Time travel

Time Travel happens pretty much all the time in the Course Books. There are Alternate Timelines either referenced in cannon or written in entirely different stories. Though they try to avoid meddling, the Saratoga Crew often finds excuses to muck about with the timeline.

In the story Virus from The Path to Ascension we see the first incident (in book-order), in which the crew uses two methods of time travel, including a precise technology called CTRL+Z, not to be confused with the story by the same name.

In The Road to War the same technology is introduced in the story CTRL+Z, which takes place chronologically before Virus of the previous book.

The Concourse to Victory will be the first book to lack an obligatory time-travel story, though it does appear in later volumes of the series.

Ethics

The fact that Hunter and Jason possess precise time travel technology and do not use it on a regular basis says a great deal about their moral standpoint on the subject. It is essentially a "last resort" to them, and they try not to prevent major events in history.

Methods

A variety of techniques are used, whereof CTRL+Z is the most reliable. None can be reverse-engineered if discovered by inferior technology.

The Gordian Maze, too, allows people to travel in time; or rather, to experience things out-of-order.

Slingshot Method

This method is employed accidentally in Shakedown and delibrately in Virus. It involves accelerating towards a large gravitational mass at high FTL in order to achieve temporal escape-velocity. According to Hunter, they have to achieve a reletivistic velocity of factor 12. What this means is not made clear.

Background Examples

The Laytami Loop Theory and Divergent Timeline Theory are both forms of time-travel; and like most in-universe speculations, are actually true in the story, but held stubbornly in doubt by most the characters.