$17,000 bucks for a two-hour plane ride?

[Water Bob]

2 hours? I don't think so.

Well, like I said, there's plenty of argument out there that supports both sides. For me, the jury is still out.

Do a google for "How long does it take to travel from Tatooine to Alderaan" and see the results. There's lots of arguments for 2 hours.

Alderaan is in the Core worlds. Tatooine is in the Outer Rim. If it only took 2 hours go get from one to the other, the Outer Rim would not be lawless.

You're thinking too linearly. Hyperspace is another dimension where spacial distances are distorted. That's why hyperspace routes are so important. They're the name of the game. You could have planet Core Worlds with two like vessels heading to the Rim. One ship takes a hyperspace route that is fairly straight (meaning clean of obstacles). The other ship takes a route that avoids a lot of astronomical obstacles. The first ship might reach its destination in a few hours where the other vessel's trip will take days.

Likewise, a ship taking off from a planet in the Rim, heading to the core worlds, could take a major trade route and be there in hours. The same ship, taking off from the same world, could use an old, outdated smuggler's route to a world in the same sector--very close, astronomically speaking, and also in the Rim--and get there in days.

 

[Morrus]

Do a google for "How long does it take to travel from Tatooine to Alderaan" and see the results. There's lots of arguments for 2 hours.

Yes, but we're discussing it here. You can't substitute your part of the conversation by issuing homework assignments.

If there a compelling arguments, present them.

2 hours doesn't feel right to me. If the travel in SW is that fast (and I accept that JJ Abrahms thinks it is in both Wars and Trek) then so many concepts just don't work well.

I think the traditional SW screen wipe is deceptive and makes things feel quicker than they are.

 

[Water Bob]

I made a mistake in my D6 Star Wars time guess.

Both Chewie and Han have 8D in Astrogation (wow!). I think it's best to assume Han programmed the Nav Computer for the Tatooine to Alderaan jump seen in A New Hope.

The Falcon's Hyperdrive is rated at .5.

The base time from Tatooine to Alderaan is 7 days (15+ Moderate Difficulty).



The Falcon's Hyperdrive cuts the base time in half: 3.5 days.

Han's Astrogation is so high, he can easily shave off 2 days and still have, for all practical purposes, a 100% chance of success (8D for 17+ = >99%).

So, the minimum time the Falcon took was 1.5 days.



Han can still shave off more time with very little risk. He can shave off another day with only a 1% chance of failure. Travel time would be 12 hours.



With the errata, the base travel time from Tatooine to Alderaan is 7 hrs. This is also the base time in the Second Edition and later editions of the game.

So, the Falcon's Hyperdrive would cut the trip to 3.5 hours as a base.

And, Han's mastery with the Navicomp would cut that down to 1.5 hours with virtually no chance of mishap.

Han could accept a 1% chance of failure and get there in 30 minutes!

 

[Morrus]

Hmmm. I don't know that George Lucas had WEG's game rules in mind when he write Star Wars.

I think we can only go with what's in the film. How WEG interpreted it is no more valid than how we do.

The movie is unclear, of course. I think all we can do is ask ourselves "how long does it feel?" For me, the answer is a day or two.

 

[ccs]

There's lots of debate on it, if you look around. The prevailing consensus seems to be about 2 hours, but there's also plenty of arguments for about 2 days.

I'll note, with the D6 Star Wars RPG, the original base travel time between Tatooine and Alderaan is 7 days. Given Han's 8D Astrogation skill at the time, He could cut that down by 5 days easily (still having a 96% chance of avoiding a hyperspace mishap. That's 8D rolling 20+.) So, 2 days would seem about right, according to the game.

Then, errata came out, and all the "day" figures in First Edition became "hour" figures. So, the base trip from Tatooine to Alderaan became 7 hours. Using Han's Astrogation skill, that becomes 2 hours.

So, the rpg supports either opinion (2 days or 2 hours).



I think I'm partial to the "days" figure, but it does seem, watching the movies, that hyperspace travel is certain extremely fast. I could buy and argument to use the "hours" figure easily.

I guess I always figured it to be half a day or so (based upon assumptions that movie-world time = real world time for hours/minutes etc).
I know in the script Han says they should reach Alderaan about at oh-two-hundered hours. So 2AM? I figured they left Mos Eisley sometime in the afternoon. 2-4pm? So a 10-12 hr trip? I also assumed that ETA took into account the falcons speed/Hans nav skill.
So when I read the WEG stuff I was like "Days? I think they got this formulae wrong". Apparently they got it wrong again as well.

 

[Ryujin]

Hmmm. I don't know that George Lucas had WEG's game rules in mind when he write Star Wars.

I think we can only go with what's in the film. How WEG interpreted it is no more valid than how we do.

The movie is unclear, of course. I think all we can do is ask ourselves "how long does it feel?" For me, the answer is a day or two.

Feels the same to me. Chess games and Force training don't feel like the sort of thing that happens in couple of hour-long trips.

 

[Morrus]

Feels the same to me. Chess games and Force training don't feel like the sort of thing that happens in couple of hour-long trips.

Yeah. Interludes definitely imply longer journeys.

 

[ccs]

I made a mistake in my D6 Star Wars time guess.

Both Chewie and Han have 8D in Astrogation (wow!). I think it's best to assume Han programmed the Nav Computer for the Tatooine to Alderaan jump seen in A New Hope.

The Falcon's Hyperdrive is rated at .5.

The base time from Tatooine to Alderaan is 7 days (15+ Moderate Difficulty).



The Falcon's Hyperdrive cuts the base time in half: 3.5 days.

Han's Astrogation is so high, he can easily shave off 2 days and still have, for all practical purposes, a 100% chance of success (8D for 17+ = >99%).

So, the minimum time the Falcon took was 1.5 days.



Han can still shave off more time with very little risk. He can shave off another day with only a 1% chance of failure. Travel time would be 12 hours.



With the errata, the base travel time from Tatooine to Alderaan is 7 hrs. This is also the base time in the Second Edition and later editions of the game.

So, the Falcon's Hyperdrive would cut the trip to 3.5 hours as a base.

And, Han's mastery with the Navicomp would cut that down to 1.5 hours with virtually no chance of mishap.

Han could accept a 1% chance of failure and get there in 30 minutes!

You're not making a compelling argument to believe WEG knew what they were talking about. You know that right?

 

[Water Bob]

Yes, but we're discussing it here. You can't substitute your part of the conversation by issuing homework assignments.

If there a compelling arguments, present them.

The biggest argument is the film itself. Go back and watch A New Hope (another Homework Assignment!). Note the scene where Luke trains with the light saber and remote, blast shield down on the helm. Han comes out of the cockpit corridor and says, "Well, you can forget your troubles with those Imperial slugs. I told ya I'd outrun 'em."

Obviously, this is the first time Han has seen Luke or Ben since making the jump to hyperspace.

Some time has passed. But, it doesn't look like a lot of time. Luke and Ben were on the bridge when the jump was made. Now, they're in the lounge with Luke practicing with saber and remote. Chewie and droids are deep into a game of holochess.

The scene is continual, without cutting elsewhere. Han talks about hokey religions and tells the droids to let the Wookiee win. Ben shows off his pupil by putting a helmet on Luke with the blast shield down.

The scene is several minutes, but still a shot period of time. Then, the alarms go off, and Han says, "Looks like we're coming up on Alderaan."

The question is: How long did Han stay in the cockpit before going aft to join the others?

Days? No way.

Hours? Possibly.

Minutes? Most likely.




I could definitely buy half an hour.

Luke and Ben went aft and started training.

Chewie, at some point, leaves Han in the cockpit, wanders aft and gets into a game of holochess with the droids. It is likely that he didn't go straight back there and start the game, but he might have. He could go back, say something like, "Well, we've got less than an hour to kill. Who's up for some holochess? Ben? Luke? No? Okay, you droids, play holochess with me."

The revised D6 Star Wars time I wrote above could be spot on, given all of this evidence. 30 minutes or 1.5 hours, I could definitely see, given the scenes in the film.

 

[Water Bob]

You're not making a compelling argument to believe WEG knew what they were talking about. You know that right?

Well, WEG is known to have well researched material that Lucasfillm went over with a fine toothed comb. The WEG material was used, for years, as the "bible" for all things Star Wars. When Timothy Zahn was writing Heir to the Empire, the book that launched the EU, Lucasfilm sent him loads of WEG material, and you can see it in his writing as he references vehicles and items in his books. Other Star Wars authors and game designers also used WEG materials as a universe bible.

The scene that I reference in the above post seems to support WEG's revised travel time (7 hours base, 30 min to 1.5 hours for the Falcon in the movie).