Conquest of space
Part 3
The first step towards the development of teleportation technology was the invention of a linear way of teleportation using a construction called a Jump Rail, which was capable of sending matter light-years away straight across space. However, construction and usage was extremely costly and the journey far too inaccurate and risky to be of any real practical use. The amount of material, special constructions and energy consumption needed to create a Jump Gate were not available at the time to make it viable. With the creation of antimatter and prototype antimatter reactors it was possible to construct the first functional Jump Rail, though it was still far from practical. The mere fact that the Jump Rail would be torn apart by the violent forces released at each launch did not help its case. For a vessel to survive the immense stress of a launch it seemed natural to focus on the construction of small , compact vessels. The first tests were performed on so called nanoships, and even though the stress tests proved minimal during launch, the smaller vessels did not survive the actual journey. These tests proved that the target matter needed to be contained within a powerful energy field to prevent its atoms from dissolving. As a result the technological development of energy shields also took a step forward. All new technology at this early stage of development was quite crude in both size and functionality. The task required a vessel with a much larger and sturdier hull, allowing it to be equipped with all the devices needed as well as the massive surrounding construction that could emit a stable energy field to protect it. Worried about loosing political momentum the new global political body changed project requirements so that all the new bulky equipment would have enough space onboard the new vessels: the giant Odysseus Probe.