The Kessel Run

With a disc hopping model of hyperspeed inplace, another option for the Kessel Run develops.

The common explanation for Solo's "Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs" line is that Kessel is surrounded by five black holes, and cutting a short route through them is dangerous. Given that the line is given as a response to a question about speed this is a nonsense.

Firstly I'm going to have to give a quick guide to black holes and four dimensional navigation to demonstrate why the original model is complete arse, less because it is relevant, more because it completely bugs me.

Black Holes are not dangerous, their casting as stellar villains is complete hollywood myth. Black Holes are stars, just like any other star, except their volume is very tiny indeed, the mass is still of stellar proportions, though of small stars depending on the degree to which they have reabsorbed their stellar matter accretion disc.

It is true if you get too close to a black hole you'll get sucked in and die, but this is true of every other kind of star too. Our sun has an 'event horizon' determined by the potential power of the unit trying to evade it. The only unique factor to a black hole is that it may have an event horizon tight enough to constrain light. This is very much in conjecture, however, with Steven Hawking (who started the whole black hole craze) coming out a few years ago to say his calculations were wrong in the first place. It now seems likely that light is simply bent tightly into a spiral orbital path which ultimately arrives at at release point and causes a pair of polar emission cones. Are we all clear so far? Excellent. Now, onto the original problem presented, the Kesselian Run issue.

Below is a diagram demonstrating the simplest route phenomena using a scale model of the run. Now here the event horizons are represented at one light year, which is the approximate range of the Oort Clouds of the solar system. I mention that because the Oort clouds marks the last point where anything of any mass at all can 'detect' the gravity well of a star. The point at which a star can affect a vessel moving quickly is MUCH smaller and there is conceptually no point at which a superluminal body could be affected by luminal forces such as a black hole, but there ya go.

As is hopefully obvious I've modeled the routes in LightWave and provided simpler 2D representations too. What I did here was to add a black hole directly in front of each of the two relevant worlds, (Kessel and Whereveria) because this marks the points where they make the most difference to the route. However a simple veer away avoids both. After that we add a third black hole directly in the new path. If we rotate our course around the Kessel / Whereveria axis even a few degrees, we have to make no other course change. So we're set for three black holes. Two more holes placed and some more rotation and we end up at a point where using all five black holes to their MAXIMUM ability to 'get in the way' we have a tiny, teeny, pathetically small course deflection.

Hopefully this demonstrates fairly conclusively that this 'Kessel Maw' crud is the result of diluted cerebral fluid.

QED - Kessel's black holes are not enough to explain the Kessel Run.

Solutions to the problem.

1 - The first is to suggest that Kessel and the other world of the Kessel run are both situated on top of the Galactic disc and very close to the core bulge. Jumping from one to the other requires a 'Disc-Hop' due to the extensive number of perfectly normal stellar bodies. Solo's thirty nine year long jump is unusual in that it is a single jump that's tightly curved (unusually good navigational systems) and allows him to execute the journey with a single jump, rather than the three or more most other ships would use. This model is similar to the 'classic' model but ditches the idiotic black hole theory and instead uses the (roughly) four and a half thousand stellar objects to be found within a tight apogee arc within the confines of the two systems at the hypothesized location in or near the galactic core. Note that these systems would potentially also feature in the classic model, but since they're not mentioned despite being important, and the black holes are, despite they're not being so, I have to label the 'Maw Model' as bantha dung.

2 - The second solution is my favourite, and is simply that you're not meant to take the line literally. Like many lines in Star Wars it's merely hyperbole. Many Star Wars fans seem to assume that because a character says a thing then it must be literally true. Solo is performing a well-documented maneuver known as 'bullshitting'. In saying the Falcon is the fastest ship in the galaxy he's just boasting. Twelve parsecs is just flim-flamming a couple of desert bums.

3 - The Run has nothing, really to do with black holes or stars, or anything. It doesn't even relate to another world. A ship starts the Kessel Run when, whilst departing Kessel, it is challenged to come to a halt and prepare for boarding. Not wanting to get caught, the ship guns the engines and jumps to hyperspace. Kessel Pursuit ships follow. If as ship is able to get away, sooner or later they will escape ahead of the pursuit ship's sensors. The faster the escaping smuggler, the sooner that will occur. In the Falcon's case, the pursuit ships are lost in the incredibly short distance of twelve parsecs.