Mike DiCenso wrote:Given that technology in the Star Wars galaxy has not changed much in thousands of years, I don't expect that we'd see much of an improvement in their ability to chart a large galaxy like the Milky Way from complete scratch in any reasonable time frame.
Their technology does change, but it changes in minute ways. They happen in increments so small that you'd barely notice them, but they do happen. Of course, even then, you are correct, the technological advancement is so slow that it's almost standing still.
More to the point, during the Clone Wars, as shown in the movie, no one even tried suggesting that a new hyperlane or lanes be charted to bypass the one ones blockaded by the CIS forces.
Well, the problem isn't that there weren't alternate lanes. There were--the real problem was that the CIS had blocked all the fast/faster lanes. This is a problem because if the Republic had tried to use alternate lanes, the CIS would have been able to redeploy faster and more effectively to intercept them. Hence the need to go to the Hutts.
This same problem does carry over into Star Trek; when the Federation gets an understanding of how hyperspace works, they'll be able to mine access to the better hyperlanes and that will effectively neuter the Empire in any attempts to re-deploy. Even if the Empire has managed to find a way to mount warp drives, they're going to be using older, less efficient models. They're not going to be able to keep up against the local powers who have better navigational knowledge and faster warp drive.
So in all that time that the Clone Wars dragged on. Neither side had the time to chart new ones, and I doubt that that the Empire would be able to do better all things considered, even if they do somehow manage a breakout from the wormhole.
-Mike
Eh, not entirely. You're right in that it takes a long time and cutting off a few lanes can hamper a military force. Perhaps this will help:
Star Wars Essential Guide to Warfare:
Routes are blazed by hyperspace scouts who make repeated microjumps and take careful surveys to record objects' positions. Those routes are then optimized and kept stable through constant tweaks to account for the ceaseless swirl of the stars, with new route and sensor data uploaded from starships when they reach spaceports. This constant flow of data allows well-traveled routes to remain stable, barring some catastrophic change along their lengths. Rarely used routes, on the other hand, can vanish within a few years.
As calculating a safe hyperspace route requires estimating the position of innumerable realspace objects, it demands immense computing power and memory. For much of galactic history, no starship had sufficient computing resources to calculate long jumps quickly or to keep more than a few courses in memory. Instead, massive supercomputers were constructed in deep space at the jumping-off points for common routes, and performed the calculations for starships. Space stations were built near or actually around these jump beacons, creating a series of way stations for travelers.
During the jump-beacon era, military forces could effectively pin ships at a given point by disabling its beacon. But by the 4100s BBY, that era was nearing its end: New navicomputers could store thousands of routes and calculate them with reasonable efficiency. Wary of rumblings beyond the Republic frontier, the Republic Navy conducted crash research to ensure that its ships could cross the galaxy quickly and safely without having to rely on beacons or spaceport data stacks. When war with the Sith and the Mandalorians reached Republic space, the navy destroyed many beacons in an effort to deny its enemies easy passage into the heart of the Republic.
After the jump-beacon era ended, any starship with a working navicomputer could traverse any known route in the galaxy. that made controlling hyperspace lanes far more challenging, as blockading one route merely pushed ships to one of many alternate ones.
Still, the way hyperspace travel had evolved made a seemingly impossible job somewhat easier. Many paths may connect points A and B, but only a few of them can be traveled quickly, and a military force that controls the fast routes can redeploy to intercept an adversary using the slow ones.
I mean, you are right; it would take a long time for the Empire to establish new hyperlanes and they wouldn't be very long ones unless they got really lucky. However, if they're able to establish a forward foothold within the ST galaxy or manage to open trade negotiations, they'd be able to set up a few trade-routes. Of course, the problem does again, come down to the vulnerability of these hyperlanes.
The real danger I think, isn't that it takes so long to establish new lanes; it's the fact that once Starfleet gets wind of it and is able to learn how to mine them, that the Empire effectively becomes bottle-necked (again). Even if they can find more lanes than the Federation can block, they won't be fast or efficient and the more time Starfleet has to study hyperspace, the more time they have to develop countermeasures.
