Lit How long is the average hyperspace travel time?

I’ve been trying to parcel in my mind all the travel times in hyperspace that I remember from the mythos. I know Timothy Zahn loves hyperspace travel times but I can’t recall many others. I know the time for Obi-Wan to travel to Tatooine to rescue Luke from Reva was ridiculously short and I know that it took Vader and Lauretta 3 days to travel to the Ghost Prison from Coruscant (in Legends)

That being said- what do you think is the average travel time for a hyperspace journey?

 

I think time must be distorted somehow.

For example, I have been a proponent of ROTJ being six months after TESB than a whole year, because that's too ridiculous to conceive for me. On my SW timeline, I include ROTJ as six months, and there's nothing to suggest otherwise why it doesn't work.

Additionally, I make CW and TCW merge together by how time may have reconciled Nelvaan and Yerbana, as the former happening over "three months", despite Ani being on Coruscant in one of the last TCWs (the Ahsoka arc).

And how about Tilotny banishing stormtroopers 1000 years in the past?

Anyway, time seems to be longer-or shorter-possibly through hyperspace.

 

It's changed very significantly from Legends to canon, becoming much, much faster in canon. As one benchmark, the Vader comic tells us that a Star Destroyer could, with some strain on the engines, travel "across the Rim," with at least two stops, in the span of a single day.

So, average travel time? A handful of hours, obviously taking a lot of factors into consideration (availability and quality of hyperlanes, quality of hyperdrive, distance traveled, etc). In my RPG campaign (set in the canon continuity) I basically roll a d6 and that's how many hours it takes to get to any given destination from where they are, unless I've previously defined a timeframe for the trip or travel time is a factor in the plot.

 

Get a galaxy map and watch TROS. Plot how many planets they have to travel to In the 16hrs I think they have. They travel most of the way across the galaxy and back again in that period.

 

It happens at the speed of plot.

Seriously, Dan Wallace and I tried to approach this with some rigor for the Essential Atlas, arming ourselves with West End Games tables and trying to derive geography from travel times in the Zahn books. It was hopeless then and it's only gotten worse. Your brain will break, trust me.

 

I don't like the short hyperspace jumps. That makes the galaxy feel small, which is wrong. Cuz space is big.

 

That is assuming a star destroyer has an "average" speed. I recall legends stating pretty clearly that it does not, and is in fact one of the fastest ships out there besides custom ships like the Falcon. And that military ships in general tend to have faster, "class 1" hyperdrives whereas civilian ships can be as slow as class 5.

As such, I think "average" trips, which we probably almost never see because of the focus on smugglers, military, jedi etc, probably take a lot longer.

 

Back when Zahn was writing early Legends material, and had the idea that "point five" was a speed and not a hyperdrive class (with slower military ships "doing point four") - the elderly Victory-class Star Destroyer could "do point five" if it pushed itself to its limit.

 

If hyperdrives are rated as Class 1 through 5, what is Class 0.5? Shouldn't the numbers be all integers?

 

I'd argue it depends on explored hyperlanes. Assuming you're using a well-calculated hyperspace route, you could go from Helska to Eriadu in an hour at most. If you're trying to stay off the grid of major hyperlanes, you'd take a few days getting from Tatooine to Geonosis, even if they're right next door.

Its like roads, really. Take a highway and you'll get to your destination much faster than if you use a shady back road.

 

Production model ones all are. Lower classes represent modifications of production model ones to get them faster - you can't get an "off-the-shelf" class 0.5.

 

You could argue that hyperspace travel time was slowed shortly after the Battle of Endor when the network crashed and even with the best calculations, hours in hyperspace was extended to days and weeks. Perhaps something seeded in the hyperlanes?

 

Havoc123's analogy of highways vs. back roads is a good one. A clear, well-mapped hyperlane might allow a hyperdrive to "open up" and reach its maximum speed, while even a class 0.5 is going to be hindered if it has to travel the hyperspace equivalent of a dirt road. That's what enables the "speed of plot" mechanism Jason mentioned. Travel times are whatever the story needs because they can vary depending on the condition of the hyperlanes traveled and whatever obstacles may or may not sit in the way. (Even a major hyperlane might have a rogue planet or something roll through at an inconvenient moment.)

What remains a headscratcher to me are those instances - and at least one exists in canon - where a ship travels interstellar distances without going through hyperspace. The Razor Crest's journey from Tatooine to Maldo Kreis to Trask without engaging the hyperdrive is still a mystery - heck, they didn't even have access to the refresher for part of that trip!

 

I’ve always felt it depended on the amount of times you had to stop or refuel, or rest or resupply. Assuming autopilot and long trips-anywhere from minutes to hours, to at the longest days. But we don’t see people hanging around in hyperspace on ships for days on end. (At least I don’t recall of any instances where characters are noted to be in hyperspace for more than a day or several hours but it most often is less).

The sheer speed of hyperspace while plot driven is absolutely consistent throughout the films. And we don’t see much “downtime” that would occur if characters had to lounge around for a week straight or carefully monitor the hyperdrives if they were going to be spending longer periods of time in hyperspace.

I’d say the longest in the modern era is maybe a day if your using a slower one on a longer route. Shortest is minutes to seconds. With several minutes to hours depending on IU circumstances and importantly plot.

But long travel times, whether in hyperspace itself or in terms of intermediate jumps has never been depicted. So we can safely presume that hyperspace is in fact insanely fast.

 

The Hyperdrive Classes all originate with a game mechanic in WEG: travel times between locations were listed in days, and ships had hyperdrive multipliers that one determined how long a trip would actually take. So, the twelve-day journey between Alderaan and Yavin would take a ship with a x1 hyperdrive 12 days, a x2 hyperdrive 24 days, and a x3 hyperdrive 36 days. (Clearly, WEG was thinking of hyperdrive journeys as taking WAY LONGER than we think of them now). The Millennium Falcon, with it's incredibly good x1/2 hyperdrive, could make that same journey in 6 days.

 

EC Henry makes a compelling argument in this video: