Timeline for Which ship can go faster, the Millennium Falcon or the USS Enterprise-D?
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| Aug 13, 2021 at 8:09 | comment | added | Chris Strickland | "Point five past light speed" can not necessarily be used to conclude that the Falcon's speed is 1.5c. Let's suppose that I am driving my car one day and I say to the passenger, "She'll do point five past speed limit". Did I just say that the car will go 55.5 mph? 1.5 * 55 mph? You might argue for either, but I would say the sentence is so asensical that it probably doesn't mean either. It can't be parsed in any meaningful way without assumptions. Point five what? How does "past" relate mathematically to a speed? Any answer is an assumption. | |
| Mar 6, 2020 at 13:45 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 9, 2019 at 21:24 | comment | added | Misha R | @DCShannon I believe speed doesn't necessarily work that way within a fictional universe. In a fictional universe it is entirely possible to travel slowly yet cover a lot of distance. Watch this: "My ship's speed was 5000 mph, and I traveled from Sol to Vega in two days." You can say it's impossible, but I wrote it, so it's part of my universe. In this case I made the contradiction pretty easy to see, but it's essentially the way speed of plot works. It's just usually better hidden. Speed then becomes an irrelevant concept - unless descriptions are highly consistent or it's 1.0 SoP. | |
| Apr 28, 2017 at 19:02 | comment | added | DCShannon | @MichaelKarnerfors I haven't presented an argument because we're not arguing. I explained my downvote. | |
| Apr 28, 2017 at 12:12 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Apr 28, 2017 at 11:16 | comment | added | MichaelK | @DCShannon I argued for why there is a difference between the two. You provided no counter-argument. Instead you just jumped to the bare assertions that there is no difference and that the answer is "ridiculous". Your comment — in my not very humble opinion — is more of a tantrum-fueled foot stomping than it is constructive feedback. Fact remains that Lucas did not give any consideration to things such as speed and similar when he made the story other than to do some "name dropping" in order to establish the Falcon as a Cool Ship™ | |
| Apr 27, 2017 at 22:01 | comment | added | DCShannon | Getting from one place to another is moving a distance. Speed is how much distance you can cover over time. There is not a difference between getting from one location to another in a short time and moving fast. This whole answer is ridiculous. | |
| Mar 28, 2017 at 11:43 | comment | added | Binary Worrier | While the question squeaks past the "Gorilla v's Shark" check, it's close enough to be nonsensical. This answer IMHO points out exactly why the question isn't really answerable and why attempts to answer will be unsatisfying and won't make sense. | |
| Mar 28, 2017 at 8:59 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 27, 2017 at 12:05 | comment | added | MichaelK | Clearly Lucas had no interest in the technical specs of the ships... he just wanted to tell a story. And if you need any further proof about this, just look at the novelisation. How do they measure time in the galaxy far far away? By Standard Time Units. I must say... can it get any more clear that the nitty gritty and nerdy details such as time and speed and physics just do not matter one iota to Lucas. :) | |
| Mar 27, 2017 at 12:02 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Valorum No, I have concluded that the Falcon can get from one location to another in a really short time, but that at the same time the only actual number that is ever mentioned about the physical speed of the ship is much too slow for this. So take it up with George Lucas, not me, because it was Lucas that made the mistake of trying to make the Falcon sound bad-ass by using stupid slow speeds and having Solo blurt out a measures of distance instead of time just because Lucas assumed parsec had anything to do with seconds. | |
| Mar 27, 2017 at 11:56 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 27, 2017 at 11:55 | comment | added | Valorum | My problem is that you want to have your cake and eat it. You've identified that the Falcon is clearly faster, yet still want to get the slightly snarky "speed of plot" point in. The first part is a solid answer, the latter is not only fluff but inconsistent fluff. You've invalidated your own argument | |
| Mar 27, 2017 at 11:15 | comment | added | Salman Arshad | This should be the accepted answer. | |
| Mar 27, 2017 at 7:53 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Valorum Well I am sorry that you find it frustrating but the things I listed are the only hard numbers he have to go on in the Star Wars universe. We know Solo claims ".5 past light speed". And then we know that the Falcon travelled over a large portion of the galaxy in the matter of hours. Already there things are cocked beyond any chance to straighten it and the question is doomed to be left without an answer. Frustrating? Yes, but that is the way it is. Lucas did not bother about these details and just goes directly to establishing that the ship is fast, because Solo says it is. | |
| Mar 26, 2017 at 14:16 | comment | added | user36551 | DS9 also used SOP values a lot: apparently the station is very remote, yet its runabouts with a maximum speed of warp 5 can get anywhere you want in no time at all. With very few exceptions, every journey in any ship seems to take only a couple of hours: a standout example is in The Homecoming, where Li Nalas has been shot over in the Cardassia system, but the runabout still makes it home in time for him to receive emergency medical treatment (should take around ten days). | |
| Mar 25, 2017 at 23:52 | comment | added | Justin Time - Reinstate Monica | To be fair, the whole "12 parsecs" thing can be explained one of three ways, each of which is equally plausible: 1) The writers forgot to do their research first. 2) Han used a shorter route, which is likely more dangerous considering most people don't use it (this one is plausible once one considers the standard weakness of FTL drives not working well near gravitational wells, which makes it very likely that standard routes give wells a wide berth when possible). 3) Han was trying to con some rubes. | |
| Mar 25, 2017 at 21:43 | comment | added | Nat | @whatsisname The issue here's that the plot holes are way too large, as discussed in the top answer in Was the Millennium Falcon too slow?. Star Trek's science is pretty bad, but Star Wars's science is beyond redemption; it's far too inconsistent to even invent explanations for. The best you can do is accept that it's broken and choose to ignore it while watching the films. | |
| Mar 25, 2017 at 14:03 | comment | added | Valorum | I find this answer frustrating. You've stated that you can't compare them, then later you've compared them and directly answered the question asked. "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." | |
| Mar 25, 2017 at 4:57 | comment | added | whatsisname | @MichaelKarnerfors: inventing things out of thin air is what Science Fiction and Fantasy is all about. Of course everything exists to advance the plot and of course things aren't always consistent. People want answers with self-imposed requirements of abiding by the make-believe stories because it's fun and interesting. I don't understand how this question has so many upvotes, it's antithetical to this sites purpose. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 23:26 | comment | added | Nat | +1. The claim that the MF made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs strongly suggests that the writers had the MF moving around at the speed of plot without any significant concern for what that speed actually was. They couldn't have even tried to sanity-check the speed of plot to ensure that the in-universe numbers were at least plausible, or they'd have realized that the given figure didn't even make sense. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 18:59 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 24, 2017 at 18:57 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Andrey "Extremely unconstructive"? According to you and what army? I am sorry that the reality of the question did not give you the answers you were hoping for but I will not invent stuff out of thin air just to please you, because that would not only be "extremely unconstructive" as you put it, but also blatantly false; I will not lie just to please the likes of you. The way I have described it is the way it is: unless the authors already from the start considered it, then things like star ship speed will fall victim to Early Installment Weirdness. Sorry, but there it is. Deal with it. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 18:48 | comment | added | Andrey | This answer is extremely unconstructive, and this kind of dismissive logic can be applied to most questions on this site, but should not. If there are inconsistencies in the source material they should be cited. Normally the author plays with distance, not speed | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 15:11 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 24, 2017 at 5:20 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Kevin Well considering that people keep saying that the Millennium Falcon travel by skipping from wormhole to wormhole I thought the distinction should be made. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 5:09 | comment | added | Ber | The Millennium Falcon travels at .5 past the Speed Of Plot. | |
| Mar 24, 2017 at 4:54 | comment | added | Kevin | @MichaelKarnerfors way to nitpick my phrasing. "Top speed" / self-sustained speed is actually more in line with my meaning. Voyager actually made the trip ("can get") in a few years due to aid from some more advanced technology; the 70 years is calculated from its "top speed." The Falcon made a similar journey on its own (no more than "top speed"). | |
| Mar 23, 2017 at 18:39 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Kevin "how far can it get in a given time" is a different question than "how fast can it travel". I can get from Copenhagen to Stockholm in little over an hour. My top speed is at the very best no more than 15-18 km/h. | |
| Mar 23, 2017 at 18:31 | comment | added | Kevin | Even with the variation in speeds within each universe, the two are so many orders of magnitude different that there is a clear answer. The MF can get halfway across the galaxy in a few hours, Voyager (and so Enterprise) is more like 70 years. | |
| Mar 23, 2017 at 13:45 | comment | added | Turambar | I know there's a tweet from our beloved Pablo Hidalgo saying that space travel happens as fast as they need it to. Just googling "Pablo Hidalgo speed of plot" got a number of hits, including this highly relevant one. | |
| Mar 22, 2017 at 14:34 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 22, 2017 at 13:25 | comment | added | Valorum | The trope is "Early Installment Weirdness. Some can forgive and others cannot. True fans accept that it's not real and that mistakes sometimes happen. | |
| Mar 22, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 22, 2017 at 12:33 | comment | added | MichaelK | @Valorum Yes, because they run into people that ask questions such the very question that crowns this page. But by then it is usually too late and you cannot make ends meet without retconing and — I will not even call it "reverse engineering" — blatant hand-waving. | |
| Mar 22, 2017 at 12:30 | history | edited | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 22, 2017 at 12:20 | comment | added | Valorum | Their speeds are portrayed inconsistently, for sure. But the writers always seem to have at least one eye on the worldbuilding aspects, especially in later episodes. | |
| Mar 22, 2017 at 12:05 | history | answered | MichaelK | CC BY-SA 3.0 |