watchdog wrote: The claim is that it's a lacking of general knowledge of whats out there but that its easy to get to because you can look up in the sky and see the stars or something along those lines, its the same claim they make when you point out the empire cant just establish a base on one end of the milky way and zip back and forth at will destroying federation targets. Mike Wong himself actually insisted to me that it's easy to look up in the sky and see where the stars and other navigating hazzards are, the proper reply to that would be, OK, so what is currently on the opposite side of the galaxy right now? I dont think any of them has ever done any sky watching, and because there is a lack of them in the star wars movies, these peple seem to be unaware of something known as a nebula, which are never the small tiny clouds seen in star trek but huge light-years long bands of dust and matter stretching across the galaxy obscuring the view, for instance;
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007 ... on-beauty/
Do I unterstand that correct, before travelling to a destination with velocities several million times of c, they want to look at that destination to see, if there is anything in their way?
Do they know, that light and every other known natural phenomenon propagates maximal with c and that, what we see now from the other side of the galaxy, has happened several ten thousand years before now?
It's not that easy, even if there wouldn't be any obscuring clouds.
They would have to see any relevant details, that means every planet or comet, regardless how difficult it is to see such small objects from a distance of thousands of light years, and every other space object, even those, who are not visible like black holes and can only be detected by drawn-out observations of their surroundings.
And when they have catalogued all relevant objects, they have still to calculate, what all these billions objects were doing in the time, that has lasted for the light to reach the observer and will do in the time, it would need the observer to reach its destination.
I doubt, that this is possible at all, let alone in a short time, considering how long the computer of the Millenium Falcon has needed to calculate the data for their travel from Tatooine to Alderaan, although they have had an up-to-date map from their galaxy and not several thousand years old data.
And that would be only natural phenomenons. Changes, done by spacefaring civilications, like travelling starships, the building of spacestations or
Dyson Spheres,
the generation of new planets,
the destroying of planets or
whole starsystems etc. are far faster than natural changes and not calculable.
And considering how precise the calculations for the travel from Tatooine to Alderaan had to be, such artificial phenomenons could be very relevant, although the probability that they are lying on a direct path to the destination is very low. After all, the probability that something would lie on a path, that is choosen without any calculations is also near zero. One could arbitrarily choose a path through the galaxy and would probably not collide with anything.
But it seems, that this is not enough. Otherwise, Han could have jumped to hyperspeed, when he was chased by Star Destroyers in »A New Hope« without waiting for any calculations from the navi-computer and could have calculated the exact route to Alderaan after he has left behind his persecutors. But, as he has said, he couldn't go to hyperspeed until he has gotten the exact data from the navi-computer.