They way I always took it was that they just blockade the most common hyperspace lanes/routes in. The main routes, to where it's likely that ships wouldn't be able to come from another direction without a massive inconvenience.
You’re not wrong but those inconveniences can be death.
As I recall. Hyperspace, within the world of Star Wars itself, isn’t fully understood. Most people can travel it but they don’t grasp how exactly. So they follow the safe paths or hyperspace lanes to travel. Hyperspace isn’t just normal space but faster, it’s entering a pocket dimension, another realm, where things within it don’t align properly with things in the real world.
To simplify it. It’s like a highway for cars to a primitive society after an apocalyptic event has lost all knowledge of how to build them. So people travel on the highways between cities but are afraid to venture off them because it’s not safe. Yes going through the forest dirt path might be faster but it’s uncharted.
I'd explain it being like traveling the sea prior to extensive mapping of the ocean. And places like the Bermuda triangle exist, and are quite prevalent.
You can try taking other paths. A straight shot might be even quicker (hello Kessel run). But requires so many more hops to avoid hidden reefs/unexplored phenoms and the slightest error in calculation will end up with your ship torn apart in some unknown area of space.
My favorite headcanon is that ships' sensors feed data to internal surround-sound speaker systems that create engine noise and laser blast sounds appropriate to the type of ships flying past, and their directions and vectors, to aid in situational awareness!
This doesn't explain the sounds when the viewpoint is in deep space, though. 😓
I believe that's actually Legends canon. I recall passages in the X-Wing novels about how the computers on their craft are taking in the information of what's happening around them and creating audible alerts based on the situation. A TIE passes by, the cockpit plays a TIE engine roughly in the fighter's direction. It explodes and the cockpit plays an explosion sound.
As I understand it’s not that your ship will be torn apart, but that if you’re not following the lanes you could be aiming at a planet or other space body and smash into it at light speed.
Also gravitational pull of planets, stars, nebulas, and presumably black holes. My understanding of the hyperspace lanes was pretty much straight/straightish lines that avoid the major gravitational forces of bodies in space so you actually get where you're going and don't get slingshot way off course.
You should check out the first half of the book "light of the Republic". It's the first high Republic book... It's basically about your comment.
First half was cool. It got boring though
Also there are markers/machines that keep the lanes open and clear. This means that if you veer off course in hyperspace you could hit something in the dimension and be lost. (Don’t remember how that works just remember someone saying it could happen.)
That's why Han Solo brags he made the Kessel run in parsecs ( a unit of length). He (or his ship rather) was able to calculate the shortest route through the Kessel run using the least number of jumps.
Also, the Hyperspace lanes shift and move over time. It's why Tattooine went from "literal nowhere" to "Nowhere, but five minutes from everywhere you want to go."
Not even that their are also wreaks that floated out into open space that sometimes get pulled into the pocket dimension that is light speed and if you veer off safe paths you could hit one.
The SW universe is massive. I assume there will be plenty of detectors in the entire system when they put up a planetary blockade just to avoid this. You could drop out of hyperspace before the system starts, but even at that point, you'd have to avoid detection and 'sneak' towards a planet. Which could take weeks considering how vast a system is.
So the only reasonable way to do so, it using hyperspeed lanes.
I remember reading something a long time ago online where someone was trying to explain the size of the Star Wars universe and how it would be about a quarter the size of the Milky Way because of how quickly you could travel around the galaxy and that a government the size of the Republic/Empire can exert so much influence on large sections of the galaxy with just millions of soldiers and thousands of capital ships.
Well to be fair, not every planet is fully populated like earth.
Some places, like Tatooine have only 200,000 people population in the entire planet. Only some planets have massive populations, like Coruscant.
And there are planets own defence forces, so Republic and Empire don't not need to directly come to every planet unless there is spesific need to.
(However Star Wars is bad with numbers, so there is that too).
In this context an inconvenience wouldn’t be something like just dropping out of hyperspace far away from the planet, it would be more like crashing into space debris while in hyperspace or crashing into the planet and getting obliterated
It's more than just inconvenience. If you notice in various SW shows, when a ship gets too far out of the "lane" (the swirly tunnel thing in hyperspace), it starts blurring rainbows and then shoots out of hyperspace, often dangerously so. Ships are built to automatically eject from hyperspace when not in a lane, because its so dangerous its pretty much guaranteed suicide.
Around a planet, there are only certain jump points ships can safely use. Actual access points into a hyperspace lane. You can't go into hyperspace anywhere you desire because you risk dropping back into normal space inside a planet. You have to follow those pre-established routes.
Blockades only need to isolate the planet from those access areas. Blocking the entire space around it is not needed.
As critical as hyperspace is to Star Wars. The rules of it are pretty much not mentioned in the movies or shows. It’s no wonder people think it’s like Star Trek warp drive
It's pretty much mentioned directly in a new hope when they escape Tatooine in the MF. Han tells Luke that the hyperspace computer takes time. Its GPS auto-correcting to the best route to Alderaan.
Its also a spoken plot point in ESB when Ozzel pulls out of Hyperspace to Hoth and that alerts the Rebels that the Empire is closing in.
Neither of those suggest that they’re lanes though. They don’t paint the picture that it’s a highway, so much as a you are traveling through space at crazy speeds that you don’t want to hit something along the way.
I can also imagine that mapping hyperspace routes would be either very, very time consuming (using non-hyperdrive speed) or very expensive (possibly losing thousands+ of hyperdrive capable probes to objects in the way). The probes could also potentially harm human lives when they crash into a manned structure or ship and calculating safety of cyclical meteor showers and other space phenomena for multiple parsecs would make it all the more difficult.
Pair that with the abundance of planets in the galaxy and I can understand why nobody would go to such lengths to have more hyperspace routes when there are already enough working ones they could use to get everywhere.
The high republic books deal a lot with mapping of the routes. The main villian has an advantage of having access to alternate lanes which gives him and his fleet a big upper hand in navigating hyperspace which creates some interesting situations. The first book starts with them putting an object in hyperspace which causes a ship to break apart and shotgun a bunch of settler pods through the galaxy that emerge and wreck into things.
The Old Republic also had the Great Hyperspace War, after some careless explorers opened a hyperlane to Korriban and the original Sith Empire used it to attack the Republic.
This kind of thing is also suggested as to why the Falcon is so capable. Yeah, it’s blisteringly fast for a freighter, but it’s not actually the physically fastest ship among things like hyperdrive-capable Xwings and other fighter craft. In Hyperdrive, it is significantly faster, but just maneuvering and sub-light speed? It is not. The key difference that the Falcon has is incredibly capable astronavigation and hyperdrive computers.
The whole suggestion of the fastest Kessel run is that Han managed to run a faster but more dangerous path through the Kessel Run - not that he was literally moving at a faster velocity than other attempts.
In the NJO series, when the republic has to investigate The Maw. It all comes down to navigation - not speed. A much slower ship that can calculate an alternate route may arrive much sooner than a faster ship taking known hyperdrive lanes.
That's why the Hyperspace explorers get paid so well when they do find a viable route . Trade corporations pay a ass load of credits for new routes to new systems or quicker routes to existing ones without having to waste tons on funding them their selves. I wish there was more of the comic books that dealt with this . I just own that one Dark Hourse Omnibus with the 2 explorers who get into the Sith Hyperspace war .
I’m sure there’s a LOT of computer calculations that goes into any sort of hyper jump including planets position around its sun/suns, gravity well size, traffic, regulations and such. I mean we have to assume their computers can account for every calculation with how expansive the star wars galaxy is.
They would also suggest that people will tend to arrive from specific directions.
Eg. if you can only get to planet A using routes from planets B and C, then you know folks will be coming from those directions. And we know that gravity wells interfere with hyperspace travel, so they can't just drop onto the other side.
So they can either drop right in front of the planet (at the carefully calculated point) or way off to the sides (plot your own point) which will still be in line-of-sight to the normal location. And then they need to fly down to the planet from that distant random point.
Meanwhile, the blockade only needs to do a quick partial orbit around the planet to get in their way. The distance they have to travel is (on the scale of space) very, very small compared to someone sneaking over from behind a moon or whatever.
It's also worth noting that *space moves*
Jumping at random, even on a path that has been clear before, doesn't mean you'll survive. There could be a comet, or a rogue planet, or an asteroid belt, or a black hole, etc etc that has moved temporarily into your path.
The lanes are probably variable to account for this and NEED computers to keep track of them.
Thats correct, objectively its all made up and we arent actually meant to put any thought into this process because its just a movie and a way to change location to advance the narrative.
However even without EU both canon and legends making their own 'explanations for lore' we can assume several things based on context clues from the movie itself.
1. The Rebels escaping Hoth could have flown in orbit around the planet and taken off in any direction, even being a few kilometers to the side and going straight past them would have worked, or even splitting their ships into different directions in low orbit and then all taking off around the Star Destroyer could have worked... but the movie needed stakes so they didnt do that, therefore we can assume logically that:
2. In order for ships to hyperspace jump to the 'rebel rendezvous coordinates' they needed to leave the planet on a specific trajectory or 'hyperlane' if you want to be specific. Which meant they had to get past the Star Destroyer which was placing itself between the jump point and the planets surface. Heck given the fact that Ozzel came out of Hyperspace along the path, both the Empire and the Rebels may even be using the same 'pathway' to get in and out of the planet so to speak.
3. Likewise, and against what I have stated above, on the Phantom Menace when they escape Naboo they 'have' to fly through the Blockade to escape. Later in the movie when they leave Coruscant to return, upon exiting hyperspace we see that they have hyperspaced in on the 'side' of the planet, essentially coming into Naboo from the '6 oclock' while the blockade is at '3 oclock', as we can see the blockade in the upper right hand corner of the planet, and the Queens shuttle flies right behind off to the side.
To achieve this one could randomly assume that they didnt fly on the same 'path' so one would assume they took a different 'route' through hyperspace and bypassed nearby sector or system to essentially do a curve around the blockade, otherwise if they had followed a direct route again they would have most likely popped out right into the blockade. After all they had to 'run' the blockade to get to Coruscant, which means that the Trade Federation was smart enough to set the blockade up on the 'road' that went between Coruscant and Naboo by ships computer systems.
Keep in mind none of what I have said above may be 'compatable' with canon or legends lore explanations, if you had never read or interacted with any star wars lore that is what the average person may think if they had only ever seen those movies.
I think, building off of this, one can assume a similarity with road blocks in our world.
Someone with no understanding of cars or roads might be similarly confused with how police roadblocks could be effective. "Why don't they just drive off-road?" Well, sometimes that can work... But it's much more complicated than it seems at first glance.
Pretty sure the rebels explain during the evacuation of Hoth that the ships need to reach the jump point.
They built that giant ion cannon exactly because they knew this would happen. They point out the ion cannon will hopefully stun the imperial ships just long enough for the rebels to run right past and jump from the jump point.
If they had picked any other direction, they'd just have a longer trip and the ion cannon cover would be insufficient.
In Episode 1 when they return to Naboo, the blockade doesn't exist anymore, cause it wasn't needed anymore, there is only one ship left, the droid control ship.
So, in the last episode of the bad batch, crosshairs ship drops out of hyperspace due to a mechanical failure, and they end up right at a planet. That’s not planned, so coming out right at a planet seems odd. Any thoughts?
The mapped hyperspace lanes are like highways to systems. You’re driving on a highway and your car breaks down. You’re already headed in the direction of a city. Chances are you’re not too far from a town.
I still think the odds are low though. Space is big lol
In fact, they do mention lanes in one sense. In Star Wars IV, when Han says that he did the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs, he is talking about a lane. A parsec is a unit of distance. The pirate's lair is located inside a deep gravity well with many black holes surrounding it. He navigates the falcon on the best lane that is calculated by the navicomputer to get to his destination.
To be fair, Lucas after the movie's original release confirmed the line was meant to be Han boasting and screwing up terms and not knowing what he said is nonsense. With the original script saying: "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation."
This has been retconned, like you explained though.
Even if that was the original intent, the retcon was still necessary. It's entirely on brand for Han to make stuff up on the fly as puffery, but the particular misinformed boast seems very out of character. Han isn't a scholar but he's not an idiot, and while I could see space travel becoming common place to the point that a lot of the specific details are lost for a lot of people, as a smuggler (and one of his alleged skill) would absolutely have to know what a parsec is, particularly as it's not even something he could delegate with a crew size of two. It's like being a trucker and not understanding that a "Mile" or "Kilometer" is a measurement of distance.
I also refer to the Lira San episode of SW Rebels. After Zeb "leads" the Ghost to Lira San, Hera mentions its no longer uncharted and they are now jump to Lira San and return any time as its charted. MY assumption is once a navicomputer knows the route it can chart a course and refine it because it knows where the issues are and it knows the safe location to revert back to.
I woke up and scrolled through some Reddit stumbled on this. My dumbass read MF as mother fucker. “When they escape tatooine in the mother fucker.”
I need coffeee…
Ahem - *Han shot first.*
He exited hyperspace inside the atmosphere of Starkiller base, bypassing its shields. Lanes, shmanes, and what even is a blockade at this point.
I've tried to forget those movies, but you're right, of course. Not that Star Wars has ever been a shining beacon of consistency, but I'd prefer it if they'd at least try to respect the old rules of their own fantasy universe. It's hard to believe in a universe with no rules.
Fair but the destinations that Po ends up at definitely have obstacles that defy how hyperspeed should work whereas at least Han stops just before an obstacle.
Legends lore (Idk about mickey mouse lore) is that the falcon isn't fast because of its engines. It's fast bc of a stolen military prototype hyperspace nav system that would shortcut traditional routes.
They had the fastest Kessel run because it flew closer to a black hole cluster than other freighters could navigate.
In your first example it's not explained at all beyond what essentially equals "hyperspace drive needs time to power up and plot the course," making no mention of needing to follow any kind of a "lane" and the second does the same on the exit side.
The movies really did a shit job explaining the fact that people in universe are following known travel routes that take multiple jump points vs just having their computer plot a straight line a-b jump like in any other Canon like ST.
Why would it need to calculate the route if it's just a lane? You go on it and just go straight. Basically it's either a lane or not depending on what the story needs at the moment
Every stellar body is constantly moving in relation to someone else. The computer likely needs to update the positions of everything between the start and the destination to make a safe trip. Lanes are effectively known regions of uncluttered space, "Go here and you're very unlikely to run into something". You can do blind jumps, it's just incredibly unsafe given how fast you're going and that sufficiently massive objects can pull you out.
Lanes on the map are supposed to be already calculated paths that consider stellar bodies moving, otherwise it's just the same as making the lane again if there's a risk of running into something.
The computer would still have to go through its charts to make a jump. It's likely much less memory intensive to have the map be an algorithm that predicts the galaxy's position rather than an actual still of every stellar body on a map. Known lanes are just points with a lot of known variables and thus calculations are easier and quicker.
I think in Han's case, he had a computer doing calculations to find safe jumps, because he wouldn't use the safe lanes, as he's a smuggler. But like Luke in his X- wing would just use the safe lanes to jump to Dagobah & Bespin, or have R2 figure something.
It's also because the rules are inconsistent and depend on where in the galaxy they are. For example in the thrawn prequel trilogy they just need to be outside of the gravity well in order to calculate a jump, but then again they are in the chaos and not "lesser space"
Wasn't that the entire point of either an arc of TCW or the movie?
That a hyperspace lane previously undiscovered from the outer rim to the inner core? Which is why they were trying to win the favor of the hutts so they could get exclusive access to the lanes over the separatists.
What I see explained almost nowhere is that the hyperactive is essentially a reality breaking and mending device that thrusts the ship into an alternate dimension where objects with massive mass still exist in a way but all other objects are ignored.
*It is* like warp drive in Star Trek. You can jump and revert anywhere you please. It just might not be safe to do so. The hyperspace lanes are just the pathways confirmed to be clear, and maybe a bit more efficient due to no newrby gravity wells dragging on drive systems. They're far from the only paths.
> It is like warp drive in Star Trek.
Technically not like Star Trek Warp Drive in that hyperspace is a different dimension while warp just manipulates the shape of spacetime.
Edit: Star Trek can also see where they're going during their FTL whereas Star wars ships are often blind till they leave hyperspace.
Yeah I think OT there’s just a small mention of the Millennium Falcon needing to do calculations first to avoid colliding with a sun. That’s about as deep as it gets.
Actually, worked fine for some of the EU. Planets were nowhere near large enough to be an issue, it was larger stars and other stellar phenomena that were an issue, in some books. The opening of the Correlia Crisis ^I ^think ^that ^was ^the ^name trilogy starts with a pilot making an emergency micro-jump while in orbit directly through the planet into orbit on the other side to evade suspected enemies. It was posed as a risky maneuver, but only because she was cutting the navi-computer's calculation time short. Of course, the whole dropping out directly into atmosphere could be an issue, they didn't get to relativistic speeds during the transition, but they were pretty damn fast.
That's because they balled them up and threw them in the trash in the sequels. Jumping into a planetary shield, hyperspace ram, random instant jumping in the last film.
This is why continuity people are important
Unless you're flying in the Millennium Falcon. Then you can drop in and out of hyperspace as you please. Until that one part where you "have" to follow the rules of hyperspace...then it's back to cruisin.
There was also that lightspeed skipping in RoS that had the MF and TIE fighter jumping in and out of urban areas. That whole scene felt like it was designed to be a rollercoaster ride.
Yeah I hated it. I was watching it like how the fuck is this supposed to be believable? Bouncing all over the galaxy with no issues? How did the the first order following know to pull out of hyperspace? Why didn't they just pancake into the first planet?
Worse than a single planet being able to watch the Starkiller shoot beams at targets in different systems as if they were all as close as the Earth to the moon?
I've never understood this, given that planets are not in fixed locations; they revolve around their star and rotate about their axis. Do hyperspace exit points move with them?
Star Wars doesn't go into it, but in other media they're kind of like Lagrange Points, where local fields overlap to make reliable access points.
So presumably yes.
Simpler version of this:
A whole tower has 4 sides but only one driveway. Block the driveway and the tower is cut off (fire escapes and delivery doors only allow small things to get through so rebels / Jedi / smugglers are also worked into this analogy)
I was coming here to argue this too! Good point.
But, playing devils advocate, couldn’t you just jump out of the lane far out from the planet, then circle all the way to the backside?
Han is Force sensitive, clearly. He shoots people without looking in TFA (intentionally), pulls out of hyperspace within atmo, even in ANH he gets the drop and surprises a Sith Lord while flying an old freighter ship. He calls it "luck" but Obi-wan tells him there's no such thing as luck. Han has the Force.
Believe it or not, you're not the first one to come up with this. He did have a slightly unnatural amount of luck on top of his piloting skills and unusually reliable intuition. There's a pretty good chance he had mild force sensitivity, but he never realized it because he didn't believe in all that hocus pocus.
My assumption has always been most of the named protagonists have a greater than average force connection. They are the ones the force chose to guide into the right places at the right time.
Except han straight up does it manually in TFA.
Breaking all previously established lore regarding hyperspace.
He, and the falcon, should be a smear on starkiller base.
I’d also just like to add that you don’t even need ships blocking the entirety of the planets side closest to the hyperspace jump point.
You just need enough overlapping fields of fire to cover any possible entry points to make it a death trap.
Couldn’t you just drop out of hyperspace slightly sooner, spend an hour taking a round about way outside of range of their sensors? Get to the planet from another angle.
Travelling through hyperspace in Star Wars isn’t just going really fast wherever you want. You need to travel in predetermined ‘lanes’ within space to go from point a to point b. These lanes are clear of any planets or stars or other high gravity area that would restrict hyperspace.
In Star Wars, you can’t be in hyperspace when under too much gravitational pull. Too close to a star or planet and you can’t jump. If you get too close while in hyperspace, you get ripped out of it. That’s how Interdiction cruisers work, the project a gravity well to stop ships from going into hyperspace.
For the blockades, every planet in Star Wars that we see is accessible by a hyper route. Think of it like a road. These roads end at a very specific point that blockades just sit at the end of. So whatever ship coming and going to the planet has to pass through the blockade.
Some planets have multiple hyperlanes leading to the planet, that require more ships to blockade. These planets are usually in the core where multiple hyperlanes pass through these planets and make them rich because they are hubs and trade destinations.
This all makes sense but why couldn’t they just leave hyperspace a little early, take a wide path around the blockade and come in from the back? I think Thrawn does a lot of things like that in the books.
They can, but the enemy is going to see all of it. If it’s a small ship, then they will deploy fighters. If it’s a larger force then they will move to intercept. If you don’t deal with the ships that are blocking the planet, then they will just come in behind you and attack.
Blockade ships are usually fleet carriers and deploy fighter craft to intercept. They can detect ships leaving hyperspace or flying around the planet and intercept them.
that’s why Blockade Runners are these heavily armored and fast cruisers designed to beat the interceptors and survive long enough to make it to hyperspace lanes.
The sequels also made it possible to pass a lightsaber through space to another person and Leia can superman in the vacuum of space - they should be disregarded and not acknowledged as canon
So, in The Force Awakens, was Han driving on a predetermined lane when they travelled to Starkiller base? They came out of hyperspace in the planets atmosphere right? So the the predetermined lane went through the planet?
The High republic books explain this a lot with the "paths" the Nihil use to traverse. They are the only ones that can basically make up their own hyper space lanes.
You know it occurs to me with all this discussion, that pirates that got ahold of an imperial interdictor ship could wreck a lot of havoc by sitting near a hyperspace lane and pulling traffic into real space…
Can you imagine being a space pirate with an easy af job, just sit there with a stolen interdictor just snatching ships out of hyperspace and attacking while the guys in the other ship are wondering what the hell is going on. And then all of a sudden on a regular day you pull a ship out of hyperspace and its the Executor
The hyperspace corridor is where the ships are. If a ship takes off from the other side of the planet it has to go where the hyperspace route is so it would run into the blockade.
Although there’s lots of explanations added into canon now (hyperspace lanes etc) I just figured that they did them in the movies because all the battles were based on WW2 flicks. WW2 had naval blockades, so SW has space blockades.
Naval blockades have a similar sort of thing going on though. If America is blockading Japan or Britain is blockading Germany, they are not ringing every mile of shoreline with a ship; that's infeasible for a number of reasons you can probably imagine easily. Most of the shore doesn't have a ship anywhere near it; a blockade is not trying to physically fence off the country in real life either.
Rather, they are deploying squadrons of ships in key locations: along chokepoints in shipping lanes such as straits or shallow reefs, patrolling the approaches to industrial harbours, near refueling stations that might be used by ships on approach etc, all with frequent reconnaissance missions to find and intercept ships that might be trying to sneak past the cordon.
In the old canon ships had to leave a planet to get clear of a gravity well and then jump from a point to another point in space, carefully calculated to miss any gravity wells between the two points. So you place the blockade where you know any ships traveling have to enter and exit hyperspace.
In new canon, they make zero sense since you can jump directly from inside an planet’s atmosphere in to a planet’s atmosphere and bypass space entirely.
It's not possible though it's stated many time planets gravitation pull you out of hyperspace and don't allow you to hyperjump unless you get far enough away.
Old canon, it was impossible because the gravity well would pull you out of hyperspace.
New canon, it is easy enough that an entire group of common TIE pilots can do it jumping from one planet to another without ever leaving atmosphere and following a cargo ship.
It’s vaguely a thing about hyperspace lanes. You can only enter and exit the highway at certain points or possibly it’s a line and you can exit anywhere on that line, so you only need to have guns pointing towards a few points or maybe just one.
Hyperspace in Star Wars is like when you are a passenger in a video game and given the skip prompt. You can skip the drive, but the route you take is already established.
Blockades in real life rarely completely cut off the intended target either. But having a bunch of war ships/vehicles in an area that can move to intercept anything trying to get through still cause an impact.
Hyperspace lanes are actual “physical” lanes that have a beginning and an end. The blockades are set at the end of those lanes
Take our highways for example. But a blockade on a highway and you’re going to be screwed. It works just like that in Star Wars, only we can’t see the highways. But they’re there
Blockades are not 100%, even in real life. In actual function, the blockadeing ships would be deployed around the planet. When something exits hyperspace, they- or more likely fighters or shuttles- would move to intercept, or engage at long range with weapons. Smugglers and blockade runners would use high speed (either at sublight, or jumping in dangerously close to the planet) and stealth to get past the guards and lose them among planetary terrain. This is why smugglers would use small ships like the Falcon.
In shows and movies, the blockade ships are bunched up so the audience can see them. If done realistically, people would complain about 'you can't blockade a whole planet with one ship or a couple of fighters'. You just have to remind yourself it's a TV show/movie, and some parts shouldn't be taken as seriously as they're presented.
Also, people have mentioned hyperspace lanes, but these aren't entey/exit points for hyperspace. They're just the best charted and safest paths for regular traffic to use, like channels in harbors and rivers so ships don't run aground. The only limit to where you can jump in or out is your proximity to a gravity well, and IMO how big a ship you have.
Think of it as blocking the highway into town. Sure, there may be some other little paths or dirt tracks in and out, but by and large most of the traffic uses the highway.
Hyperspace lanes are the safest ways to enter a system from long distance the way a warship would, so they block all the lanes and so block access to the planet, any ship that enters the system will enter near them. You can do hyperspace jumps in any location in current canon, but it’s super super risky and you can’t exactly jump a short distance, even micro-jumps take ships huge distances
People drive cars, they can only drive on roads. Driving off-road is insanely dangerous, so there's no point in having roadblocks anywhere else than, well, roads. Not a 100% proper analogy but hopefully that gives you the gist of it
It's the same as an shipping blockade in real life, except the ocean is a bit bigger and goes up and down.
Yes I am aware that 'up' and 'down' don't exist in space
Star wars is less sci and more fantasy. The planets don't really move like we know them too irl. Planets and space are always on a single plane too so you .
Hyperspace routes are the places in space that have been certified clear of stuff in space by explorers and they lead to different planets.
Think of hyperspace like a high way system. Blockades only blockade the off ramps but if the off ramp carried like 99% of your towns out bound or in bound traffic. You could go around but it might take uo too much fuel or might be too risky to calculate the hyperspace jump.
So in legends/prequels/etc. there are things called hyperspace shoals. Those were the only places you could safely exist hyperspace near a planet so blockading them would stop most traffic.
For example, the queen of Naboo's ship needed to get to the shoal in order to hyperspace out and ran the blockade during the trade federation blockade. If she could hyperspace anywhere, she clearly would have avoided that.
So if you blockade the volume of space between the shoal and the planet, you should be able to intercept everything relatively easily assuming you have the ability to intercept anything running past you, and Star Destroyers have fighters.
Now, there were some advances in hyperspace technology post empire that have radically changed that, but not every ship has that sort of drive.
The galaxy has set hyperspace routes that ships travel on, because going into hyperspace randomly is incredibly dangerous. So every ship coming into a planet's orbit would be doing so from a set location. Alternatively, to enter hyperspace, the ships would need to fly to that location as well.
It is not explained very well in any of the movies/shows but the way hyperspace works is basically the way it works in stellaris there are specific entrances and exits in every system so the blockades just guard the entrance that is on the side the enemies are coming from
I imagine they wrap around the planet, and that they have sensors that would alarm them if a ship came out of hyperspace above or below them, and they could pretty easily move to intercept.
But yea, doesn’t look how I would do it haha. I thought of this first with the Naboo embargo in TPM.
Long story short shipping lanes. Warps speed needs to be calculated so they don’t hit palnets stars ect. Blockade’s block the access entry points of these lanes
Because in star wars there is something known as hyper space lanes which is what ships use to travel in hyperspace safely as any other way,they could collide with debris,and so fleets only set up blockades at hyperspace lanes
Imagine hyperspace like driving routes and outside of them are covered in supernovae, blackholes and other fun things to die for. Over the millennia and beyond, Peoples find save hyperspace routes through the galaxy. If you jump to Hyperspace, the board computer measure the distance, the possibility and the destinations. It makes sure, that one jump wouldn't end up crashing against the next meteor or sun, if you try to move up or below. It is easier for the blockade to block two sides instead of all over the place, because they know, only dumb peoples try to jump elsewhere with the risk of being killed.
There is some exception though. Like Kashyyyk or Mon Cala, they have some secret hyperspace routes, that pass fleets beyond the known hyperspace routes or palpatines secret route, that send the KUS to Corusant
Because that's where the Hyperspace lane is. When in hyperspace gravity can pull you out of hyperspace and you can hit the "shadows" of objects in real space which will mess up your ship (and not the actual object projecting the shadow to my knowledge). This means people only travel on pre-plotted hyperspace lanes, if you know where all the hyper space routes are around a planet then you know all the points ships will emerge from, and for most planets they only have 2, one to go one direction and one to go the other direction to form a trade route.
Think of it like a freeway. If you wanted to block all travel from a freeway into a small town you wouldn't need to surround the entire town, you'd just need to block the offramp
They way I always took it was that they just blockade the most common hyperspace lanes/routes in. The main routes, to where it's likely that ships wouldn't be able to come from another direction without a massive inconvenience.
I mean, if you're trying to smuggle or ambush, maybe it would be worth the inconvenience.
You’re not wrong but those inconveniences can be death. As I recall. Hyperspace, within the world of Star Wars itself, isn’t fully understood. Most people can travel it but they don’t grasp how exactly. So they follow the safe paths or hyperspace lanes to travel. Hyperspace isn’t just normal space but faster, it’s entering a pocket dimension, another realm, where things within it don’t align properly with things in the real world. To simplify it. It’s like a highway for cars to a primitive society after an apocalyptic event has lost all knowledge of how to build them. So people travel on the highways between cities but are afraid to venture off them because it’s not safe. Yes going through the forest dirt path might be faster but it’s uncharted.
I'd explain it being like traveling the sea prior to extensive mapping of the ocean. And places like the Bermuda triangle exist, and are quite prevalent. You can try taking other paths. A straight shot might be even quicker (hello Kessel run). But requires so many more hops to avoid hidden reefs/unexplored phenoms and the slightest error in calculation will end up with your ship torn apart in some unknown area of space.
A ship getting torn up in space?? What do you think this galaxy has? Physics?
Well, you can hear spaceships, so... Sortanotreallybutmaybeyesno?
My favorite headcanon is that ships' sensors feed data to internal surround-sound speaker systems that create engine noise and laser blast sounds appropriate to the type of ships flying past, and their directions and vectors, to aid in situational awareness! This doesn't explain the sounds when the viewpoint is in deep space, though. 😓
I believe that's actually Legends canon. I recall passages in the X-Wing novels about how the computers on their craft are taking in the information of what's happening around them and creating audible alerts based on the situation. A TIE passes by, the cockpit plays a TIE engine roughly in the fighter's direction. It explodes and the cockpit plays an explosion sound.
As I understand it’s not that your ship will be torn apart, but that if you’re not following the lanes you could be aiming at a planet or other space body and smash into it at light speed.
Also gravitational pull of planets, stars, nebulas, and presumably black holes. My understanding of the hyperspace lanes was pretty much straight/straightish lines that avoid the major gravitational forces of bodies in space so you actually get where you're going and don't get slingshot way off course.
You should check out the first half of the book "light of the Republic". It's the first high Republic book... It's basically about your comment. First half was cool. It got boring though
First half was excellent but I’ve also had trouble finishing it. Glad it wasn’t just me.
It just went from a full send insane roller coaster to just... Nothing happening and world building?
Also there are markers/machines that keep the lanes open and clear. This means that if you veer off course in hyperspace you could hit something in the dimension and be lost. (Don’t remember how that works just remember someone saying it could happen.)
I think you’re referring to Hera talking about Purgle wandering into hyperspace lanes, causing ships to crash into them. I could be wrong though.
Ah, forgot she said that lol. Pretty sure it was from a YouTube vid about space lanes by eckheartsladder though.
That's why Han Solo brags he made the Kessel run in parsecs ( a unit of length). He (or his ship rather) was able to calculate the shortest route through the Kessel run using the least number of jumps.
Also, the Hyperspace lanes shift and move over time. It's why Tattooine went from "literal nowhere" to "Nowhere, but five minutes from everywhere you want to go."
I would love a short series about a freighter that gets stuck stationary while in hyperspace.
And to follow up, there is a lot of NASTY shit floating around in the star wars galaxy. From Spacer pirates to star weirds, it's just not worth it.
Not even that their are also wreaks that floated out into open space that sometimes get pulled into the pocket dimension that is light speed and if you veer off safe paths you could hit one.
“Hyperspace ain’t like Dustin’ crops boy…”
For real. Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops.
The SW universe is massive. I assume there will be plenty of detectors in the entire system when they put up a planetary blockade just to avoid this. You could drop out of hyperspace before the system starts, but even at that point, you'd have to avoid detection and 'sneak' towards a planet. Which could take weeks considering how vast a system is. So the only reasonable way to do so, it using hyperspeed lanes.
I remember reading something a long time ago online where someone was trying to explain the size of the Star Wars universe and how it would be about a quarter the size of the Milky Way because of how quickly you could travel around the galaxy and that a government the size of the Republic/Empire can exert so much influence on large sections of the galaxy with just millions of soldiers and thousands of capital ships.
I haven't seen that, but its plausible. Dwarf galaxies are very much a thing.
Well to be fair, not every planet is fully populated like earth. Some places, like Tatooine have only 200,000 people population in the entire planet. Only some planets have massive populations, like Coruscant. And there are planets own defence forces, so Republic and Empire don't not need to directly come to every planet unless there is spesific need to. (However Star Wars is bad with numbers, so there is that too).
In this context an inconvenience wouldn’t be something like just dropping out of hyperspace far away from the planet, it would be more like crashing into space debris while in hyperspace or crashing into the planet and getting obliterated
Ah yes, a crash in Hyperspace, the events of Light of the Jedi cover that well.
It's more than just inconvenience. If you notice in various SW shows, when a ship gets too far out of the "lane" (the swirly tunnel thing in hyperspace), it starts blurring rainbows and then shoots out of hyperspace, often dangerously so. Ships are built to automatically eject from hyperspace when not in a lane, because its so dangerous its pretty much guaranteed suicide.
And most of the work of blockading is done by the fighter ships anyway.
Around a planet, there are only certain jump points ships can safely use. Actual access points into a hyperspace lane. You can't go into hyperspace anywhere you desire because you risk dropping back into normal space inside a planet. You have to follow those pre-established routes. Blockades only need to isolate the planet from those access areas. Blocking the entire space around it is not needed.
As critical as hyperspace is to Star Wars. The rules of it are pretty much not mentioned in the movies or shows. It’s no wonder people think it’s like Star Trek warp drive
It's pretty much mentioned directly in a new hope when they escape Tatooine in the MF. Han tells Luke that the hyperspace computer takes time. Its GPS auto-correcting to the best route to Alderaan. Its also a spoken plot point in ESB when Ozzel pulls out of Hyperspace to Hoth and that alerts the Rebels that the Empire is closing in.
Neither of those suggest that they’re lanes though. They don’t paint the picture that it’s a highway, so much as a you are traveling through space at crazy speeds that you don’t want to hit something along the way.
Yup. The "lanes" are just pre-mapped, safe routes that tens to drop you into pretty predictable spots outside a planets gravity well.
I can also imagine that mapping hyperspace routes would be either very, very time consuming (using non-hyperdrive speed) or very expensive (possibly losing thousands+ of hyperdrive capable probes to objects in the way). The probes could also potentially harm human lives when they crash into a manned structure or ship and calculating safety of cyclical meteor showers and other space phenomena for multiple parsecs would make it all the more difficult. Pair that with the abundance of planets in the galaxy and I can understand why nobody would go to such lengths to have more hyperspace routes when there are already enough working ones they could use to get everywhere.
The high republic books deal a lot with mapping of the routes. The main villian has an advantage of having access to alternate lanes which gives him and his fleet a big upper hand in navigating hyperspace which creates some interesting situations. The first book starts with them putting an object in hyperspace which causes a ship to break apart and shotgun a bunch of settler pods through the galaxy that emerge and wreck into things.
The Old Republic also had the Great Hyperspace War, after some careless explorers opened a hyperlane to Korriban and the original Sith Empire used it to attack the Republic.
I love that series! The Korriban Sith are lovable antagonists.
This kind of thing is also suggested as to why the Falcon is so capable. Yeah, it’s blisteringly fast for a freighter, but it’s not actually the physically fastest ship among things like hyperdrive-capable Xwings and other fighter craft. In Hyperdrive, it is significantly faster, but just maneuvering and sub-light speed? It is not. The key difference that the Falcon has is incredibly capable astronavigation and hyperdrive computers. The whole suggestion of the fastest Kessel run is that Han managed to run a faster but more dangerous path through the Kessel Run - not that he was literally moving at a faster velocity than other attempts. In the NJO series, when the republic has to investigate The Maw. It all comes down to navigation - not speed. A much slower ship that can calculate an alternate route may arrive much sooner than a faster ship taking known hyperdrive lanes.
That's why the Hyperspace explorers get paid so well when they do find a viable route . Trade corporations pay a ass load of credits for new routes to new systems or quicker routes to existing ones without having to waste tons on funding them their selves. I wish there was more of the comic books that dealt with this . I just own that one Dark Hourse Omnibus with the 2 explorers who get into the Sith Hyperspace war .
Also planets rotation around it's sun etc, they seem pretty stationary in star wars
I’m sure there’s a LOT of computer calculations that goes into any sort of hyper jump including planets position around its sun/suns, gravity well size, traffic, regulations and such. I mean we have to assume their computers can account for every calculation with how expansive the star wars galaxy is.
Very cool how the bulky, 70s retro futuristic looking Star wars tech still is a lot more capable than much of today's technology :D
They would also suggest that people will tend to arrive from specific directions. Eg. if you can only get to planet A using routes from planets B and C, then you know folks will be coming from those directions. And we know that gravity wells interfere with hyperspace travel, so they can't just drop onto the other side. So they can either drop right in front of the planet (at the carefully calculated point) or way off to the sides (plot your own point) which will still be in line-of-sight to the normal location. And then they need to fly down to the planet from that distant random point. Meanwhile, the blockade only needs to do a quick partial orbit around the planet to get in their way. The distance they have to travel is (on the scale of space) very, very small compared to someone sneaking over from behind a moon or whatever.
It's also worth noting that *space moves* Jumping at random, even on a path that has been clear before, doesn't mean you'll survive. There could be a comet, or a rogue planet, or an asteroid belt, or a black hole, etc etc that has moved temporarily into your path. The lanes are probably variable to account for this and NEED computers to keep track of them.
Thats correct, objectively its all made up and we arent actually meant to put any thought into this process because its just a movie and a way to change location to advance the narrative. However even without EU both canon and legends making their own 'explanations for lore' we can assume several things based on context clues from the movie itself. 1. The Rebels escaping Hoth could have flown in orbit around the planet and taken off in any direction, even being a few kilometers to the side and going straight past them would have worked, or even splitting their ships into different directions in low orbit and then all taking off around the Star Destroyer could have worked... but the movie needed stakes so they didnt do that, therefore we can assume logically that: 2. In order for ships to hyperspace jump to the 'rebel rendezvous coordinates' they needed to leave the planet on a specific trajectory or 'hyperlane' if you want to be specific. Which meant they had to get past the Star Destroyer which was placing itself between the jump point and the planets surface. Heck given the fact that Ozzel came out of Hyperspace along the path, both the Empire and the Rebels may even be using the same 'pathway' to get in and out of the planet so to speak. 3. Likewise, and against what I have stated above, on the Phantom Menace when they escape Naboo they 'have' to fly through the Blockade to escape. Later in the movie when they leave Coruscant to return, upon exiting hyperspace we see that they have hyperspaced in on the 'side' of the planet, essentially coming into Naboo from the '6 oclock' while the blockade is at '3 oclock', as we can see the blockade in the upper right hand corner of the planet, and the Queens shuttle flies right behind off to the side. To achieve this one could randomly assume that they didnt fly on the same 'path' so one would assume they took a different 'route' through hyperspace and bypassed nearby sector or system to essentially do a curve around the blockade, otherwise if they had followed a direct route again they would have most likely popped out right into the blockade. After all they had to 'run' the blockade to get to Coruscant, which means that the Trade Federation was smart enough to set the blockade up on the 'road' that went between Coruscant and Naboo by ships computer systems. Keep in mind none of what I have said above may be 'compatable' with canon or legends lore explanations, if you had never read or interacted with any star wars lore that is what the average person may think if they had only ever seen those movies.
I think, building off of this, one can assume a similarity with road blocks in our world. Someone with no understanding of cars or roads might be similarly confused with how police roadblocks could be effective. "Why don't they just drive off-road?" Well, sometimes that can work... But it's much more complicated than it seems at first glance.
Hyperspace travel do kind of be like off-roading with the windows blacked out using maps alone.
Pretty sure the rebels explain during the evacuation of Hoth that the ships need to reach the jump point. They built that giant ion cannon exactly because they knew this would happen. They point out the ion cannon will hopefully stun the imperial ships just long enough for the rebels to run right past and jump from the jump point. If they had picked any other direction, they'd just have a longer trip and the ion cannon cover would be insufficient.
In Episode 1 when they return to Naboo, the blockade doesn't exist anymore, cause it wasn't needed anymore, there is only one ship left, the droid control ship.
Sorry what do you mean it's all made up ?? This happened many years ago so I thought it was history ??
So, in the last episode of the bad batch, crosshairs ship drops out of hyperspace due to a mechanical failure, and they end up right at a planet. That’s not planned, so coming out right at a planet seems odd. Any thoughts?
In old lore, planets and other celestial body will pull ship out of the hyperspace because they create a anomaly between real space and hyperspace
This could track with a failing hyperdrive, the slight (but not catastrophic) mass shadow could stall an engine that’s already on its way out
The mapped hyperspace lanes are like highways to systems. You’re driving on a highway and your car breaks down. You’re already headed in the direction of a city. Chances are you’re not too far from a town. I still think the odds are low though. Space is big lol
In fact, they do mention lanes in one sense. In Star Wars IV, when Han says that he did the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs, he is talking about a lane. A parsec is a unit of distance. The pirate's lair is located inside a deep gravity well with many black holes surrounding it. He navigates the falcon on the best lane that is calculated by the navicomputer to get to his destination.
To be fair, Lucas after the movie's original release confirmed the line was meant to be Han boasting and screwing up terms and not knowing what he said is nonsense. With the original script saying: "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation." This has been retconned, like you explained though.
Even if that was the original intent, the retcon was still necessary. It's entirely on brand for Han to make stuff up on the fly as puffery, but the particular misinformed boast seems very out of character. Han isn't a scholar but he's not an idiot, and while I could see space travel becoming common place to the point that a lot of the specific details are lost for a lot of people, as a smuggler (and one of his alleged skill) would absolutely have to know what a parsec is, particularly as it's not even something he could delegate with a crew size of two. It's like being a trucker and not understanding that a "Mile" or "Kilometer" is a measurement of distance.
There’s the whole arc in CW about how the separatist get access to the secret hypserpsace lane that lets the appear on coruscant
I also refer to the Lira San episode of SW Rebels. After Zeb "leads" the Ghost to Lira San, Hera mentions its no longer uncharted and they are now jump to Lira San and return any time as its charted. MY assumption is once a navicomputer knows the route it can chart a course and refine it because it knows where the issues are and it knows the safe location to revert back to.
I woke up and scrolled through some Reddit stumbled on this. My dumbass read MF as mother fucker. “When they escape tatooine in the mother fucker.” I need coffeee…
Actually it's mf MF, the motherfucking Millennium Falcon
Whose they? And What aluminium falcon
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought my Dark Lord of the Sith could protect a small thermal exhaust port that's only two meters wide!
*That thing wasn't even paid for yet!*
Since when did Windu own it?
Also indirect mention about calculations in rogue one when leaving jedha. Nice touch for respecting lore
And then Po goes and hyper space skips breaking all logic.
Ahem - *Han shot first.* He exited hyperspace inside the atmosphere of Starkiller base, bypassing its shields. Lanes, shmanes, and what even is a blockade at this point.
I've tried to forget those movies, but you're right, of course. Not that Star Wars has ever been a shining beacon of consistency, but I'd prefer it if they'd at least try to respect the old rules of their own fantasy universe. It's hard to believe in a universe with no rules.
Fair but the destinations that Po ends up at definitely have obstacles that defy how hyperspeed should work whereas at least Han stops just before an obstacle.
Legends lore (Idk about mickey mouse lore) is that the falcon isn't fast because of its engines. It's fast bc of a stolen military prototype hyperspace nav system that would shortcut traditional routes. They had the fastest Kessel run because it flew closer to a black hole cluster than other freighters could navigate.
Mickey Mouse doesn't pilot space ships, he pilots steam boats
In your first example it's not explained at all beyond what essentially equals "hyperspace drive needs time to power up and plot the course," making no mention of needing to follow any kind of a "lane" and the second does the same on the exit side. The movies really did a shit job explaining the fact that people in universe are following known travel routes that take multiple jump points vs just having their computer plot a straight line a-b jump like in any other Canon like ST.
Why would it need to calculate the route if it's just a lane? You go on it and just go straight. Basically it's either a lane or not depending on what the story needs at the moment
Does your GPS not need a moment to calculate the fastest route to your destination?
Every stellar body is constantly moving in relation to someone else. The computer likely needs to update the positions of everything between the start and the destination to make a safe trip. Lanes are effectively known regions of uncluttered space, "Go here and you're very unlikely to run into something". You can do blind jumps, it's just incredibly unsafe given how fast you're going and that sufficiently massive objects can pull you out.
Lanes on the map are supposed to be already calculated paths that consider stellar bodies moving, otherwise it's just the same as making the lane again if there's a risk of running into something.
The computer would still have to go through its charts to make a jump. It's likely much less memory intensive to have the map be an algorithm that predicts the galaxy's position rather than an actual still of every stellar body on a map. Known lanes are just points with a lot of known variables and thus calculations are easier and quicker.
I think in Han's case, he had a computer doing calculations to find safe jumps, because he wouldn't use the safe lanes, as he's a smuggler. But like Luke in his X- wing would just use the safe lanes to jump to Dagobah & Bespin, or have R2 figure something.
It's also because the rules are inconsistent and depend on where in the galaxy they are. For example in the thrawn prequel trilogy they just need to be outside of the gravity well in order to calculate a jump, but then again they are in the chaos and not "lesser space"
Wasn't that the entire point of either an arc of TCW or the movie? That a hyperspace lane previously undiscovered from the outer rim to the inner core? Which is why they were trying to win the favor of the hutts so they could get exclusive access to the lanes over the separatists. What I see explained almost nowhere is that the hyperactive is essentially a reality breaking and mending device that thrusts the ship into an alternate dimension where objects with massive mass still exist in a way but all other objects are ignored.
*It is* like warp drive in Star Trek. You can jump and revert anywhere you please. It just might not be safe to do so. The hyperspace lanes are just the pathways confirmed to be clear, and maybe a bit more efficient due to no newrby gravity wells dragging on drive systems. They're far from the only paths.
> It is like warp drive in Star Trek. Technically not like Star Trek Warp Drive in that hyperspace is a different dimension while warp just manipulates the shape of spacetime. Edit: Star Trek can also see where they're going during their FTL whereas Star wars ships are often blind till they leave hyperspace.
Yeah I think OT there’s just a small mention of the Millennium Falcon needing to do calculations first to avoid colliding with a sun. That’s about as deep as it gets.
Probably because it’d be mostly pretty boring to go into the mechanics of things that few viewers concern themselves with.
You just insulted every single trekkie.
Don't forget movie 9 where ???
That really pissed me off as it absolutely breaks every established rule about Hyperspace Jump Engines from the SW Universe.
Actually, worked fine for some of the EU. Planets were nowhere near large enough to be an issue, it was larger stars and other stellar phenomena that were an issue, in some books. The opening of the Correlia Crisis ^I ^think ^that ^was ^the ^name trilogy starts with a pilot making an emergency micro-jump while in orbit directly through the planet into orbit on the other side to evade suspected enemies. It was posed as a risky maneuver, but only because she was cutting the navi-computer's calculation time short. Of course, the whole dropping out directly into atmosphere could be an issue, they didn't get to relativistic speeds during the transition, but they were pretty damn fast.
bUt iF iT WaS tHAt eAsY EVeRyoNe wOUld dO iT /s
Lightspeed skipping really helped with this.
Also, it seemed like the latest trilogy broke all of the rules I thought I knew (from mostly now non-canonical legends books).
That's because they balled them up and threw them in the trash in the sequels. Jumping into a planetary shield, hyperspace ram, random instant jumping in the last film. This is why continuity people are important
Except in Last Jedi, where the Falcon jumps to the fleet, ejects Rey, and then jumps away again.
So it's like the interstate?
Yes, and this is how I'm going to summarize this from now on.
You can thank Chancellor Eisenhower for the intergalactic interstate system
Underrated comment, hahahaha
Unless you're flying in the Millennium Falcon. Then you can drop in and out of hyperspace as you please. Until that one part where you "have" to follow the rules of hyperspace...then it's back to cruisin.
Remember when they said it was suuuuper dangerous, and then suddenly everyone was doing it? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Definitely not like dusting crops
Oh i member
If you mean the stunt in TFA, they already said in the movie the manoeuvre wasn't safe and could end in disaster.
There was also that lightspeed skipping in RoS that had the MF and TIE fighter jumping in and out of urban areas. That whole scene felt like it was designed to be a rollercoaster ride.
The lightspeed skipping scene might be the most egregious in the entire sequel trilogy.
Yeah I hated it. I was watching it like how the fuck is this supposed to be believable? Bouncing all over the galaxy with no issues? How did the the first order following know to pull out of hyperspace? Why didn't they just pancake into the first planet?
Worse than a single planet being able to watch the Starkiller shoot beams at targets in different systems as if they were all as close as the Earth to the moon?
Oh well, then, I guess it's ok
That only happened on a fanfic.
Fanfic is written by fans. That was a foefic.
Touché
I've never understood this, given that planets are not in fixed locations; they revolve around their star and rotate about their axis. Do hyperspace exit points move with them?
Star Wars doesn't go into it, but in other media they're kind of like Lagrange Points, where local fields overlap to make reliable access points. So presumably yes.
Never thought this nice
Not to mention stars revolve around the galaxy at staggering speeds.
Simpler version of this: A whole tower has 4 sides but only one driveway. Block the driveway and the tower is cut off (fire escapes and delivery doors only allow small things to get through so rebels / Jedi / smugglers are also worked into this analogy)
I was coming here to argue this too! Good point. But, playing devils advocate, couldn’t you just jump out of the lane far out from the planet, then circle all the way to the backside?
Presumably yes, but that trip would take a more time, and they might detect you and intercept you before you reach the planet
Thr Force Awakens completely does away with that though. Having Han drop out of hyperspace *meters* above a planet and using human reflexes to do so.
Han is Force sensitive, clearly. He shoots people without looking in TFA (intentionally), pulls out of hyperspace within atmo, even in ANH he gets the drop and surprises a Sith Lord while flying an old freighter ship. He calls it "luck" but Obi-wan tells him there's no such thing as luck. Han has the Force.
Believe it or not, you're not the first one to come up with this. He did have a slightly unnatural amount of luck on top of his piloting skills and unusually reliable intuition. There's a pretty good chance he had mild force sensitivity, but he never realized it because he didn't believe in all that hocus pocus.
My assumption has always been most of the named protagonists have a greater than average force connection. They are the ones the force chose to guide into the right places at the right time.
Is that not explained by the Millennium Falcon's navigation computer being AI in Solo when they 'merge' the droids whatever into it?
Except han straight up does it manually in TFA. Breaking all previously established lore regarding hyperspace. He, and the falcon, should be a smear on starkiller base.
I’d also just like to add that you don’t even need ships blocking the entirety of the planets side closest to the hyperspace jump point. You just need enough overlapping fields of fire to cover any possible entry points to make it a death trap.
That would work! Or park an Interdictor somewhere in orbit and that's it. No going into hyperspace and you also pull out ships that are already FTL.
Excellent technical Star Wars response.
Couldn’t you just drop out of hyperspace slightly sooner, spend an hour taking a round about way outside of range of their sensors? Get to the planet from another angle.
Travelling through hyperspace in Star Wars isn’t just going really fast wherever you want. You need to travel in predetermined ‘lanes’ within space to go from point a to point b. These lanes are clear of any planets or stars or other high gravity area that would restrict hyperspace. In Star Wars, you can’t be in hyperspace when under too much gravitational pull. Too close to a star or planet and you can’t jump. If you get too close while in hyperspace, you get ripped out of it. That’s how Interdiction cruisers work, the project a gravity well to stop ships from going into hyperspace. For the blockades, every planet in Star Wars that we see is accessible by a hyper route. Think of it like a road. These roads end at a very specific point that blockades just sit at the end of. So whatever ship coming and going to the planet has to pass through the blockade. Some planets have multiple hyperlanes leading to the planet, that require more ships to blockade. These planets are usually in the core where multiple hyperlanes pass through these planets and make them rich because they are hubs and trade destinations.
This all makes sense but why couldn’t they just leave hyperspace a little early, take a wide path around the blockade and come in from the back? I think Thrawn does a lot of things like that in the books.
They can, but the enemy is going to see all of it. If it’s a small ship, then they will deploy fighters. If it’s a larger force then they will move to intercept. If you don’t deal with the ships that are blocking the planet, then they will just come in behind you and attack.
Blockade ships are usually fleet carriers and deploy fighter craft to intercept. They can detect ships leaving hyperspace or flying around the planet and intercept them. that’s why Blockade Runners are these heavily armored and fast cruisers designed to beat the interceptors and survive long enough to make it to hyperspace lanes.
IIRC, that's why Vader killed the admiral in ESB
The sequels break that. The millennium falcon drops out of hyperspace well within a planets gravity
The sequels also made it possible to pass a lightsaber through space to another person and Leia can superman in the vacuum of space - they should be disregarded and not acknowledged as canon
Someone should get filthy rich and buy Disney just for that purpose
What should I name the gofundme?
Justice for all the Jedi Somehow Palpatine didn’t return They die now?
So, in The Force Awakens, was Han driving on a predetermined lane when they travelled to Starkiller base? They came out of hyperspace in the planets atmosphere right? So the the predetermined lane went through the planet?
I think the simplest answer to that is - the sequels just didn't give a fuck about how hyperspace works...
Or when he went into hyperspace from inside the hanger of whatever ship he was on there
The High republic books explain this a lot with the "paths" the Nihil use to traverse. They are the only ones that can basically make up their own hyper space lanes.
You know it occurs to me with all this discussion, that pirates that got ahold of an imperial interdictor ship could wreck a lot of havoc by sitting near a hyperspace lane and pulling traffic into real space…
It would probably work until they accidentally pull in a star destroyer or something then the scheme would fail pretty quickly
It’s all fun and games until you pull Death Squadron out of hyperspace.
Can you imagine being a space pirate with an easy af job, just sit there with a stolen interdictor just snatching ships out of hyperspace and attacking while the guys in the other ship are wondering what the hell is going on. And then all of a sudden on a regular day you pull a ship out of hyperspace and its the Executor
They can call in the space police to deal with the pirates
They'll just outrun the space cops, and make them eat bass~
I love Auralnauts so much
The hyperspace corridor is where the ships are. If a ship takes off from the other side of the planet it has to go where the hyperspace route is so it would run into the blockade.
Hyperspace lanes is the explanation iirc, only usually one safe direction to jump out of hyperspce
All this tedious mucking around in hyperspace is why we have the infinite improbability drive
Oh no, not again.
And probably bistromathics as well
wtf is the infinite improbability drive
It’s from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, an excellent read for *anyone*. Get on it, and don’t panic!
Although there’s lots of explanations added into canon now (hyperspace lanes etc) I just figured that they did them in the movies because all the battles were based on WW2 flicks. WW2 had naval blockades, so SW has space blockades.
Naval blockades have a similar sort of thing going on though. If America is blockading Japan or Britain is blockading Germany, they are not ringing every mile of shoreline with a ship; that's infeasible for a number of reasons you can probably imagine easily. Most of the shore doesn't have a ship anywhere near it; a blockade is not trying to physically fence off the country in real life either. Rather, they are deploying squadrons of ships in key locations: along chokepoints in shipping lanes such as straits or shallow reefs, patrolling the approaches to industrial harbours, near refueling stations that might be used by ships on approach etc, all with frequent reconnaissance missions to find and intercept ships that might be trying to sneak past the cordon.
In the old canon ships had to leave a planet to get clear of a gravity well and then jump from a point to another point in space, carefully calculated to miss any gravity wells between the two points. So you place the blockade where you know any ships traveling have to enter and exit hyperspace. In new canon, they make zero sense since you can jump directly from inside an planet’s atmosphere in to a planet’s atmosphere and bypass space entirely.
That's right about the old canon, and I'm not defending the new canon by saying that jumping directly into a planet's atmosphere isn't easy
It’s *possible* but exceptionally dangerous so in practice nobody does it
It's not possible though it's stated many time planets gravitation pull you out of hyperspace and don't allow you to hyperjump unless you get far enough away.
Old canon, it was impossible because the gravity well would pull you out of hyperspace. New canon, it is easy enough that an entire group of common TIE pilots can do it jumping from one planet to another without ever leaving atmosphere and following a cargo ship.
"We have blockaded your planet!" "How have you been able to do this? You only have a few starships!" "Haha! But these are very fast starships!" :P
It’s vaguely a thing about hyperspace lanes. You can only enter and exit the highway at certain points or possibly it’s a line and you can exit anywhere on that line, so you only need to have guns pointing towards a few points or maybe just one.
Hyperspace in Star Wars is like when you are a passenger in a video game and given the skip prompt. You can skip the drive, but the route you take is already established.
It aint that kind of movie kid
If it was then, we’re all screwed.
Blockades in real life rarely completely cut off the intended target either. But having a bunch of war ships/vehicles in an area that can move to intercept anything trying to get through still cause an impact.
Hyperspace lanes are actual “physical” lanes that have a beginning and an end. The blockades are set at the end of those lanes Take our highways for example. But a blockade on a highway and you’re going to be screwed. It works just like that in Star Wars, only we can’t see the highways. But they’re there
Blockades are not 100%, even in real life. In actual function, the blockadeing ships would be deployed around the planet. When something exits hyperspace, they- or more likely fighters or shuttles- would move to intercept, or engage at long range with weapons. Smugglers and blockade runners would use high speed (either at sublight, or jumping in dangerously close to the planet) and stealth to get past the guards and lose them among planetary terrain. This is why smugglers would use small ships like the Falcon. In shows and movies, the blockade ships are bunched up so the audience can see them. If done realistically, people would complain about 'you can't blockade a whole planet with one ship or a couple of fighters'. You just have to remind yourself it's a TV show/movie, and some parts shouldn't be taken as seriously as they're presented. Also, people have mentioned hyperspace lanes, but these aren't entey/exit points for hyperspace. They're just the best charted and safest paths for regular traffic to use, like channels in harbors and rivers so ships don't run aground. The only limit to where you can jump in or out is your proximity to a gravity well, and IMO how big a ship you have.
Have you ever seen a kid chase another kid around a table? Its like that but with starships.
> what’s stopping the other side from jumping out of hyperspace behind the planet? It would be impolite.
Think of it as blocking the highway into town. Sure, there may be some other little paths or dirt tracks in and out, but by and large most of the traffic uses the highway.
Hyperspace lanes are the safest ways to enter a system from long distance the way a warship would, so they block all the lanes and so block access to the planet, any ship that enters the system will enter near them. You can do hyperspace jumps in any location in current canon, but it’s super super risky and you can’t exactly jump a short distance, even micro-jumps take ships huge distances
People drive cars, they can only drive on roads. Driving off-road is insanely dangerous, so there's no point in having roadblocks anywhere else than, well, roads. Not a 100% proper analogy but hopefully that gives you the gist of it
It's the same as an shipping blockade in real life, except the ocean is a bit bigger and goes up and down. Yes I am aware that 'up' and 'down' don't exist in space
Up and down still sort of exist within a galaxy though. All planets are going to be along the galactic plane.
Yea, they're pretty poorly thought of. I think rule of cool rules here, instead of any kind of logic or sense.
Hyper space lanes only come from one direction.
Hyperspace lanes cause ships to arrive at certain areas in the system allowing got blockades to be an effective tool
Star wars is less sci and more fantasy. The planets don't really move like we know them too irl. Planets and space are always on a single plane too so you . Hyperspace routes are the places in space that have been certified clear of stuff in space by explorers and they lead to different planets. Think of hyperspace like a high way system. Blockades only blockade the off ramps but if the off ramp carried like 99% of your towns out bound or in bound traffic. You could go around but it might take uo too much fuel or might be too risky to calculate the hyperspace jump.
So in legends/prequels/etc. there are things called hyperspace shoals. Those were the only places you could safely exist hyperspace near a planet so blockading them would stop most traffic. For example, the queen of Naboo's ship needed to get to the shoal in order to hyperspace out and ran the blockade during the trade federation blockade. If she could hyperspace anywhere, she clearly would have avoided that. So if you blockade the volume of space between the shoal and the planet, you should be able to intercept everything relatively easily assuming you have the ability to intercept anything running past you, and Star Destroyers have fighters. Now, there were some advances in hyperspace technology post empire that have radically changed that, but not every ship has that sort of drive.
Do you know nothing about hyperspace?? You are as clumsy as you are stupid
The galaxy has set hyperspace routes that ships travel on, because going into hyperspace randomly is incredibly dangerous. So every ship coming into a planet's orbit would be doing so from a set location. Alternatively, to enter hyperspace, the ships would need to fly to that location as well.
It is not explained very well in any of the movies/shows but the way hyperspace works is basically the way it works in stellaris there are specific entrances and exits in every system so the blockades just guard the entrance that is on the side the enemies are coming from
Star wars does not make sense. It’s part of the charm.
I imagine they wrap around the planet, and that they have sensors that would alarm them if a ship came out of hyperspace above or below them, and they could pretty easily move to intercept. But yea, doesn’t look how I would do it haha. I thought of this first with the Naboo embargo in TPM.
Long story short shipping lanes. Warps speed needs to be calculated so they don’t hit palnets stars ect. Blockade’s block the access entry points of these lanes
How about the bombers in TLJ?, that totally made sense.
Because in star wars there is something known as hyper space lanes which is what ships use to travel in hyperspace safely as any other way,they could collide with debris,and so fleets only set up blockades at hyperspace lanes
I wondered the same till I googled SW hyperspace travel. Then it all makes sense.
Imagine hyperspace like driving routes and outside of them are covered in supernovae, blackholes and other fun things to die for. Over the millennia and beyond, Peoples find save hyperspace routes through the galaxy. If you jump to Hyperspace, the board computer measure the distance, the possibility and the destinations. It makes sure, that one jump wouldn't end up crashing against the next meteor or sun, if you try to move up or below. It is easier for the blockade to block two sides instead of all over the place, because they know, only dumb peoples try to jump elsewhere with the risk of being killed. There is some exception though. Like Kashyyyk or Mon Cala, they have some secret hyperspace routes, that pass fleets beyond the known hyperspace routes or palpatines secret route, that send the KUS to Corusant
Because that's where the Hyperspace lane is. When in hyperspace gravity can pull you out of hyperspace and you can hit the "shadows" of objects in real space which will mess up your ship (and not the actual object projecting the shadow to my knowledge). This means people only travel on pre-plotted hyperspace lanes, if you know where all the hyper space routes are around a planet then you know all the points ships will emerge from, and for most planets they only have 2, one to go one direction and one to go the other direction to form a trade route. Think of it like a freeway. If you wanted to block all travel from a freeway into a small town you wouldn't need to surround the entire town, you'd just need to block the offramp
They do this because most of the audience thinks two dimensionally like Khan.