Galactic Empire Sourcebook
Galactic Travel Times
(Sep 2025)

To estimate rough travel times in your games, you can use the following tables. It's important to note that these travel times are for the “average” person – if you are well connected, you can move at the speed of plot via knowing secret or lesser known hyperspace routes.

WEG Generalized Hyperspace Travel Times
(Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition; Page 112)

Within a Sector = A Few Hours to A Few Days
Within a Region = A Few Hours to a Few Days
Nearby Region = Several days to weeks
Across the Galaxy = Several weeks to several months

WEG Generalized Sublight Travel Times
(Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, 2nd Edition; Revised & Expanded, Page 116)

Sublight Benchmarks. While starships move at relatively slow speeds in orbit, they can achieve incredible velocities in open space. Here are some very rough guidelines for sublight travel times:

  • Five minutes to fly from orbit to a safe hyperspace jump point.

  • Half an hour to fly from a planet to one of its moons.

  • Two to six hours to fly from one planet to the nearest planet in the system. (Two hours for relatively close terrestrial worlds; the upper limit is for flying between distant gas giants.)

  • Anywhere from 10 to 48 hours to fly from a star to the outer limits of the system, depending upon distance and the presence of any hazards such as asteroid belts or gas clouds. (It takes about 15 hours to reach the outer limits of a "representative" system composed of a single yellow star and less than a dozen significant planetary bodies.)

Behind the Magic CD-ROM Presentation c. 1990s
(LINK to IMAGE)


Bespin

Corellia

Coruscant

Dagobah

Dantooine

Endor

Tatooine

Alderaan

8 hrs

6 hrs

16 hrs

1 day, 6 hrs

13 hrs

18 hrs

7 hrs

Bespin


6 hrs

16 days, 14 hrs

1 day, 3 hrs

22 hrs

1 day, 8 hrs

16 hrs

Corellia



4 hrs

1 day, 7 hrs

12 hrs

17 hrs

4 hrs

Coruscant




12 days, 4 hrs

19 hrs

6 days, 12 hrs

22 days, 14 hrs

Dagobah





1 day, 8 hrs

4 days, 1 hr

1 day, 4 hrs

Dantooine






21 hrs

20 hrs

Endor







1 day

Wizards of the Coast D20 Regional Travel Times (x1 Hyperdrive) in Hours

Deep Core: Byss
Core Worlds: Corellia, Duro, Rendili, Kuat, Alderaan, Caamas, Corulag, Coruscant
Colonies: Fondor, Ghorman, Neimoidiam, Carida
Inner Rim: Bestine, Hapes, Bilbringi
Expansion Region: Nkllon
Mid Rim: Sullust, Naboo, Bothawui, Nal Hutta, Toydaria, Kashyyyk, Ord Mantell, Ithor
Outer Rim: Endor, Bespin, Hoth, Bakura, Mustafar, Dagobah, Sluis Van, Tatooine, Geonosis, Ryloth, Kamino, Gamorr, Yavin

NOTE: The travel times below take into account travel time within the region – i.e. the Outer Rim requires 48 hours to travel from end to end, because it's on the outside of the Galaxy, while the core worlds only have a 6 hour travel time as they are all very compact and close to each other.

NOTE II: Adjust by multiplying by the speed of your hyperdrive; x2, multiply by 2, etc.

Travelling from

Deep Core

Core Worlds

Colonies

Inner Rim

Expansion

Mid Rim

Outer Rim

Wild Space

Deep Core

12

18

24

48

72

96

120

144

Core Worlds

24

6

24

36

60

84

96

120

Colonies

48

24

12

24

48

72

96

120

Inner Rim

72

36

24

18

24

48

72

96

Expansion Region

96

60

48

24

24

24

48

72

Mid Rim

120

84

72

48

24

36

24

48

Outer Rim

144

96

96

72

48

24

48

24

Wild Space

168

120

120

96

72

48

24

12

If these estimates aren't good enough, you can analyze what we see in the movies to try and estimate “straight line” speeds:

Analysis of Hyperdrive Speeds from the Sullust to Endor transit in Return of the Jedi

The distance from Sullust to Endor is about 30,000~ LY based off scaling from the official Star Wars map (HERE); using a map scaler (LINK).

We know that all the Rebel Starfighters made the jump themselves; which gives us a possible mission profile based off US P-51 pilots flying seven hour missions from Iwo Jima to Japan in 1945; adjusted for the fact that Star Wars pilots can let the astromechs fly the craft during FTL and relax:

The requirement for a "fly back" portion is due to the fact that during planning the attack on the second Death Star, the Rebels have to operate under the assumption that the attack may fail or be called off shortly after arrival at Endor. Since it would take too long to land the starfighters onto the Rebel Capital Ships; the fighters need to have sufficient return endurance to fly home or to a pre-arranged rendezvous.

The next constraint is the fact that the Rebel fleet jumped together and arrived at Endor together – all units had to move at the speed of the slowest unit. According to WEG stats, GR-75 Medium Transports only have x4 hyperdrives; but they were keeping up with the rest of the fleet (Nebulon Bs and Corvettes have x2 drives). Therefore, I have to conclude that the Rebellion refitted its GR-75s with x2 hyperdrives in order for them to act as Fleet Auxiliaries.

Calculations using those constants result in the following table of hyperdrive “ratings”:

Hyperdrive Rating

Speed (LY/hr)

Hyperdrive Rating

Speed (LY/hr)

0.125x

104,000

2048x (150 LY/D)

6.25

0.25x

52,000

4096x (75 LY/D)

3.125

0.5x

26,000

8192x (37.4 LY/D)

1.562

1x

13,000

16384x (18.7 LY/D)

0.7812

2x

6,500

32768x (9.3 LY/D)

0.3906

4x

3,250

65536x (4.68 LY/D)

0.1953

8x

1,625

131072x (2.3 LY/D)

0.0976

16x

800~

262144x (1.1 LY/D)

0.0488

32x

400~

524288x (0.58 LY/D)

0.0244

64x

200~

1048576x (0.29 LY/D)

0.0122

128x

100~

2097152x (0.14 LY/D)

0.0061

256x

50~

4194304x (2.22 LY/Mo)

0.00305

512x

25~

8388608x (1.1 LY/Mo)

0.001525

1024x

12.5~

16777216x (0.5 LY/Mo)

0.0007625

What's interesting is that the higher “hypothetical” ratings of x0.125 and x0.25 tend to support Palpatine's Revenge of the Sith journey from Coruscant to Mustafar (some 60,000~ LY) in an hour or less (constrained by the need for Anakin to survive unassisted in Mustafar’s harsh atmosphere).

The other ends of the hypothetical drive ratings let us fix various proto-historical dates in the development of the Galaxy, such as when a true “Galactic Republic” became possible.

In the 1830s, it took about six months (4,380 hours) for a person to travel via sailing ship from London to Calcutta on Earth – the equivalent distance would be from Coruscant to the Outer Rim, some 50 kLY; giving us a travel speed of 11 LY/hr, or the equivalent of a Class x1024.

Further down the scale, a x4096 drive at 3 LY/hr turns the journey from Coruscant to Alderaan (8200 LY) into a 3.5 month voyage, while travelling to the fringes of the Outer Rim becomes a two-year journey comparable to the Magellan Expedition's circumnavigation of Earth from 1519-1522.

At the lowest end of the scale; a x16777216 drive takes about 275~ days to travel 5 LY; which while slow compared to what we see in the movies, is a significant improvement over the 50 years it would take at 7.1% the speed of light to travel that distance via conventional fusion propulsion.

Another thing that leaps out to me is is that presumably the Bureau of Ships and Services (BoSS) redefines hyperdrive speeds every few thousand years; as this is the only way we can explain Class One drives; when presumably in the era of the x1024 drives, they were also known as Class Ones.

My current “feel” for each era of Star Wars regarding hyperdrive speeds is:

Era

Drive Speeds

Core to Outer Rim (65,000 LY)

Galactic Empire (0 BBY)

x0.5 to x4

20 Hours

High Republic (1000 BBY)

x8 to x32

1.5 to 7 days

Middle Republic (2000 BBY)

x128 to x256

30 to 60 days

Early Republic (3000 BBY)

x512 to x2048

3.5 months to 14 months

Regional Powers (4000 BBY)

x4096 to x16384

2.3 to 9.5 years

Galactic Settlement (5000 BBY)

x32768 to x131072

19 to 75 years

Core Settlement (6000 BBY)

x262144 to x1048576

150 to 600 years

Core Founding (7000 BBY)

x2097152 to x8388608

1200 to 4800 years

This provides a nice gradient of long periods of technological stability that are vital to preserving the “feel” of Star Wars, while also providing the necessary technological progression required over long time scales.

Analysis of Sublight Propulsion speeds from the Yavin to Death Star transit in A New Hope

In A New Hope, the Rebel Starfighters traversed a distance of 400,000 km in less than 5 minutes (300~ seconds) as shown by their performance in A New Hope as they transit from Yavin IV to the Death Star around the Gas Giant Yavin giving them an average cruise velocity of around 1,300 km/sec and acceleration on the order of 1700G per early 2000s analysis by Michael Wong (LINK).

Rebel Starfighter acceleration may have been limited due to the short distance of 400,000 km to the Death Star; but it provides us with a rule of thumb to estimate sublight transit times based off our own solar system: From Earth to Mars would take 16.5 hours. Past that, the Asteroid Belt would take 2.3 days, Jupiter 5.6 days and Neptune 38.6 days.

What's interesting is if you “sanity check” things with the Delta-V equation, using same weight ratio as a F-15 (13,154 kg empty, 6,103 kg fuel mass), with a restriction of 33% of total Delta-V (reserving a third each for flyout, combat, and flyback); you end up with 1,357 km/sec from a 1.1~ million ISP propulsion system; so there's room for improvement within Star Wars, given that the theoretical limit of deuterium-tritium fusion is about 2.7~ million ISP.

Presumably over 10,000+ years, the races of Star Wars may have shifted from deuterium-tritium fusion reactions to Rhydonium fusion reactions for “mobile” applications since Rhydo is a room temperature fuel (as shown in Andor S2) and easier to handle than “traditional” cryogenic fusion fuels.