Wormhole Travel Network

The Wormhole Travel Network is the standard means for public hyperspace travel. The network consists of wormhole generators in very high orbit around various planets, with each wormhole having exactly two ends and thus a single wormhole generator can only lead to one other planet. Since wormhole generators are so expensive to create and maintain (they require post-atomic age technology to operate and are usually powered by orbital nuclear reactors), it is usually only economical for a planet to have a single wormhole generator. If a planet only has one wormhole, it will usually lead to a somewhat nearby, better-connected planet, or, also often, directly to Epsilon. As such, one can reach any connected planet, usually by first going to the "nearest" hub planet, going from there to the hub planet "nearest" the destination, and so on. This results in hub planets like Calpha, Epsilon, Exonia, and Gûntăria having tens or even hundreds of wormholes leading to "lesser" planets. A typical wormhole generator in the Travel Network is powered by one to three nuclear reactors and primarily consists of two concentric rings roughly 45 degrees off of each other's plane, generating a spherical wormhole at least 100 m in diameter and rarely above 1000 m in diameter. Each generator has a radio antenna that broadcasts information such as the identification of the planet it links to, the generator's own location for those finding it among many, order of the queue if there are multiple ships waiting to pass through, and so forth. Since the wormholes are spherical, two ships can use opposite sides of the wormhole without interfering with each other, and this usually means one side is used for going from planet A to planet B, and the other side is for going from planet B to planet A. Each host planet is responsible for policing the wormholes in their own orbit, though occasionally the Galactic Armada needs to step in to resolve chronic corruption or piracy.