Here is something for you all to chew on.

So in one of the recent threads about Rogue One the ever troublesome topic of hyperspace came up. It was pointed out that more and more often travel time through Hyperspace is the ever fluid “Speed of Plot”. Which got me thinking. Fluid speed? What if…

Imagine a room where you have a ceiling fan blowing a high speed. Then place around the room a few standing fans. The kind that oscillate so they are constantly changing direction. Then turn on the central air so the vents in the floor are blowing. All of these things are adding to the tempest of wind bustling around the room.

Now is when you try and toss your paper airplane (ie spaceship) across the room. Imagine the flight path it would take. It would constantly be jostled around and would probably never reach the destination you were intending to throw it at. God forbid it got too close to the back of a fan and was sucked into the blades. The chaos of the air moving would make it impossible to throw your paper plane where you wanted it to go.

But we all know that the fans are predictable. They either always blow in the same direction, or oscillate in a set pattern. Even the unseen air currents tend to buffet against each other in a predictable way. So if we took the time to study it and plan it out, and developed a way to throw the paper airplane in a consistent manner, we could theoretically toss the plane and have it reach its destination almost every time.

That’s how I now envision hyperspace. Not as some empty alternate dimension where you just have to draw a straight enough line so you can avoid the “gravity wells”, but as this space filled with constantly shifting currents and eddies where you have no idea where you will end up if you don’t plan it out properly.

But these fluidic dynamic aspects of hyperspace don’t push or pull your ship per say. They change the path your ship is traveling along. Like a crystal bending the path of your laser beam.

This also gives a good reason why there are hyperspace lanes. Areas where the seaming chaos is more predictable. In those places hyperspace its self helps move ships along in expected ways. All the air is blowing in the same direction or all the crystals tend to line up.

With this explanation you could make a case for why astrogation is so important.

And also why the travel times seem to be so fluid. Along reliable routes the travel times can be measured and predictable. But you can toss the dice and try to find the fastest route possible. All the wind is blowing in your direction or the crystals point right where you want to go. Maybe you get lucky and the route you find gets you "on the other side of the galaxy by now" but you better hope your calculations are correct.

Magic.

Love it.

It reminds me of the fan explanation as to why human ships in the Halo universe often ended up millions of kilometers off-target when emerging from slipspace while Covenant ships could perform precision jumps. We posited that slipspace had currents, eddies, and whorls, and while the Covenant understood this (or at least their ships did) humanity was still treating slipspace as just an empty dimension. Once the war ended and they got access to both Covenant and Forerunner technology, they quickly realized their mistake.

I like this as an explanation. My own approach has been that more time passes during hyperspace travel (and indeed, between scenes) than is exciting to portray on screen, so all the games of dejarik that Han, Leia, and Chewie played to pass the time just aren't shown. I also tend to believe that scenes cut together to make them seem contemporary are actually happening in different timeframes, but that's probably just a byproduct of my love for Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space novels.

That, however, is for a different thread entirely.

Astrogation becomes a super important skill. A good roll can cut time-in-hyperspace down by quite a bit.

Take Han Solo for example. Sure, the Falcon has really impressive hyperdrive engines, but it's Solo's ability to navigate that significantly reduces the flight time from Tatooine to Alderaan to a matter of a couple hours instead of many, many hours or even days. It is Solo's ability to navigate that allows him to cut distance off the infamous Kessel Run more so than just time. He has a knack for it. He has a really impressive Astrogation skill. (He might also have a nav droid brain plugged in giving him a boost die or two and some ranks of Galaxy Mapper for extra luck.) If he has an Intellect of 2 or 3, he probably has an Astrogation of 5. In your metaphor, Ryoden, Solo knows just how to gauge the wind currents to throw the paper airplane just perfectly.

A fleet of ships jump at the same time. One superstar navigator plots the course for the entire fleet and then sends that info to each ship's computer in a data burst. Since it's the best navigator in the fleet plotting it, you're looking at an egghead with, like, a 4 Intellect and, say, 5 Astrogation. Plus boost dice for a nav droid brain or other navigators helping him plot, and his ranks of Galaxy Mapper are countering the setback dice for plotting a course for so many ships at once and many with different grade hyperdrives... And again, the whole fleet jumps from Yavin 4 to Scarif in record time.

I like your metaphor. I like that it emphasizes Astrogation skill more.

It's a great way to describe hyperspace. But it still probably doesn't explain how everyone always arrives at the exact right time, Plot is still a better explanation there.

And also why the travel times seem to be so fluid. Along reliable routes the travel times can be measured and predictable. But you can toss the dice and try to find the fastest route possible. All the wind is blowing in your direction or the crystals point right where you want to go. Maybe you get lucky and the route you find gets you "on the other side of the galaxy by now" but you better hope your calculations are correct.

I had not written down my own mental concept of how hyperspace works, but as I was reading this, I kept thinking to myself that you had successfully described my own thoughts on the subject, and done a better job than I could have done.

Well done, you!

That said, this is fine for the game, but doesn’t really help with the movies or TV shows. ;(

Also, explains why Solo thinks about how speed in parsecs - navigating in the straightest line possible will be fastest (and shortest) path.

It's perfectly plausible in the pseudo-science of the setting. I like your explanation.

Additionally, hyperdrives don't eject anything, do they?

Mass Shadows themselves are already a constant ebb and flow. Remember, nothing in the galaxy is static. Not the moons, not the planets, not the suns, not all those black holes around the galaxy, not even the giant black hole in the center of the galaxy. Everything moves. Earth is moving with 30 km/s, the sun is moving with with 200 km/s, andromeda and the milky way moving with 400,000 km/h at each other. Everything is in movement, always. The star wars galaxy has between 500,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars. All those stars have their orbits, not all of them are stable if you are planning to fly from one end of the galaxy to another you need to consider a lot of them across your path.

And that is just the suns, every planet, every asteroid, every comet, every space station needs to needs to be considered as well, even spaceships and space whales are big enough to cause a fatal mass shadow. Luckly space is big, so you are very unlikely to hit smaller objects, but the lanes are to kept clear of obstacles for good reasons.

There certainly is a lot potential for ebb and flow with even just celestial mechanics and movement. No need to add even more.

Astrogation becomes a super important skill. A good roll can cut time-in-hyperspace down by quite a bit.

Take Han Solo for example. Sure, the Falcon has really impressive hyperdrive engines, but it's Solo's ability to navigate that significantly reduces the flight time from Tatooine to Alderaan to a matter of a couple hours instead of many, many hours or even days. It is Solo's ability to navigate that allows him to cut distance off the infamous Kessel Run more so than just time. He has a knack for it. He has a really impressive Astrogation skill. (He might also have a nav droid brain plugged in giving him a boost die or two and some ranks of Galaxy Mapper for extra luck.) If he has an Intellect of 2 or 3, he probably has an Astrogation of 5. In your metaphor, Ryoden, Solo knows just how to gauge the wind currents to throw the paper airplane just perfectly.

A fleet of ships jump at the same time. One superstar navigator plots the course for the entire fleet and then sends that info to each ship's computer in a data burst. Since it's the best navigator in the fleet plotting it, you're looking at an egghead with, like, a 4 Intellect and, say, 5 Astrogation. Plus boost dice for a nav droid brain or other navigators helping him plot, and his ranks of Galaxy Mapper are countering the setback dice for plotting a course for so many ships at once and many with different grade hyperdrives... And again, the whole fleet jumps from Yavin 4 to Scarif in record time.

I like your metaphor. I like that it emphasizes Astrogation skill more.

Hmmm, solo? Nah, he just got a fully modified astrogation droid brain. And I guess Chewie has the Int value to make good use of it °_^