The History of Hyperdrives | Star Wars Explained

Without hyperdrives Star Wars just wouldn't be the same. So today we're going to explain to you guys the history of hyperdrives in Star Wars.

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[hvist]

I think I figured out how the Rakatans managed to lose all their Force-Sensitivity in the first place, and this information is brought in the form of a substance that was briefly touched-upon in the books involving Abeloth. In the book series in question we have a group of Sith Colonials that were left abandoned without their ship on a planetoid. These colonials were the descendants of a Sith expeditionary force created and authorized by the Sith Lord Naga Sadow in 5000 BBY with the purpose of strip-mining the largest moon of Phaegon III a-la Dead Spaces' "Planet Cracking". Naga Sadow commissioned two Sith Dreadnaughts for this task, the Omen and the Harbinger captained by the Human Yaru Korsin and the Kaleesh Saes Rogon respectively, their goal for the planet cracking was to extract the material of the Moon to use it in the upcoming invasion of the Republic by the Resurgent Sith Empire. What was this material you may be asking? It was Lignan. Lignan is a powerful Force-sensitive material that has a strong presence in the Dark Side of the Force, channeling the energy from Lignan would briefly augmenting the Force-Sensitives' abilities immensely, however the process would cause the Lignan to burn up and fall into ashes upon drawing the Force from it. Despite this drawback, Lignan Ore could be smelted and compressed to create Lignan Crystals, which when used in a Lightsaber are able to create a blade that burns even hotter than an ordinary or even an artificial crystal-based Lightsaber (poignantly shown when Luke Skywalker tried escaping from a Lignan-Lightsaber wielding Colonial by cutting through a blast door with his Synthetic Crystal-based Lightsaber, only for the Lignan-Based Lightsaber to cut through the blast door holding the Colonial back much faster and catch up with Luke. This is relevant because it is said by many sources that Synthetic Crystals are said to be stronger in the Force than Natural Crystals are, which is half the reason behind why the Sith seem to rely on Synthetic Crystals for their own Lightsabers compared to the Natural ones the Jedi use)

Why is this information relevant and connects with how the Rakata lost their Force-Sensitivity? I'm getting to that part. Lignan Ore was extremely rare to come by, with the only source of the material being found on the largest moon of Phaegon III in 5000 BBY, however the shipment and mission was attacked by the Jedi Order that sent several agents to investigate a dark presence that they felt, Jedi Master Relin Druur and his padawan Drev Hassin assaulted the Sith Dreadnaughts and caused significant damage that caused the Omen to crash-land on a remote world of Kesh that the survivors became the Colonials that Luke Skywalker encountered, while the Harbinger had sustained significant damage to its hyperdrive causing it, the Harbingers' crew, and Relin Druur to be flung forward in time to the year 41 ABY (thereby making Relin Druur the oldest-surviving member of the Old Jedi Order, with Celeste Morne coming in at a close second due to becoming the owner of the Muur Talisman in 3963 BBY and caused her to go into stasis until 19 BBY when she was awakened by Darth Vader, then finally being allowed to die in 137 ABY to Darth Vaders' descendant Cade Skywalker). But WHY was Lignan considered rare to begin with? Here's where the connection begins: the Rakata used Lignan in their construction for their society and it was used in nearly every aspect of their culture.

The Rakata upon beginning to use the Infinity Gates that allowed them to come across worlds that were rich in Lignan Ore, upon discovering the unique properties that Lignan offered when channeled by the Force, the Rakata managed to refine Lignan to a more usable and stable form for continuous usage, molding it into armored plating, weapons, jewelry, even starships would have Lignan imbued in some aspect of it. With Lignan, the Rakata managed to create their first Hyperdrives, which as you forgot to point out could ONLY "lock-on" to worlds that held a strong enough presence in the Force to navigate to that the ships could access. When the Infinite Empire reached its pinnacle, the Rakatans' began the construction of the Star Forge, and just like everywhere else, the Star Forge was constructed using Lignan in nearly every aspect of its assembly. Due to the unique nature of the Star Forge, it was able to efficiently use the stellar essence of Lehons' sun of Abo to harness the energy and convert it through Hydrogen Fusion to create any conceivable material necessary for construction: including Lignan. While this might have been a boon to the Rakata, the Infinite Empire was completely savage in nature as is stated that the Rakata commemorated Infinity Maps and other devices on other worlds to celebrate their triumphs only to destroy them afterwards, but due to the unique quirk of their design these devices were able to self-repair and are seen to be usable in the events of Knights of the Old Republic which is roughly over 20, 000 years after the collapse of the Infinite Empire itself.

Aside from this treatment and glut of their own tech, the Rakatans' may have been centralized as a government but they weren't entirely united on a personal level since it was regimented by Rakatans casually killing and devouring other species alongside members of their own as a means of advancing in prestige and ranking. Due to this savage, non-conservative approach to everything, the Rakatans would have eventually exhausted all of the largest-known deposits of Lignan in the Galaxy at the time, and due to losing these deposits so too did they lose replacement materials to use in their weapons and armor for repairs. What I forgot to mention is that Lignan itself is entirely addictive, and like most addictives: use it too much and you won't be able to use the benefits that you naturally had that you had supplanted by using the addictive. Suffice to say, the "plague" that swept through the Rakatans that caused them to lose their connection to the Force was a symptom of withdrawl because of their own Lignan Addiction that for the longest time had fueled their own innate Force Sensitivity for many generations to the point that their natural sensitivity was entirely dependant on Lignan to utilize. And due to their own innately savage approach and mentality, the Rakatans failed to realize that they could have used the Star Forge itself to satiate their Lignan Addiction due to the fact that it could create its own Lignan through Hydrogen Fusion.

It's all connected here.

How the Star Forge was able to corrupt Revan and Malak and why its controls can only be used by Force Sensitives strong in the Dark Side of the Force.
How come there is rarely any other deposits of Lignan in the Galaxy and why it is rarely even heard of.
How the Infinite Empire was able to collapse and why the entire Rakatan species lost their connection to the Force.

However, this is just all a theory, but a very plausible theory.

[jangustl_wt]

Nothing looks better than a Star-Destroyer jumping out of Hyperspace and crushing Rebel ships.

[autofox]

The jump from hyperspace beacon networks to navicomputers should be mentioned, too. Originally, most ships weren't able to make their own hyperspace jump calculations, and relied on a vast network of space buoys to achieve accurate navigation through hyperspace. These beacons were eventually supplanted by shipboard navicomputers which rendered the network obsolete.

[officialredrab]

Plot twist, George Lucas is a time traveler and put the history of Star Wars into movies.

[MYUILL]

Not gonna lie that early Legends stuff sounds a lot like Babylon 5 and other sci-fi ideas...

[lokeyz]

Id like to see hyperspace gates used in the new canon version of the old republic. I wanna see slug throwers and more primative droids used too.

[sananaryon]

You forgot the Hyperspace Beacon. Since early hyperdrives didn't have an attached nav computer to chart the jumps, they placed Hyperspace Beacons in key locations, which the pilots could use to manually chart their way through the perils of hyperspace

[ExUSSailor]

NASA has already started theoretical experimentation into FTL technology. Though, it's less "Star Wars Hyperdrive", and, more "Star Trek Warp Drive".

[docbrown]

That was the best and shortest back story for hyperdrive in SW I've heard / read / seen so far. You have a great knack for breaking it down to nuts and bolts, I do the same thing to help ppl understand stuff, ppl like us are an asset to the human race, we educate. Keep up the good work !!

[MrTotalNiceGuy]

One thing I see that keeps getting missed is; the Rakatans hyperdrive wasnt just powered by the force, it could only be used to travel to planets with a large amount of life(force).
Meaning they ended up bypassing systems where they couldnt establish a hyperspace link connection.
So in effect the Infinite Empire was huge, but there were many places within it that remained undiscovered and free of it rule.

[josephthompson]

Hey Allen! Just wanna say thank you for all the great content! Been going through some struggles and nothing cheers me up more than watching some Generation Tech on my favorite sifi universe! #maytheforcebewithyou

[romanace]

I wish we had technology like hyperdrives.

[eointolster]

Thank you for the video and thank you for saying Celestials correctly.

[starkillerz]

I've got a chart of how fast ships can travel in hyperspace e.g class 0.5 = 277, 080 Light Years per day/ class 1 = 184, 720 Light years per day and class 2 = 92, 360. hopefully this helps for next times episode. (This is Canon).

[ancapftw]

If KOTOR is cannon, human can't be slaves of the Rakata. The droid says that you, a human, aren't slaves or builders.

[timothyt.]

Okay. In The Last Jedi, the weird runner up to Leia with the purple hair probably used a dimensional drive to ram into the ship, not a hyperdrive. Thanks for the video, man. This redeems at least that part of the movie.

[nick-]

Sweet! Been waiting for this since I suggested it months ago! Good video!

[orangejtst]

Generation tech keep up the great work guys!

[yourregulartexan]

I heard that the effects of Hyperspace are relatively unknown. I was wondering if you'll make a video on Hyperspace

[markhorden]

You should do an episode of verses about the differences between hyperspace from Star Wars and warp drive from Star Trek. And which ones more obtainable in real life