The Story of Human Exploration and Discovery Beyond the Orion Arm
The materials contained herein unless otherwise noted are the copyright of J. Austin Wilde, 1991 to 2009, all rights reserved.
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Sagittarius Colonial Atlas
Ahriman (HM+31 0938 B)
Amethyst (HB+32 3331 B)
Angelique (HM-50 2602 B)
Apollonia/Phyrigia (HD+35 2475 A)
Aquilla (SAG+56 0107)
Arkhangelsk (HM+41 2746)
Atlantis (HM+52 0225)
Aurora (HM+47 2620 A)
Avignon (HM+31 3323)
Baker's End (SAG-36 0528)
Bellarmine (HM+36 1662 A)
Bellissimo (HM+40 2827)
Beowulf (HM+39 5516 A)
Bounty (HB+38 0524 A)
Buran (HD+32 1678)
Cauldron (SAG+47 1522)
Charybdis (HB+56 0404 B)
Concordia (HM+00 2422 A)
Cora's World (HM-40 2634)
Daedelus (SAG+45 4907 A)
Demeter (HM+31 3563)
Destiny (HD+47 0309)
Dustbowl/New Deseret (SAG-42 4503 B)
Frontiera (HD+40 1336)
Frostpile (SAG+43 2208)
Fury (HM+53 0102 A)
Gateway (HM+00 0000)
Goldrush (SAG+33 2643)
Gulag (HD+40 4019)
Hecate's Hate (HM+32 3972)
Hyperborea (SAG+44 1855 B)
Ice Station Mike (HD+42 3267)
Ice Station Oscar (HD+42 5807)
Inshallah (HM+53 0608)
Jena (HB-33 4139 A)
Jewel/Sulfur Flats (HM+41 0955 A & B)
Jin Xian (HM-45 4415)
Jove/Fuzhou (SAG+49 2911 A & B)
Libertad (HD-46 2312)
Marino (HD-31 4687)
Midgard/Muspellheim (HD+54 1018)
Mirabilis (HM-45 1718)
Neu Bavaria (HM+31 7329)
New Anchorage (HD+35 3455 A)
New Ares (HM+57 0405 A)
New Havana (HM+55 1217)
New Tanstaafl (HM+43 3626 A)
New Taranto (HB+31 2685 A)
New Zion (HD+47 0954)
Paydirt (HM+36 2309)
Porto Fria (HM-52 2716 A)
Pu'uhonua (HM+35 2017)
Research Station Victor (HB+55 1522)
Sakura (HM-31 0629)
Sandovar (HM+34 0139 A)
Santa Clara (SAG+31 0179 B)
Scherzo (SAG+55 2007 B)
Sheba's World/Neu Bayer (HD-51 1306 A)
Tanner's World (HB-32 1052)
Tartarus (HM+31 5806)
The Alamo (HM+34 0552 B)
Tortuga (HD-37 4529)
Toulon (SAG+55 0823 A)
Valhalla (HD+31 1168)
Viracocha (HM+31 1175 A)
Waypoint November (HM+31 1969 A)
Waypoint Omega (HM-06 1121 A)
Waypoint Tango (HD+41 4528 A)
Waypoint X-Ray (HD-66 1619)
Waypoint Yankee (HD+10 1721)
Waystation Alfa (HM+34 1207)
Xiamen (HM+48 2891 B)
Zhengzhou (HM-27 9791 B)
Encyclopedia
Spacecraft
Technology
Classification
Designs
AMC Registry of Vessels
| Sagan class | Sagittarius Bright Star Catalogue | Sagittarius Development Corporation | Sakura |
| Sakura class | Sakura Consortium | Salvor class | Sandovar |
| Santa Clara | Scherzo | Sheba's World | Short Jump Stardrive |
| Skyler, Drake | Sojourner class | Solarian Dollar | Solarian Space-Time Engineering |
| Star Catalogues | Stardrive | Stargate | Starjammer class |
The Sagan class is a venerable wheel and spoke space station design.
More information on the Sagan can be found here.
The Sagittarius Bright Star Catalogue was compiled by automated telescopes in 2355 shortly before manned expeditions through the Sagittarius Stargate took place. These brightest of all nearby stars were to be used as astrogational reference points until hard data on local pulsars could be obtained. Star systems whose catalogue numbers begin with 'SAG' are part of the catalogue, and contain primary stars whose Absolute Magnitude is brighter than +1.00.
A listing of Star System Catalogues can be found here.
| Sagittarius
Development Corporation (SDC) Headquarters - Fury, (HM+53 0102 System) The Sagittarius Development Corporation (SDC) was founded in 2340 by a partnership of Gavin Aurimas of the Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation, Frederick Mercer and his eldest son Joachim of Mercer Heavy Industries, and select representatives of the Bank of Sol, Helios Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell's Exo Division. The purpose of the SDC was to exploit the Stargate linking the Orion and Sagittarius spiral arms of the galaxy, and to foster colonial development free of the destructive influences of the existing polities of Earth. The SDC financed and built the Sagittarius Stargate through the sale of Aurmias' Solarian Space-Time Engineering corporation (SSTE), as well as the ten Bonaventure Class explorers and Gateway Station. The SDC used these to send the first survey and pioneer teams into the Sagittarius Arm to pave the way for colonization. Currently, the SDC provides basic infrastructure in the sector to include Ice Stations for collecting, storing, and delivering volatiles for passing spacecraft; Way Stations that offer a place for information to be transferred, ships to be replenished, and a general haven for starship crews to get some R&R far from civilization; an Interstellar Baseline Interferometry Telescope system utilizing large optical and radio telescopes in multiple star systems to simulate a telescope several parsecs in size to continue scientific and exploratory work in Sagittarius; and what passes for an interstellar security force against any potential pirates, nihilists, and outlaws. The SDC also has a system for the delivery of mail and personal freight, utilizing its own ships and offering mail franchises to reputable independent captains. Current SDC policy tends towards a hands off approach to independent or corporate colonies, letting them develop their worlds as they see fit and only intervening if necessary to keep the peace. The mere threat of withdrawing basic infrastructure services is usually enough to force a peaceful settlement between quarreling parties, but if that should fail the SDC is prepared to enforce a peace using their heavily armed Bonaventures as well as their starfleet of smaller frigates and corvettes. |
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Third planet in the HM-31 0629 System. First settled in 2357 and administered by the Sakura Consortium. One of the most technologically advanced of the colonies, and possessing a beanstalk and orbital shipyards. Primarily Japanese ethnic makeup, with strict immigration laws.
See Sakura's Sagittarius Colonial Atlas Entry for more information.
Headquarters - Sakura, (HM-31 0629 System)
The Sakura Consortium is a conglomerate of Japanese and Oceanic corporations primarily involved in heavy industry and defense contracting headed up by Masamichi Sakamoto. The colony of Sakura is a corporate colony, and is building up its infrastructure to compete with its rivals, Mercer Heavy Industries, Ceres Metals Corporation, and the industrial conglomerates of the Jin Xian Commonwealth (especially Dahan). The Sakura Consortium is on good terms with the SDC and supports its efforts to maintain a trade infrastructure, but has no desire to join any potential political entities the SDC might attempt to create. Sakura is a very traditional, some might even say a throwback, Japanese organization in spite of its multinational makeup, and Sakamoto himself has a very large hand in the dictates of how the colony is run.
The Short Jump Stardrive refers to any Stardrive system capable of executing a Jump up to a distance of 10.758 light years (about 3.3 parsecs) from the system of origin. Short Jump is the most common form of stardrive found in human starships, and the technology is widely available by 2361. The first successful use of Short Jump technology was demonstrated in 2191 by the unmanned test bed Adventurer I. During the infancy of Short Jump, the range for a Jump was limited to about 5.85 light years, and slow yet steady developments have improved this range to the present day limits. Further Short Jump development seems to have run its course, as fundamental detection, calculation, and negative-stress tensor field limits for spacecraft have been determined based on the technology in use. It has been demonstrated that Short Jump range may top out at about 11.04 light years, although pushing these limits even to this level has its risks, and most drives will not attempt a Jump greater than the established 10.758 light years.
For Jumps greater than 10.758 light years, a different but related technology is required: Long Jump Stardrive.
Drake Skyler
The Solarian Dollar ($SD) is the official currency denomination of the Bank of Sol. It is an index currency, similar to the various financial instruments issued by the World Bank between the late 20th century and its spectacular collapse in 2033. The Solarian Dollar is pegged to the exchange rates of seven major currencies plus the value of one gram of 0.999 fine gold. The index currencies currently in use are the U.S. Dollar, the British Pound, the EU Euro, the Japanese Yen, the Guangzhou nuYuan, the Brazilian Real, and the Indian Rupee. Manchurian Yuan was at one time part of the index, but was dropped in 2110 following a dispute between the Bank of Sol and the Manchurian government. In retaliation, Manchuria does not recognize the Solarian Dollar, either on Earth or on Manchuria's offworld colonies.
The purchasing power of the Solarian Dollar floats with the value of FOREX and gold currently on deposit with the Bank. As an index currency, the value of the Solarian Dollar is fairly stable, as shocks to one or more currencies are typically counteracted by corresponding rises with the others, or with the price of gold. The bank charges a one time fee of 2% against that day's FOREX trading value for currency deposited in a Bank of Sol account. The Solarian Dollar is then freely convertible after a 48 hour period to any other index currency or amount of gold based in the day's exchange rate. Interest in deposits is paid out in Solarian Dollars to the account. It is possible to convert prior to the 48 hour period, but at a heavy penalty of 25%. These mechanisms are in place to discourage hedging and speculative attacks against the Solarian Dollar.
The Solarian Dollar and the Bank of Sol itself were created to facilitate non partisan trade between various offworld colonies. The value of the currency is such that many do not redeem their Solarian Dollars for index currency, and conduct all financial transactions using it. This is especially prevalent in offworld colonies of an independent nature, whereas most colonies with heavy backing by one of the Earth polities may to varying degrees permit their citizens to use and trade with Solarian Dollars, but almost always require taxes and fees to be paid in the home currency.
When the Sagittarius Development Corporation announced the opening of the Orion-Sagittarius Stargate to the public in 2357, it announced that the Solarian Dollar would be the only currency accepted for services, and all SDC wages and royalties were to be paid in Solarian Dollars. As the Bank of Sol is a major partner of the SDC, this is not a surprising move. With the collapse of the Stargate, most colonies not under the direction of the Jin Xian Development Corporation or Dahan use the Solarian Dollar as their unit of exchange.
Since the Stargate Crash, the Solarian Dollar has become a commodities backed unit of exchange rather than an index currency. The Bank's Sagittarius Board of Governors, on which the SDC, Helios, and Mercer Heavy Industries have seats, now meet quarterly to determine the price of the commodities that underpin the dollar. This has been done to provide economic stability in the wake of the disaster, and the Bank has said that it will continue to honor exchanges in units of the original index currency (such as U.S. Dollars or Guangzhou nuYuan) until January 1st, 2363. At that point the Bank will only deal in Solarian Dollars and the commodities that back it.
Solarian Space-Time Engineering (SSTE) is a corporation founded in 2180 by Gavin Aurimas to research and produce technologies capable of manipulating space and time for the purpose of faster than light communication. SSTE received start-up funds in a grant from the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design a mechanism by which a Plank scale wormhole might be detected, captured, inflated, and held open long enough to allow a macroscale object to transit it. Aurimas' groundbreaking work with wormholes and space-time metrics in the late 22nd century had already predicted the existence of wormholes between nearby stars whose locations were a probability function that could be determined mathematically with reasonable (for data systems of the period) speed and accuracy. A privately funded experiment at the location predicted by Aurimas and his team for a 'Jump Point' between Sol and Alpha Centauri-A provided very encouraging results, and DARPA pounced on the opportunity with an offer of lavish funding and limitless resources in exchange for exclusive access to all data and mechanisms related to FTL propulsion. Aurimas was at first reluctant to turn over all his research to a sovereign power in exchange for financing he felt he could get on his own to continue his work, and only after a year of intense negotiations did he agree to a 20 year publication moratorium on his efforts from the date of the first successful interstellar jump. Even this was too much for some of his colleagues, who left his team in disgust to pursue their own work in the private sector. In any event, Gavin Aurimas' genius proved to be the necessary ingredient for eventual success as all privately funded attempts had shut down by 2190.
SSTE was created as a result of that agreement, a private company funded by the U.S. Government to prove that FTL communication via wormhole was possible and to construct a mechanism by which this could be done. When the Adventurer III successfully jumped to Alpha Centauri-A on July 4, 2199, SSTE had finally proved their system, and were authorized to begin work on a larger, more capable Stardrive for an eventual manned spacecraft. SSTE produced between twenty and twenty-two Stardrive units for the U.S. Government under its exclusive arrangement. (The exact number is subject to intense debate, as several Stardrives produced were considered prototypes not meant for actual deployment on a spacecraft.)
IPO and Dawn of the
Interstellar Age
SSTE went public in 2219, with an initial offering that raised over 10 trillion Solarian Dollars. SSTE's sudden windfall led to Congressional hearings in the election year of 2220, as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle demanded to know why the taxpayers had already spent nearly 15 trillion US dollars on the Stardrive project between 2180 and 2220, an amount that adjusted to modern dollars, equalled the Manhattan Project, the entire Apollo Moon Project, and the Mars Colonization Mission combined, only to allow the SSTE to become fabulously wealthy on work paid for by the people of the United States. In a famous public hearing that many in the Senate later wished had remained closed, Gavin Aurimas declared that the twenty year head start the United States had received with his Stardrive technology and the manned survey missions they had conducted since 2206 had already repaid the taxpayers' monies tenfold. Aurimas' statements to the Senate, timed with the arrival of the first American colony mission on Terranova just two weeks later, served to defuse any remaining domestic hostility, and SSTE's announcement that they would make Stardrive available to anyone who could afford it served to allay the bitterness of the rest of the world over the United States' seemingly insurmountable lead in the conquest of the stars.
SSTE enjoyed a booming business in Stardrive production, and turned out regular advances in the range, reliability, and energy requirements for the next several decades. Although Aurimas had freely offered Stardrives to all who could afford them, in the first decades of the 23rd Century, this amounted to a handful of Western Alliance nations and deep pocketed Multinational Corporations. The largest obstacles to lowering the cost were the price of the platinum-iridium alloy used to generate the negative stress-tensor field and the obscenely exacting specifications with which the alloy was refined, the metal drawn into wire for the field coils, and the winding of the field coils themselves. Mercer Heavy Industries, having been the SSTE's prime engineering contractor since 2190, finally perfected a lower cost production process by 2255, allowing second and third tier polities to get into the interstellar race.
Long Jump and
Interference by World Governments
The period between 2255 and 2288 was one of regular profits but relatively little advancement in the technology of Stardrives and Space-Time Metric manipulations. Gavin Aurimas himself was rarely seen in public during this period, which began with his radical Life Extension therapy, the first of the Amaranth line of genetic tweaks. During this period, Gavin was obsessed with the problems of his Stardrive's limited range. There seemed to be no reason why Jumps longer than 11 or so light years weren't theoretically possible, but the limitations of his machine appeared to be insurmountable. In March 2288, Aurimas made a rare public announcement that he had developed a new type of Stardrive, one he called a Long Jump Stardrive, that could theoretically span distances of hundreds of light years. SSTE stock prices soared to new heights on this announcement, but not all was well within the company. Also of note, but considered to be little more than a scientific curiosity, was a white paper detailing how a Casimir Effect 'drive sail' might be implemented. The predicted efficiencies of the drive sail were such that, while attractive in the sense that they expended very little mass, and hence were nearly 'reactionless' as a propulsion system, they produced levels of thrust that were far below what was available with conventional fusion and antimatter-fusion engines.
The Western Alliance of nations had a turbulent relationship with Aurimas and SSTE, and the news of Long Jump Stardrive was met with as much trepidation as excitement. Enormous pressure was put upon the SSTE Board of Directors, who in turn forged a deal with the Western Alliance that nearly drove Aurimas to resign. Long Jump Stardrive would be sold exclusively to the governments of the Alliance, and would not be made available for private ownership. Aurimas, although the CEO of SSTE, was powerless to stop the deal, and requested an extended sabbatical from operating the corporation. The SSTE board granted his request, instructing him to take as much time as he desired, and Aurimas went back into seclusion until 2303 while a puppet of the Board ran day to day operations. Those fifteen years in the wilderness, as he later recalled the period, were not spent idly.
Aurimas Regains
Control, The Stargates
Aurimas had amassed a vast fortune during his long tenure as CEO, and coupled with the royalties he received on every stardrive produced, even ones not built by SSTE or its subsidiaries and partners, he was easily the richest man in all of history. SSTE stock was quietly bought up by proxies including his nearly equally wealthy friend Frederick Mercer of Mercer Heavy Industries during the years between 2288 and 2303, until Aurimas had secretly obtained a controlling stake in the company. In 2303 Aurimas launched a double coup. He returned to work with the most stunning development in the history of applied physics - he had discovered a way to capture, inflate, and maintain a stable wormhole linking two star systems for an indefinite amount of time. Although the process required a staggering amount of energy to initiate the construction of what the media outlets immediately dubbed a Stargate, maintenance of the inflated wormhole, while non-trivial, was both affordable and achievable with existing data management systems. His second stroke was to exercise his majority stake in SSTE, and fire the entire SSTE Board of Directors. The only shareholders capable of fighting the decision were the conglomerates Helios and Wellspring, both producers of antimatter for Long Jump stardrives, antimatter catalyzed fusion drives, and as Aurimas revealed some of the details for the construction of his newest project, Stargates.
SSTE created the first Stargate in 2313, which linked Alpha Centauri-A and Sol. Financing for the Stargate was achieved through a split of SSTE stock, which, while removing Aurimas' majority position, had the potential to make an exponential leap in wealth creation, and no one was willing to challenge his position as CEO after such a master stroke of genius and determination. At last it was possible to send radio and laser comm messages between star systems through the Stargate directly, lowering the costs of communications by an order of magnitude over sending messages by courier starship. More Stargate links sprang up over the next 40 years, although each required a staggering amount of energy to construct. As revenge for their Long Jump manipulations, Aurimas forbade any Western Alliance military spacecraft of any type on any mission from using one of his Stargates at any time. To soften the blow, he continued to honor the agreement restricting Long Jump technology sales - which in his mind were becoming obsolete with the proliferation of Stargates.
Aurimas Resigns from SSTE
In 2333, with the SSTE the wealthiest, most influential corporation in human history, Gavin Aurimas and his friend Frederick Mercer begin to quietly sell off most of their SSTE stock. The vast sums of money generated by the sale are used to finance the Sagittarius Development Corporation. As most of the stock is sold through proxies much as it was first purchased at the end of the 23rd century, there is little evidence to suggest a lack of faith in the company, and the dip in stock price is soon overcome by the continuing development of new Stargates bringing in revenue. When the SDC is announced in 2340, Gavin also announces his resignation from SSTE as CEO, though he will remain on the Board of Directors for as long as he is desired by the remainder of the board. SSTE's stock price holds relatively steady on this news.
In a move that surprises many, SSTE is not chosen as the Prime Contractor for the inflation of the Orion-Sagittarius Stargate in the Wolf 359 System, though they do win the contract to create a Stargate link between Wolf 359 and Sol. The SDC would inflate the Stargate, and the SSTE would manage day to day operations of the wormhole link once the SDC declared it was ready for general use. The SDC announces the Stargate is operational on May 3, 2355, and the first of the SDC's great Bonaventure class explorers begin their surveys of the Sagittarius Arm. Two years of near total news blackout from Sagittarius are ended as the SDC completed its transfer of all holdings from the Orion Arm, and announced that the Stargate is open. SSTE takes over custody of day to day operations of the Stargate, with continuous oversight by the SDC.
Epsilon Stargate
Crash, SSTE in Trouble
August 10, 2359 marked the worst day in the 179 year history of SSTE as a group of nihilists known as The End of History, with suspected backing from the Aztlan government, deliberately crashed a hijacked freighter into the caustic region of the Epsilon Indi-Epsilon Eridani Stargate. The wormhole collapsed in a frantic burst of gamma rays and neutrinos that rivalled a tiny supernova. The radiation pulse killed over six million people in both star systems, and nearly destabilized a second Stargate linking Epsilon Indi to Sol. The amount of death and destruction caused by the collapse overwhelmed the governments of Great Britain and Brazil, and the entire Western Alliance was mobilized against the disaster. The crash of the Stargate called into question the very safety of all of human civilization, as a chain reaction of collapsing Stargates could easily spread back to the Solar System. Construction on new Stargates was put on hold, and the Western Alliance insisted upon round the clock protection of the remaining Stargates with warships orbiting the wormholes, and military pilots with armed escort performing all maneuvers for ships transiting the Stargates. SSTE was called before the governments of the world to answer questions about how a collapse was possible, what had been done to prevent such an event, and what could be done in the future. Many demand that Gavin Aurimas personally appear for questioning in the matter, but the reclusive former CEO of SSTE remained in Sagittarius, and instead issued a recorded statement of regret for the loss of life and a call for any who would be willing to put aside the folly of the old hatreds of Man to join him. SSTE's stock plunged to half its value within a week of the crash. Aurimas' refusal to answer to the World caused another plunge to one quarter its original pre-Crash value.
SSTE continued to limp along during 2360, its revenues steady as the Orion Arm economy had become too dependent on Stargate links to give them up outright, but were faced with an incredible class action lawsuit by the families of more than 6 million dead as well as possible criminal sanctions by the governments of Brazil and Great Britain that could easily bring the company to utter ruin. SSTE retained several public relations firms that year to try and steer responsibility for the Crash back towards the psychopaths who caused it, but the sheer magnitude of the disaster, coupled with the dread of knowing that over a dozen Stargates with the same potential remained in operation - three of which linked back to the Solar System - was too much to overcome in public opinion. Counter arguments from politicians, intellectuals, and popular entertainers echoed a common refrain: SSTE built the Stargates. SSTE assured everyone they were safe. SSTE was wrong. SSTE is responsible. Gavin Aurimas' refusal to return to Orion to answer questions was the final insult.
2361 opened with more threats of Stargate collapse by the End of History. Despite Aztlan's denunciation of the group and its methods, and a full scale military intervention against the nihilist group wherever it was found by the Western Alliance powers, tensions and rivalries between the polities was at a flashpoint, and the human race was posed on the brink of an unrestricted interstellar war. Against this backdrop, SSTE had no choice but to begin deflation of all the remaining Stargates to what was presumed to be a 'safe' diameter of one centimeter until the danger had passed. On January 29, 2361 the Orion-Sagittarius Stargate crashed during deflation procedures from an unknown cause. The crash severed the link between the two spiral arms, and the only SSTE personnel in Sagittarius were instantly killed. The final fate of SSTE is and will remain unknown.
A listing of all star catalogues in use by the SDC
Brown Dwarf Catalogue
Hayes-Mizuno Habitable Star Catalogue
Hayes Bright Star Catalogue
Hayes Dim Star Catalogue
Nebula Catalogue
Sagittarius Bright Star Catalogue
White Dwarf Catalogue
X-Ray Source Catalogue
Stardrive refers to a so-called Faster Than Light (FTL) propulsion system. There are two types of Stardrive in use: Short Jump and Long Jump. Stardrive was invented by Gavin Aurimas and his research company Solarian Space-Time Engineering. The first successful Stardrive jump was conducted in 2191, and covered a scant 1.03 AU distance. It was later determined that this had been a very lucky accident, and that sub-interstellar jump attempts were the result of difficult to model quantum fluctuations that caused random destinations, and in most cases produced solution sets that dumped a stardrive equipped craft within the envelope of the nearby star. This actually happened during Adventurer I's final jump of June 2192, when it materialized in the Sun's photosphere and was destroyed.
A stable 'permanent' traversable wormhole created by exploiting a space-time metric manipulation of the Average Null Energy Condition on an existing Plank-scale wormhole. An early theoretical model of space-time in the mid 21st century predicted that the observed granularity of space-time allowed for the existence of wormholes formed shortly after the Big Bang and 'frozen' near the Plank-scale in size and mass. These wormholes expanded to points in space-time as the universe expanded, and connected regions of space in accordance to the warp of the space-time metric caused by massive objects. Gavin Aurimas proved these theories in 2179 with a patent to detect naturally occuring wormhole potential wells, and a device for this purpose was successful in mapping out what was later dubbed as a 'Jump Point' between the Solar System and Alpha Centauri. These discoveries gave rise to Stardrive.
The development of the Stargate remains shrouded in mystery. The handful of white papers and extracts published by Aurimas are difficult to follow and have been accused of being deliberately obtuse by some scientists. The crux of the system seems to be based upon similar principles as for Long Jump stardrive, but some of the metrics noted do not compare precisely. It has been argued in some circles of thought that Aurimas himself has stumbled upon something that even he doesn't completely understand, and has only just managed to kludge it all together into a workable system.
Stargates must be dynamically stabilized in order to keep them open, and this is done by some of the most powerful expert system AIs in existence. The process has been compared to supporting a stick of warm butter with a web of dental floss, only in the case of a Stargate, instead of making a buttery mess if you fail, you instead release all of the vast energies required to keep the wormhole inflated to macroscale in a tiny supernova. The amount of energy contained in a typical 100 meter diameter stargate is roughly that of the entire output of Sol for 0.8 seconds, or about 300 YottaJoules. Collecting this much energy requires vast solar arrays converting sunlight to electricity which is then in turn used to manufacture antimatter. Approximately five years of energy harvesting from Sol and Alpha Centauri A and B were required to stockpile sufficient antimatter to feed into the metric field generators to inflate the first stargate, and 98% of the antimatter industry's output since then has gone towards the creation of new stargates, fueling a boom in production from every available star within range of settlement, epsecially from smaller red dwarf stars with no other value for colonization.
Wormhole seeds for stargate production are typically found in the same resonance harmonic potential wells as normal Short Jump Points. This has caused some issue with tracking and crowding of local regions of space that have a stargate, as these were typically serviceable short jump routes previous to the inflation of the wormhole. With the exception of the Sagittarius-Orion Stargate, no stargate wormhole has been found that corresponds to a non-Short Jump potential well. Aurimas' theory explains the scarcity of such fossilized remnants from the Big Bang - short jump routes are more common due to gravitational resonances between nearby stars, whereas longer routes, such as for Long Jump and for more distant stargates are governed by far more complex interactions, and as such are very difficult to model and predict. This has been one of the principal limitations to the current Long Jump maximum range of about ten parsecs when it should have a theoretical range in the hundreds or even thousands of parsecs.