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I've always been puzzled by the speeds of space craft in Star Wars. The Millennium Falcon was said to travel at "point 5 beyond the speed of light" - which I guess is 1.5c:

HAN: She'll make point five beyond the speed of light. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself.

And it was said by Han Solo to be the fastest ship in the fleet.

HAN: Look. I want you to take her. I mean it. Take her. You need all the help you can get. She's the fastest ship in the fleet.

But at that speed it will take years to travel between solar systems.

Is this a mistake in the Star Wars universe?

DavidW
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Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
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    Why the close votes? This is a good question, which has an interesting accepted answer pointing to retcons and even some justified guesswork about what the hyperdrive classes are. – Andres F. Feb 21 '13 at 02:12
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    I think the problem lies with your assumptions of what point five past lightspeed means. No, George Lucas isn't great with physics and real-world applications in his science fantasy epic, but we already know that. So, to assume it means anything without any other references to hyperdrive capabilities... – Thom Brannan Feb 21 '13 at 06:56
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    What fleet??! Han only owns one vessel, the Falcon. It has to be his fastest. – Oldcat Sep 10 '15 at 00:41
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    Perhaps it's a logarithmic shorthand. Assume 1.0 is light-speed and 2.0 is infinite-speed, then 1.5 would be pretty-darn fast. Remember that this is a universe full of devise intelligent species, technology, and (thus) standars, so smugglers like Han using less-standard slang wouldn't be implausible. Also, I believe Star Trek uses a similar logarithmic 1-10 scale. – Slipp D. Thompson Dec 27 '15 at 08:05
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    Just divide the length of the Kessel run by 12 parsecs and you should be able to figure out its top speed, assuming you do physics like George Lucas... – corsiKa Feb 26 '16 at 19:58
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    The real question is point five what? You may assume he's talking about 1.5c, but it's not clear from the dialogue. – John Sensebe Mar 08 '16 at 21:01
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    @JohnSensebe: he says point five *beyond the speed of light* it's in the question. – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE Mar 08 '16 at 21:39
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    Clearly he was talking about the Millennium Falcon doing 1.5c without the use of its hyperdrive. – Shufflepants Mar 22 '17 at 18:53
  • @Shufflepants When they weren't using hyperdrive, the ships moved slower than cars. We see this when they were raiding the Death Star, evading asteroids, etc.. Lucas wanted ships to be slow for story-telling reasons, but still pass between stars, so he used hyperdrive and jumping into hyperspace as a plot device. Hans had to mean 1.5c for his hyperdrive, or else he had the one spaceship in the universe that could move faster than 50 miles-per-hour without it. – Nat Mar 25 '17 at 22:59

8 Answers8

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Yes. This is a mistake in the Star Wars universe. George Lucas had no understanding of space travel or physics. Which is why his starfighters swoop about the way World War II fighter planes did.

In modern explanation the "past lightspeed" bit has been retconned away. Instead there are the hyperdrive classes with a reverse scale. The higher the number the slower the ship. So a Class 1 hyperdrive is one of the fastest, but the Millennium Falcon has a 0.5 class hyperdrive. Twice as fast as a Class 1. Just how fast a Class 1 is is never really explained.

Though if you really want to go into it, get some of the role-playing books. They'll have charts for travel between star systems (and possibly distances). You may be able to figure out how fast a class 1 is supposed to be from that.

More information: Hyperdrive on Wikia

[edit] Okay this is a ridiculously rough calculation. I went and pulled out my old WEG RPG book and looked at the space travel section. It didn't have a map or distances or anything -- one of them does, but I don't have the time to find it now -- but it did make this statement:

Even with a well traveled hyperspace route the fastest ships, such as the Millennium Falcon, would take several months to traverse the whole diameter of the galaxy.

Elsewhere the Galaxy was quoted as being 120,000 light years in diameter. Using this we can make a really rough guess at how fast the Falcon is, and from that, what the classes really mean. So we'll assume "several" is 6 months. Using that we can find that a class 1/2 hyperdrive would travel at about 28 light years per hour. So a class one's speed is about 14 light years per hour.

I'll find that map and do a better one later. I'll note that the book does say that well traveled hyperspace routes, such as trade routes, can take significantly less time than less traveled routes. Why that would be, I dunno, but it hints that there is more going on to hyperspace than simply traveling faster than light. [/edit]

DavidW
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Daniel Bingham
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    "George Lucas had no understanding of space travel or physics." Which also explains why the Falcon can make the Kessel Run in less than 3.702813098×10^14 km (aka twelve parsecs). – R. Martinho Fernandes Jan 31 '11 at 00:59
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    More generally, Sci-fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale – Nick T Jan 31 '11 at 03:00
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    This makes perfect sense. You are a delivery truck driver, and have to make X number of stops. The stops are not in straight lines, and depending how you go, the distance traveled can be more or less. Solo lived on the edge, going through dangerous space to reduce the distance needed. – JTP - Apologise to Monica Jan 31 '11 at 05:41
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    @JoeTaxpayer: no it doesn't make sense at all, because Solo was asked if the ship was fast. You can also make it in twelve parsecs if you're riding a space snail. – R. Martinho Fernandes Feb 02 '11 at 01:12
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    Martinho - he used it to justify the speed, you are correct, I stand down. – JTP - Apologise to Monica Feb 03 '11 at 02:05
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    They (tried to) explain away the parsecs = distance thing in one of the novels - the Falcon was fast enough to fly closer to a black hole cluster than any other ship, allowing it to cut distance. I can't recall if the reduced distance was supposed to be due to the more direct route or the gravitational effects of the black hole cluster, though. – Jeff Feb 03 '11 at 22:04
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    @Daniel your in-edit calculations are off by a double order of magnitude... the travel times for crossing the galaxy in current canon are in double digit hours... not triple digit days. WEG got it wrong in SW 1E, and LFL made them change it later. But then, as nick notes, Sci-Fi Writers have no sense of Scale. – aramis May 18 '11 at 17:44
  • And yet the falcon is able to get from coruscant to the kessel in days. Then back get a fleet and return all within a week. – Chad Oct 13 '11 at 16:23
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    To be fair, even Lucas knew that spaceships don't actually behave like fighters. He ignored that because he wanted that 30s-serial-movie feel. Deliberate artistic choice, not screwup like most of the SW physics. – Tynam Dec 06 '11 at 15:17
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    Re: Falcon does the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs - there are a number of reasons why explaining how fast a ship is by the distance you can get from A to B could be valid. To build off of the answer from @JoeTaxpayer it could be that part of the straight line path on the Kessel run takes you through pirate controlled territory. Therefore, to perform the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs you must be faster than the pirates. Most ships aren't, thus they go around the hostile space and go over 12 parsecs. – Xantec Jan 06 '12 at 20:14
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    I've always assumed that the "12 parsecs" line was a play by Han, trying to figure out how stupid Ben was so that he can decide whether to charge him extra. – gobernador Aug 10 '12 at 14:40
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    @TheWhole"Parsec"thing I prefer to explanation that Han, who saw an old man and a farm boy, was trying to pull a fast one on them with a little technobable. – Zibbobz Mar 11 '14 at 17:18
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    For the parsecs thing, I always imagined that in hyperspace, time isn't really a factor. Since you're presumably traveling in another dimension, or basically "above" (hyper) the normal fabric of space-time, distance is a much more reliable description of how efficient your engine is. Or maybe your computer - perhaps the Falcon's hyperdrive could calculate shorter jumps than others (12 parsecs being the best calculated for that particular run). – phreakhead Oct 12 '14 at 01:52
  • @Tynam, how can you tell the difference? – Paul Draper Sep 12 '15 at 04:37
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    @PaulDraper: In this case - because Lucas said (in interview and print) at the time that it was a deliberate artistic choice. Animators back that up. – Tynam Sep 14 '15 at 07:16
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    @Jeff The Star Wars Wikia has some more information on the close-to-black-hole-cutting-distance thing, and it seems to date back to a “The Second Kessel Run” comic strip published in 1980.  Star Wars Wikia - Kessel Run / Star Wars Wikia - The Second Kessel Run Maybe it's a bit of retconning, but I think it's unfair to discredit that Lucas had a sizable team of model-makers, animators, & others who had to make sure their work fit in with the rest.  It's old enough I'd call it canon. – Slipp D. Thompson Dec 27 '15 at 20:38
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    @SlippD.Thompson: Sadly, what any particular person (who isn't a Disney exec) considers canon doesn't matter. And the topic was better explained in (I believe) the Jedi Academy trilogy, when they visited Kessel. Which, of course, is now 'Legends' instead of canon. – Jeff Dec 28 '15 at 14:24
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    @Jeff Yeah, I guess I'm just not interested in what Disney or J.J.Abrams thinks, nor what swatches of story these Canon and Legends trademarks are assigned. I'm really only interested in the original intents of the original creators of the original trilogy, at the time they created it or shortly afterwards. The prequels sucked and The Force Awakens was methodical & monotonous, so I just don't care about those creators' thoughts & decisions in the late 90s and mid-2010s. They're wrong. – Slipp D. Thompson Dec 28 '15 at 17:39
  • I always likened it to relativity. The actual distance you travel becomes shorter as you approach light speed, so a slower ship may have read 20 parsecs on its odometer while the Falcon only read 12. I mean, we're past light speed, but I could understand what they were shooting for. – DeepDeadpool Dec 21 '16 at 23:05
  • How close you can get to a gravitational body is based on escape speed. And how close you get at closest approach has consequences on how short your journey past that body. – Kaithar Mar 21 '17 at 23:52
  • " George Lucas had no understanding of space travel or physics. Which is why his starfighters swoop about the way World War II fighter planes did." Or, alternatively, because that was the cinematic style he wanted. Only a very bad director would have have let physics decide the style of their space battles. – Jack Aidley Mar 24 '17 at 14:34
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I've a strong dislike for the kind of EU retconning on display here - it can have a tendency to make something, which was a confusing enough mess to begin with, even more confusing and even messier. The script didn't say "0.5", it said "point five".

Let's assume that there's a scale of speeds beyond the speed of light. The Falcon is on the fifth point of that scale. It needn't be more complex than that.

DavidW
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I thought that comparing how fast a ship gets from point A to point B in the Star Wars universe was determined by how good their navi-computer was. (Not sure if I have the term navi-computer right. By that, I mean an computer for navigation (or astrogation if you like that term better).)

Apparently hyperspace has a vast network of routes and the better the navi-computer, the more efficient a route it took through hyperspace thus getting the ship to its destination faster.

I'm sure velocity is also important though. It seems to me the Millenium Falcon always seemed to be slower than pursuing star destroyers until it jumped to hyperspace. In the "A New Hope" Luke is alarmed at the rate the imperial cruisers were gaining on them as they fled Mos Eisley, for example. Even though in the Cantina Han Solo claims to have outrun imperial ships. (Not the local bulk cruisers, but the big Corellian ships ... just to clarify which ones.... :) )

To answer the question, I like to think the Falcon was a fast ship. Han Solo and Lando Calrisian seemed to think so, although every one else seemed to have never heard of it (Obi-Wan), thought it was a piece of junk (Luke), and offered to get out and push (Leia). I guess it depends on your point of view. (After all many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view....)

So I guess this is a pretty good question that is sure to offer many different perspectives!

RunnerRick
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    While, I generally agree, remember the Falcon was escaping the effects of the planet's gravity while the destroyers were already clear of it (relatively) and the falcon would presumably need time to build up to full speed. Of course this doesnt address why the bulk cruisers were already up to that speed, but do we really want to open that can of bantha fodder? – Robert Brim Feb 23 '11 at 14:57
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    For the record, navicomputer is indeed the correct term, though in most EU books I see it rendered in one word. +1 – The Fallen Jan 31 '14 at 14:30
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    I've heard the navicomputer explanation before. It falls apart once you think about Han telling Lando to take the Falcon because she has the best Hyperdrive navigation in the fleet. Doesn't seem all that useful in a pitched space battle. But maybe when he boats she's "the fastest ship in the fleet" he's only referring to star fighters and other small, maneuverable vessels. The Falcon seems to keep up with TIE Fighters well enough. – Schwern Apr 06 '15 at 15:37
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    As a note, the Falcon tends to have a high top sublight speed in video games, but take a while to accelerate up to it. Not necessarily canon, but it does lend credence to the "needs time to get to full speed" idea. – Justin Time - Reinstate Monica Jun 15 '19 at 17:20
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Star Wars uses a reverse scale. The lower the rating, the faster the ship. 0.5 is 2x as fast as an Imperial warship. The scale is asymptotic, with 0.0 being infinite speed, and higher numbers being slower. The next fastest ship is Boba Fett's Slave I, which had a class 0.7 hyperdrive.

Mark Rogers
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Teknophilia
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    To expand on that, the Imperial ships teknophilia mentioned are referred to as having a Class 1 hyperdrive. The Death Star had a Class 2 or 3 hyperdrive (if I recall correctly) and most civilian ships had relatively slow Class 4 or 5 drives. – Cajunluke Jan 30 '11 at 16:13
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    Still doesn't explain the "past light speed bit". – Daniel Bingham Jan 30 '11 at 16:13
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    It looks like an error on part of the writers. Taken straight from Wookiepedia's "Lightspeed" entry: "Lightspeed was a slang term referring to the speed at which a starship traveled through hyperspace. In reality though, lightspeed, or traveling through hyperspace with a class 1.0 hyperdrive motivator was actually over one hundred million times faster than the speed of light, allowing a ship to cross the galaxy in a matter of days." – Teknophilia Jan 30 '11 at 16:23
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    His words could be taken to mean "Once you pass light speed by entering hyperspace, this ship will make time as well as a class 0.5 would" – Kevin Laity Jan 25 '12 at 18:07
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    That isn't a reverse scale. A reverse scale would count down rather than up. It is a reciprocal scale. – Oldcat Sep 10 '15 at 00:43
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I've always written it off as Han using anachronistic language. It's similar to how people my age still say they're going to "tape" a show on TV. Once a term gets into common usage, it often separates from its original meaning. So it's entirely conceivable that people might still call something "light speed" long after it has ceased to be an accurate description. And the "point five" may not be a simple decimal scale.

Also, I kind of get the idea from the cantina scene that Han isn't being entirely straightforward with what he perceives to be desert hicks --- throwing around jargon to impress them and drive up the price.

The result is that I'm not inclined to pick apart what Han says as a though he's giving a lecture on propulsion at space college.

scarytall
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What most people fail to realize is that when making a movie, it is entirely possible that travel times between, say, Tatooine and Alderaan (or the Death Star, as it were in the fourth when Han made the comment referenced above) were much longer than they appeared in actual screen time. You don't question it when a movie skips over a plane trip over the Atlantic, even though that takes several hours. So maybe the Falcon did take a month or two to get from Tatooine to Alderaan and we just were not shown it. Now by all accounts I doubt it takes 6 months to cross the galaxy, probably more like 2 or three. Otherwise the timing would be very off on most of these events, but you do have to realize that Obi-Wan taught Luke a god bit about the force and a lightsaber on that first trip on the Falcon. So it's safe to assume that the travel speeds of the Falcon are more like 40-45 times the speed of light. This means that a class 1 hyperdrive probably goes about 20-25 and a class 4 more like 8-12. Still not as instant as shown in the movies, but that's just Hollywood for ya.

Also I would like to point out that these speeds put Star Wars warship speeds on a par with that of ships from other sci-fi series, such as the mass effect cores in Mass Effect (minus the use of mass relays) and the hyperdrives of the Stargate series.

Niall C.
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CMDR. Sheppard
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    This makes some more sense when you consider how much Obi Wan paid for passage aboard the Millennium Falcon. Luke was pretty aghast at the price Obi Wan wanted to pay, saying they could buy a ship for that much. If the trip only took a few hours, it would hardly seem reasonable to pay that much. – shim Mar 22 '17 at 18:16
  • Not talking about shaving off a fraction of the trip by flying in a luxury high speed ship. The Millennium Falcon is a run down freighter in a galaxy full of starships and pilots. Here on Earth, planes are faster than say cars, and cost more, but planes cost a lot more to run and they have high demand with low supply. The economics of space travel in Star Wars are vastly different. – shim Mar 27 '17 at 20:01
  • @shim Quite the opposite, I think. A faster trip is more expensive (does the defunct Concorde ring a bell?) – Matemáticos Chibchas Apr 13 '20 at 17:25
  • My comment above already addresses your point. – shim Apr 13 '20 at 17:28
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Or, he could be talking about the sublight drive. Star Wars ships have a sublight drive, which is the regular engines, and a hyperdrive which is lightspeed. But, he was saying she'll make point five past lightspeed, which doesn't seem like much, unless the Falcon has been retrofitted with an illegal sublight drive that goes .5 faster than the speed of light.

Carolus Atte Welle
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The Millennium Falcon goes 4,401 light-years per hour: The Kessel Run is 18 parsecs. Han Solo said he did it in 12. Maybe he meant 12 seconds, not 12 parsecs. A parsec is 3.26 light-years, so the Kessel Run is 58.68 light-years. Han's ship is twice the speed of a c1 hyperdrive (being c0.5), so a c1 hyperdrive can go 58.68 light-years in 24 seconds. 24 seconds×2.5 is 1 minute. 58.68×2.5 is 146.7 light-years. 146.7 L-Y/Min. Multiply by 60 to get 8,802 light-years per hour. 120,000/8,802= A c1 Hyperdrive can cross the Galaxy in 13 hours and 38 minutes. You can multiply 818 (Minutes) by whatever class the hyperdrive is to find how long it takes to go 120,000 light-years. Just a theory. Also, it says to go from Cornelia to Bespin it takes 7 or 8 hours with a c1 hyperdrive, and that's halfway across the galaxy, so my theory is one of the closest.

HeX
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