[quote]1.) What is Slipspace? All I know is that the UNSC pretty much punches a hole in space and flies through while the Covenant "find" a rift to travel with.[/quote]Slipspace is a tangled mess of 11 dimensions in a single reality more formally referred to as slipstream space or Shaw-Fujikawa space (sometimes referred to as subspace). Humans enter slipspace via the use of Shaw-Fujikawa slipspace engines that puncture a hole in space-time and allow the ship safe passage via a buffer field that keeps the ship safe from the turbulent nature of slipspace. This ultimately makes for a rough estimate, with UNSC ships usually exiting slipspace several hundred thousands of kilometers off their set destination. In addition to this, UNSC ships could also be prone to being shunted out of slipspace prematurely, or even disappearing from reality all together (this threat interestingly also applied to technicians performing maintenance and repairs on slipspace drives, as people have vanished from thin air around a slipspace drive, even when a ship was not in slipspace; this is why properly mounting a slipspace drive is of the UTMOST importance and the slightest error can lead to certain danger or doom). With that all said and done, UNSC slipspace tech has been advanced greatly since the start of the Covenant War, with many UNSC ships drawing upon reverse engineered Forerunner tech, or in the case of the UNSC Infinity, an actual Forerunner slipspace engine. The Covenant utilize reverse engineered Forerunner tech to surgically open a hole into slipspace allowing for a cleaner passage than the UNSC. So they do not "find" rifts. Portals to slipspace are not a naturally occurring phenomenon (although there have been curious reports from UNSC ships of asteroids present in slipspace). Covenant slipspace tech allows for their ships to enter slipspace under extreme circumstances (IE near a large source of gravity), and travel much faster than UNSC ships, as well as exit at their intended destination within a (?)millimeter of error. The Forerunners utilized slipspace engines built around cystal flakes cleaved by Builders from the slipspace crystal (presumebly massive as well as artificial; the use of crystal flakes to calculate journeys through slipspace is unusual and little is mentioned about how the Forerunners came to use this tech and whether or not it was even their invention). The crystal flakes are incredibly powerful, and seemingly allow passage through slipspace without a buffer field like the UNSC and Covenant need to use. Slipspace is also highly irradiated. To counteract this, the UNSC line the insides of their ships with lead foil to insulate it from radiation. Covenant and Forerunner ships make use of energy shields to protect their ships (and their occupants) from radiation. [quote]2.) How long was the P.O.A in slipspace when they traveled to the first Halo?[/quote]3 weeks. [quote]3.) How long was Blue team stuck in the cavern in the Fall of Reach?[/quote]3-4 weeks