Over a decade ago, while
Taiidani scientists were researching alternate methods of
Faster-Than-Light travel, a curious micro-wormhole effect
was achieved by charging two quantum plates and then
separating them. While particles would pass instantaneously
from a hole in the center of one plate to the other
regardless of distance, the research led to a dead end. The
first problem was one of power; even with large ground-based
fusion reactors linked to the system, the wormhole effect
could only be expanded to something the size of a fist.
While this might have made for an interesting weapon
delivery system, the other drawback was that whatever
entered the wormhole emerged as a stream of undifferentiated
molecules.
Logged in the data-banks as
nothing more than a curiosity, the wormhole pipe lay
unexploited until Fleet logistics began trying to find a way
around the weakness of extended supply lines. Logistics
asked for a resource controller ship that could handle and
process shipments from multiple Resource Collectors.
Unfortunately, while setting a Resource controller at the
edge of the resource rich area would reduce the trip time
for the collectors, it did little to speed up the transit of
the raw materials to a mining base foundry. Luckily, a fleet
engineer stumbled across records of the wormhole effect and
suggested this as the perfect mode of transporting resources
from the collector to the base, since collectors already had
reduced the resources to a stream of elemental atoms. Using
a capital ship hull to support the massive power plant
needed to maintain the quantum tunnel, engineers created
what was, basically, a slow-moving mobile base that would
speed up re-supply by an order of magnitude.
A welcome side effect of the
large reactor system was that the Siim Salla controller
could also serve as a refueling base for 6 fighters and 2
corvettes at a time.
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