Graviton Storms and other “Space Weather”
One might think the endless vacuum of space is void and there are no conditions that could be measured or affect space ships.
However there are Solar winds inside and around Stars (and Star systems), there are flares spewing gases, radiation and matter particles at near light speed in all directions. Strong Radio sources, electro magnetic pulses caused by violent active stars, more powerful than most Tech Stop cannons. And there are Graviton waves, black holes, white holes, Pulsars, Quasars, Novas, Super Novas, dust clouds, dark matter wells and the ultra rare but not entirely unknown trans-spatial rifts aka Wormholes. [1][2]
Gravitons and the control of gravitation is an incredible important factor to any FTL space ship. It controls the centrifugal forces, the acceleration and deceleration forces that are enormous at relativistic speeds. Graviton storms created by black holes, by pulsars can indeed be a hazard to space ships. Especially to ships of TL 3 to 5 .
Modern Union ships of TL 8 and higher are no longer affected and hardly notice them. Their computronics can easily compensate.
[1]Worm holes created by Super Exotic matter usually around White Holes (Matter fountains) in a process ;not very well understood by Union science; (Narth Supreme once said he has a pretty fair basic understanding how they work, but even he is unable to really re create the process in his mind and thus fully understand it)[2]; can create non stable trans spatial rifts of a few milimeters in diameter to many thousands kilometers wide. A ship could easily be cut in half, transformed into energy or transported to another point in space altogether. The mathematical possibility of this happening is astronomically small. (Narth Supreme explained : If the entire Union Fleet was expanded by a factor of ten Trillion ships and they would simultaneously fly in all directions, the chance that one encountered a Worm hole would be less than 1 percent.)...but not impossible.
[1] Some think this might have changed after Narth Supreme had a “good long talk” with his new friend “The Dark One” about trans spatial celestial mechanics and how the Omniverse really works... (A conversation Mothermachine said was so far beyond her, even as Narth Supreme tried to explain it to her in simplified omni dim physics, that she had to temporarily shut down her main processing centers to prevent a logic process overload,)