A modification of the ship's hyperdrive that increased its performance to class two allowed for more frequent victualing stops, and some of that cargo space was converted for hangar use.
Now when I say " written well, " what I mean is you might have the most fantastic notion in the world, suddenly you have a man who can fly faster than the speed of light.
Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920's, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there.
Imagine that the particles are tennis balls, and those tennis balls are launched at near the speed of light from one side of the galaxy before colliding into more tennis balls coming from the other side of the galaxy.