This may be a bit of a silly question but could you clarify the Warp drives for me please?
If it still takes a week to get from Earth to mars, then travel, even if it is FTL, to other systems would still take far too long.
I assume that it was the very first FTL Warp drives that do the journey in 1 week and now 'modern' warp drives are much more powerful?
or is there some sort of relay system that was created which exponentially speeds up the travelling vessal so that it takes far less time to travel to your destination?
I'm not saying that they shoulld be instant. Maybe say 'modern' warp drives can get you to the most distant colonies in just about a year, give or take a month and that anything closer takes less time?
This could even be variable, with costly ships (like those used by successful pirates/raiders, the Imperial Government and/or Military and medium/large corporations) being able to travel to their destinations very quickly whereas smaller and/or less costly ships take longer.
I'm wondering because i'm not sure how certain things would work if it took as long as is implied to travel as travel between systems would take decades (which, i admit, is better than centuries and millennia, but still a long time). This would mean pilots (actually, probably entire crews) would only be able to do a few trips before dying of old age and anyone wanitng to take up a 'career' in space would never see their family again. At least, alive anyway.