Terran Empire Technology
Faster than Light
Sling Drive
The Sling Drive was the original FTL drive of know space and is still in use by merchant fleets and the like as it is far, far cheaper to build and maintain than Jump Drive. The system works by using a series of large rings to accelerate a ship rapidly and in effect sling it to the target area. When exploring new systems or system that do not have a Sling Drive of there own the ships need to manually slow themselves this uses a large amount of fuel which was a major factor in the slow expansion of territory of the races of known space.
In connected systems a second catch ring is built to slow ships down.