Jump (Alliance-Union universe)

Jump is a fictional technology used by spacecraft in science fiction author C. J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe to travel faster-than-light (FTL). Jump can also be a verb, and is the act of travelling FTL using jump technology.

In 2220, Estelle Bok, a physicist investigating FTL travel, arrived at Cyteen Station with a group of immigrants. She continued her research there and achieved a major breakthrough in 2230 when she found a loophole allowing the Einsteinian limit to be breached. This enabled her to derive the Bok Equation, the theoretical basis for FTL travel. Cyteen management immediately initiated a program to apply Bok's principle to ship drives, and in 2248 the first FTL probe, Aurora, set out from Cyteen Station to Mariner Station, 6.8 light years away, and back.

As news of the FTL technology spread, ships began arriving at Cyteen Station requesting FTL conversions. However, it was not until 2261 that Earth learned of these developments and attached top priority to acquiring the new technology. When the technology finally reached Pell Station in 2262, Earth began studying it, and launched its first FTL warship in 2266.

In the Alliance-Union universe faster-than-light (FTL) ships have two major drive systems, slower-than-light (STL) thrusters and FTL jump engines. The jump engines comprise vanes that are attached to the outside of the ship. When the vanes are pulsed, they generate gravity waves which create a field, or "bubble", around the ship that pulls it (and anything else in the field) along the interface between realspace (Einsteinian space) and hyperspace (jumpspace).

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