Imagine a microscopic web that spans the entire cosmos. An intergalactic ecosystem. An infinite number of roads leading everywhere."
–
Gabriel Lorca, 2256 ("Context Is for Kings")
The displacement-activated spore hub drive, commonly shortened to spore drive or s-drive, was an
organic propulsion system the Federation experimented with during the 2240s and 2250s. The technology used mycelium spores harvested from Prototaxites stellaviatori to jump or leap across the mycelial network. During such jumps, the ships were not in normal space but in the mycelial plane. (
DIS: "Context Is for Kings", "Choose Your Pain")
Contentshide
Origins and concept
Program
history
Super-mycelial reactor
Technical details
Background information
Origins and concept Edit
Mycelium spores
P. stellaviatori mycelium spores,
key to the drive technology
The spore drive was based on the ideas of two colleagues and friends, Paul Stamets and Straal, who had been working on the concept since 2244. They were eager to get to the "veins and muscles" that held the galaxy together.
Their research was based on the insight that at a quantum level, there was no difference between
biology or
physics, and specifically that spores were not only the progenitors of panspermia, but also the building blocks of energy across the universe. This allowed Stamets and Straal to approach
physics as
biology. As such, the equations involved were reminiscent of both quantum astrophysics and biochemistry.
