Shaw-Fujikawa Space (Specops306)

Even after nearly two hundred years of interstellar travel, very little is known about Shaw-Fujikawa Space, more commonly known as "slipspace", the medium used by human interstellar ships to travel between star systems. It's discovery has allowed humanity to leave the confines of its native solar system, colonising dozens of star systems and hundreds of planets, moons and planetoids in its fledgling expansion through the cosmos, but it is as unpredictable and dangerous as it is useful. Slipspace research is considered one of the most difficult aspects of modern quantum theory, and various theories have been proposed and rejected in turn to explain its peculiarities and very existence. Very little progress has been made prior to 2525, and what little advancement humanity has made since contact with the Covenant has been by reverse-engineering their more sophisticated technology. Even after the war, and the introduction of fleetwide refits, slipspace remains an obscure and confusing subject for many.

History
Use of slipspace predades its discovery by humanity by millenia. In approximately 100,000 BCE, it was used by the Forerunners, an extinct and enigmatic species, to build a vast interstellar empire across the galaxy. Their ability to manipulate slipspace was vastly superior to anything humanity could achieve, and outstripped even the Covenant - a distance of 11856 lightyears that might take a UNSC warship 12 years, or a Covenant warship 13 days, a Forerunner warship at 10% power can travel in a mere five days. It is hardly surprising that the Forerunner's civilisation was able to span the entire galaxy, given the ability to travel such distances in so little time. Transport was not the only application the Forerunners put their understanding of slipspace to - their Translocation Grids created a "teleportation" network able to operate at vast distances, and on relatively unprotected personnel, and at nearly instantaneous transit times. It may have been used for much more, however; records from the Battle of Onyx indicate that the Forerunners were able to use slipstream entry and exit points generated by others, and rumours from the Minorcan Campaign hold that the Forerunner ruins beneath the surface used slipspace to achieve unknown goals.

After the Forerunners disappeared after activating the Halo Array, slipspace technology would remain unused until it's convergent rediscovery by two species; the San'Shyuum and the Sangheili. In the latter case, early Sangheili understanding of slipspace seems to have been approximately equivalent to that of modern humanity, slow and unpredictable; the latter directly reverse-engineered Forerunner technology to achieve a less advanced version of the technology that was nevertheless more than sufficient for their needs. It was their superior ability to manipulate slipspace, as well as the vast arsenal that the San'Shyuum-operated Keyship possessed, that allowed them to dominate the Sangheili fleet and draw the war between them to a standstill. When the two species founded the Covenant, the political and military union that would eventually come to dominate most of the Orion Arm, their fleet made extensive use of this improved slipspace drive, though it still paled in comparison to the true capabilities of Forerunner technology. The Sangheili and San'Shyuum are unique among the Covenant species in that only these two ever reached the interstellar stage - the only other species to come close, the Jiralhanae and Lekgolo, never developed much along the lines of slipspace technology, the latter because of the vast environmental difficulties they faced, the former because they virtually annihilated their society through brutal and bloody civil war.

Humanity's own discovery of slipspace has been comparatively recent. While similar theories, such as Minowski space, Heim Theory and Matterwave Transport Without Transit, were all concieved during the 20th and 21st Centuries, it was only in 2291 that a team of international researchers, led by Doctors Tobias Fleming Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa, was successfully able to prove the existence of slipspace, subsequently named Shaw-Fujikawa Space by the scientific community to the embarrassment of both. The subsequent decades would see great strides in human understanding and manipulation of slipspace occur; beginning with exploratory scientific probes into the dimension, many of which were lost, the team eventually succeeded in dropping a probe out of slipspace, and then reentering the dimension, returning for analysis. Even in its early days, the UNSC was intensely interested in the applications of slipspace in interstellar travel, and by 2362 the first interstellar colony ship, the, was launched. Between 2362 and 2590, the human sphere of influence would expand at a dramatic rate, colonising hundreds of planets, planetoids and moons in dozens of star systems.

Although contact with the Covenant would come at a devastating cost, and would see the destruction of all the UNSC's Outer Colonies and many of its Inner Colonies, it would also bring technological understanding. Reverse-engineering of Covenant technology was a slow process, primarily hampered by the extreme damage sustained by any salvagable material, and was spearheaded by ONI's Project TEMERITY, a research and reverse-engineering program, and Project EXCALIBUR, a design and implementation program. By 2552, human understanding of slipspace had dramatically increased, allowing marginally better transit times but, more importantly, allowing the UNSC to enact precision slipspace jumps for improved combat manoeuvres. The capture and reverse-engineering of a Covenant slipspace drive would eventually result in the UNSC making vast progress, bringing its slipspace capalility to comparative Covenant levels. Other applications of the technology were also found; lacking instantaneous communication on a level comparable to the Covenant, the UNSC would invest heavily in Slipspace FTL communications satellites, allowing faster but still delayed communication. Classified sites on Earth, Reach and Onyx were cordoned off to construct massive slipspace drives on the planet's surface, generating ruptures in orbit to allow communications probes to travel at the same velocity as warships.

Currently, operation of slipspace drives is well within both the UNSC's and Covenant capacity, and have been used to great effect by both sides. This does not, however, mean that either side fully understands the technology that they use. The nature of the Covenant's technological acquisition, the appropriation and reverse-engineering of Forerunner artefacts, means that the knowledge required for this is concentrated among a small elite group of San'Shyuum who restrict this information from the Sangheili, Jiralhanae, and other species who use it. In the wake of the Great Schism, this has left the Sangheili and Jiralhanae with an inability to produce new slipspace drives, forced to cannibalise decommissioned ships for inferior devices. Unusually, this has led to ship graveyards becoming focal points of conflict, both sides determined to prevent the other gaining more drives to produce more ships. On the other hand, while humanity possesses the knowledge to create and use advanced slipspace drives, it is only at a very basic level, and production of Covenant-level drives has only been enabled through decades of painstaking reverse-engineering of technology in turn reverse-engineered from much more advanced devices. The alliance of the UNSC and SAF during and after the Great Schism has seen a limited exchange of materiel, allowing the Sangheili to boost output of warships in exchange for metals and materials neccessary for their construction and for the UNSC's own reconstruction. It is ironic that a technology used to inflict billions of deaths has brought two former enemies together to such a degree.

Lacking the neccessary infrastructure for the most part, the Sangheili are still struggling to return themselves to a social state where they can comprehend the technology they use. Many still regard their own ships and weapons as divine gifts from their Gods, ignorant of the basic scientific processes that enable their function. UNSC physicists and technicians have done much to improve this, but it is an uphill struggle for such a warrior-oriented culture. UNSC research is conducted at various sites throughout its territory. Formerly, the Rishard Fellowship of Applied Quantum Physics on Reach was home to many of the UNSC's top researchers until the colony was conquered and glassed by the Covenant. Many of these physicists were evacuated off the planet at great expense by the UNSC Army's 33rd Cavalry Division, holding off the Covenant advance through Rishard as the evacuation ships took off. Afterwards, the UNSC would set up the Charon Research Base, relocating the most advanced human quantum physicsts to the isolated planetoid/moon for two reasons; first, it allowed testing of slipspace devices far from other gravitational influences, and second, to allow joint human/Sangheili study away from the prying eyes of the colonial media.

Remarks

 * "It's not true space and there is nothing to slip against. So why call it Slipspace? Why not just use "hyperspace", since that seems to fit the description much better?"
 * "I remember it took the Aegis Fate two weeks to reach Delta Halo, but through the Ark Portal it was just in and out - no cryo-sleep, nothing. We'd barely logged our rifles at the armoury when we got deployed again!"
 * "Truly, the Prophets hid much from us during our centuries of servitude. At first, it was a true partnership, but as their search proved fruitless and our patience waned, they sought to keep us beneath them. No longer."
 * "The only theory that has a lot of acceptance is that slipspace is the remains of the universe before ours, after it's undergone heat death and its laws of physics have begun to break down. It makes sense, I guess. Does that mean it's right? I don't know."