George Lucas has talked about this specific line and measurement in interviews. The idea was that if you have a better nav computer you could get places faster by planting the shortest route. One way to think of it with the hyperspace is as if all ships are held at a more-or-less constant speed in hyperspace, and thus to get there faster than someone the only real was was to find a shorter route through hyperspace. Better nav computers and sensors could plot better courses through asteroid fields and closer to sun’s without having issues, whereas poorer computers would plot really safe routes that take longer.
I’d love to see a primary source on what he said. I’m sure if he said it after years of people lampooning the line, his take was probably defensive and revisionist.
Here are two quick clips. If you spend any time searching into this you will very quickly find lots more. The original comes from the making of documentary done in the 90’s
Eh, fair enough. It is retrospective so we’ll never know how much of that he was thinking about at the time. But he explains it convincingly enough. It’s still a mistake to have such a complicated notion of what goes into hyperspace travel and then not provide enough basis in that for the dialogue to make sense. That might be a worse error than just the simple mistake of using the wrong unit.
George Lucas has talked about this specific line and measurement in interviews. The idea was that if you have a better nav computer you could get places faster by planting the shortest route. One way to think of it with the hyperspace is as if all ships are held at a more-or-less constant speed in hyperspace, and thus to get there faster than someone the only real was was to find a shorter route through hyperspace. Better nav computers and sensors could plot better courses through asteroid fields and closer to sun’s without having issues, whereas poorer computers would plot really safe routes that take longer.
I’d love to see a primary source on what he said. I’m sure if he said it after years of people lampooning the line, his take was probably defensive and revisionist.
https://youtube.com/shorts/VOys-f1HaIc
https://youtube.com/shorts/f5bftwl0h_I
Here are two quick clips. If you spend any time searching into this you will very quickly find lots more. The original comes from the making of documentary done in the 90’s
Eh, fair enough. It is retrospective so we’ll never know how much of that he was thinking about at the time. But he explains it convincingly enough. It’s still a mistake to have such a complicated notion of what goes into hyperspace travel and then not provide enough basis in that for the dialogue to make sense. That might be a worse error than just the simple mistake of using the wrong unit.