Ahh, but in Star Wars, “Light Speed” is exactly as fast as the plot demands. Checkmate, science dorks!
In Starwars they travel through hyperspace, hitting light speed is how you get into it!
I just assumed light speed was a colloquialism for hyperdrive.
At any rate, hyperdrive blows warp out of the water in raw speed. A trip across the galaxy is just a few days. The downside is that you’re pretty much limited to already charted safe routes unless you want to test your luck with potential ship-killing hazards that can’t be detected before hitting them.
It’s both. I think “jumping to lightspeed” is an in-universe misnomer for jumping to Hyperspace. Han Solo misuses the terminology the first time we’re introduced to the concept (so does Kenobi, for that matter), but in that same scene he does make a distinction between lightspeed and hyperspace. The ship still needs to accelerate to something very close to light speed to slip into the parallel hyperspace dimension, so it kinda tracks between the two concepts.
You also can’t leave or enter the galaxy Star Wars takes place in, except for a small perforation called Vector Prime. There’s a galactic barrier in place that causes hyperspace to just kinda…stop working.
Wanna make your own hyper space jump not using hyper space lanes? Bring one of the talented young ladies of Thrawns species, you will be fine until said young lady is no longer young
