel to the literal edge of the universe by merely flying there in a ridiculously short time. Back in the [[MediaNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver]] and [[MediaNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks Bronze Ages]], Superman and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} -[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 the latter being known to take less than a full day to cover the distance between Earth and the center of the universe]]- casually zipped through the cosmos and visited alien worlds. Nonetheless, they also own a starship to travel fast to worlds where her powers don't work. |
| 54 | ** Invoked in ''ComicBook/WhoTookTheSuperOutOfSuperman'', where an alien race wants to destroy Earth because it's in the path of the interstellar travel network they look to build. |
| 55 | ** In ''ComicBook/TheKillersOfKrypton'', Supergirl builds her own faster-than-light spaceship to reach and navigate around the edges of the galaxy in a ridiculous lapse of time. |
| 56 | ** In ''ComicBook/RedDaughterOfKrypton'', the Red Lanterns use her own Red Rings or the [[CoolStarship Kaalvar]] to travel between solar systems almost instantly. |
| 57 | * In ''ComicBook/StarRaiders'', faster-than-light space travel is fully developed and easily available. |
| 58 | * ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: Paula von Gunther ends up creating a teleportation device, and Diana uses it to travel to Venus and beyond at a snap. |
| 59 | * 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 [[ScaryDogmaticAliens 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. |
| 60 | ** The PKNE story "Too Close" reveals that at least some races have access to a PortalNetwork to move between places too far away even for hyperspace. The problem is that if someone incompetent were to access a node they could cause a lot of trouble... Such as sending a ''planet'' from a system to another and make it interfere with the orbits of the local planets, killing everyone when the inhabited worlds get too close or too far from their star. Hence why they're supposed to stay in neutral hands and a hostile faction seizing one was met by [[PrivateMilitaryContractor Neopard being hired to retake it]]. |
| 61 | [[/folder]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 64 | * The existence of technologies enabling this is actually a plot point in ''Fanfic/{{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... |
| 65 | * In ''Fanfic/DefendersOfTheUniverse'', crossing galactic distances isn't much of a chore. The Lions can fly to the edge of the solar system in seconds, while Gems like Lapis can do so in days. The Castle of Lions's teladuv systems can transport the Paladins to anywhere in the universe almost instantaneously. |
| 66 | * In ''Fanfic/HellsisterTrilogy'', one of the first acts of random destruction of [[EnemyWithout Satan]] [[ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} Girl]] is to blow a ''pleasure cruiser'' up. Interstellar travel is ''very'' common in the 31st century, and some alien races like Daxamites and Rokynians don't even need ships. |
| 67 | * In ''Franchise/StarWars'' fanfiction ''Fanfic/ShatteredEmpire'', hyperspace allows the main characters to travel across lightyears in mere seconds. |
| 68 | * In ''Fanfic/KaraOfRokyn'', interstellar and interdimensional travel is easy thanks to the existence of warp spaceports.[[Franchise/GreenLantern Hal Jordan]] doesn't need them thanks to his power ring, but he still takes a full day to cover the huge distance between Rokyn to Earth, even using space warps. |
| 69 | * ''Fanfic/NoStarsInSight'': Being a former galactic empire, [[VideoGame/{{Destiny}} the Cabal]] naturally have starships capable of advanced FasterThanLightTravel. It only takes a single day for the ''Rancis Olytus'', a typical Imperial Cabal frigate, to warp from a RoguePlanet described as being not far from our solar system to the Kepler-186 system hundreds of light years away. |
| 70 | * In ''Fanfic/APrizeForThreeEmpires'', every team of super-heroes owns at least one starship with faster-than-light engines. |
| 71 | [[/folder]] |
| 72 | |
| 73 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 74 | * In ''WesternAnimation/JimmyNeutronBoyGenius'', Jimmy offhandedly states that the Yokian homeworld appears to be about 3 million light years away right before casually presenting the itinerary for the trip. And of course, the space fleet that they build out of the amusement park rides manages to make the trip in what is seemingly about a day. Strangely, in the made-for-TV movie "Win, Lose, and Kaboom," Jimmy asks his alien love interest if she thinks that they'll ever be able to see each other again, and she says "our planets are separated by parsecs of space" as if that actually means something. |
| 75 | ** In an episode of the TV series, Jimmy does attempt to explain exactly how he is able to do this, but [[TheUnReveal we don't hear it because of Carl's terrible singing]]. |
| 76 | [[/folder]] |
| 77 | |
| 78 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 79 | * ''[[Film/CommandoCody Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe]]''. In this 1953 FilmSerial our hero fights The Ruler, who plans to conquer Earth and then the Universe from his lair on Venus. Fortunately Commando Cody has invented an atomic rocketship that can fly to Venus and stop his evil plan. So the Ruler decides to punish Earth by putting out the Sun. Naturally this means moving his lair to another planetary system, to which Cody flies off to in his rocketship without the slightest mention of him having invented FasterThanLightTravel. Then again it's obvious from the title that ScienceFictionWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale. |
| 80 | * In ''Film/TheFifthElement'', star-hopping is apparently a common past-time of the rich and powerful, who think no more of vacationing on another planet (or, as in the film, on a cruise ship orbiting a planet) as their counterparts today would of seeing the Caribbean. |
| 81 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': |
| 82 | ** The franchise at large is so completely based on this trope that it's really hard to come up with concrete examples. They're everywhere. Even the Death Star--large enough to be mistaken for a moon--goes traipsing around the galaxy freely. In the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', people have worked out the speeds of hyperdrive travel based on evidence in the movies and the EU, and a good course in a fast ship will get you across ''the galaxy'' in ''a week''. In the films, cross-galactic travel is accomplished in mere hours (unless you think Obi-Wan and Luke spent days and weeks on the ''Millenium Falcon'' on the trip from Tatooine (Outer Rim) to Alderaan (Core World)). There's also Padmé's trip from Coruscant (Core World) to Mustafar (Outer Rim). Spaceships can be purchased at [[HonestJohnsDealership Honest John's Dealerships]], as in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear''. Planets with economies based on offworld tourism exist, famous for shopping, or beautiful scenery, gambling opportunities, super-friendly locals... |
| 83 | ** The fastest portrayal of this in the films is likely ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith''. Palpatine notes that "I sense Lord Vader is in danger", gets in a ship, and travels from Coruscant (located in the center of the galaxy) to Mustafar (located in the Outer Rim). Given he was referring to Obi-Wan's duel with Anakin, and assuming, as his dialogue implies, it was happening at that moment, that suggests Palpatine got halfway across the galaxy in the space of a single swordfight, arriving right when it ended. |
| 84 | ** The ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' games make for an interesting study. Once you have your own ship, you can fly back and forth between the various planets as much as you like. [[TakeYourTime Time isn't a factor]], and you usually visit just a single location on each planet (or two, at most). Once you get access to the Yavin space station, you'll go there after every mission, just to shop, because ''they have good deals.'' That's right. You'll cross the galaxy at mind-bending speeds for a discount on a blaster. A small fee, probably intended to cover the fuel expenses, is paid for every trip (the longer the trip, the larger the amount of money you'll have to pay), but it's still quite negligible, to the point that people will travel back and forth, even for minor reasons, without minding it (or noticing it) at all. |
| 85 | ** 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 spaceport, exchanging cargo, grabbing a bite, and then 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. It's even established that civilian ships must normally abide by flight control that prevents them going very fast, and must enter a planet slowly for safety. Luke chafes initially at this, having grown used to miltiary exemptions which allow faster speeds. |
| 86 | ** ''Literature/YodaDarkRendezvous'' has some Jedi trying to sneak off Coruscant on a budget passenger liner belonging to "Kut-Rate Kruises." They're all horrified to various degrees by the crowding, delays, security, and so on that they usually get to bypass. After maintaining their cover on public transporation proves to be impossible, they give up and buy a cheap freighter from an HonestJohnsDealership. Similarly, ''By the Emperor's Hand'', a Mara Jade comic, features Mara getting transport on an even cheaper ship with passenger areas that are basically like cattle cars, with all the passengers sleeping on the floor and no security. The benefit of ''that'' ship is that they don't really check for ID, so refugees and petty criminals can reach different places. |
| 87 | ** Also, in the ''Literature/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. |
| 88 | ** The vibe seems to be that interstellar travel is like air travel about 50 years ago. If you want to, you can make a living doing it, but it's rather difficult. |
| 89 | ** 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 to get discovered for it. |
| 90 | * The 80s comedy ''Film/MoronsFromOuterSpace'' involves a ''rented'' interstellar spaceship crashing on the Earth, with Earth officials positive the aliens are of high intelligence in order to pilot such a ship. If only they'd seen the movie's title... |
| 91 | * This is very evident in ''Franchise/TheChroniclesOfRiddick'' franchise, to the point that not only are criminals routinely shipped to penal planets in other star systems, it's possible to make a living as a bounty hunter even with having to schlep the prisoner to the prison planet yourself. It helps that their 'verse has developed a form of [[PullTheIV easy intravenous]] [[HumanPopsicle stasis]] technology--punch in your ship's course, stick the needle in your arm and you make the trip without consuming resources. |
| 92 | * Averted on the 1958 film ''Film/ItTheTerrorFromBeyondSpace''. It is mentioned repeatedly that the flight from Mars to Earth and vice versa takes about four months each way. |
| 93 | * ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse'': |
| 94 | ** ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy2014'' 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 two limiting factors are that such travel is dependent on a PortalNetwork rather than being able to go anywhere, and 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. |
| 95 | ** The Nine Realms of ''Film/{{Thor}}'' and its sequels are each located in a separate galaxy, but are linked to each other by fixed portals connected to the cosmic nimbus Yggdrasil. However, if a realm's portal goes down, then the only quick way to reach another realm is through a highly dangerous method involving dark energy. The one exception is during the Convergence, a cosmic event occurring every 5,000 years where the dimensional boundaries between the realms becomes paper-thin. |
| 96 | ** ''Film/CaptainMarvel2019'' establishes that while jump points allow for instantaneous travel across interstellar distances, actually getting to a jump point can take a long time and that all you can really do is sit and wait until your ship gets there. In fact, the film's plot revolves around [[spoiler:the invention of an engine that allows ships to travel between stars without relying on jump points. This would allow the Skrulls to flee to a planet far away from any known jump points and live in peace without fearing Kree persecution.]] |
| 97 | * In ''Film/{{Solaris 1972}}'', nothing is seen of the travel between Earth and Solaris. This is partly for budget reasons, partly because Tarkovsky intended for the film to be more of a psychological drama than a classical science fiction movie. |
| 98 | * ''Film/BattlefieldEarth'': Thanks to the Psychlos' [[PortalNetwork network of teleporters]] Terl would casually teleport from [[VichyEarth Earth]] back to the planet Psychlo of an evening just to go to a bar. |
| 99 | [[/folder]] |
| 100 | |
| 101 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 102 | [[AC:Examples by author:]] |
| 103 | * Creator/MikhailAkhmanov: |
| 104 | ** In the ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'' series, this trope is played straight for some alien races, but not humans. In the first novel, humanity doesn't even have FTL drives. In subsequent books, only the military has FTL-capable starships. However, the rapid expansion of humanity makes it clear that humans will play this trope straight eventually. Contour drives require little energy and can transport a ship anywhere in the galaxy nearly instantly, although no one has ever tried such a long jump, as even small jumps require extremely precise calculations. Jumps are usually done in series. |
| 105 | ** Averted in Akhmanov and Christopher Gilmore's ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'', in which interstellar travel is achieved via a relativistic drive that feels like a fraction of a second for anyone in the ship but takes decades in real time. While humanity has settled dozens of worlds, colonization is a costly venture that only governments on rich planets can afford, usually when overpopulation becomes an issue. The only people for whom space travel is routine are space traders, including the titular protagonist. Due to this, space traders are greeted on almost every populated world and treated as royalty. Without them, there would be no interaction between planets. Even interstellar communication is a rarity, as it requires large orbital transmitters and receivers to be set up and maintained, and any message would still take years to arrive. Even with this, a ship still has to travel for months under normal power in order to get away from deep gravity wells, as they mess up calculations. It is also risky, as a jump can deposit the ship near a star or inside a planet. There are, probably, no more than several hundred space traders in this 'verse and a few thousand settled worlds 20,000 years since interstellar travel became feasible. |
| 106 | * Creator/IsaacAsimov: |
| 107 | ** "Literature/ImInMarsportWithoutHilda": Characters make reference to the Capellan system being outside the jurisdiction of their Federation. Space travel is common enough that there's an [[FantasticDrug anti-space sickness medicine]] that people use on a regular basis. |
| 108 | ** "Literature/TheLastQuestion": The second scene involves FTL through [[SubspaceOrHyperspace 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. |
| 109 | ** "Literature/MirrorImage": The Spacers are on a short (a few weeks) trip between Spacer solar systems, and stop by Earth because it isn't out of the way and Detective Baley might be able to resolve a problem the captain has been given. |
| 110 | ** "Literature/MotherEarth": Earth has colonized roughly fifty worlds within one hundred parsecs of itself. Roughly, because Hesperus (the furthest of the new planets) is the first world colonized by humans from the Outer Worlds rather than humans from Earth. Metals, food, technology, and more is traded amoung the fifty-one worlds on a regular basis. |
| 111 | * Creator/PeterFHamilton: |
| 112 | ** ''Literature/PandorasStar'' starts off with this but then inverts it. Humanity develops wormhole technology that allows them to treat interstellar travel like an airport or a train station, so they never really develop spaceship technology too much. When they finally do need to develop spaceships, they do so by jury-rigging the wormhole technology, but it is very much an inconvenient form of interstellar travel. |
| 113 | ** The ''Literature/VoidTrilogy'', 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. |
| 114 | ** In what is likely the most extreme example of this trope, the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Kiint]] from ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' have [[spoiler:the capability to teleport instantly [[ExaggeratedTrope across multiple]] ''galaxies'' at a moment's notice]]. In the same trilogy, regular space travel is available, and people own private starships, but it's still difficult enough that it couldn't be used to effectively reduce the population pressure on Earth. |
| 115 | ** Hamilton runs the gamut of this trope in his various novels. It's completely averted in ''Literature/FallenDragon'', where space travel takes months and is so costly that it has been nearly abandoned, and the only companies still doing it are just invading planets they own the rights to and stealing all their stuff to try to make a profit. |
| 116 | * Creator/RobertAHeinlein's various works catalog a wide range of interstellar travel options, depending on the continuity. |
| 117 | ** His "Future History" series discusses the evolution of space travel from the first manned spaceflight, to the first FTL capable vessel, to the point where it's as easy as hopping into a rental ship and flitting between star systems. This trope isn't fully expressed, however, until ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'', whose protagonists invent a dimension-hopping device that lets them travel to any time, place, or universe as easily as flipping a switch. |
| 118 | ** In ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'', the starships of the Three Galaxies organization can jump between stars and galaxies in almost no time at all. Most of the travel time between planets is entering and leaving the planets' atmospheres. |
| 119 | * Creator/SergeyLukyanenko: |
| 120 | ** The ''Literature/LineOfDelirium'' trilogy, being very loosely based on ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'', this trope is played perfectly straight. HyperspaceOrSubspace travel is cheap, relatively, and accessible to almost anyone (it's treated as someone buying a plane ticket today). It takes only days to get anywhere, weeks at most. Additionally, the relatively cheap and mass-produced ''Grasshopper''-class ships are mainly designed for in-system travel, but they do possess hyperdrives with enough fuel for a single jump. It's mentioned that many companies use them as the equivalent of a company car, provided you're willing to spend hours in a cramped vehicle without ArtificialGravity, eating the kind of space food that hasn't changed since mid-20th century. |
| 121 | ** ''Literature/TheStarsAreColdToys'' is premised on humans discovering FasterThanLightTravel in the early 21st century, resulting in most countries having their own space programs and American space shuttles and Russian ''Buran'' spacecraft lifting off into space using the usual means and then activating the jumper device, which instantly sends a ship slightly over 12 light years in a given direction. The distance is always constant. By sheer coincidence, the first interstellar jump results in humanity encountering the Conclave, a conglomerate of alien races ruling this part of the galaxy. Unfortunately, there is a strict hierarchy between the Strong and Weak races, and humanity is classified as the latter. The alien method of FTL travel are considerably slower, often taking months, although they still fit this trope. Then you have the [[spoiler:[[HumanAliens Geometers]]]], who have managed to combine both technologies into a highly efficient method of interstellar travel to the point where moving entire star systems isn't that big a deal. The human jumper has the added bonus of only allowing humans to survive the jump with their sanity intact, which is good for humans, as the Conclave has a habit of destroying races that serve no useful purpose to it (even if they don't pose a threat). The greatest fear is aliens learning to survive the jump, and all pilots have standing orders to destroy the ship in the event this happens (they may even choose the means to do so: self-destruct, fry the jumper which earns you a slow death, or enter into an uncontrollable series of {{Blind Jump}}s until you run out of power). Oh, and humans feel the greatest high possible when jumping. |
| 122 | * Creator/AndreNorton's science fiction books feature Free Traders who travel from star to star carrying trade items. Their ships use a [[FasterThanLightTravel FTL drive]] that allows interstellar travel in a few days. Similarly, in ''Literature/TheZeroStone'', Jern and his master can wander the space ways in the jewel business. |
| 123 | %%* The short stories [[http://theopinionguy.com/OG25.pdf "Assumption" (scroll down)]] and [[http://abyssandapex.com/201004-black.html "The Black Sheep of Vaerlosi"]] by Desmond Warzel.%%Administrivia/WeblinksAreNotExamples |
| 124 | [[AC:Examples by work:]] |
| 125 | * ''Literature/AlmostNight'': While Stella's trip from colony Gamma to colony Tau is expensive, there is an entire running spaceport taking people to various destinations. And the trip takes a couple weeks. |
| 126 | * This is done with cities and indeed entire planets in the ''Literature/CitiesInFlight'' series, in which a new law of physics shows that the larger an object is, the easier it is to move at hugely FTL speeds. At one point it is stated that a spacecraft is crossing the solar system at FTL speeds powered by a few ordinary batteries. |
| 127 | * ''Literature/CoDominium'': Starships have the Alderson Drive, which allows instantaneous jumps from star to star. The setting has merchant starships, such as those owned by Horace Hussein Bury. The only limitation is that the relative positions and natures of stars determine where the jump-points lie, and one must still use ordinary reaction drives to move about in-system and between jump points. |
| 128 | * Partially justified in ''Literature/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness'', in which many of the characters are actual Gods, and not subject to the rules of nature. However, the Steel General seems to ignore light-speed when mounted on his MechanicalHorse, Bronze, whose every stride covers twice the distance of the previous one. Even for ordinary humans, interstellar flight seems fairly routine, and humanity has spread far across the universe. |
| 129 | * In ''Literature/DeathOrGlory'', this is played straight for the five dominant alien races of TheAlliance, who zip around the galaxy with ease and have even visited the globular clusters "above" and "below" the galactic disk. Meanwhile, humans, despite having FTL, crawl from one star to another, and the human sphere of influence only extends to a few hundred light years from Earth. This changes by the second book, taking place a century and a half later. With the influx of alien tech, humans become one of the most ubiquitous races in the galaxy, and a private ship owner can cross the galaxy in about a week of constant jumping. |
| 130 | * ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'': |
| 131 | ** In the ''Literature/LegendsOfDune'' prequel trilogy, the pre-Guild interstellar travel is more in line with this trope. The League of Nobles spaceports are always bustling with activity. The mechanism is not made explicit, but it is clear that the ships available at the time used some form of FTL propulsion. It is clearly stated several times that it would take a month to travel between Selusa Secundus, the League capital world, and Corrin, the central [[RobotWar Synchronized World]]. The difference with the later invention of foldspace engines and their need for prescient navigators or forbidden computers is that folding space gets you to your destination pretty much instantaneously -- which is why nobody's fast enough to keep up with it unless they've already seen the safe path. |
| 132 | * Played straight and averted in the ''Literature/{{Eldraeverse}}''. While the [[PortalNetwork stargates]] do flip you instantly from star system to star system via wormhole, in-system travel (including between stargates on long trips) has to take place at low accelerations, which is where most of the journey time is used up, and to get the stargates in place in the first place requires long sublight voyages. |
| 133 | * In Jerry Oltion's ''The Getaway Special'' and its sequel ''Anywhere but Here'', a MadScientist invents a faster than light teleportation drive that runs on car batteries and can be built with parts from Radio Shack for about $200. The only limitation on the drive is that it cannot jump "into" another mass - even atmosphere. Launch from anywhere, deorbit with parachutes. Result: extrasolar colonization in [=RV=]s! And Homeland Security breaking up extrasolar trailer parks with {{Colony Drop}}s... |
| 134 | * ''Literature/{{Glasshouse}}'' has interstellar teleportation, though as the characters are practically [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Sufficiently Advanced Humans]], this may be unsurprising. |
| 135 | * In ''Literature/TheGoblinReservation'', the galaxy is covered by a transporting network, whereby objects are instantly transmitted between any two nodes as infinitely fast "wave patterns". The network itself, though, is expanded by slower-than-light spaceships. |
| 136 | * ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'': The novels, while mainly focused on the military, make no secret that it's ridiculously easy for any private citizen to obtain a [=FTL=]-capable ship. Travel time can be anything from a few minutes to hours and days (no longer than that, usually), depending on how deep into [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Hypersphere]] a ship is capable and the pilot is willing to go (the deeper the faster). It gets to the ridiculous extent that a previously unknown race of HumanAliens is able to purchase a battlefleet online along with enough HumongousMecha to wage a war on humanity. |
| 137 | * Parodied in all ''Franchise/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' media. Hyperspace is treated in a manner similar to the highway system is on Earth (which is why the Earth is destroyed in the first place). The infamous Infinite Improbability Drive used by the protagonists allows for travel over ridiculously vast distances with some rather trippy side effects if you don't happen to be in the cabin. In a later book, interstellar travel that is even ''faster'' than the IID is facilitated via an ''Italian restaurant''. As well as being ridiculously fast, it has the enormous benefit of not randomly turning planets into banana fruitcake as it passes. |
| 138 | * In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series, it is explained that it's cheaper to ship bulk cargo from one system to another than to ship something from two locations on the same planet. The catch is that you must be ultra-rich to afford even the tiniest spaceship, and interstellar travel is not exactly safe or fast, especially if you can't use a Junction transit, which can shave ''months'' off of a trip. |
| 139 | * ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' plays SpaceIsAnOcean fairly freely -- while interstellar travel isn't necessarily cheap {{canon}}ically, within the story most characters consider it to be no more inconvenient than a long plane trip would be to us. In perhaps the most over-the-top example, ''Mid-Flinx'' features a character who travels to a barely documented planet, only to be followed by ''three other ships'' which are looking for him. This would seem far less improbable if he hadn't gotten there by pointing in a random direction and instructing his ship to take him "that way". Then again, Flinx is TheChosenOne of his particular universe, so it's quite likely his venture there was [[YouCantFightFate not entirely random]]. |
| 140 | * Partially used in the ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' books -- during the first half (''Hyperion''), travel to any given point is quick, through a system of teleporter gates called Farcasters. The entire galaxy has melted together into one gigantic metropolis, since any given city is never further away than the nearest Farcaster. Particularly rich people have their houses divided over several planets, with Farcasters instead of ordinary doors. However, in ''Endymion'', [[spoiler:a major plot-twist at the end of ''Hyperion'' has destroyed this system, and interstellar travel is now only available to particularly powerful organizations and the enormously wealthy]]. In ''Endymion'' [[spoiler:the only remaining mode of instantaneous travel ''kills you'' when it is used]]. And then it turns out that [[spoiler:Aenea can teach people]] a way to teleport themselves to any planet in the universe that has life on it. Instant teleportation without needing a spaceship defines this trope. |
| 141 | * Averted in ''Literature/JunctionPoint''. It takes an absurd amount of energy, and the most advanced technology Earth has to offer, just to get to a 'nearby' star, and it still takes around 14 years (5 for the crew). |
| 142 | * Played mostly straight in ''Literature/{{Lacuna}}'', in which the jump drive allows the crew to travel to anywhere in the galaxy where there's no significant gravitational pull. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, doing so has a slight chance of creating a horrific, ever expanding NegativeSpaceWedgie which very, very slowly destroys the universe. The Toralii know about this and attack anyone who possess jump drive.]] |
| 143 | * ''Literature/LandInTheStars'': All space travel is conducted using {{Solar Sail}}s and possesses an almost ''Franchise/StarTrek'' foundation of how speed is measured. |
| 144 | * ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'': After the Bergenholm inertialess drive was created, some ships could go up to 90 parsecs (294.4 light years) per hour. Later books add the hyperspatial tube, which doesn't cut the travel time much (if at all) but does let you traverse the distance unseen (except at the point of emergence). |
| 145 | * In ''Literature/LucifersStar'', the Spiral (Orion's Arm) is a place that depends on Casual Interstellar Travel. 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. |
| 146 | * Partly played straight in ''Literature/MasterOfFormalities''. While private citizens aren't shown to be able to afford spaceships of their own, passenger interstellar travel is fairly common and treated as commercial air travel is these days, except much more uncomfortable (passenger liners don't even have bathrooms; instead, people are given pills that temporarily suppress a number of their bodily functions, although it's not uncommon for the effects to wear off before the arrival). Similar to air travel, getting to your destination often requires multiple hops, although individual flights are usually about as long as mid-range air flight. [[FeudalFuture Planetary rulers]] do have their own ships, both luxurious private yachts and warships for their militaries. |
| 147 | * In ''Literature/NocteYin'', gates exist between planets. |
| 148 | * In ''Literature/TheShipWho'', certainly it's casual for Courier Service ships, who are most of the protagonists. [[BrainsAndBrawn Helva and Kira]] pick up [[UterineReplicators a cargo of tens of thousand of embryos]] to relieve a planet that's suffered a SterilityPlague, and are unworried about the four-week deadline they have before the embryos have to be implanted or decanted, stopping on several other worlds along the way to pick up donations of more. For ordinary people interplanetary travel is common, but interstellar distances are difficult enough that the SpaceStation in ''The City Who Fought'' can't just be fully evacuated before raiders come. |
| 149 | * Interstellar travel in the plot-relevant areas of the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' setting has almost always been described in this fashion, generally using whichever "mainstream" FTL drive was currently ''en vogue''. While the comparison to automobiles may be stretching it a bit (people who actually have their own ship to, say, fly to Vega over the holidays would still be a distinct and fairly small minority), small groups and even individuals routinely do personally own commercial or private starships (in sometimes-varying states of repair and readiness) as a matter of course. |
| 150 | * ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes'' has a FramingDevice in a time where "Travel between planets was common; between stars, unexceptional." The actual action happens at a much earlier time with the world's first experiment at interstellar travel. |
| 151 | * Superlight travel is accomplished via subspace in ''Literature/RieselTalesTwoHunters''. Through this method, the average starship can cross a light-year in about 45 seconds. However, a straight-line, cross-galaxy trip would still take nearly two months. |
| 152 | * [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_story%29 "The Road Not Taken"]], a short story by Creator/HarryTurtledove, is the uber-example of this trope. It posits that anti-gravity and hyper-drive are easy to discover, but lead societies away from further advances, so the galaxy is populated by a bunch of species who all have ''interstellar'' {{Global Airship}}s -- and black-powder muskets '''at best'''. One such species tries to invade Earth with disastrous (for them) results. |
| 153 | * "Literature/ATangledWeb1981": Interstellar travel is casual enough that Starlodge is willing to spend a large amount of money building a resort on an alien world. |
| 154 | [[/folder]] |
| 155 | |
| 156 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 157 | * The first six ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' seasons involved travel between ''galaxies'' in a time span ranging from seconds at the quickest (via teleportation) to a day or two via TransformingMecha spaceship thanks to alien technology. Season seven did it at a more... reasonable in-galaxy-only pace (except for a notable incident involving a wormhole) due to using a human-built ship, and later seasons involving aliens avoid mention of distances whenever possible. When they ''do'', its always something like "several galaxies away". |
| 158 | * Everything in the ''Franchise/StargateVerse'', but especially the titular Stargate network. |
| 159 | ** PlayedWith in that ''without'' the eponymous PortalNetwork, interstellar travel is a major pain in the ass, but not impossible if you happen to have a massive capital ship with a good hyperdrive handy. Of course such ships tend to be mostly owned by organized militaries, empires, and crime syndicates. |
| 160 | *** Not necessarily, as we see a number of bounty hunters owning Tel'taks, small Goa'uld cargo ships that can be modified in many ways. At least one is known to have weapons installed. Granted, they probably stole those, but still. |
| 161 | *** In particular, the Asgard and the Replicators have hyperdrives so fast that ''intergalactic'' travel is no big deal, and [[{{Precursors}} the Ancients]] had similar capacity. Eventually [[spoiler:Earth]] gets the same technology. |
| 162 | * ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' 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 Cylons, scouting out areas of space, or just quicker travel. Granted, the ships that didn't have FTL were quickly destroyed in the genocide. |
| 163 | * As mentioned in the trope description, ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is not the best example of this trope... but it does have its moments. Apart from the Federation, assorted alien empires, and major shipping lines, you will occasionally come across an individual trader flying a small but [[FasterThanLightTravel warp-capable]] vessel to ferry Tribbles or what-have-you around the galaxy. ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Deep Space Nine]]'''s Quark had an interstellar shuttle briefly, but it was a gift (and assassination attempt) from his ''much'' richer cousin. Swindler and smuggler Harry Mudd also had his own ship in ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries The Original Series]]'' (which he paid for with counterfeit money), and private owners of small warp ships made appearances in a few ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episodes. So, an interstellar ship is the kind of thing the occasional well-off (or clever/lucky/dishonest) entrepreneur can afford, but not just anybody could get one. In metaphors, travelling between stars isn't as easy as getting a car, or even as easy as getting your own used single-engine Cessna, but it probably is as easy as getting your own small private jet. |
| 164 | ** Played a little more straight in ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', where one of the regular cast members came from a family living aboard an interstellar cargo ship. An episode features another similar cargo ship. However, since all they can afford are Warp 2 engines (which could really only go as fast as 1.5), they take months, or even years, to travel between stars (for reference, using the pre-TNG scale, Warp 1.5 is equal to 3.375 times the speed of light, meaning a trip from Earth to Alpha Centauri would take about 1.3 years). Meanwhile, the ''Enterprise'' can zip around the galaxy (or at least their corner of it) with ease. In effect, these cargo ships become GenerationShips (minus the degradation normally associated with this trope). At the end of the episode, the captain of the cargo ship mentions that he'll need at least a Warp 3 engine to keep up with newer cargo ships, so he'll have to fork over some cash. |
| 165 | * ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' is a good example. All three subtropes of FasterThanLightTravel are present; [[HandWave "Hetch Drive"]] is dirt cheap and available to everyone, [[RandomTransportation "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]]. |
| 166 | * In ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'', people could travel between ''galaxies'' in small fighters and courier ships. |
| 167 | ** Also, because of how Slipstream FTL works, which has something to do with probability, and sentience, and, um... [[AWizardDidIt "Quantum"]], the more a route is traveled, the faster and easier to navigate it becomes. This would make Casual Travel even cheaper the more people do it. |
| 168 | ** It's clearly stated the luck is the biggest factor in slipstream travel. A lucky pilot can cross galaxies in minutes, while an unlucky one can take months to get to the nearby system. Since machines (even [=AIs=]) can't guess, they can't use slipstream at all, unless they... [[BrainInAJar get creative]]. That's what they need to do to get anywhere specific in a hurry. If there isn't any living brain to help, they can just do a random walk and hope they get lucky at some point. More than one ship managed to pull it off. The ''Andromeda Ascendant'' was stuck in slipstream for ''years'' trying to get back to her home galaxy after the crew was killed off. |
| 169 | * In the ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'' episode "Wizard For A Day", some non-magical HumanAliens cross interstellar space in a matter of days to ''get a milkshake''. |
| 170 | * In ''Series/BabylonFive'' no private interstellar ships are shown, but commercial ships are available for common people (at least middle class) in a way similar to modern commercial flights. |
| 171 | ** Privately owned spacecraft make use of Jump Gates (a PortalNetwork) whereas larger commercial and military ships may or may not possess on board Jump Drives. |
| 172 | * ''{{Series/Lexx}}'': Ships just "speed up" or "slow down." The specific technology is never mentioned, but Mantrid's drone arms were capable of devouring [[spoiler: the entire universe]]. |
| 173 | * In ''Series/TheOrville'', ships equipped with Quantum Drives can travel between solar systems fairly quickly with no problem, with some trips taking mere minutes if the ship is traveling at maximum speed. |
| 174 | [[/folder]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:Puppet Shows]] |
| 177 | * ''Series/FireballXL5'' is an {{JustForFun/egregious}} offender: the ship itself and its launch procedure are pretty scientifically accurate, but as soon as it gets into orbit it can suddenly go to countless planets of the week without explanation. |
| 178 | [[/folder]] |
| 179 | |
| 180 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 181 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Alternity}}'''s ''[[TabletopGame/StarDrive Star*Drive]]'' setting has relatively casual travel, thanks to the titular stardrive. A stardrive jump always lasts five days, though the distance covered depends on the power of the engine. |
| 182 | * Varies slightly with ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' and the [[CrapsackWorld nature of the universe]]. There are a good number of [=JumpShips=] capable of interstellar travel, but said travel is generally prohibitively expensive and largely reserved for the wealthy, the politicians, and the military--which, when considering the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth, may be the same person. |
| 183 | ** It also takes a considerable amount of time. The 30 light-year jump is pretty much instantaneous, but to get to a jump point can take days if not longer from a planet, and once you get there the [=JumpShip=] needs to recharge which, depending on the facilities at a jump point and the star it's now orbiting, can take anywhere between days and ''weeks.'' Interstellar travel in [=BattleTech=] is anything but fast for civilians, and not much better for the Military. |
| 184 | *** It's actually possible to quick-charge the drive, but it doesn't occur often because FTL drives in the [=BattleTech=] universe are fragile, and quick charging will easily either damage or destroy it outright depending on how fast you're charging it. |
| 185 | * ''TabletopGame/FadingSuns'' has ''very'' casual travel thanks to the Jumpgates left by the [[strike:dead]] [[strike:ascended]] mysteriously absent {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s. Society may be feudal thanks to the Church (Catholics IN SPACE), but getting to the next system over is as simple as puttering out to the jumpgate in your thousand-year-old ship and popping through. Also, we are told that if you ever GO BEYOND the gate (i.e. go into interstellar space), you will be assaulted by demonic creatures, plagues or demonic plague creatures. That's right, go too far beyond the light of a star and you are ''attacked by demons''. It fits snugly beside the Church's declaration that 'technology is evil'--except starships, computers, blaster guns (heaven forbid), personal energy shields, medical scanners, healing serum, planes, phones, lights, satellites, space stations, jumpgates, hovercars, SAM launchers, grenades, gravity emitters.... |
| 186 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}''. Starships can travel up to 6 parsecs (19.6 light years) per week regardless of how powerful the ship is, and people routinely take interstellar trips the way we take ocean cruises today. |
| 187 | ** That's only partially true. Only the very fastest ships can do six parsecs. Jump engines take up space (to be more accurate, ''fuel'' for jumps--a ship requires 10% of its tonnage in fuel for each parsec of jump. So a ship capable of jump-6 must be 60% fuel tankage just for the jump (plus more fuel for other uses and plus the jump engines themselves)) and a privately owned vessel usually can't afford more then 3 parsecs. Most [[SpaceTrucker Free Traders]] can only do Jump-1 with a few doing Jump-2. Large merchants as well usually are Jump-1 to make room for cargo. |
| 188 | * ''TabletopGame/TwentyThreeHundredAD'' is a harder version of interstellar travel than the same company's ''Traveller''. Starships are expensive enough to be mostly owned by large companies and nations rather than individuals, and it's a little more expensive and a little less routine to travel than booking an airplane would be today. Nevertheless millions of humans have left Earth for other worlds and thousands of ships ply the spacelanes. |
| 189 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' both plays straight and subverts this trope. While there is enough cargo traffic to keep entire [[CityPlanet hive worlds]] fed, watered, and supplied, interstellar travel, especially civilian interstellar travel on ships that rely on charts instead of Navigators, tends to be (relatively) slow, and [[FateWorseThanDeath very]] [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace dangerous]]. The Tau method is much less dangerous, but even slower. Neither Chaos nor Orks likely care about the wait or dangers as long as they have someone to kill at the destination (or along the way), and the trope is played straight by Eldar and Necrons, who either get there through a portal network, use [[HandWave inertial drives]], or are [[SealedEvilInACan already there]]. A lot of the earlier material often states that a ship CAN jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in the space of a few weeks... from the point of view of the ship. To an outsider, that ship will be gone for months, if not ''years''. Some sources also state it can take up to a week to get from a world to a 'safe' spot where you can enter the Warp, thus extending transit time quite considerably. While Tyranids do not have any real FTL capability, they are a HordeOfAlienLocusts who [[PlanetEater go around eating every single planet they can find]], so it doesn't really matter how long it takes for them to get anywhere. |
| 190 | * In the ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}} Three Galaxies'' {{Sourcebook}}s, interstellar travel is not only a breeze, but [[ExaggeratedTrope intergalactic travel]] as well. This is partially justified in that the eponymous galaxies are [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale unusually close to each other]]. In the main setting, [[AvertedTrope there is no interstellar travel at all]]. And unless you live on one of the pre-Rifts orbital stations, even interplanetary travel is out of the question. |
| 191 | [[/folder]] |
| 192 | |
| 193 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 194 | * For the Capsuleers (players) of ''VideoGame/EveOnline'', a regular shopping trip can take one through a dozen star systems. {{Muggles}} are mostly planetbound, though. |
| 195 | ** Inversely, outfitting a spaceworthy ship costs a few hundred million to a few billion ISK (Inter-Stellar Kredits, the de facto currency of the galaxy). It has been said that one single ISK is worth enough to allow you to live in comfort planetside for the rest of your life. |
| 196 | * ''VideoGame/{{Extrapower}}'': Space travel is casual enough for characters based on Earth or on distant alien planets to be good friends who sometimes have coordinated adventures. At the start of ''[[VideoGame/ExtrapowerAttackOfDarkforce Attack of Darkforce]]'', Sharkungo's concern isn't that the distance between the Earth and the Shakun Star is massive, it's that he couldn't fly to the Earth faster than the Dark Force fleet can. Thankfully, the resident SpaceMaster helps cut his trip down to hours. Days or weeks into the story, Forcestar joins him on Earth, having just flown on his own power. |
| 197 | * ''VideoGame/{{Freelancer}}'' runneth over with this kind of travel, enabled by the Trade Lanes and the [[PortalNetwork inter-system Jump Gates]], plus the Pirate-infested, naturally occuring Jumpholes. |
| 198 | * In both ''VideoGame/IndependenceWar'' games, Linear Displacement System (LDS) drives are practically standard equipment for spacecraft, which allow for quick inter-system travel and escape from threats (if one doesn't get hit with an LDS inhibitor missile to prevent that). [[FasterthanLightTravel Capsule drives]], on the other hand, are most certainly NOT standard equipment, as shown in ''Independence War 2'': Cal and friends don't even get a capsule drive until about the time the game transitions from Act I to Act II, where [[spoiler:they trade a blue, alien ring hidden in Lucrecia's hoard to Haven Station for the capsule drive. You're going to need it, as you'll see next mission...]] |
| 199 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'' plays it straight and downplays it. |
| 200 | ** Played straight with [[PortalNetwork Mass Relays]], which are capable of transporting a starship 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''. |
| 201 | ** Downplayed 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). This is enough to travel between systems within a sector pretty easily,[[note]]For reference, there are [[http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html 1,400 star systems]] within 50 light years of our sun.[[/note]] but going to somewhere on the other side of the galaxy would take years - hence the need for the relay. 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. |
| 202 | ** FTL-capable ships are also extremely cheap in-universe and obtainable by middle class citizens. In ''Initiation'', one character purchases an obsolescent navy destroyer on the savings of a military officer, and in one conversation in ''Mass Effect 2'' Shepard says that a "a decent sized ship, even used, costs hundreds of thousands of credits" (a credit is roughly to them what a USD is to us). |
| 203 | ** And at the end of ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', Shepard destroys the [[EldritchAbomination Reapers']] backup plan. Their response is to just fly back into the galaxy from darkspace. That's right, the Reapers have Casual '''Intergalactic''' Travel, which further emphasizes just how much more advanced the millions-of-years-old Reapers are compared to even the most advanced galactic races. The ''Arrival'' DLC shows that the Reapers can get from far outside the galaxy to the edges of the Milky Way in a very short time. They were smart enough not to put all their eggs in one basket. The third game's codex says that while the best non-relay FTL the Citadel races has is between 12 and 14 LY per day, the Reapers can go 30 LY in a day... and their unknown power source doesn't have that lethal static discharge due to whatever unknown fuel source they have. |
| 204 | ** 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. Again, they can get around within the Heleus Cluster pretty easily, but traveling dozens of thousands rather than dozens of light years is a different matter. |
| 205 | * In ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'', this depends on the specific faction: |
| 206 | ** FTL travel starts off being relatively slow for humans (about 2 LY/day), but also pretty cheap. And since the UNSC has mastered terraforming, most of the UNSC's colonies are within about a week's travel. The UNSC doesn't cover much space (a colony a dozen light years from Earth is considered far-flung), but has colonized a decent portion of that space, with about 800 colonies including planets, moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, and space stations. In the years after the end of the Covenant war, humanity's FTL capabilities have improved substantially, at least for its most advanced ships. |
| 207 | ** Covenant FTL technology is much more refined, despite being merely inferior copies of [[{{Precursors}} 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/Halo4'' era, anyways. |
| 208 | *** Covenant FTL actually averts this for a different reason: navigation. Knowing an area's location in real space doesn't actually help you find it in slipspace, and you need slipspace coordinates to go anywhere. As a result it's ''extremely'' difficult for them to both find new planets and maintain links with their old ones. This is why it took them nearly thirty years to find Earth, despite starting only less than twenty light years away at Harvest. |
| 209 | ** The Forerunners are in a class all their own. The fact that it took longer than an hour to cross the galaxy was actually a sign that something was wrong. The Forerunner's own precursors were even more advanced. |
| 210 | ** The ''Halo'' universe's physics actually has a phenomenon called "reconciliation" which inherently prevents FTL travel from becoming ''too'' casual. Here's an overly simplified explanation; traveling through slipspace causes chronological and causal paradoxes, forcing reality to automatically "reconcile" itself after each jump. If too much slipspace travel happens at one time, the strain on reality will automatically cause FTL traffic to slow down or even halt until the universe can reset itself. |
| 211 | * ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'', FTL there is ''ludicrously'' fast, but this trope is particularly obvious in the [=PS2=] games where the ships are shown just flying through space and not using any form of FTL until the [=PS3=] titles. The fact that series' events unfold not in one, but ''three'' [[ALongTimeAgoInAGalaxyFarFarAway Galaxies Far Far Away]] should make speeds' monstrosity fairly obvious. [[MST3KMantra But then again]], it's all for [[RuleOfFun fun]], not any kind of realism. |
| 212 | * The ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' games involve travel through something that looks like outer space, but is much much easier to get around in. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that the games takes place within a 4-dimensional {{MMORPG}}, and it's only natural that the programmers would design their universe-powering game engine's physics to include FTL if they wanted a science fiction game. Yes, it's quite {{metafiction}}al. |
| 213 | * Ten thousand credits will net your civilian clunker a jump drive, with a mere 50 creds per landing to refuel, in ''VideoGame/WingCommanderPrivateer''. ''[[VideoGame/Privateer2TheDarkening Privateer 2]]'' doesn't even bother with the cost of a jump drive, it's built in to all ships. |
| 214 | * ''VideoGame/{{Descent}} 2'' starts the game telling you that you have been kept on retainer for 'up to 72 hours'. In that time you manage to travel to several different planets (in several different systems) and destroy lots of robots. |
| 215 | * Played straight in ''VideoGame/SinsOfASolarEmpire''. Until the arrival of the Vasari, the Trade Order was a loose group of worlds, where most of the interstellar trading was done by civilians. With the start of the Vasari conquest, the Trade Order reformed into the Trade Emergency Coalition. However, you can still build trade stations in space that automatically spawn trade ships (that you can't control), which prowl the phase lanes between planets and stars. |
| 216 | * With the addition of trading to ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'', it's clear that this is the case with the trade ships. Instead of assigning them to a specific system, they are instead assigned to a sector that includes one or more systems. They then travel from system to system, increasing the empire's revenue. It's not entirely clear how the [[BeePeople Hivers]] trade with systems not joined with their PortalNetwork, but the game just {{Hand Wave}}s this. |
| 217 | * ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' and its sequels treat the hyperdrive like this; however, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation there is nowhere near enough]] [[FridgeLogic space traffic as in-universe sources would suggest.]] |
| 218 | ** ''VideoGame/EliteDangerous'' replaces the Hyperdrive with the Frame-Shift Drive, which is practically the same thing. (The game also addresses the FridgeLogic of the first few games by adding more ships that can be seen in various star systems.) |
| 219 | * Particularly in the later games in the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'' series, space is pretty damn crowded with (damn annoying) civilian ships. |
| 220 | * Likewise ''VideoGame/EscapeVelocity''. A basic cargo shuttle costs maybe ten to twenty grand. |
| 221 | * Seemingly [[AvertedTrope averted]] in ''VideoGame/SluggishMorss'', though possibly played straight in the sequel. |
| 222 | * In ''VideoGame/AsurasWrath'', the grand finale has Asura [[spoiler: in his Destructor form casually flying past entire solar systems in mere seconds to beat the crap out of the FinalBoss.]] |
| 223 | * ''[[VideoGame/DawnOfWar Dawn of War: Soulstorm]]'': 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). |
| 224 | * ''VideoGame/NoMansSky'': Almost every single ship in the game is capable of FasterThanLightTravel, though it requires [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts money-intensive]] Hyperdrive fuel. |
| 225 | * A gate network is required to get to any other system in ''VideoGame/TheMandate''. If a gate malfunctions and you end up somewhere without a gate to use for a return trip, you are essentially screwed. |
| 226 | * A staple in ''VideoGame/{{Starbound}}''. Besides being able to fly from one planet to another in the same system using only your basic propulsion in a matter of seconds, you can shoot off to another solar system in only a little more time - greater distance just means greater fuel cost, and fuel is easy to obtain. Interestingly, GameplayAndStoryIntegration is in play; the universe is very widely populated due to ease of travel, with almost every planet having a few settlements, peaceful or friendly, for you to find. |
| 227 | * ''VideoGame/{{Starfield}}'' has Grav-Drive technology, which instantly disappears and reappears the operating ship from departure to destination. It is casual enough that schools use it for field trips, old retired ladies can cruise around enjoying retirement and invite random other starfarers onboard for some good eats, or scam artists to cruise around hawking "extended warranties for starships", and for myriad other encounters. It's casual enough for a host of ne'er-do-wells to cruise around in them too. You can just sit idly in orbit of a highly populated world and just watch several ships cruise about, with one jumping in and out of the system every few seconds. |
| 228 | [[/folder]] |
| 229 | |
| 230 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 231 | * Interstellar travel was already pretty casual in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' ''before'' the Teraport was re-invented, when everything depended on the PortalNetwork--there are even interstellar taxis for transporting individuals between stars--though it is mentioned that only the wealthiest 10% have access. Then again, this is a sci-fi so far up the [[JustForFun/AbusingTheKardashevScaleForFunAndProfit Kardashev Scale]] that ''{{antimatter}}'' is yesterday's technology. |
| 232 | * ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'' subverts it with the 'Starslip Drive', which abuses {{Alternate Universe|s}}. As the original title (Starslip ''Crisis'') suggests, it isn't without consequences. |
| 233 | * Averted in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'': They ''do'' have a form of [[FasterThanLightTravel FTL]]--known as the [[FunWithAcronyms Dangerous And Very Expensive]] drive. All but the very rich[[note]]the "Expensive" in the name isn't there just for acronym value[[/note]] are stuck with GenerationShips. |
| 234 | * In the ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' StoryArc "GOFOTRON: Champion of the Cosmos" space travel within the Punyverse seems to be quite easy. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] since, unlike our universe, the hundred or so solar systems in the Punyverse are all bundled up right next to each other. |
| 235 | * ''Webcomic/FarOutThere'' takes this as a given. It's been [[http://faroutthere.smackjeeves.com/comics/1027276/page-30-all-aboard/ stated]] that the cast could have a ship of their own if Ichabod wasn't too lazy to buy one. |
| 236 | * Played with in ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob''--there is not FTL, but relativistic speed travel is common; the Nemesite homeworld is ''relatively'' near Earth's sun; and the Nemesites live for millenia. While going home would normally be no big deal to Voluptua, one reason she's lingering here is that her new human friends [[WeAreAsMayflies are as mayflies,]] and would age and die in the time she would likely be gone. |
| 237 | * It's apparently in the process of being invented in ''Webcomic/{{Galaxion}}''. The "teething troubles" stage, to be exact. As of yet, it managed to work for a glorious one time without ''exploding''. |
| 238 | [[/folder]] |
| 239 | |
| 240 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 241 | * Interstellar travel is moderately casual in ''Website/OrionsArm''. While regular travel by spaceship is slower-than-light, the spaceships are generally relativistic and experience time dilation, and most people (or things, or things who are people) are immortal anyway and can go into suspended animation or turn themselves off if they get bored. Also, the wormhole network does allow for more or less casual fast interstellar travel within the terragen bubble for those who can withstand the limitations. |
| 242 | * Painfully averted in ''Literature/JunctionPoint''. It takes ''Odysseus'', humanity's most advanced ship, 14 years to reach the 'nearby' system of Kapteyn's Star. Due to time dilation, however, only five years passed for the crew. |
| 243 | * This is a DownplayedTrope in ''Literature/{{Starsnatcher}}''. While most spaceships are capable of interstellar travel thanks to the local PortalNetwork of wormholes, it takes several months at minimum, as wormholes are usually placed far away from any nearby gravity well (e.g. a star or a planet). |
| 244 | * ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': the underlying premise of "Tennyo's Easter" since Tennyo only has one week of Easter break and she's traveling all over the Milky Way galaxy. Having found and rescued an [[CoolShip ultra-fast sentient starship]] built by the [[{{Precursors}} Isokist]]--possibly the same ones which created the Star Stalker in the first place--helps a lot. |
| 245 | * Humans are the only creatures in the world of ''Literature/TheQuintessentialMarySue'' who ''[[PunyEarthlings don't]]'' have the ability to do this. The [[ProudScholarRace Philosphites]] have a warp-drive that lets them [[SmallUniverseAfterAll travel the whole length and breadth of the universe]], the [[ProudWarriorRace Amazinines]] are {{Flying Brick}}s that rival the Silver-Age ComicBook/{{Superman}} in power and can just ''fly'' anywhere in the universe at billions of times lightspeed, and the [[MageSpecies People of the Gem]] can exceed even those by [[TeleportationWithDrawbacks teleporting with a magic spell]]. |
| 246 | [[/folder]] |
| 247 | |
| 248 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 249 | * In the ''WesternAnimation/FelixTheCatJoeOriolo'' cartoons, space travel is very casual. The Professor's spaceship and Poindexter's flying saucer allow them to travel to other planets with all the effort and time of going on a Sunday drive. |
| 250 | * ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'' is a weird example: in the first episode, it takes Zim six months to travel from Conventia to Earth, but later episodes show him traveling to Irken or other planets in what one presumes is a relatively short time (Dib mentions Zim had been gone "three days" when he went to Foodcourtia). [[WildMassGuessing Perhaps the Tallest put him on a cheap flight?]] |
| 251 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' does this a lot, primarily out of [[RuleOfFunny sheer comedic value]]. Not only does the Planet Express ship routinely make deliveries to distant planets as a matter of normal business, not only are there highway-like lines of other space ships waiting to travel similar distances, not only has the crew rocketed off to the edge of the universe and come right back to earth in a matter of a week, but Cubert and Dwight have once ''delivered newspapers'' to homes in a ''nearby asteroid belt'' (supposedly not our solar system's) using what amounts to a ''do-it-yourself bicycle-powered rocket''. |
| 252 | ** In the second episode of the series the trope is lampshaded. The crew get a job to do a delivery on the moon, and Fry asks to do the countdown for launch. Leela launches anyway and by the time Fry counts down from 10 to 8, they've already arrived on the moon. He then quickly counts down the rest while seeming disappointed. |
| 253 | ** Even worse for him, travel to the moon is so casual, that it's seen as insultingly low-class to even go in the first place. The people actually living on the lunar surface are treated as being the future equivalent of those living in a trailer park today. |
| 254 | * In ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien'', the heroes get their own SpacePlane that can make good time anywhere the galaxy, though this may be justified by the fact they are part of the SpacePolice and would need such equipment. CIT seems to be common in the setting with even one of Ben's alien forms (Jetray) having the ability to travel at ''warp speed'' to catch up to the others when they take the space plane to another planet. |
| 255 | * Several episodes of ''WesternAnimation/DefendersOfTheEarth'' involve the Defenders travelling to planets outside Earth's solar system and back in a matter of hours. However, no other human characters in the series seem to be able to do this, suggesting that the Defenders may be using borrowed alien tech. |
| 256 | * The Homeworld Gems in ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' have ships that can travel between galaxies in fairly reasonable time (going from Homeworld to Earth in a few hours), and once they start colonizing a planet, they set up a [[PortalNetwork Galaxy Warp]] for near-instantaneous travel. Gems that can fly can also do this, purely on their own power. It does take a bit longer as expected, but no more than a few months. In one episode, Pearl builds a spaceship out of old airplane parts. She estimates that a trip to the next star system and back would only take 50 years. It's not really clear if that's just what she assumes the ship is capable of (it breaks apart before even leaving the atmosphere), or if it actually could've done that. |
| 257 | * The flying saucer in ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'' can go to space in a short amount of time. This is because said flying saucer has interstellar overdrive. |
| 258 | * Combined with InterplanetaryVoyage: In Creator/SabanEntertainment's ''The Why Why Family'', Baby Victor's Grandpa Matic is an expert on UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem who [[SpeaksFluentAnimal Speaks Fluent Dog]] with a dog named Zygo and in most episodes takes him and Victor on a journey through outer space on a CoolStarship in order to study the wondrous ways of the universe. |
| 259 | * ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' features the Cybertronians, who alongside being long-lived robotic beings that can handle space travel better than a human could, also have a system of teleportation through machines called Space Bridges. The Autobots have an entire network of Space Bridges that connects the territories of its multi-star-system commonwealth. To coincide with this (according to the map provided in the [[AllThereInTheManual AllSpark Almanac]]), despite Earth being approximately 10 kiloparsecs away (3.33 ''quintillion'' kilometers) the Steelhaven flagship can apparently travel there and back within a month or so. |
| 260 | * In ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', Rick has multiple different ways of doing this: |
| 261 | ** 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, aside from [[AppliedPhlebotinum concentrated dark matter]], 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. |
| 262 | ** His portal gun bypasses being in space completely, and allows him and those he brings with him to instantly portal to another part of the universe or even the ''multiverse'' (i.e. dimension-hopping). He can seemingly go anywhere with it, to the point that it makes you wonder why he needs the spaceship at all unless he's actually doing something ''in'' space with it. Rick has occasionally mentioned that the portal gun can run out of charge, so it's possible that he uses the spaceship to save battery life, but it's left vague how much energy each portal uses, or how much charge the portal gun has to begin with. |
| 263 | [[/folder]] |
| 264 |
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