HYPERSPACE JUMP ENGINE

Hyperspace "Jump Engines" allow a vessel to open a passage into Hyperspace, which provides a short-cut that bridges the vast expanse between worlds without having to break the speed of light.

Theory states that "Hyperspace" is an alternate dimension in which height, width and depth are distorted to the point that distances has little to no meaning.  Theory states that after the Big Bang (the event that created the universe), all stellar matter was thrown out from the "Hydrogen inrush" when a micro particle a millionth of the size of the atom exploded, thus creating all matter in the universe.

All the stellar matter that was created by the Big Bang was thrown out by the explosion, the titanic mass of the Big Bang unable to hold in the compressed stellar matter that was released with the Hydrogen inrush  Stellar matter moved (and still moves), out from the center of the Big Bang, the resulting empty space equaling Hyperspace.  Confused yet?  Well let me try and explain:

	The universe is like a giant ball.  Everything we know of the universe, or REAL SPACE is on the outside of the ball, i.e. the matter thrown out by the Big Bang, at the center of the universe.  There are many dimensions to space, only four of which we are aware of (height, width, depth, and space/time).  Hyperspace is another dimension, probably the left over space from the Big Bang, where time and space do not exist as we know it (if at all).
	As you can see in the illustration, if a ship wants to travel from point "A" to point "B", it would have to travel a fantastic distance along the outside of the ball.  To shorten the distance that needs to be traveled, a ship can instead enter Hyperspace and use it as a shortcut.
	As you can see, a ship can move into Hyperspace and travel to another point in Hyperspace relative to their destination, but the distance is significantly shorter because in Hyperspace the distance traveled is mapped into a smaller area.  When the ship comes out of Hyperspace it will be at it's destination, but only at a fraction of the time it would have taken to travel the same relative distance in Real Space.  This follows Einstein's theory of relativity.

The deeper you go into Hyperspace, the relative distance that needs to be traversed to reach your destination becomes smaller, thus getting you to where you would like to be, faster.  There is a problem however, and that is the Big Bang.  The mass and gravity of the Big Bang still exist and objects in real space also cast a gravity echo into Hyperspace, which can be significantly amplified given that the area a star's gravity will effect in Hyperspace will be significantly larger in the smaller dimensional plane of Hyperspace.  Thus, while in Hyperspace, a ship must maintain constant thrust, or it will be lost in the massive gravity spikes and eddies.  Traveling too deep into Hyperspace COULD result in a vessel not being able to get back out of Hyperspace, trapping a ship there forever.

Scale in Hyperspace varies dramatically, depending upon the destination and rout taken, due to gravitational spikes, eddies and the fact that Real Space does not have a one-to-one ratio in Hyperspace. Babylon 5, for example, is 10.67 light-years from Earth (100.9 billion kilometers), and the direct travel time is about three days. This means, relatively speaking, a ship would be traveling 389,455,000 kilometers a second relative to Real Space.

By way of comparison Centauri Prime is 75 light-years (709.6 billion kilometers) from Babylon 5 and it takes about six days to get there. That means the same ship would be traveling 1,368,750,000 kilometers a second.

This means that ships capable of accelerating at between 1 and 12 G-forces, via the use of Hyperspace, can travel between 1299 and 4565 times the speed of light, and faster. Advanced ships, like the Whitestars, can travel between SOL and Babylon 5 is just a few hours, suggesting that advanced ships using gravimetric drives can travel at 30,000 and 220,000 times the speed of light, via Hyperspace.

If you are looking for a ratio however, a journey from Babylon 5 to SOL would be a ratio of 259,200 kilometers to every one kilometer in real space. A journey from Babylon 5 to Centauri Prime would be 518,400 kilometers for every one kilometer in real space. So your average, is probably anywhere between 100,000 to one, and 600,000 to one.