Return to Answer

In the case of the Millennium Falcon this certainly seems true in that — first — Solo claims the ship makes it "point-five past light-speed", not more than 1.5 c, which is nothing compared to any of incarnations of the Enterprise we know, from NX-01 and on-wards. But — then — the Falcon manages to get half-way across that the Far Far Away galaxy in a really short matter of time. So it appears the Falcon is taking shortcuts or piggybacking on something that allows it to get to the destination in a time that makes for a higher average speed than the ship can actually propel itself.

In the case of the Millennium Falcon this certainly seems true in that — first — Solo claims the ship makes it "point-five past light-speed", not more than 1.5 c, which is nothing compared to any of incarnations of the Enterprise we know, from NX-01 and on-wards. But — then — the Falcon manages to get half-way across the Far Far Away galaxy in a really short matter of time. So it appears the Falcon is taking shortcuts or piggybacking on something that allows it to get to the destination in a time that makes for a higher average speed than the ship can actually propel itself.

• An unimportant inconvenience that must be to be dealt with, because the audience will not accept that characters just magically pop from one place to the other. By example, this is why Transporters were added to Star Trek.
• Part of the plot, in that the travel will take exactly as long as is needed to make the plot come out right
• Set dressing, a reason to place a bunch of characters in a cramped space where they need to interact with each other.

• An unimportant inconvenience that must be dealt with, because the audience do not accept that characters just magically pop from one place to the other. By example, this is why Transporters were added to Star Trek.
• Part of the plot, in that the travel will take exactly as long as is needed to make the plot come out right
• Set dressing, a reason to place a bunch of characters in a cramped space where they need to interact with each other.

This may sound snarky but the comment is serious; it is meant to point out that the numbers are not comparable, even within the same universe. Also they are irrelevant, because speed is not really important. What is important is: "will the ship get me where I am going in time?" And in science fiction, that answer is that...

This, in turn, means that if you start digging into this — as people have done, starting with the very cryptic statement that The Millennium Falcon did the Kessel Run in a number of parsec, which is a measure of distance and not time — you will find that the speeds are wildly inconsistent and do not actually make any sense. As Valorum points out in the comments: star ship speeds are easy prey for Early Installment Weirdness. And once the hand-waving starts to try to make this come out right — "wormholes", "folding space" and what-not — then all bets are off and you cannot make any kind of comparison. The numbers may be incomparable even within the same universe.

If the U.S.S Voyager could travel in the same manner as the Millennium Falcon, then the whole of the Star Trek: Voyager series would have been quite short, with the pilot episode ending with them travelling from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha ditto with ease and being home in time for Janeway's next coffee, and that would have been it. Instead the ship plods along at 1.0 SOP until the finale, whereupon they just wormhole the ship home and close down the show.

Whereas, if the Millennium Falcon would have had to suffer the constraints of the U.S.S Voyager there would not even have been a galaxy-wide war because years would be spent in transit just going from one star to the next one. But instead ships even as large as the Death Stars (120 and 900 km respectively) can just gallivant around the galaxy without even breaking a sweat.

So — again — we find that star ships travel at The Speed Of Plot. And comparisons between physical speeds are entirely pointless, because the ships will arrive just in time to make the plot come out right.

This may sound snarky but the comment is serious; it is meant to point out that the numbers are not comparable, even within the same universe. Also they are irrelevant, because speed is not really important. What is important is: "will the ship get me where I am going in time?" And in science fiction, that answer is...

This, in turn, means that if you start digging into it — as people have done starting with the very cryptic statement that The Millennium Falcon did the Kessel Run in a number of parsec, which is a measure of distance and not time — you will find that the speeds are wildly inconsistent and do not actually make any sense. As Valorum points out in the comments: star ship speeds are easy prey for Early Installment Weirdness. And once the hand-waving starts to try to make this come out right — "wormholes", "folding space" and what-not — then all bets are off and you cannot make any kind of comparison. The numbers may be incomparable even within the same universe.

If the USS Voyager could travel in the same manner as the Millennium Falcon, then the whole of the Star Trek: Voyager series would have been quite short, with the pilot episode ending with them travelling from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha ditto with ease and being home in time for Janeway's next coffee, and that would have been it. Instead Voyager plods along at 1.0 SOP until the finale, whereupon they just wormhole the ship home and close down the show.

Whereas, if the Millennium Falcon would have had to suffer the constraints of the USS Voyager there would not even have been a galaxy-wide war because years would be spent in transit just going from one star to the next one. But instead ships even as large as the Death Stars (120 and 900 km respectively) can just gallivant around the galaxy without even breaking a sweat.

Hence, comparisons between physical speeds are entirely pointless, because the ships will arrive just in time to make the plot come out right.