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This article is aboutthe parallel existence used byships to facilitate expeditious interstellar travel. You may be looking forthe former official fan club of Star Wars, also calledHyperspace, orthe restaurant on Yag-prime.
"Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"
Hyperspace (calleddarkspace by theYuuzhan Vong) was an alternate dimension of thespace-time continuum used bystarships to achieve faster-than-light travel that could only be entered at faster-than-light speeds using ahyperdrive. Hyperspace was coterminous withrealspace, with a unique point in realspace being associated with a unique point in hyperspace.[2] While a number of aspects of hyperspace remained mysterious toastrophysicists andastrogation experts, it was clear that hyperspace shortened travel times, allowingstarships equipped with hyperdrives to crosslight-years in a matter of minutes.[3] Consequently, hyperspace travel was the backbone ofgalactic society,commerce and trade,politics andwarfare.[3]
Normally, baryonic matter inrealspace would obey physical principles of relativity: it would increase asymptotically in mass as it accelerated towards the speed of light, requiring more and more energy to approach it, but even at infinite values never surpassing the speed of light threshold. Tachyonic matter, on the other hand, existed at values solely above the speed of light, and could not decrease lower than the light-speed barrier.
Hyperdrive technology allowed sentients to bypass this barrier, making use of a trans-physical effect to create ripples in space-time. A hyperdrive-equipped ship would propel off these ripples to "jump" into hyperspace, allowing it to traversethe galaxy at speeds of hundreds or even thousands of times the speed of light.[2] Hyperspace was an alternate dimension ofspace-time, similar tosubspace orotherspace,[3] that was coterminous with realspace: each point in realspace was associated with a unique point in hyperspace. Essentially, a ship traveling galactic north in realspace as it jumped to hyperspace would travel north in hyperspace too. Every object in realspace, likestars orplanets, also had a"shadow" in hyperspace at the same location it occupied in realspace.[2]
History[]
The principles of Hyperspace travel were first discovered by the ancientRakata.[5]
Hyperdrive usage[]
View of entering hyperspace
Astarship utilizing a hyperdrive had to go through a fixed, routine process. After the course was plotted in the navigation computer, the ship moved to the bearing matching that course and activated the hyperdrive. The ship then seemed to accelerate so rapidly that passengers within the vessel saw the stars stretched into parallel lines during the "jump" to Hyperspace. This apparent acceleration was also observable from outside the vessel, where a ship jumping to Hyperspace would appear to undergo a sudden, massive burst of speed and disappear from the physical universe. This phenomenon was referred to aspseudomotion.
When hyperspace was entered, the starship has left the conventional universe, orrealspace. At hyperspeed, the entire visible universe was seen as a blue-shaded corridor of mottled high-speed blur, indicative of the other-dimensional nature of Hyperspace. In Hyperspace, a ship was effectively cut-off from all normal methods of scanning and detection.
View of exiting hyperspace
Hyperdriving of a ship (for example, theT-65 X-wing starfighter) was done by submitting coordinates to a navicomputer, either manually or by being received by wireless transmissions;Rogue Squadron, among many others, used this kind of transmission so that all ships in a group or fleet utilized the same coordinates for a mission. Coordinate calculation was a dangerous task, for if a vessel in hyperspace traveled too close to ablack hole, star, or other gravity well, they would be forced out of hyperspace. Intrasystem hyperspace travel via "micro-jumps" was rare, but was sometimes used strategically.
Because of the inherent dangers of hyperspatial navigation, highly traveled routes were close to inhabited systems. In the event of a navigation error or hyperdrive equipment malfunction, proximity to starports or inhabited systems meant it was unlikely one would be stranded with only sublight power and limited provisions. Usually problems came in the form of mistakes in calculating navigation coordinates or incomplete and outdated information in regard to significant gravitic bodies. Trying to find a ship that had re-entered realspace due to a malfunction or at an undetermined location was a nearly impossible task, as the many who sought the legendaryKatana fleet across the vast tracts of open space learned.
Hazards[]
"Without precise calculations, we'd fly right through a star, bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?"
―Han Solo, to Luke Skywalker, while being pursued by an Imperial Star Destroyer[1]
The result of a hyperspace collision between aY-wing and a gravity shadow
When moving at speeds many times the speed of light, there were many dangers. While any collision or interference at this state can be potentially fatal, the effects of gravitational pull on a starship could be particularly devastating, thus a course had to be plotted outside the "mass shadow" or gravity well of large celestial bodies. This was exploited in many ways through the ages. Hyperspace courses were often plotted using a planet's mass as a backstop, with the hyperdrive's safety systems automatically stopping the ship as it reached the farthest point of possible travel.
Hyperspace collisions, whether they be intentional or by accident, could devastate or even destroy aplanet. Considering the fact that the output of thereactors of manyCapital ships rivaled or eclipsed that of astar, and that the energies needed to make hyperspace travel possible were vast, one could unleash a great deal of destructive power on a target. Even if a planet had itsplanetary shielding up at the time of a hyperspace collision, it could still have the potential to kill millions on a world such asCoruscant just due to the fallout.[6] One of the more famous hyperspace accidents occurred during theClone Wars, when thebattlecruiserQuaestor collided with theSeparatist planetPammant, fracturing it to its core.[7]
Gravity generators could be used to create an artificialinterdiction field which stopped hyperspace travel in a particular area by mimicking the outer fringes of a celestial body's gravity, useful for both pulling ships out of hyperspace en route and preventing enemies from escaping tolightspeed during engagement. Less affluent groups, such aspirates, dragged largeasteroids (orplanetoids) into trade routes in lieu of the generator or starship method, providing them with both a means to stop shipping and a temporary base or shield against hostile fire.
Black holes were a constant menace. At least a few vessels each year were destroyed by the several "wandering" black holes in real space. Their near infinite gravity wells could be catastrophic to craft that passed too close.
Outside the bounds of a vessel's shielding, hyperspace itself was a lethal environment to any realspace species. Being blown out of the airlock of a vessel while in hyperspace was a more effective way to kill an individual than exposing that individual to the vacuum of realspace. An individual could survive in an escape pod ejected in hyperspace, but if the pod lacked a hyperdrive of its own, reversion to realspace would be impossible.[8]
Even staring at hyperspace from the observation deck of a starship for a prolonged amount of time could produce "hyper-rapture," a form of madness, in a being, or so the legends stated. As there was something fundamentally wrong with viewing the higher-dimensional universe, standard Imperial operating procedure was to keep thetransparisteel opaqued during travel through hyperspace.[9] However,Darth Vader enjoyed staring at the kaleidoscopic and swirling patterns of light,[9] andCronal found it soothing to stare into what he thought of as the emptiness outside the universe.[10]
When a jump was attempted utilizing a damaged hyperdrive, a starship could be stuck in a "crossroad" of space: halfway into hyperspace, and half in realspace. An example of this was theSith dreadnaughtHarbinger. The unfortunate ship, after some quick thinking by the ship's captain,Saes Rrogon, was propelled 5,000 years into the future, to the time ofLuke Skywalker's Jedi Order.
Effects on sensors and comms[]
In addition to navigational hazards, there was also the difficulty inherent in communicating with a starship while traveling at hyperspeed. Since ships in hyperspace did not exist, in a conventional sense, they were largely cut off from conventional radio or subspace communication, since wavelengths of any signal would be massively distorted even if they reached the vessel.Hypercomm signals could reach a vessel in hyperspace, however it was very difficult to communicate in even this fashion unless the signal was sent from one end or the other of the traveling ship's course, or between ships on the same course.
The same difficulties presented to communication also applied tosensors; it was nearly impossible to maintain sensor lock on a vessel in hyperspace, which made escape to lightspeed a very robust retreat option in most engagements. The only option available for pursuit was generally to plot several courses along the target's last known vector, and try to guess where the ship would come out of hyperspace for course corrections. This was generally a losing strategy, of course, since most ships wishing to avoid pursuit would plot a short jump, followed by a longer one to the destination at a different vector before enemies could arrive. The best option was to place ahoming beacon on the enemy ship, but at large distances onlyHoloNet-equipped tracking devices were useful, and these were fantastically expensive.
An interesting phenomenon associated with hyperspace travel wasCronau radiation. This was a short, but powerful burst of radiation which was generated when a ship entered and left hyperspace. It could be detected by properly aligned sensors from a few light-seconds away, often well outside normal sensor radius. This was how the Rebel base onHoth was able to prepare for the oncoming attack whenAdmiralOzzel mistakenly took theExecutor and its battle fleet out of hyperspace too close to the system, rather than approaching stealthily from outside the system.
Communications[]
While hyperspace travel was the primary usage of this phenomenon which bound the modern galaxy together, it was by no means the only one. Hypercomm technology sent signal packets through hyperspace at greater speeds and distances than was possible with more conventionalsubspace transmitters, and this was done so with much greater speed than hyperdrive-equipped starships. TheHoloNet increased the range still further, using an interconnected network ofhyperwave transceivers suspended in hyperspace to rebroadcast enormous tracts of data over the entire galaxy, allowing instantaneous, full-holo transmissions from virtually any subscriber to any other. Under theGalactic Empire, the HoloNet was rigorously controlled, and even under the New Republic, the network was fantastically expensive to maintain, and so direct two-way connection was usually limited to government personnel and the wealthy. News, entertainment, and other wide-reaching broadcasts were transmitted throughout the galaxy and repeated on localsector-basedsubspace networks, however, so every level of galactic society was touched by this communications tool, not simply those with expensive hypercomm systems.
Because of the danger of mass shadows (not to mention interdicting pirates), hyperspace courses had to be plotted with great caution. Very few beings other than powerfulJedi could react while traveling at many times the speed of light, and in any case conventional sensors and communicators could not receive information faster than lightspeed. Even subspace sensors, which operated along an alternate dimension and propagate faster than light, could not keep up with the vast speeds of hyperspace travel. Thus, precise advance knowledge of the celestial bodies along the way was necessary in the form of navigational computers. These devices, also known as nav comps or navicomputers by spacers, contained detailed star charts and the ability to make astronavigational calculations quickly from one point to another before a jump was taken.
While pilots had to have a basic understanding of astronav skills to operate a nav computer proficiently, they didn't need to know the complex physical equations necessary for hyperspeed travel, although some species, such as theGivin andSiniteen, were able to calculate these equations in their heads and thus did not require the help of a computer. The internal library charts had to be periodically updated, of course, as systems move slowly around the galaxy, stars explode and are born, and so on, and so a dedicated explorer and cartographer corps still existed millennia after the first star lanes were plotted.
Most star travelers used preexisting, well-known trade routes. This guaranteed that interdiction by pirates and celestial bodies was kept to a minimum, help was close by in the case of a malfunction, and travel times could be reasonably predicted.
TheHound's Tooth, the personal ship of the bounty hunterBossk, was able to change course in the middle of a hyperspace jump. This capability was considered "magnificent" by Flirt when the droid examined the ships systems on a trip back to Lomabu.[11]
Due to the existance of hyperspace shadows, there was also no straight, fixed hyperspace route that leads from one end of the galaxy to the other.[12]
Hyperspace travel times[]
Despite being a mature technology and ships having travelled relatively stable hyperspace-routes that were updated constantly, moving through hyperspace was still a dangerous proposition.[12]While generally determined by the distance between two planets, hyperspace travel times between two locations seemingly close to one another could be drastically extended by the need to navigate around stellar hazards, such asasteroid fields andnebulae.
An example of this was the journey fromCoruscant toAlderaan. In terms of distance, Alderaan was situated close to Coruscant—the former at approximately 5,000 light years from the Core, the latter at approximately 10,000.[13] However, during theImperial era, such a journey required roughly sixteen hours of travel due to a section of the route passing through a part of the largely-unchartedDeep Core, where navigation was difficult as a result of thegravity wells produced by the congregation of stars.[14] Ironically, then, it was actually faster to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on the other side of the galaxy. In some cases, intragalactic travels could take days, depending on the distance between two planets and the obstacles between.
Appearances[]
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