Lit How much does a spaceship, or hyperspace travel, cost for the average person?

For the average individual/family, how much does a spaceship cost?

Or getting a ticket on some transport ship for hyperspace travel (and would transport ships be more like trains or more like taxis)?

It seems relatively cheap and accessible, but we hardly ever see anyone owning a spaceship or going on a tour of the galaxy for fun.

 

impossible to answer really.

Not only are rates very variable between sources, but we don't have accurate exchange values for SW credits vs real world money, afaik

 

I'm just wondering how affordable it is, in general. Does a starship cost the equivalent of a car to us? Of a house to us? Of a yacht to us?

 

Space travel seems to be expensive enough that it's not something done lightly. There are a few ships that fall into the likely range of affordability for the average citizen (25,000 credits for a used YT-1300), but I imagine fuel and maintenance costs would catch up with them fairly quickly.

 

I seem to recall it being mentioned as expensive in Courtship...or maybe that was using the HoloNet aboard a starship.

In any case, it seems like early EU made any sort of interstellar communication and transit less available than it's been portrayed more recently.

 

It's any wonder there are space pirates. They need to cover their costs, so they prey on others. Get fuel, equipment, and whatever cash the poor pilot was carrying, jettison their corpse out into space, sell their ship to a chop-shop. Your costs are covered and you now have a bounty on your head. Congratulations!

 

I remember Luke making a comment after Han wanted to charge ten grand to take him Ben, and the droids to Alderaan saying that they could almost buy a ship for that much in ANH.

 

Saga Edition has Charter space flights at about 10000 credits, regular hyperspace transport goes from 500 to 5000 depending on how much luxury you want, though the guide points out local conditions and politics, supply and demand etc. will make prices vary drastically.

Since you apparently don’t need more than a little guts, an armed light freighter and a half dozen people to hijack a sizeable commercial bulk transporter, with cargo worth in the millions, I am sure it is a way to make a living.

 

This thread highlights how I wish we saw more people in Star Wars taking the bus, i.e. more people hitching a ride on the public transports that get mentioned far too infrequently.

Smugglers, bounty hunters, military officers, and all the other stereotypical jobs in the books might necessitate a personal transport, but beyond the world of the galaxy trotters, you've got the ordinary joes who work in the local Coruscant library, teach in the Coronet City university, bake cakes on Alderaan, who would go offworld so rarely that they'd only need access to space transport now and again for holidays or visiting family, making buying a ticket more logical than owning a private plane.

 

I always thought because Han had won his in a card game he really only needed to perform maintenance and upkeep aside from 'gas' or whatever. He didn't have a monthly payment so to speak. That's why he took passengers, smuggling jobs and cargo to pay for upkeep.

As far the others we've seen have any of the other characters owned their own ship? Most were in an official capacity, Jedi ect. I think Lando had his own but he always struck me as well off so he could afford it.

The royal families did but then there is money and position so that paid for that.

 

He loved to tinker with as well, plus there is all kinds of other fun costs like renting a hangar, getting official papers and licenses from BOSS and local governments. Han also being rather fond of just burning through his money if he has any certainly didn’t help.

Younger Lando was close to having to sell the Falcon because he couldn’t make a living as free trader when he tried. Rather nicely told in his Centrality adventures.

 

Probably too much...

 

I could see them being pretty hefty.

Stories about the average worker in the SW universe, we need these.

 

Death Star probably came the closest.

 

I have yet to read that, I'll have to do that.

 

The Star Wars galaxy is centered around space travel, many planets' economies depend entirely depend on it.

I assume Hyperspace flight costs a bit, but not much more than sea and air travel on Earth do and owning a starship is like having an upper-class plane/private jet.

The Galactic Republic Navy, Revan's Sith Fleet, Conferedate Navy, Imperial Starfleet and New Republic Defense Force were made up by millions of capital ships.

 

Of which most were patrol boats and bulk transports.

 

Yep. Because ground troops cannot just walk between planets, starships are the only way to transport armies in an interstellar war. To fight a full-scale galactic war, dozens or even hundreds of billion ground soldiers are needed (the clonetroopers were 3,2 million in the initial order - number increased rapidly during the war - but only an elite force and very small part of the entire fighting force in the Republic during the Clone Wars) and troop transport ships to move them between planets and star systems.

 

Not just that, apparently it took an insane effort just to keep the Empire up and running, with as much as a third of all freight hauled around the galaxy being supplies for the Imperial military or Imperial projects.

 

42 Quatloos.

 

I was thinking about this recently. I think it is important to remember that for all its sci-fi trappings, there is a lot of fantasy and generally old-timey ideas to Star Wars. And in the olden days, there weren't any passenger ships - if you needed to get somewhere by ship, you found a cargo ship heading that way and negotiated a place on board. Or charted a ship if you were really which. Which is pretty much what happens in ANH.

Plus, a lot of the galaxy is sparsely inhabited enough that I can imagine many planets do get enough traffic to justify regular passenger travel, so you have to buy passage on a cargo ship.

 

Even when not actively on a mission, it would be more cost-effective to leave the Mist Hunter parked and take a speederbus, if one has no plans on leaving the planet. Why fly the ship everywhere when parking cannot be guaranteed?

 

In many science fiction/space fantasy universes, most important locations on a planet are within walking distance to a star port. Never have to take a train or lend a speeder.

 

I'd imagine that a used small starship would be affordable to anyone making a decent wage.

 

I vaguely remember that it was in reference to the obscene cost of hypercomm transmissions.