Scrapped Ideas/Space Travel in the 'Verse

This article will explain the details of both maneuver drives and star drives used by various factions in the 'Verse.

Maneuver Drives
A maneuver drive is used to propel a ship through "normal" space, changing its velocity in space as needed, more or less subject to the known laws of force and motion. Such drives range from realistic propulsion systems like rockets, to TL13 drives that appear to break some physical laws, but are still limited by the speed of light.

Reaction Drives
A reaction drive is a drive that obeys (and takes advantage of) Newton's third law of motion. This law implies that the momentum of a system is always conserved, unless and external force is applied to it. Some reaction drives work by taking advantage of external that act on the spaceship, changing its momentum. However, most reaction drives use the rocket equation. Reaction Drives, primarily space-capable, chemical rockets are typically first seen when a civilization reaches TL7.

Principles of Rocketry
In its simplest form, a spaceship using a rocket drive is composed of two portions.

The first portion is the payload. This consists of all the parts that are to be conveyed to the ship's destination: crew, passengers, life support equipment, computers and other instruments, drive machinery, cargo, the hull structure of the ship itself, and so on.