FTL is not possible, but Dr. Jones proceeded to offer great insight with the words, "I have little doubt that a FTL version would look like a conventional rocket for all the purposes of getting it off the ground, but then the propulsion system would not need to be a rocket and instead could use something else altogether." I would like to know more about a version of the rocket where its function changes as the rocket recedes into the sky. The closest I have found to a solution would be this book from 2014 "The Physics of Space and Time" by Professor Julian Barbour, where he uses the word "hyperspace" to mean a FTL version of the rocket where, "the function of the accelerator is to put it (the rocket) into a tunnel through which it can leave Earth’s gravitationally confined space, and travel FTL". I believe that the reason the word "hyperspace" is not used more often is because it is used to refer to FTL in Star Trek, which is not what I am talking about. My question would be, is there a more standard term for FTL as I described it, or is my question essentially unanswerable? A: From the movie FTL (2010) we are introduced to the concept of the foldspace engine: It's a kind of black hole that they can use to fold the fabric of space-time and create shortcuts Foldspace is kind of an umbrella term for anything that can fold space in some way. But the main "power source" is the black hole There is a ship called a "spatial tug", but that ship is also a spacecraft as it has FTL within the known universe and its primary purpose is "exploration". There is also a "shuttlecraft", which also has FTL as a secondary function and carries people into the foldspace engine. A: The short answer is: no, not really. You can't invent a name for it because it doesn't exist; we know about the universe only what was created by experiments and we know this space-time of ours better than anything else we can imagine. A wormhole might be called "a form of hyper-space where we don't know what that word actually means." A "wormhole" may be the wrong word altogether; maybe a wormhole is a tunnel, maybe it's a gate, maybe it's some undefined process that you couldn't find anything better than "mystery," or maybe it's something else, or something else that we don't know yet. You mentioned the idea of "hyperspace" where a spacecraft goes beyond our universe and into the next. This has been done, but it takes a while and is very risky as the odds that you can find a useful wormhole is very low. And what do you do? You set up your spacecraft on the other side of the wormhole and wait for the other side of the wormhole to be created, when you send another spacecraft to the other side, and eventually to the far side of the galaxy, where you do the same. And every time, the chances are very low that you'll find another wormhole, because their existence was very unlikely to begin with. It's like trying to find unicorns in a way. You are probably better off looking for the spaceships themselves, which are rare but much more likely to be found. Even the use of the word wormhole to refer to an unexplained phenomenon of space and time requires some interpretation. For example, what does "wormhole" mean and how would you draw one? Most of the time, you just would not even try to draw it. You just start a description with, "There is some kind of hole in space." A: From the standpoint of physics, I don't think there's an agreed-upon name for a space rocket that's not a hypersonic but instead uses its power to travel "above" spacetime so it's not simply traveling "through" space like a normal space rocket. Some ideas you might get from a space mission or a science fiction author would be "warp drives," "fold space engines" or "hyper drives," but none of these names are very widely used or well-known. A: Not "now". I believe in some near future it will be commonplace to travel with FTL. Like, today it is commonplace to travel with radio. (As I said, in "now" it is still in its infancy) You will go from place A to B, your drive is working on Z band so you can't do it at the speed of light. It is, of course, extremely rare and so you will mostly share this drive with other travellers. (like travelling in space but you just go from Pluto to Mars) It will be at the speed of light, the energy requirements and fuel amount will be too much for most earth installations and so it will be very rare for the average person to have ever travel with FTL. It will only be in the most advanced vehicles that will have the capability. A lot like traveling on the Moon or other planets. So, it will be common after "now". A: The way I understood your question it sounds similar to what is proposed with Wormhole Stargates in the Stargate franchise. While the details of the space travel and universe are quite different (and this might explain the lack of use of the term "Hyper-space" in that context), these appear to be wormholes at the core. A Stargate that allows you to travel on another planet is described like this (emphasis mine): This creates a stable wormhole (essentially, a tunnel that connects two distant points in space-time), allowing an individual to travel through it. However, since the wormhole can't exist without a Stargate and since travel can only be made on-foot or in vehicles designed to cross a wormhole, travel is only possible to and from Stargates. So, basically the ship is moving across a wormhole that is supported by some kind of cosmic energy. A bit like the way wormholes are described in the answer from @Valorum's link. What I can say about using the word 'hyperspace' in the context of your question is that this is not actually new at all and while other answers have already given a good description of how this term is used in sci-fi media, here is a more scientific take on it. In the context of cosmology the term is used to describe 'space outside our galaxy'. So if a star is collapsing and a new one is created, the space around the new star is in a hyper-spacial state where an astronaut could potentially travel back in time. There is some literature out there where you can read more on this concept: (1) Hyper-spaciotemporal cosmology (2) Hyperspace Further Reading: A brief analysis of some of the ideas mentioned in those papers (with a good discussion about wormholes and the Stargate franchise) can be found in the Wikipedia article: Wormhole