Trans Gates

Trans Gates are structures which allow FTL travel.

Slingshot Drive
The Trans Gate drew on the Slingshot Drive, an early form of FTL travel developed in the late 22nd century. The unreliability, and deadly nature of the Slingshot in use lead to little use beyond small jumps. The Trans Gates started as confirmed safe passageways between which ships could jump, but the expense of the Gates combined with the still unreliability of long range Slingshotting led to it's change.

Trans Gates
The first Trans Gates following the same principals followed by modern Gates began to appear in the mid 23rd century. Patented by the newly founded Yuntrans Associates, early tests by Yuntrans showed an almost 100% safety rate when combined with certain ship upgrades. Yuntrans eventually pushed the changes upon ship designers, and by the end of the 23rd century, usage of Trans Gates became ubiquitous.

Mechanics
Trans Gates project a small plane of hyper charged matter. When a ship enters the plane, it is slowly surrounded by a bubble of sorts of this matter. A large pulse of energy finishes the transition, firing the bubble, and the ship inside it, to a opposite gate, which will be set to receive with a oppositely charge plane of matter.

The bubble of hyper charged matter allows ships to leave reality in a way, entering a strange area created between gateways. Unlike the Slingshot Drive, the nature of this bubble allows ships to pass through all intervening objects, and due to speed remain invisible and undetectable until slowing down. While most gateways are designed to not let the transit column interact with any significant mass, it is not needed, although the effects of an object passing through a living being in this so called "Trans Space" can be prove deadly, as shown by the experimental Charge Cannons.

The speed of ships passing through Trans Space is based entirely on the pulse of energy received at the starting gate. A combination of the amount of energy, and the efficiency of it's receiving. The more of this energy that reaches the bubble at the same time, the faster the jump, which leads to  the addition of a perfect circular section of the hull on certain smaller ships, allowing all the energy to reach the bubble.

Anomalies
A hasty entry into a gate, an incomplete bubble and the clsoe passing of various space bound phenomena can cause certain anomalies while in Trans Space, the most common of which is "blurring", which leads to the dimming of sight and the smudging of the perception of the ships interior.