Travel times

Does anyone know how long it takes to travel across the galaxy?
I know it depends on things like how close to a planet is the hyperspace route, and how fast the ships navi-computer is, but what i'm looking for is a rough estimate.

How about say...

Tatooine - Korriban?

 

Let's just say "no" because everything has changed so many times in the last 25 years that it's nearly impossible to make accurate calculations, imo. Much of it is George's "fault" (imagine me using airquotes there because he has ultimate final say) due to times being relatively static from 1987 to 1999 and then AOTC seeming to throw a bunch of that off and then things being revised, and then revisions like every 1-2 years thereafter(ish).

 

Nah, the movies have been pretty consistent in travel times. Except for the Falcon's trip to Bespin, nothing's indicated as taking more than a day (though there's a few of unidentifiable length, too). Early WEG I know also had them pretty fast, with the Tatooine-Alderaan figure of 8 hours (based on ANH) that Stackpole later used (and in fact, Stackpole usually strikes a pretty good balance there). I think the Thrawn Trilogy was the first to have significantly long hyperspace trips. Later EU eventually made a synthesis of the two, with major hyperroutes allowing for faster travel and lesser used routes or new routes taking up to weeks.

So to not quite answer the question of the OP, it really depends. If you're going along a hyperroute (i.e. operating on movie time), it could take a day tops. If you're on back routes, it could take far, far longer. If you're going between two movie worlds it's always faster, because the fast HS times in the films have left all of them sitting next to major routes.

 

It also depends a lot on who you are and what you're flying. Most of the movie characters enjoy military clearance, Jedi exemptions, or are just plain scofflaws. But remember in BFC when Luke is flying a civilian ship incognito and it takes like three days to get out of Coruscant orbit?

 

I've just been re-reading shatterpoint and it mentions WEEKS of space travel, and days of insystem space travel

 

Sci-fi is notoriously inconsistent with travel times. Not just Star Wars, sci-fi in general.

I'm recalling the pilot episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, where it took only four days at Warp 4.5 to travel between Earth and the Klingon homeworld. If that were true, one would have conquered the other fairly easily, since starships got considerably faster, even within 10 years. The Star Trek: Star Charts (their equivalent to the atlas) had the lamest explanation ever, saying that the Vulcans often mapped "subspace shortcuts" that allowed certain corridors to be traveled faster. These shortcuts could be ridden for years, but may degrade, making a temporary shortcut between Earth and Qo'noS possible, but only briefly. Lamest explanation ever.

Star Wars is no better. Most of the hyperspace flights in the films were vague enough that one could argue that it was a fair amount of time (e.g. the Millennium Falcon arrived at Alderaan minutes after Han Solo entered the hold to talk to Luke and Obi-Wan, but he may have been in the cockpit for hours for all we know). But some trips were just too short. Palpatine went from Coruscant to Mustafar so fast that Vader was still alive, despite being burnt that badly. Couldn't have been more than 30-45 minutes really.

 

I've always been reasonably happy as far as the in-a-day-on-a-super-hyperroute travel times go. It was always fairly consistent in as far as the super-hyperroutes were fast, whereas going cross country through the galactic outback could take weeks, as if hiking through the mountains rather than taking the highway.

The only one I've ever really had a problem with was Coruscant-to-Mustafar in an eyeblink. I've always considered that particular trip to be the pinnacle of lame as it was way faster than anything else I can think of and, even in the context of the film itself, was somewhat contrived. Much prefer Stover's take in the novel where the two duels don't feel quite as concurrent, which makes it slightly more as though Palpatine simply foresaw the urgency in advance than necessarily jumped from one end of the galaxy to the other in five seconds.

 

Yeah, I was also under the impression that Palpatine saw in advance his apprentice's distress.

Still, given what we know about Palpatine, the idea that he had access to secret hyperspace routes and a very, very fast hyperdrive is not out of the question.

Overall, given that travel time is affected by quality of the engines, the quality of the route and the distance involved, I can accept widely divergent travel times easily.

 

If you take the Corellian Run Coreward, and then pick up either the Hydian or the Perlemian (I think Hydian might be a little quicker) you'll probably arrive in less then a day.

Edit: Actually, given Korriban's distance from the lane proper...I'd say about a day on the lanes, and maybe another day or two from the exit point of the lane to Korriban...Korriban is ISOLATED, let's not forget.

If you were to simply try jumping across the outer rim, trusting your nav...weeks.

And don't even think about trying what my RPG group does...jumping above/below the galactic disc, hoping for unobstructed paths...that's wild space up/down there...your nav won't help you.

-------

As everyone else has commented, things move at "the speed of the plot" in most series...so the rules are fast and loose...same thing applies to "How fast" a ship is in a universe with hyperspace travel..."grain of salt" stuff.

Hyperlanes are the key...it's like the fast current of a river...you put your canoe in it...ZOOM...otherwise, you're just paddling along.

Now, of course this assumes the routes are unobstructed...no interdictions or Pirates or the like.

 

Yeah.

The only way to (possibly) get there faster would, perhaps, be if instead of going all the way along the Hydian you instead went via Coruscant->Empress Teta->Daragon Trail->Korriban. The Daragon Trail is a direct access corridor that shoots right from the Deep Core to Sith Space, so might shave the couple of days wandering the outback trying to get off the Hydian Way and inside the Caldera to Korriban.

Though, I must admit, I've always disliked the idea of there being this super fast access lane direct from Korriban to the Deep Core... it's odd that nobody else has ever used it after Naga Sadow launched his surprise blitzkrieg -- my unqualified explanation has always been that the Republic must have mined the heck out of it or something to stop the Sith ever doing so again.

 

Stellar drift works too...if they can use it to isolate Ruusan, they can use it for this.

Truth be told, I wish there was more "drift" issues. Some of these lanes have been secure a LONG time...even adjusting them would be a huge step toward realism.

 

The WotC RPG's give these travel times:

Original RPG (factoring in astrogation skill and hyperdrive quality):

Tatooine to Korriban: Minimum 1 hour, maximum 372 hours.
Coruscant to Mustafar: Minimum 24 hours, maximum 1452 hours.

Saga edition (factoring in pure dice luck, astrogation skill and hyperdrive quality):

Tatooine to Korriban: Minimum 1 day, maximum 144 days
Coruscant to Mustafar: Minimum 1 day, maximum 144 days
(Unless my understanding of the mechanics are flawed, Saga cares jack about travel distance).


Also, all Palp said was that he sensed Lord Vader was in danger, not that he was cut down and dying. Not to mention how Yoda and Obi went to their respective bad guy to fight, only Yoda had his right there, whereas Obi needed to talk to Padme and then actually travel to Mustafar to get to his. Palp should have had plenty of time to end the duel with Yoda, then sense Vader's peril, and immediately take off in time to save V. At least provided the above numbers, which seem to agree that a scant day was needed for the right craft with the right pilot.

 

There is a lot of questionable travel times in ROTS...it's obvious that it wasn't a concern as they tried to tell the story in the time allotted.

Just the propensity of traveling in hyperspace via starfighter is somewhat indicative of these not being "long" trips.

 

That's true of any sci-fi storytelling, really - 'travel times' are always Speed of Plot. The most egregious example for me will always be "ST: First Contact", when the Enterprise is sent far away to the Romulan border to make sure former Borg member Picard is as far away as possible from the Borg attack - they get the feed of the defense of Earth going badly and they get back in time to participate in the battle.

At least Star Wars has a more reasonable explanation with the hyperspace routes. Think about travel on foot, on horseback, on car and on plane on earth. I sometimes marvel casually driving for a couple hours on a highway that would've taken days a couple centuries ago. The analogy isn't direct, of course. The 'roads' of the galaxy can't be constructed (apart from the suspicion of the Ancients), so we have essentially places that are forever a 'backwater' and some places that happen to be right in the crossroads of the major lanes.

(And as an aside, the EU needs to do more with Denon - you know, the immense city-world that is at the meeting of the two most important hyperspace lanes of the galaxy and was the capital of the Republic for almost five whole minutes).

 

^ Actually, the Atlas repeatedly mentions things called S-Thread boosters which can stabilize a hyperspace route and make it safer, so lanes can be constructed to a small degree.

Or you can have a Sun Crusher get rid of some annoying stars in the middle of your hyperlane!

 

I don't have any evidence from the movies or the Expanded Universe to support my speculation, but I've always imagined travel times as such...

1) Hyperspace travel circa the formation of the Republic was comparable to trans-oceanic voyages at the time of Columbus, taking months to go only part way across the galaxy.

2) Between the time period of the Great Hyperspace War to the Galactic Cold War technology had advanced sufficiently for hyperspace travel to be comparable to the Titanic crossing the Atlantic in about a week.

3) By the era of the movies and onward hyperspace travel is more comparable to jetliners than to ships, with travel from Coruscant to the far reaches of the Outer Rim no different than a commercial airliner making a flight from the Prime Meridian to the International Date Line (halfway around the world).

 

Routes that are traveled more frequently stay open longer, even ancient routes. Because of the BoSS system, each ship that travels through a particular route will update that route's status, so minor drift issues won't be a problem for the next ship that comes through. If a route is seldom traveled, however, galactic drift could eventually destroy a route or alter it so much that anyone coming through with outdated data risks a collision.

 

I'm sure there's plenty of drift. It's just that space is biiiiiiiiiig, so there's always going to be a lot of deep space to run through.

 

Meh. Hyperspace routes are already maddening aberrations from physics, even when accepting the already excrutiating aberration that hyperspace itself is. Some routes are faster, some are slower. Why? Well, ships cannot steer in hyperspace, so I'm told. Perhaps slower routes require more reentries to "real" space to change direction in order to dodge those mass shadows we're told about? We certainly saw as much in the X-wing and TIE Fighter games. All those nav buoys and hyperspace points must have some purpose, and we can't rightly dismiss them as game devices because they were integral to now canonical stories.

 

The material where it appeared originally - the "Sanctuary Pipeline" from Sullust to Endor used by the Empire to ferry supplies to the DSII - indicated that they were hideously expensive to maintain and easily damaged, making them only really useful for... well, ferrying supplies for a secret military project.

 

Guys, this is space. A hyper route technically doesn't imply speed but rather usage. For example, if there were a star cluster or a supernova separating Coruscant and Alderaan, while the way to Tatooine was a longer, but straighter shot, that has to be taken into account, even if Alderaan is closer geographically. It's like being two miles away from someone, but separated by a twenty mile across wall, while another guy is ten miles away unobstructed. You're going to get to the second guy sooner than the first, assuming constant speeds.

 

Or certain Deep Core throne worlds.

Actually, on that note, I was just thinking about the Galaxy Gun. How could it have fired its hyperspace projectiles all the way to Hutt Space? Byss is on the western side of the Deep Core, so any shots it made to the eastern quadrant would have had to go through the "Deepest Core." Surely there are no direct routes from Byss to Hutt Space.

 

I think the explanation has been in just about every source that mentions the Daragon Trail - that the destruction of Primus Goluud severed the trail and made it unusable.

As the Primus Goluud example demonstrates, may not be the best plan. ;-)

I always just assumed the projectiles were equipped with guidance systems.

 

Disregarding their lackbuster canon level, those buoys could be shot or flown through, meaning they were most likely holographic.

In what way were they integral to now canonical stories?

 

I think the point was how it reinforces the idea that you can't always jump directly from A to B, but often may have to go via C, which naturally then adds to the travel time because your navicomp will have to calculate the next jump before you can continue.

In a novel, that's going to be boring as hell to read, whereas in the video games we actually got the chance to see it first-hand because it was fun to try and cut people off on one of their many stop-offs before they reached their final destination.

In effect, it wasn't always a case of needing an interdictor; sometimes you'd just get raided by pirates at the motorway service station.