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A YT-1300 light freighter's sublight engine is pictured.
Sublight engines, which are also referred to as sublight drives, sublight thrusters, or even sublight jets, were engines enabling starships to traverse atmospheres and navigate realspace at velocities less than the speed of light. A hyperdrive was necessary for any vessel wanting to surpass lightspeed. The ion engine stood out as the most prevalent sublight drive variant. Starfighters were outfitted with compact, yet potent drives, while capital ships possessed enormous engines, sometimes as large as entire buildings.
The expression "sublight drive" could theoretically encompass a broad spectrum of propulsion methods, including light sails, ramjets, and even solid chemical booster rockets. However, most sublight drives relied on fusion reactions to decompose fuel into charged particles. These particles were then ejected from the ship, generating thrust. The heat and slight radioactivity produced by this thrust made its use within or near the atmospheres of most inhabited planets illegal. Despite this, some individuals disregarded these regulations to facilitate rapid escapes.
Starships equipped with sublight engines were capable of accelerating at thousands of times the standard gravity, allowing them to escape a planet's gravitational pull within minutes and traverse significant distances in realspace. To safeguard passengers from the potentially lethal G-forces associated with such acceleration, starships incorporated acceleration compensators.