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Parsecs


ejbsuperbat

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Parsecs. A measurement of distance. But I am confused about something, in the films (and some conversations in game) we hear 1 or 2 parsecs is quite far. But aboard our ships, the lowest amount of parsecs I have ever seen is above 1000. Am I missing sowing here?

 

Thanks in advance.

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Parsecs. A measurement of distance. But I am confused about something, in the films (and some conversations in game) we hear 1 or 2 parsecs is quite far. But aboard our ships, the lowest amount of parsecs I have ever seen is above 1000. Am I missing sowing here?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

your regularly flying across large chunks of the galaxy which is mind bogglingly big so its not that wierd

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This. Star Wars is *definitely* not Hard SF. It makes Star "Problem? Hey, let's invent a particle!" Trek look like hard SF in comparison, when it really, really isn't.

 

Star Wars is basically a fantasy which happens to be set in space. That's not running it down- science fantasy's a very fun genre, but, "Jedi Wizard" (the early, rubbish name for Jedi Sage) wasn't wrong because it was wrong, just because it's bad form to draw *too* much attention to the roots.

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The SW universe is inconsistent but the range of ship speeds in hyperspace in the Episode IV-VI is typically estimated at the range of 30-150 lightyears per hour (for a stationary observer) on a well charted hyperspace route, which typically is fairly roundabout. So with a mediocre ship you might do 1000 parsecs in about 2.5 days of travel, but a destination 1000 parsecs away might take a week or two to get do depending on how well mapped the part of the galaxy you're talking about is mapped. If it's not mapped at all, it might take a few decades to a few centuries to cover 1000 parsecs if you wanted to survive the trip.

 

Of course the famous parsec mention is Han Solo bragging about doing the Kessle Run, where from the context it seems like he's trying to use it as a unit of time rather than a unit of distance. If George Lucas and the folks at Lucasfilm are good at physics, they're clearly going to great lengths to disguise it.

 

Basically if you want Star Wars physics to make any sort of consistent sense you have to judiciously choose to ignore, reinterpret, and reinvent large portions of the "physics canon" in SW.

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...

 

Of course the famous parsec mention is Han Solo bragging about doing the Kessle Run, where from the context it seems like he's trying to use it as a unit of time rather than a unit of distance. If George Lucas and the folks at Lucasfilm are good at physics, they're clearly going to great lengths to disguise it.

 

...

There is an explanation that makes some sense on that matter.

If you can cut a few "corners" in the route of the Kessel Run, you should be able to do it in less parsecs than the official charted run.

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There is an explanation that makes some sense on that matter.

If you can cut a few "corners" in the route of the Kessel Run, you should be able to do it in less parsecs than the official charted run.

 

That had to be retconned in by the EU authors, using the explanation that a faster ship would be able to skirt closer to the black holes in the Maw

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There is an explanation that makes some sense on that matter.

If you can cut a few "corners" in the route of the Kessel Run, you should be able to do it in less parsecs than the official charted run.

 

There's a better explanation: Han was lying his *** off, and Obi-won wasn't in a great place to call him on it.

 

It's even hinted at in the film, with Ewan McGregor's expression being readable as "...really? How dumb do you think I am?"

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There's a better explanation: Han was lying his *** off, and Obi-won wasn't in a great place to call him on it.

 

It's even hinted at in the film, with Ewan McGregor's expression being readable as "...really? How dumb do you think I am?"

 

Which movie exactly is it that has Ewan McGregor and Han in it? :D

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Well the idea of a parsec makes more sense as a measure of time. When Han was taking obi and Luke to alderrann it must have taken a good bit of time. That's why Luke was able to receive training from obi. Otherwise it seems like Luke only spent an afternoon with the old man.
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You know what burns my ***?

 

When you're on Nar and it says that to get to Nal Hutta(NS is a satellite to Hutta) it takes you 536 parsecs or so. Oh god dam it!

 

And that is the *last* time we let 2V-R8 map read.

 

(Khem Val: "Are we nearly there yet?")

Edited by RowanThursday
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Yes he did mean he completed the journey under 12 parsecs. Because on the Kessel run there are black holes. Any other pilot would have taken a longer route. Han on the other hand skimmed close to the black holes, and did the journey in a shorter distance. So when he was bragging about the kessle run, he was saying I am that good of a pilot.
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