Tag: hyperspace

With hyperspace tracking and gravity wells, do you imagine they will come up with new defences for lightspeed travel and what could they do?

The funny thing about travelling in hyperspace is that, if you’re fast enough, you can overtake the ship you’re chasing and they won’t know it until they drop out again. With the ability to predict the course a ship or a fleet will take through hyperspace, anyone with a gravity well projector could theoretically not only pull it back into realspace, they could do it anywhere along the path, provided they can reach it first. I expect you could also reroute a ship equipped with a gravity well projector into the path, if your own ships weren’t fast enough. If the First Order acquired an Interdictor-class Star Destroyer, for example, they could drop the Resistance fleet right in the middle of their navy. 

I’m sure there are other creative uses for those two technologies, but that’s what came to my mind. 

~ Jacen

Are hyperspace maps a thing?

In a way, yes. A map of the galaxy is called a star-chart, a star map, or an astronav chart, and they are used for navigating a ship through both hyperspace and realspace. (No special map is needed to navigate hyperspace; each point in realspace has an associated point in the alternate dimension of hyperspace, and every object in realspace has an associated “shadow” in hyperspace, so they are linked.) When a ship jumps to hyperspace, a star-chart is used to calculate a route to the destination that ensures the ship doesn’t collide with a celestial body. This is called astrogation. 

~ Jacen

So I remember Han saying that calculating the jump to lightspeed was difficult because you could end up somewhere dangerous. When Snoke’s ship jumps to lightspeed, is that ship in charge of doing the calcs for the rest of the ships that might be with them since it’s way bigger?

*minor spoilers sorta*

I expect that, since the Supremacy was the ship with the hyperspace tracker equipped, its navicomputer would perform the calculations and then transmit the them (or just the destination, and allow the others to calculate a route) to the other ships. Its size shouldn’t really make a difference, no ship would exit hyperspace close enough to a celestial body that a bigger ship following the same route could hit it. If the navicomputer and hyperdrive are both in working order, a hyperspace jump is usually relatively safe. 

~ Jacen

I always wondered about relativity’s effect in the Star Wars galaxy, especially since the characters would age differently in lightspeed and traveling on ships than on planets. Also, wouldn’t time pass differently? Do they bend spacetime rules to have events happen in timely manners/ without much time lost?

We have to suspend disbelief a little bit here, but essentially relativity in the Star Wars universe is supposed to work much the same as in real life. The reason why people don’t age or experience time differently in hyperspace when compared to the rest of the universe is that the hyperdrive uses relativistic shielding to counteract the time dilation. In cases where this shielding has malfunctioned, a journey that appears to the passengers to be only a short jump could take centuries in reality, causing them to appear to travel in time. And we have to keep in mind that jumping to hyperspace in Star Wars is treated as entering another dimension, so it’ll be a little different.

~ Jacen

Is it possible for a ship to come out of hyperspace in-atmosphere?

The atmosphere itself wouldn’t be so much of a problem, of course, the issue would be with the gravity well of the planet. Theoretically, the safety mechanisms should pull the ship out of hyperspace as soon as the force of a celestial body’s gravity starts to have an effect on the ship, a ways before it actually reaches the body itself. Likewise, a ship should not be able to enter hyperspace while under the influence of the gravity well. However, we have seen that malfunctions in he hyperdrive and related safety systems can cause a ship to jump to hyperspace while in a planet’s atmosphere. It is possible that a similar malfunction, or disabling the failsafe that causes the ship to exit hyperspace, could allow the ship to end a jump closer to the planet than normally allowed. Naturally, this would be very dangerous and could easily cause the ship to just hit the planet’s surface or burn up upon reentry, and right now I can’t think of any examples of someone actually doing it, but I believe it could be possible with a lot of careful calculation.

Hope that helps!

~ Jacen

Approximately how long, with hyperdrive, would it take for a ship (let’s say the Falcon) to get from the outer rim to Coruscant? Thank you, wise Jacen!

While travel time will vary quite a bit between ships and specific destinations, it would take approximately 48 hours for the Falcon to get from the Outer Rim to the Core Worlds (like Coruscant).

image

This chart (from this post) shows the base travel times between different regions of the galaxy. The post also has a map of the galaxy so you can see where the regions are, but I prefer to use this interactive map because you can click on different planets, sectors, regions, etc. and zoom in and out. It also shows hyperspace routes and the like.

To find the final travel time, you take the base time and multiply it by the hyperdrive rating of the ship (usually, you can find this on its Wookieepedia page). For example, a standard YT-1300 (hyperdrive class 2.0) would take about 96 x 2 = 192 hours to make the same journey. The Falcon has a hyperdrive rating of 0.5 due to various alterations; there are very few ships faster than this. The lower the rating, the faster the ship.

I also know of a website that shows a navicomputer and has you click on planets you want to travel between, enter the hyperdrive class and the skill of the pilot, and comes up with a travel time for you. However, the map is a bit outdated and uses a vastly different system of rating hyperdrives which I don’t know how to use. It’s here, in case you want to experiment, but I think you’ll have more luck finding the approximate time yourself.

I hope that helps!

~ Jacen