Hyperspeed; How Fast Is It?

I apologize if there?s a thread on this already, but I wasn?t sure. It?s a bit technical, but I?m hoping there?s enough tech heads to help me with it =)

As with the previous thread I created (Rebel Dream Origin?), this too is to help with the same fanfic I?m writing. One might be wondering why I even need to know such a thing, but there?s reasons for things to work in story, I need to know (if possible).

First, let?s establish what I do know.

There?s the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second or 1,079,252,848.8 km/h, which is approximately 186,282.397 miles per second, or 670,616,629.4 miles per hour; sometimes roughly 300,000 km per second).

Then we have a light year, the distance light travels in 1 years time, which = about 5.879 × 1012 (nearly six trillion) miles.

Okay, now that that?s established, just how fast is hyperspeed for the different ships in the GFFA? Has this ever had a concrete number? We?ve gotten various bits of info-- engine class numbers, Han saying the Falcon will do .5 past lightspeed (as per ANH), etc.

The only thing that gets me close the desired info I have is the Hypderdrive Classification chart in the back of the NEGtV&V.

But I?m a little confused on how to read it.

For instance, the Falcon?s sublight speed is 3000. Okay, we know its sublight, meaning slower than the speed of light. But what?s the actually measurement it?s using? 3000 miles p/h? If I had to assume, I?d go with 3000 km/h, if only because it seems that?s the preferred method of measurement used when determining other elements in GFFA (length of a ship, distance covered, etc). If it indeed is km/h, then that?s solved.

But what?s the Hyperspeed? The Falcon, according to the same chart, has (roughly) a 5.5 class hyperdrive. But can anyone tell me what that means? IS it a scale of 1000 times lightspeed?
If so, that makes it 5.5 times the speed of light which is overly faster than what Han said in ANH. And since the engines have always (seemingly) been called sublight (outside of the hyperspace engines), it would seem contradictory in terms for SUBlight engines to do .5 PAST lightspeed.

So, can anyone help me?

 

In the Movies... as fast as the Plot dictates (snide referal to Mustafar)

 

I've never seen what the supposed problem with Mustafar is. There's a cut between Obi-Wan leaving and Palpatine arriving; clearly one didn't happen right after the other.

 

Wasn't Obi still there when Ian called for his shuttle? It wouldn't take that long to return to the docking platform and Threepio, not C-3P0 that strict Del Rey formatting orders be done every time.

A law which Dark Rendezvous actually violated, using the Threepio spelling.

 

Palpatine calls for his shuttle on Coruscant at the same time Obi-Wan is still fighting. After Obi-Wan leaves, an unspecified amount of time passes during the edit. In the novel, Palpatine's shuttle arrives as Obi-Wan's still beside Anakin's body, but that's expressly contradicted by the movie.

 

Indeed. Ah well, I just enjoy the flashy effects, I don't give Ragnos' unsubstantiated virginity for movie nitpicking. *shrugs*

 

Unfortunately, I cannot find his thread, and I'm not searching 20 pgs back...but I do appreciate you telling me. Let's me know it's been discussed at least before.

 

okay, this is gonna sound dumb, but I'm gonna be using ST as a reference point for a simple question (and this is still rellavent to why I'm asking, so please bare with me =P)

ST's (as of TNG and up) warp scales states that, to travel Across the Entire Galaxy (100,000 light years) would take 66 years at Warp 9 (1,516 x speed of light).

Am I to assume, based on further SW reading (I did eventually find the ThrawnMcEwok thread here), that SW is generally faster than that? (can you guess what my story is about? oy

EDIT: And wouldn't you know, I managed to answer my own Q.... For the EntD to travel just 20ly at Warp 9 takes 5 days...the Chimeara travels 350ly in the same # of days???

Holy crap...

 

I'm a fan fic writer and personally I;ve never worried about this. They get there when they get there IMHO.

Apparently it takes 8 hours to travel from Tatooine to Alderaan but 22 days from Tatooine to Coruscant on a military class hyperdrive.

Can someone tell me the reason for this? Coruscant can't be more than a few parsecs from Alderaan.

 

The EU times are slow by movie standards, which is partly what McEwok's thread is about. For the ones with specific time brackets, Coruscant to Tatooine isn't even half a day, Tatooine to Alderaan is less than a day, and Alderaan to Yavin is less than a day. Using time cues on other trips (for example, two scenes on the same planet that bracket a hyperspace trip), it turns out that except for Han's trip to Bespin, very few trips take more than a day at the most. Some can't really be bracketed, like Tatooine to Dagobah and Dagobah to Sullust, but for those that can, it's very fast.

 

2 completely different series and universes are irrelevant to each other.

 

I was going by FactFile there but I wasn't really sure how canon it is.

 

I can make it E-canon, if you desire.

 

No thanks, excellence.

I never did get a chance to see you, did I?

As I've said before I don't worry about the times for hyperspace travel in my fics, even if there are a few inconsitencies with it.

 

They're not when you're intent was to cross them over in a NON "This is better than that!" story...

Still, seperate genres, but figuring out their speed is math, which is a universal constant...I'm trying trying to figure out scales is all...

Katana_Geldar, I wouldn't worry either if it weren't a crossover. But when they travel at such different speeds....

 

Other than adding and subtracting I haven't done maths for five years which is probably why I don't bother.

Whatever floats your boat, or starship I guess.

 

See me? Were we supposed to meet up?

Thing with the new essential guide to ships and vehicles, NEGVV, an officially published tome doesn't necessarily make their stats accurate. It did have a good hyperdrive speed table at the back, but the sublight speeds for entries were in places a bit hmmmm.

The Krytos Trap book says it takes 8hrs at X-wing speed to transit from Alderaan to Tatooine. Even if a thousand hyperlanes are a thousand ways different to each other . . . just 8hrs is still problematic. It must be a real highway fastlane with few cosmic bodies in the way.

 

I suppose I'll have to see if there's things I could do to help avoid the outright issue really.

Though when it comes ot better, Being able to travel/attack/manuever at high warp I'm sure will be a tacticle advantage, but getting to or from, I guess the Ent will just have to be towed if possible =P

 

"Coruscant to Tatooine isn't even half a day"

A half day and they can't go and enforce their anti-slave laws? How lazy is the Republic?

 

For sublight speeds, it is more likely that any numerical description applied to ships is a reference to acceleration, as opposed to total speed that a craft can be propelled. We know that, in Star Wars, even relatively simple ships like TIE fighters and freighters can fly faster than the speed of light (ESB and BFC come to mind) Since these ships are travelling through a vaccuum, and there are no relativistic or material consequences of moving as such speeds, the upward limit of how fast ships can travel would only correspond to the velocity that they can accrue (I've always imagined that the reason for lightspeed being no barrier in sublight drive is caused by some magical property of the artificial gravity, the inertial compensators, and possibly the hyperdrives, which are pretty magical and fantastic in their own right. There's no in-universe explination given for this that I'm aware of)

As such, sublight 'speed' ratings would refer more closely to how much energy the ship's engines can put out over time given the ship's mass. TIEs, with their high engine power to mass ratio, would have a much higher rate of acceleration than the Falcon, and much much much higher rate than Star Destroyers, hence their higher sublight speed rating. They would be able to outpace most other craft, at least for the first few days (assuming that they don't run out of fuel or the pilot dies) But a Star Destroyer that has a good running start would be able to leave a fighter in the dust if the fighter was coming off of a cold start.

 

OK, I'm thinking it's worth it to merge these threads into a Hyperdrive: A Fleet Junkie Project thread...