Alcubierre-White Warp Drive

Overview
The Alcubierre-White Warp Drive is a FTL drive operated by the United Federation of Sol and other human entities for interstellar travel between star systems.

The Alcubierre-White Warp Drive creates FTL travel by folding and expanding the fabric of space around the ship, moving the ship faster than light while not breaking causality rules for the 2.998 x 10^8 m/s speed of light. Creating a bubble of “normal space” by forming a negative mass variable and a single point of reference, the Alcubierre-White warp drive allows travel across interstellar space to be shortened by years, permitting travel across all of known space in the matter of months, rather than millenia. Unfortunately, the gravity wells of various objects larger than or equal to dwarf planets creates distortions in the space-gravity compression, invalidating the use of warp drives close to planetary or stellar systems. However, if no gravitational object exists within the desired location and travel vector, a pulse-jump can be initiated, by which the ship stores up energy in a capacitor, then rapidly expels the energy into the warp drive, creating a short, but very fast, warp jump, allowing the ship momentarily to have extreme space folding capabilities. This strategy is often applied in ship combat, or for in-system jumps from planet to planet.

Classes
Class 1 = 1c - 200c

First experimental warp drives fell under this classification, along with basic in-system transport haulers

Class 2 = 200c - 300c

Most early warships were classified as class 2, as research into faster travel was funneled into the military. Presently they are almost exclusively used by outdated transport and cargo haulers. Occasionally they are used by smaller pirate gangs, but this a rare occurrence.

Class 3 = 300c - 400c

Designed at the height of the Terran-Martian War, it was the cutting edge of its time. Now it is used primarily by interstellar merchant freighters, pirates, and system defense units.

Class 4 = 400c - 600c

The current warp drive - the class 4 - is used by nearly all modern warships, with the smaller, faster destroyers and light cruisers pushing the upper limits, while the battleships, carriers and support vessels fall into the lower range of warp speeds. The Class 4 is yet to be released for civilian usage.

Class 5 = 600c +

Rumored to be in development, the class 5 would be groundbreaking in its implementation, allowing a vessel to travel across the Federation in a matter of weeks, rather than months.