Slip Portal

The main high speed transport system for Puppetkind is known as the Slip Portal. Slip Portals (or Portals) are miniature Einstein-Rosen bridges created with the event horizon of a simulated singularity directed through a supercooled electromagnetic duct commonly known as Goelz Tube.

Each end of a slip portal must be connected by one continuous Poly Methyl MethAcrylate (PMMA) fiber, so the distance over which a Portal can travel is limited by the lenth of PMMA cable that can be produced. At this time, the longest PMMA fiber that has been created reached a length of 7102.24 km before a flaw emerged. It took over 7 months to extrude a cable of that length. All attempts to splice multiple PMMA cables together through adhesion or connectors has met with abject failure, as it introduces serious flaws into the energy stream, and makes whatever passes through the portal very much not what went in.

Even short distance portal travel was proven to be too dangerous for humans over time as it introduced minor flaws in DNA encoding which eventually led to serious health issues. However, despite the human abandonment of the Portal project, felt based beings are much more resilient to the minute changes introduced by Portal technology, and as such, Puppet scientists continued to enhance and develop the Portal system for use in Puppet facilities, and eventually space vessels.

Further research led to the creation of the VCSEL Enhanced Slip Portal, more commonly known as a Slide Portal. The Slide Portal uses a GaAs-Al_xGa_(1-x)As VCSEL (gallium arsenide - aluminium gallium arsenide vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) to direct the event horizon of the simulated singularity without the use of Goelz Tubing. Without the necessity of the Goelz Tube harness, the energy flow between the two Portal event horizons actually travels freely through Slip Space and allows for extreme distances between Portal ends, limted only by the power and focus of the VSCEL emitters. The Slide Portal breakthrough, pioneered by Dr. Frank "Yoda" Henson, essentially created a Transporter system that functioned much like the sci-fi Transporter from Star Trek.

While Slide Portals opened up entirely new avenues in regards to the ease of moving Puppet personnel and equipment, their extreme energy requirements have kept Slip Portals the more commonly used Portal type within Puppet cities, homes and space vessels. And while it has never been tested, it is rumored that Slide Portal transport is not nearly as detrimental to human physiology as Slip Portal transport is, as the energy stream travels entirely through Slip Space, rather than being routed through PMMA fiber cable.

Communications have also been enhanced with a combination of Slip Portal and Slide Portal technology embedded in a series of communications beacons placed throughout the immediate solar system, and recently explored areas of space. The communications applications of Portal technology have been enthusiastically supported by NAASA and other human run exploratory organizations, as it allows for almost instantaneous communications anywhere within the Sol system.