Ships & Tech
Drift lab
The three or four stations aboard where a traversal's landing point is actually calculated.
In full
Given a junction's geometry and the harmonics being applied, the drift lab predicts where the ship will come out. Get it wrong and the crew arrives somewhere unexpected; get it badly wrong and the worst case is geological obstruction. It is where the abstractions in this glossary — drift, dead reckoning, the margin — are done by hand, by people who never explain the words they are using.
Key facts
- Three to four stations.
- Predicts emergence point from junction geometry and applied harmonics.
- Worst-case failure is arriving inside something.
- The room where drift stops being a concept.