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In the second episode of the second season of The Mandalorian,

Mando needs to transport a passenger and her eggs to another star system. He is on Tatooine and the star system is in the same sector and may even be the closest star to Tatooine. Yet, Mando cannot use hyperspace because it would kill the eggs. He has to get there with sublight engines.

I know Star Wars could give a crap about real science but surely John Favreau knows you can’t travel interstellar without moving faster than light. Even if sublight is the speed of light; it takes 4 years to get from Earth to our nearest stellar neighbor. Without this, it takes thousands of years.

Granted Mando does admit it takes a long time but by the way he says it; it implies maybe a few weeks. What can I tell myself to maintain the suspension of disbelief? I love science and I know Star Wars is science fantasy but this is logic and a basic common fact. You cannot get to other systems without FTL.

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    I can't speak to what John Favreau knows or how fast sub light engines are. But absolutely everyone involved in the Disney Trilogy especially the Last Jedi have no clue about interstellar distances.
    – lucasbachmann
    Commented Nov 7, 2020 at 3:02
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    Unlike the original trilogy, of course, where George Lucas knew so much about interstellar distances that Han claimed to be able make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.
    – Adamant
    Commented Nov 7, 2020 at 4:13
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    In the same way, the Falcon could go from the Hoth system to Bespin without hyperdrive. (Empire Strikes Back film)
    – FlaStorm32
    Commented Nov 7, 2020 at 13:36
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    They explained that. The Falcon had a backup Class 10 that allowed them to limp in a few weeks.
    – Max
    Commented Nov 7, 2020 at 17:51
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    Not only do the Disney writers not understand lightspeed, they use gravity bombs on a level run. In space.
    – Kristian H
    Commented Nov 9, 2020 at 21:59

4 Answers 4

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The speed of light is not a speed-limiter in the Star Wars universe

Pretty much the only explanation I can think of:

In our universe, nothing goes faster than light. the tyranny of E=MC^2 means that as you approach the speed of light, the energy required to accelerate your mass ramps up to infinity.

However

Star Wars has multiple technologies that mess with this, massive power-to-weight ratios and a bunch of other stuff.

Inertial Dampers and Artificial gravity fields mean that the ship's own mass may not be a factor. The M in the equation being reduced massively or even cancelled out entirely makes E=MC^2 possibly entirely redundant, allowing a ship to push past light-speed without Hyperdrive.

Part of the Hyperdrive technology-set includes machinery which acts to cancel out the effects of relativity. This may be useful too.

On top of that, the fuel efficiency in Star Wars is crazy good.

I could well believe that if a ship can cheat its way past Einstein, it can get up to multiples of the speed of light without using Hyperdrive.

Hyperdrive has the advantage that it goes literally millions of times faster than C, so it's still better (and more fuel-efficient) than this approach.
But if a ship can get to say... 3500 C in real-space, traversing a few hundred lightyears in a few weeks is quite feasible.

Compare and contrast, the Inertialess Drive.

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  • Actually the tyranny is expressed by time dilation relative to a stationary observer or, more abstractly, by the Lorentz group of transformations rather than the energy content of a mass at rest. But yes.
    – David Tonhofer
    Commented Jan 3, 2021 at 16:03
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    This answer would be greatly improved by any kind of in-canon reference that supports the hypothesis. That said, I've still upvoted, as it's the only answer that makes any in-universe sense.
    – Zeiss Ikon
    Commented Dec 16, 2021 at 13:30
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    +1 but essentially, Star Wars is space opera fantasy, and ships move as required by the plot. Physics are not essential for Star Wars, which exists in a scifi but magical universe
    – Andres F.
    Commented Oct 20, 2023 at 1:21
  • Re-reading this literally years later. @ZeissIkon, Han solo gives us the throwaway line in ANH "She'll make point-five past lightspeed..". I'd say that was at least minor evidence that they can literally do better than the speed of light in real-space without hyperdrive if they want to. Though that does suggest that thousands of C without hyperdrive isn't on the table since 1.5c was treated as exceptional in that interpretation.
    – Ruadhan2300
    Commented Oct 30, 2023 at 8:44
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Starships have "Backup Hyperdrives" media tends to omit this glaring discrepancy. In hyperdrive physics, they follow a successive reverse number drive. Lower the number the faster you go, So a class 1 is Faster than a 2, so on. For commercial bulk cargo and big civilian ships 3-4 class hyperdrives are the norm, or affordable making general cargo runs 2 weeks or less. CLass 2 hyperdrives, Pretty common make galactic traversal a few days and class 1, matter of Hours if follow major hyperspace Lanes. Back up hyperdrives, are small, portable and weak, class 12-15. Incredibly slow, but better than NOthing in an emergency.

Bear in mind Millennium Falcon in Empire Strikes Back had a defective hyperdrive, yet made it to Bespin from HOTH. Star Wars Galaxy is 120,000 lightyears wide approximately, According to Encyclopedia Map "Essential Atlas" The distance between the two is about 500-750 lightyears. At sublight speeds would take millennia. enter image description here

There are several scenarios I can think of.

  • Sporadically repaired the hyperdrive for short jumps every now and then
  • BACKUP hyperdrive
  • towed by a friendly vessel
  • IN the movie, Falcon hitched a ride grappling on a neighboring Star Destroyer, the amount of time spent, could have been a while, long enought to hitch a hyperspace ride.

In the novelization of "ESB" the Falcon spent weeks getting to Bespin, Also note in the movie, Luke spent progressive amount of time getting progressively dirty as he was training under Yoda.

Any case, Razor crest like many vessels likely had a backup drive, it'd take far longer but short trips are irrelevant

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  • The hyperdrive on the Razor Crest wasn't broken though. It was perfectly functional, he just wasn't allowed to use it for fear of killing his passenger
    – Valorum
    Commented Oct 20, 2023 at 6:36
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    Which eliminates all the listed scenarios since they all use a hyperdrive, just not always the Razorcrest's.
    – DavidW
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 17:52
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Star Wars Canon Hyperdrives don’t solely move things really fast, and the associated terminology isn’t what you think

From the Databank:

HYPERDRIVE Hyperdrives allow starships to travel faster than the speed of light, crossing space through the alternate dimension of hyperspace. Large objects in normal space cast “mass shadows” in hyperspace, so hyperspace jumps must be precisely calculated to avoid collisions.

Hyperdrives then open a dimensional gate to a different dimension called “Hyperspace,” that is coterminous with real space, which allows navigation of shorter routes. This is expressed in inaccurate terms as a function of “lightspeed,” but what is being calculated is a function of the duration because those traveling in hyperspace are cheating the real space distance that light has to normally travel. If the hyperspace route allows travel in half the time versus normal light, then the traveler may suggest they went “twice lightspeed.”

Star Wars’ sublight drives are simply those drives which cannot enter hyperspace; it’s no indication of how fast it can or can’t actually travel. Sublight drives still go really fast.

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  • "it’s no indication of how fast it can or can’t actually travel" - Can you offer any evidence to back up this very bold statement?
    – Valorum
    Commented Oct 20, 2023 at 6:48
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As I understand it, there are three ways to travel at faster-than-light speeds in Star Wars: hyperdrive, lightspeed (i.e. jumping to lightspeed but not switching the Hyperdrive on) and "sub-light" (which is still faster than the speed of light). It's clear that ships in Star Wars can travel at many times faster than the speed of light without using hyperdrive (and without Einstein's Theory of Relativity raising its ugly head) - that's why Din Djarin can get to that "distant moon" in another star system in hours or days without using hyperspace. So this "sub-light" method must be some alternative kind of warp speed that's fast enough for travel between nearby star systems, but without some of the drawbacks of hyperspace travel. It's nowhere near as fast as hyperspace travel, which could have gotten that family to their destination in minutes and across the galaxy in a few days.

But if they're traveling between two Outer Rim star systems (which must be light years apart), there's just no way they're traveling at less than multiple times the speed of light. Either the writers screwed up, or "sub-light" in the Star Wars universe doesn't mean "less than the speed of light."

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