Aferrium

Aferrium is a High Temperature Superconductor (HTS), reaching the superconductive state below -74 °C. It is very valuable but also very expensive and because of that usually only used in ECUs. Another perk of aferrium is its extreme strength and endurance, it takes absolutely enormous amounts of energy to wear it out.

Aferrium is a cuprate alloy mixed with strengthening cagnium. The first version of aferrium (a cheaper but less effective version) was also known as Cagnium Reinforced Cuprate Alloy (CRCA) and consisted of an Afferoid Cuprate Alloy (ACA) and cagnium. Later, the newly found material topromium (only found on some moons and very rare) was found to greatly increase the temperature at which aferrium turned into a superconductor, from the originial 123 K (had to be cooled with the more expensive liquid nitrogen, instead of refrigium) to around 200 K. Topromium is extremely expensive and only added minimally. Only the most expensive systems use topromium-rich aferrium.

Versions

 * Cagnium Reinforced Cuprate Alloy (CRCA): The first version of aferrium, used in the first ECUs such as in the early Atlas-drives. (Tc=~120-130 K)
 * Low-Topromium Cagnium Reinforced Cuprate Alloy (LTCRCA): Most widely used version of aferrium. (Tc=~200 K)
 * High-Topromium Cagnium Reinforced Cuprate Alloy (HTCRCA): More expensive version of aferrium, used in more advanced systems such as the Prometheus C1. (Tc=~260 K)
 * Reinforced Cagnium Topromium Alloy (RCTA): Pure topromium, reinforced with cagnium, extremely expensive. (Tc=~47 °C, ~320 K)

23rd century
CRCA was long strongly bonded with the cagnium price and at the introduction of CRCA in 2269 cagnium was at 28 GC/kg. 40% of CRCA was cagnium and the other 60% was mostly the aferroid cuprate alloy, which usually costed around 50 GC/kg. A high production cost lead to the introduction at around 60 GC/kg. Quickly though the price of cagnium decreased and so did the price of CRCA.

Topromium was discovered in 2280 (20,000 GC/kg) and LTCRCA (2% topromium, 490 GC/kg) was first produced in 2282. Project Atlas was already fully in development and that way LTCRCA was not used in it but ordinary CRCA was. In 2295 HTCRCA was introduced (20% topromium, 4400 GC/kg) and used in the first AAR.

24th century
In the 24th century many new ways of mining topromium were found and also the cagnium prices and the aferroid cuprate alloy prices went down. In the beginning of the 24th century the 60% topromium RCTA was introduced, which costed around 7800 GC/kg (topromium prices were around 10,000 GC/kg then). At the end of the century the prices were as follows:
 * Pure topromium: 9800 GC/kg
 * Cagnium-2: 3 GC/kg
 * ACA-4: 25 GC/kg
 * CRCA (0.4 Cagnium-2, 0.6 ACA-4): 18,3 GC/kg
 * LTCRCA (0.4 Cagnium-2, 0.55 ACA-4, 0.05 topromium): 532 GC/kg
 * HTCRCA (0.4 Cagnium-2, 0.35 ACA-4, 0.25 topromium): 2572 GC/kg
 * RCTA (0.4 Cagnium-2, 0.6 topromium): 6024 GC/kg

25th century
Prices dropped even further in the 25th century, topromium remained relatively stable though but decreased in price to 8800 GC/kg. Cagnium-3 was introduced and ACA-5 and 6. LTCRCA reached below 450 GC/kg at the end of the century.