Weather Drive

The Weather Drive was an experimental Hyperdrive which, if successful, would have been simply revolutionary. Unfortunately the experiments failed catastrophically. The prototype, the Weather Gang, disappeared alongside all scientists during the first voyage of experimental ship the Rider. With no prototypes or scientists remaining, the research project fizzled out and ended up a mere footnote in history as one of many failed experiments.
The base idea of the Weather Drive was that it would not purely push against Hyperspace, in other words fight to obtain the required Relativity to break in the Hypersea, but try to glide along it to slip in. This meant that far less force would be required to get in, with the addition of a far greater Relativity potential. Even though Hyperdrives have grown far more advanced since then, they still have not reached the same potential that the Weather Drive was hypothesised to have.

Type

Hyperdrive

Invention Date

Theory 2652 CE
Prototype 2657 CE

Maximum Relativity

5.5

Status

Assumed Failure

Functionality

One possible short description of a Hyperdrive is that it creates a bubble around the ship, then pushes said bubble against a barrier of sorts, until it manages to break through this barrier and reach into Hyperspace. As this is all brute force, entering Hyperspace and staying in costs a lot of fuel.
The Weather Drive came from an entirely different perspective instead. It aimed at the fluctuations of Hyperspace to guide those through the drive, holding on to them and letting itself glide along the fluctuations to slip into Hyperspace. This meant far less power and fuel would be needed, it also decreased the turbulence endured while entering the Hypersea.
An added bonus was that this would allow many Weather Drives to work together, assuming they were synced right. Synced wrong they could resist each other, but if done right multiple small drives could function better than a single large drive would. In comparison, normal drives clash because their bubbles don't properly combine into a single big one.

History

Initial experiments matched the theories and even seemed to suggest the Weather Drive might function even better than expected. Unfortunately this did mean there was a risk the drives would end up clashing due to different performance from what was expected.
During the Rider's first full flight, results were communicated to control vessels nearby. Equipped with a total of fourteen Weather Drives, the Rider started by running two, then added one drive at a time. Shortly after starting up its sixth drive, communication was lost in an abrupt manner. Investigations suggested clashing drives had destroyed the ship.
In recent years, the Weather Drive theories were resurfaced by scientists from Thales Station. They found discrepancies best described as there being something rotten in the known history. While studying the partial research, they claim to have picked up some peculiar traces of the lost Weather Gang. They are now hiring Stormfarers to help them investigate.