OK, so I've never quite understood this. Obi-Wan gets his message to the Jedi temple about the assassin and the clone army, and Yoda goes to Kamino to check out the clone army for himself. Obi-Wan gets captured, held for a while by Dooku and then Anakin and Padme head over to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan, before they themselves are captured. Then, right before the executions were to take place, Yoda charges in to the rescue with the cloned army. Is it just me or does the time frame not make sense here? How did Yoda travel all the way from Coruscant to Kamino, then to Geonosis and then get there in time? I thought it was only a few days or less from when Obi-Wan was captured.
Travel time in the Star Wars galaxy routinely only seems to take a matter of days or hours no matter how far away it is. It is a little too convenient. But if you think about it... at the end of ESB they were outside the galaxy. So clearly they have some crazy FTL speeds.
From your link: However, Leland Chee confirmed on the StarWars.com Message Boards that the object seen in Episode V is the Star Wars galaxy,[3] despite this requiring the Rebel fleet to have traveled a very long distance from the galaxy. However, such a travel is possible according to the Outbound Flight Project led by Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth
Leland Chee also said that Yoda had never been to Dagobah before ROTS. So much for that. ( And galaxies don't rotate at a visible speed, but whatever. ) "Anyway, we should be at Alderaan about oh-two-hundred hours." "This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi; it will soon see the end of the rebellion." "If the Millennium Falcon went into light-speed, it'll be on the other side of the galaxy by now." Also see: superfast travel from Coruscant to Mustafar in ROTS.
I always thought it was the galaxy. So there. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever that the Falcon flew towards a forming solar system. It made absolute sense that the Rebellion had to escape the galaxy to recover from the Empire attacks.
I've never been concerned with the distances in Star Wars. It's not science fiction. It's fantasy. The ships have the ability to get form star to star regardless of whether light speed or hyperdrive is working. Just like how my car has the ability to drive me from here to California. It's just what they do. The thing with with the Rishi Maze/galaxy comes down to this: it made for a cool shot. TYM
That's as good a theory as any. Since Star Wars has never been interested in genuine scientific accuracy, I figured that there were sections of space that functioned kinda like rivers with flows that would carry a ship fast enough to other parts of the galaxy. These moved at the perfect speed for the advancement of the plot, so the characters could get to wherever they had to be without working hyperdrive.
I think you just need to accept the FTL in the Star Wars universe is similar to wormhole travel in the Farscape or Star Trek universe--it allows one to travel across the galaxy almost instantaneously or at the most within a few hours. I know that this is not the official timeline for ESB but my personal fan theory has always been this: First of all forget the pacing of the movie, all the scenes with Han, Leia, Chewie and the droids running from the imperial fleet through the asteroid field and up until they begin to head to Bespin takes place during Luke's trip to Dagobah. Bespin is already close for the Falcon to reach but a journey that still takes years running without hyperdrive. Imagine the back up hyperdrive as still enabling the ship to approach the speed of light. During those years, Luke trains on Dagobah with Yoda until he gets his vision, at which point he jumps back in his X-Wing and flies to Bespin at the incredibly fast speeds hyperdrive allows. So the events at Bespin take place several years after the events on Hoth during which Luke actually has time to invest in actual jedi training.
Well number 1, as other people have said, interstellar propulsion in Star Wars is inconsistent since as with any sci-fi franchise, movie convenience takes priority. The way I see it, Anakin and Padme were probably kept for a few days while the Geonosian leadership interrogated them and then debated the best way to dispose of them. Plus, wouldn't the leadership want to give all the regular Geonosians time to finish their daily jobs before coming to view the spectacle of execution? And in a Star Wars vehicle reference book I have, it is stated that the Acclamator class assault ships had powerful hyperdrives capable of doing 0.6, which is super-good in the Episode II era. The Millennium Falcon in the original trilogy era does 0.5.
When I cite it, it's actually a form of shorthand for my real theory: that Han and Chewie, being starship mechanics in all but name, were able at some point along the way to make repairs which jury-rigged the faulty hyperdrive so that it would have limited functionality within a certain range but would be unreliable outside that range. ( This is essentially the same situation faced by the Queen's ship in TPM, which was at least explained by "the hyperdrive is leaking". ) You don't need incredibly fast speeds to get from Dagobah to Dagobah!