United Galaxies Council.	Space Travel Dangers.		United Galaxies Council.
There are many dangers to space travel; Not all are life-threatening, and in fact most can be overcome IF you know how to deal with them.
Void Space Wormholes Misfold		Cosmic String Spatial Anomalies Quantum Filament
Void Space.
The anomaly known as "Void Space" is a closed structure in space-time encased in an inert layer of subspace. Approximately nine light years in circumference, they are impenetrable to matter or energy, resulting in a region wherein no gases, stellar bodies, or matter of any kind existed. Within a void, funnels periodically erupt into normal space, creating massive graviton forces which pull in anything unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity smaller than a planet. Inside, the same graviton forces drain a vessel's power supply, making energy a highly-limited commodity. This results in a number of ships trapped within a void, with their crews turning to piracy and murder. In 2287 a UGC vessel found a way to escape a void entirely under her own power, and marked the area for future reference for other spacecraft. Shortly after, the Spaceways Patrol And Enforcement Services (the Patrol) assigned UGPC VIGILANT to test towing technologies in this void, then for the next 06 months to tow ships caught in the void out. Not long after taking station, however, private interests entered the void to tow stricken ships out; Per UGC policy, VIGILANT was forced to abandon her station and allow the private parties to take over. The process works by engaging a polaron modulator (a device capable of compensating for extreme graviton stress) when the graviton forces reached critical levels. At this point, the polarity suddenly reverses, pulling anything near the funnel inside. The tow vessel and her escort then enter a funnel just as it was forming, and jump to high warp immediately before the polarity reverses. Perhaps amazingly, some voids actually support life; One that has entered the galactic community is the Fantome. Voids can be private property, and in fact the colony of Void is exactly such; Also, one particular void has a warning beacon stating that this void is "unstable" and filled with space junk, that all ships entering the void are in imminent danger of destruction; However, this sign is actually a ruse to get vessels to steer clear on their own, but in fact holds "The Yard", a beyond top secret research and development complex (actually a series of hundreds of complexes, consisting of over 2,000 space stations, and many more space ships, ranging from one man stunt craft to warships). Unauthorized ships that enter "The Yard" are summarily destroyed, BUT many of the ships that patrol this void operate for the sole purpose of disrupting the graviton forces before they reach critical levels, thus preventing the shunts form forming in the first place; They also destabilize the graviton where and how the complex administrators want them to, thus creating shunts when they want them to, allowing ships in and out as needed.
			A Schematic Of A Void.
Wormholes.
A "Wormhole" is a "tunnel" connecting two separate points in space-time. It consists of two apertures in space-time connected by a conduit outside normal space, through subspace. Since this conduit is shorter than the distance between the two points in normal space, it allows rapid travel between the two points. If a wormhole is large and stable enough, a starship (or other traveler) could travel through it. A wormhole could also connect two different points in time as well. As wormholes collapse, they become smaller and are known as micro-wormholes. Wormholes and the possibility of using them for time travel had been recognized by scientists since the 20th Century. No known stable wormholes had yet been discovered in the galaxies, and artificial wormholes are far too difficult to build; However, it has been theorized that a naturally forming wormhole ‘could' be stabilized into a permanent wormhole. The theory involves generating a tensor matrix and sending out a magneton pulse using a target drone. The pulse would then interact with the matrix to produce a gravimetric distortion, which would stabilize the opening in the space-time continuum. Warp engine imbalances have also been known to create wormholes, causing the ship to become trapped in a wormhole, possibly leading to her destruction.
			A Schematic Of A Wormhole.
Misfold
A "Misfold" can occur because of miscalculations, technical problems or spatial anomalies, causing space fold capable ship to deviate from its intended destination and emerge off course (often also causing damage to the spacecraft). Errors are typically in terms of feet or yards, but misfolds of light-years have occurred. Sometimes ships end up in a different star system than the one that they intended to jump to, or stranded in deep space. Misfolds have even been known to move ships into the wrong galaxy (though only in one spectacular case). Long-range misfolds require very unusual astronomical conditions, and thus are extremely rare. Navigational errors and poor maintenance are the most common cause for a misfold. In a notable misfold, the warship UES INDOMITABLE was suspended in hyperspace for 250 years during a misfold before appearing at the destination jump point, effectively moving the ship and its crew 250 years into the future. The possibility of this sort of "hyperspace suspended animation" is understood by hyperspace physicists but this is the only known case of it actually happening.
Cosmic String
A "Cosmic String" is a spatial phenomenon characterized by its extremely narrow width and powerful gravitational fields. Cosmic strings are no wider than a proton yet have gravitational fields as powerful as those of a black hole. Cosmic strings can be detected by the presence of highly accelerated interstellar gases, which serve to outline the string and make it visible to standard sensors. A cosmic string emanates a characteristic set of subspace frequencies as atomic particles decay along its event horizon. Many ships have nearly been destroyed after an encountering a cosmic string fragment; The Spaceliner Epsilon Queen is thought to have ollided with a cosmic string (during a misfold event).
Spatial Anomalies
"Spatial Anomalies" are rare, but are suspected to have caused the loss of hundreds of starships. Because of a starship's limited meteoritic shielding, occasionally "something in the doorway could cause an accident" during FTL transiting. Evidently, spatial anomalies, while astronomically rare, are not entirely random. On 12 January 2250, the cargo ship Raiden tried to fold from Garuda to Wayside but misfolded to Jenero instead because of a cosmic rift drifting through the jump point at the time. The Raiden was wrecked in the process. Almost exactly 346 years later, on 18 January 2596, the CONSTELLATION-Class Battleship CROWN PRINCE PRIVAVEY (named for a Garudan 'prince') suffered the same fate in an attempt to jump from Garuda to a classified destination, also misfolding to Jenero. Only wreckage was ever discovered of either ship (though much of the records were recovered in the CROWN PRINCE PRIVAVEY'S case). Inherent mechanics ensure that starships rarely fold into the gravity well of a star or planet. This usually only occurs when a starship is attempting to target a specific planet and ends some miles off-course. This is often, in fact, the result of trying to use the planet's gravity well to pull the ship out of FTL drive, usually used exclusively by pirates, smugglers, and the militry to get close to the planet before the planet's defenses or even sensor network can catch them (Atorian radiers are noted for using this extensively; so much so that's it's colloquially referred to as an "Ator jump").
Quantum Filament
A "Quantum Filament" is an astrophysical phenomenon which can be very hazardous to space vehicles. Quantum filaments can be hundreds of miles long, but have almost no mass, making them extremely difficult to detect. Collision with two quantum filament can cause major damage to a ship, including hull breach, main power failure, polarity shift in the ship's antimatter containment fields (leading to a progressive degeneration in the fields).
Then there's Space Pirates, Mad Scientists (splicer's don't count, they're not mad, just sick and evil), Raiders, Scrappers, Reavers (Space Cannibal Hunting Parties), Militant Alien Invasion Forces bent on Universal Conquest, Parasites, Cosmic Enteties that can smash entire planets and can swallow stars, Meteor Showers, Solar Flares, Pulsars, Comets, Black Holes, Cosmic rays, Super Novas. Dark Matter, Cosmic Radiation, Solar Flares, Radiation Wavefronts (space is FULL of various radiation currents, stuff flowing out from a star, incoming stuff banging up against the outgoing stuff, etc.), dust clouds (bad if you're traveling at relativistic velocities through normal space), monoatomic oxygen (combines readily with your hull, 'rusting' it), and that's just the "normal" stuff.