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Casual Interstellar Travel (view source)

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* Everything in the ''[[Stargate Verse]]'', but especially the titular Stargate network.
* ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined|Battlestar Galactica]]'' sports at least one use of this almost every episode. While not every ship has FTL capabilities, most modern ones are outfitted; civilian and military. The FTL drives are used to skip across space for reasons such as: running away from offenders ([[Ahem]], {{spoiler|CYLONS}}.), scouting out areas of space, or just quicker travel. Granted, the ships that didn't have FTL were quickly destroyed in the genocide.
* As mentioned in the trope description, ''[[Star Trek]]'' is not the best example of this trope... but it does have its moments. Apart from the Federation, assorted alien empires, and major shipping lines, you will occasionally come across an individual trader flying a small but [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|warp-capable]] vessel to ferry Tribbles or what-have-you around the galaxy. ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Deep Space Nine]]'''s Quark had an interstellar shuttle briefly, but it was a gift (and assassination attempt) from his ''much'' richer cousin. Swindler and smuggler Harry Mudd also had his own ship in ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|The Original Series]]'' (which he paid for with counterfeit money), and private owners of small warp ships made appearances in a few ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episodes. So, an interstellar ship is the kind of thing the occasional well-off (or clever/lucky/dishonest) entrepreneur can afford, but not just anybody could get one. In metaphors, travelling between stars isn't as easy as getting a car, or even as easy as getting your own used single-engine Cessna, but it probably is as easy as getting your own small private jet.
* ''[[Farscape]]'' is a good example. All three subtropes of [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] are present; [[Hand Wave|"Hetch Drive"]] is dirt cheap and available to everyone, [[Teleporters and Transporters|"Starburst"]] is available to [[Living Ship|Leviathans]], but [[Our Wormholes Are Different|wormholes]] - which act as a [[All the Myriad Ways|metadimensional]] [[Portal Network]] - can only be utilized with the assistance of [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s, which they [[You Are Not Ready|don't give lightly]] for [[Apocalypse How|really]] [[Weapon of Mass Destruction|good]] [[Divide by Zero|reasons]].
* In ''[[Andromeda]]'', people could travel between ''galaxies'' in small fighters and courier ships.
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** That's only partially true. Only the very fastest ships can do six parsecs. Jump engines take up space and a privately owned vessel usually can't afford more then 3 parsecs. Most [[Space Trucker|Free Traders]] can only do Jump-1 with a few doing Jump-2. Large merchants as well usually are Jump-1 to make room for cargo.
** It's also not nearly as routine as ocean cruises. There is no communication between stars except via another ship. Thus all news anyone has from somewhere else is late by a varying amount of time and probably mixed up and confused as a result. Which makes everything outside one's own star system a wild and potentially dangerous adventure.
* ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' both plays straight and subverts this trope. While there is enough cargo traffic to keep entire [[City Planet|hive worlds]] fed, watered, and supplied, interstellar travel, especially civilian interstellar travel on ships that rely on charts instead of Navigators, tends to be (relatively) slow, and [[Fate Worse Than Death|very]] [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|dangerous]]. The Tau method is much less dangerous, but even slower. Neither Chaos, Tyranids, nor Orks likely care about the wait or dangers as long as they have someone to kill ([[Horde of Alien Locusts|or eat]]) at the destination, and the trope is played straight by Eldar and Necrons, who either get there through a portal network, use [[Hand Wave|inertial drives]], or are [[Sealed Evil in a Can|already there]]. A lot of the earlier material often states that a ship CAN jump from one end of the galaxy to the other in the space of a few weeks... from the point of view of the ship. To an outsider, that ship will be gone for months, if not ''years''. Some sources also state it can take up to a week to get from a world to a 'safe' spot where you can enter the Warp, thus extending transit time quite considerably.
* ''[[Fading Suns]]'' has ''very'' casual travel thanks to the Jumpgates left by the <s>dead</s> <s>ascended</s> mysteriously absent [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s. Society may be feudal thanks to the Church (Catholics IN SPACE), but getting to the next system over is as simple as puttering out to the jumpgate in your thousand-year-old ship and popping through. Also, we are told that if you ever GO BEYOND the gate (i.e. go into interstellar space), you will be assaulted by demonic creatures, plagues or demonic plague creatures. That's right, go too far beyond the light of a star and you are ''attacked by demons''. It fits snugly beside the Church's declaration that 'technology is evil' - except starships, computers, blaster guns (heaven forbid), personal energy shields, medical scanners, healing serum, planes, phones, lights, satellites, space stations, jumpgates, hovercars, SAM launchers, grenades, gravity emitters....
 
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Faster Than Light Index]]
[[Category:Casual Interstellar Travel{{PAGENAME}}]]
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