Faster Than The Fastest

Faster-than-light travel is a staple of space anime, appearing in various forms. Here we will explain why this is a necessity, how it is implemented and how much sense it makes.

When writing a story taking place in space, it’s easy to forget that space travel is terribly slow. This isn’t mainly because space rockets are slow, but mostly because distances in the universe are huge. In order to leave Earth’s orbit, rockets need to reach a velocity of multiple kilometres per second! This is much more than any transport system could ever hope to achieve on Earth, where velocity is limited because of air resistance.

This speed corresponding to our current technology is good enough when the story is bound to our solar system. In the manga and anime Space Brothers, two brothers dream of becoming astronauts, and the story taking place in 2025 stays reasonable with missions going towards the moon and the International Space Station. However, it would not be crazy to imagine a realistic story where the protagonists go to Mars, or even to Jupiter, Saturn or any of the solar system planets. Sure, that would bring a lot of technical issues, but it isn’t entirely impossible. Unmanned aircrafts have already been sent towards most planets after all. Of course, it might not be able to land on Jupiter, as it is a gaseous planet and doesn’t have a definite surface, but reaching all of these places in our solar system is still possible.