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As an example, Darth Vader's flagship the Executor was 19km long. How did someone get from one end of the ship to another in any decent amount of time? The question assumes that there are accessible parts of the ship from end to end, and that a single person might have to go from end to end (as opposed to 'workers' just living in the general area that they worked in), but even a situation where they only have to travel 10km or so. Is there any evidence in either canon or Legends as to how people moved around these massive ships? I've only ever seen elevators for vertical movement, but how did they move from end to end?

This question is specifically about a Super Star Destroyer, but I suppose it can apply to any of the 'smaller' ships that are still massive in length, so if there is only an answer for a smaller ship, that would still be interesting.

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  • starwars.com/news/…
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 16:16
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    Wasn't there a scene where we see a bunch of troopers on the back of something like an airport golf cart zipping down the corridor? Otherwise, I'd assume an internal tram of some sort.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 17:00
  • @FuzzyBoots - Are you hinking of the rebel personnel carrier?
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 17:04
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    I recall horizontal turbolifts being used in the Jedi Temple, kinda like how Star Trek lifts could move both vertically between and horizontally along starship decks. There was a railed tram system of some kind in the Separatist starship Malevolence for personnel/cargo transport, so perhaps something like that or the "airport golf cart"-style trams like in the Rebel base on Yavin IV.
    – SpaceWolf1701
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 17:06
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    Grievous' flagship has sideways traveling turbolifts; "Count Dooku watched with clinical distaste as the blue-scanned images of Kenobi and Skywalker engaged in a preposterous farce-chase, pursued by destroyer droids into and out of turbolift pods that shot upward and downward and even sideways. “It will be,” he said slowly, meditatively, as though he spoke only to himself, “an embarrassment to be captured by him.”" - ROTS Novelisation
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 17:22

3 Answers 3

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It's only Legends material, but Dark Force Rising has Mara Jade and Luke Skywalker sneak onto the Chimaera to break Talon Karrde out of Imperial interrogation. The narrative notes in several places the "turbolift clusters" adjacent to bays and other parts of the ship, and then when Mara and Luke are travelling from the shuttle bay to the detention area, it's explained that the turbolift cars travel in all directions around the ship:

The detention center was in the far aft section of the ship, a few decks beneath the command and systems control sections and directly above Engineering and the huge sublight drive thrust nozzles. The turbolift car shifted direction several times along the way, alternating between horizontal and vertical movement, It seemed to Luke to be altogether too complicated a route, and he found himself wondering even now if Mara might be pulling some kind of double cross. But her sense didn't indicate any such treachery; and it occurred to him that she might have deliberately tangled their path to put the Chimaera's internal security systems off the scent.

Later on, after breaking Karrde out but being detected, they walk through horizontal turbolift tunnels, so I think it's pretty clear that turbo"lifts" are an omnidirectional transportation network.

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    Not quite germane, but the turbolifts in Star Trek work the same way, I think that any of them can get to any of the other positions within the ship
    – Daishozen
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 20:02
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    @Daishozen Yeah, they call them lifts, but they're really more like semi-automatic trams travelling between stations. Did we ever see someone waiting for a turbolift? It might very well be that as soon as one car leaves, another that was on standby takes its place.
    – Luaan
    Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 8:13
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    @Luuan: There are some instances where people had to wait for turbolifts, but usually that kind of internal consistency is sacrificed in favor of flow. (Same for the delay that would have to be there between hailing someone by communicator, the person hearing that hail replayed by the computer, and responding.)
    – DevSolar
    Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 9:30
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    @Daishozen This is actually represented by the movement of the lights in the windows of the lift in at least the original series. In fact, you can pull up a diagram of the Enterprise and trace the path of the lift by the movement. For instance, if Kirk starts at the shuttle bay and goes to the bridge, you can watch the lights move horizontally as the lift moves toward the font of the hull, vertically and then diagonally up the "neck", and so forth.
    – Harabeck
    Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 21:00
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Super Star Destroyers in Legends have at least one unbroken corridor running their length equipped with a tram system, though it's for freight rather than dedicated passenger use.

The Beltway was a central corridor running the length of the Super Star Destroyer [Lusankya], from stern to prow. It was not a corridor for pedestrian traffic; the octagonal shaft featured a tracked hauler at the top, allowing it to be used for the transportation of heavy equipment. It was wide enough that skilled pilots could have flown paired X-Wings wing-to-wing along its length.

- Rebel Stand, p. 227

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  • Sounds analogous to, but bigger than the corridors in naval capital ships, like dvidshub.net/image/5308418/…
    – Criggie
    Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 13:13
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    @Criggie I've done that tour on that ship, and the tour guide mentioned some movie where the director chose to ignore the existence of this corridor in order to have the protagonists man handle munitions from one part of the ship to another. (The yellow bar in the top of your linked photo is a crane rail that runs the length of the corridor and is intended for moving things like munitions from one gun turret to another).
    – Peter M
    Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 14:52
  • Came here for this. I don't know how canon it is, but the FFG Star Wars RPG has campaign modules that include imperial starship infiltration, so I know they have this exact design feature for their large freighters. (Source is Perlemaian Haul adventure in the Age of Rebellion core rulebook)
    – T.E.D.
    Commented Sep 5, 2020 at 17:36
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The Malevolence has horizontal freight trams (seen in TCW: Destroy Malevolence when Grievous and Kenobi fight).

I expect that the same technology could be applied and modified to let people travel.

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    Where does it say that it has a tram?
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 5, 2020 at 17:36
  • Season 1, Episode 4. This is actually Canon, not Legends. See partialarc.com/articles//… for multiple screenshots
    – Scott
    Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 5:57
  • I've taken the liberty of adding in a video and inlining a link to the episode so that people can see that it's a canon event.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 6, 2020 at 13:53

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