Well, Star Wars has Hyperspace. Battlestar Galactica has 'jumps'. Babylon 5 has 'Jumpgates'.
These are all fine ways to travel through space.
In Dune, space is folded.
In Space Journey Battles, all options are available, but the main travel system is 'The InterGalactic Mass Transit System.
It isn't easy to explain, but basically, it is a Bus System in space. Built by an Ancient Race, the Space Transit System exists in an alternate universe. You can enter the SPS, and then exit through a portal that will take you close to your desired destination.
It is a series of shortcut tunnels through space.
There are buses and transports operating, so even if you don't have a ship, you can still use the public transport, which unfortunately, can be rather slow at times, so it is much better to have your own ship.
The main idea of this came from reading 2010 by Arthur C. Clarke. The basic idea was there, enough to give me thoughts on how my system would work.
I still have to work out a lot of the details.
In a fictional setting, it will work just fine, and will be plausible.
If people can handle the concept of hyperspace, they should have no problem handling the idea of a MassSpaceTransit System.
One idea I will work on in conjunction with this is that public transportation sucks.
Anyway, there you go.
There will be an ancient portal somewhere between Mars and Jupiter which is more or less invisible, which is why we've never discovered it yet. The entrance is like a secret door in space. You would never know it is there unless you knew what you were looking for.
But how, if you are on Earth, do you reach the portal which is somewhere in space between Mars and Jupiter?
Well, I might have a HTS, a human transportation system, from Earth to the spacegate station, like in the movie 'They Live'.
