Galactic Travel

I have been working on a gazetteer lately, trying to quantify the hyperspace travel times between a large group of planets all across the Star Wars galaxy. It has been an interesting journey, with the Essential Atlas at my side, digging into facts about the structure of real galaxies in an attempt to solve the problem.

Many Star Wars sources deliberately leave out details on the thorny issue of hyperspace travel, likely because of the vast number of contradictory tidbits of information out there. One of the common quotes in this arena is "Ships travel at the speed of plot."

As in, "Forget about it."

While this free and easy notion might work well for a movie, it grates on my nerves when thinking about an otherwise quasi-realistic Sci-Fi universe. We need to know how long it takes to get from point A to point B, and it should be consistent and understandable. There is a lot of hand-waving in the Star Wars canon about how local space effects can make travel times much different than one would guess, based simply on the straight line distance between trip endpoints.

As a first order approximation, I am measuring the distance between each planet pair on my list (see below) on the master galaxy map found in the Essential Atlas. I have a couple of reference distances to compare against in order to convert my distance measurements (in inches) into light years (namely, the distances from Coruscant, Tatooine, Naboo, Hoth, and Yavin to the Galactic Core). At this point, I will have to figure out a hyperspace travel speed in terms of light years per hour (for the x1 drive multiplier). Then things get messy...how does one incorporate things like the variable density of stars throughout the galaxy? For my first order approximation, I won't bother with this. I tend to think these sorts of arguments are more "retcon" type ideas, generated after-the-fact, made to gloss over the widely varying apparent travel times from different quoted sources. Stay tuned for more updates as my work continues...

For the sake of argument, here is the list of planets in my gazetteer thus far: Abregado-rae, Alderaan, Ansion, Arda, Bespin, Bogden, Bonadan, Bothawui, Brentaal, Cato Neimoidia, Corellia, Coruscant, Dagobah, Dantooine, Dorvalla, Endor, Eriadu, Felucia, Fondor, Gamorr, Geonosis, Hoth, Kamino, Kashyyyk, Kuat, Lianna, Malastare, Mandalore, Mon Calamari, Mustafar, Muunilist, Mygeeto, Naboo, Nal Hutta, Onderon, Ord Mantell, Polis Massa, Rodia, Ryloth, Saleucami, Subterrel, Sullust, Taanab, Tatooine, Thyferra, Tierfon, Utapau, Yavin.

Did I miss any you would include? Tell me in the comments section.

Another question for you: how long should it take for a smuggler in a light freighter to cross the entire galaxy? A day or two? A week?

As an arbitrary point or reference, a group of people in a motor home could go from New York City to Los Angeles in something like 45 hours or so (that's a bit like a light freighter crew crossing the galaxy, isn't it?)