The Real Stars of DUNE

The real stars of Dune.

Thanks to the Dune wiki and Stellar Australis blog.

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SOURCES

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SOCIAL

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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:49 - Timeline
2:16 - Real Stars
8:56 - Salusa Secundus
10:45 - Ground News
12:05 - Kaitain
15:54 - Zensunni Wandering
17:54 - FTL Travel

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LEGAL-ISH DISCLAIMER
All non-licensed clips are used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

[QuantumHistorian]

_"There was no AI used in the making of this video"_ sounds like someone's afraid that the Butlerian Jihad police was going to come after them

[flippert]

Haha, nice touch: "There was no AI used in the making of this video"

[nocontentacc]

I love how small the Dune Imperium is compared to other sci-fi empires, makes it feel that much more real. It's not a galaxy spanning empire, it doesn't even breach the Gould Belt. It's a small blip on a galactic map.

[natesmith]

It’s cool to know that all the worlds in the Dune future are still in our stellar neighborhood. So when they brag about traveling vast distances, it’s really not that far on a galactic scale. It also gives perspective on what a big deal the Great Scattering was.

[isaiahsmith]

Canonically a Heighliner is basically engines and docking clamps. If you ever read the novel Permanence by Karl Schroeder you'll get an idea of space travel in dune, with the heighliners taking long circituous routes and depositing ships carrying goods and people, or picking them up.

Thats also a reason why in the 2021 adaptation they make mention of the cost for the imperial entourage, which would be staggeringly expensive to all but the most wealthy houses, Emperor notwithstanding. Also I don't know if they'll explain it in part 2, but the Harkonnen assault on arrakis was so mind bogglingly expensive it took them from one of the wealthiest houses to one of the poorest in the span of 1 trip.

[eredris]

The way I think about is, "folding space" is more like tunnelling through space.

For example, when the Atreides moved from Caladan to Arrakis, the Guild sent a Heighliner to Caladan to pick them up.
- So now the Heighliner is in only one place - Caladan.
- They pack up, strap in and the Heighliner "departs" from Caladan.
- It's not instantaneous and the travel takes time while the Guild Navigators "fold" space around them and find a route to Arrakis - essentially tunneling through space faster than light from one point to the next.
- Once the folding of space is done, the heighliner appears out of folded space into real space outside of Arrakis - much like a burrower emerging from a tunnel.

It could explain why you can see the origin point on the other side of the Heighliner in Villeneuve's movie - The Heighliner basically establishes a tunnel through spacetime. But I don't think the travel would be instantaneous since you would need to be on the heighliner as it burrowed through spacetime. You can just see the origin point but you would not be able to go back unless the Heighliner folds space the other way too.

I like this idea because poetically, it makes the Heighliners work essentially like Sand Worms, burrowing through the sands of Spacetime.

[duncanny]

As I understand it 'folding Space' in Dune relies on the Holtzman Engines to move the actual spacecraft inside an area of 'space' that is not part of the Universe involving Electromagnetism. the background space, if you like. this area is currently posited as why distant stars can move faster than light relative to us. If you sue this 'space' you can move much faster than light. the DANGER is that you an your ship will hit something at that speed and just die/vanish/be destroyed. The spice allows the Navigators to see into the future enough that they can see the danger long before it arrives and plot a course that thus avoids all dangers in the journey. It is all in the books. Hope this helps. By the way, we are currently investigating the ways this might be achieved in the present day! Great video, by the way. 👍

[CartoonHero]

The folding through the ship itself TOTALLY breaks canon, but is an amazing touch in terms of artistic licence and adaptation. Even in the books they usually side step anytime spent in travel between worlds because it's boring. But it is implied that travel between worlds takes time. When Paul and Leto talk about leaving for Arrakis in the first few chapters of the book Paul says he'd like to get a look at one of the navigators and Leto cautions him to do nothing that would risk their use of the guild and that he wouldn't even have a chance to get off their ship by saying something to effect of "There could be a Harkonnen ship right beside us in the Guild's hold and we'd never know it or do anything about it" which implies you are along for the ride and the directness of the route varies based on how much you're willing to pay for an express route or milk run ticket. Leto also forces the Guild ship to remain in orbit longer then was scheduled by withholding part of their cargo as a way to gain face over the smugglers and spite the Guild by making them late for a delivery on their next stop.

I was always curious though if Guild travel was hours, days, weeks, etc long between places like Arrakis and the other worlds because if you take into account at the end of Dune Paul is around 18 or 19 years old and by the start of Dune Messiah Paul is now around 31 or 33 years old and has already put down most of the rebellion with the most violent and war heavy days of the Jihad seeming to be years behind them. This would likely mean either the wars on each planet where long (which is likely) or that he spent the better part of 13 years traveling the empire to snatch and grab and move on (which could also be possible but less likely)

[gibn]

From a pedantic standpoint, the 2021 take on the heighliner seems to take inspiration from how theoretic wormholes "fold" space by literally bending the dimensions of spacetime making a path from A to B significantly shorter.

[xtigmlo]

2:12 Mass Effect "uncharted worlds" background music, how satisfying😌. Ah now I feel very nostalgic!

[pacotaco]

Wow only 500 out of the milky way's ~150, 000 lightyears. I didnt realize the Known Universe in Dune was so small

[QuantumHistorian]

_"Man may not be replaced"_ at 6:26 is a strange way of spelling the much more commonly repeated maxim _"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind"_ of the Orange Catholic Bible.

[MrOpenSeseme]

Folding Space: Literally that. If Space and Time are the same thing, visualize space as a giant piece of paper that you can fold to create a shorter path.

Paul's abilities, and that of the navigators, is to see through time and know where the folds are safe to use.

[mrjeremydizon]

Tio is indeed Spanish for uncle and if Tio Holtzman is of Asian descent he is not necessarily Chinese since Tio (or Tiyo) is also a Filipino word for uncle (because the Philippines is a Spanish colony in the 1500s-1800s so Tio Holtzman may be of Filipino descent.

[phoenixguild]

The disclaimer that AI was not used in the making of this film is really funny given the lore of Dune. I'm certain that was intentional

[HawkGTboy]

Haha, I love the Mass Effect map music. Excellent choice.

[andrybak]

19:30 — my head canon for FTL travel in the 2021 film: 1) a heighliner ship arrives at the starting point of your journey; 2) the guild navigator starts folding spacetime using the heighliner; 3) your tiny ship now can start entering the fold in spacetime; 4) the guild navigator finishes folding; 5) heighliner arrives at the destination through the fold but the fold is kind of "inside of it"; 6) the guild navigator starts to unfold the spacetime; 7) your ship can start exiting the fold in spacetime.

[Wpper]

iIrc during the journey on an intergalactic highliner. The passengers were prohibited to leave their ships because at times enemies were transported within the very same highliner, meaning that they did spent some time inside the highliner

[TheNoemad]

I started reading again because of your video "The Real Stars and Scale of Sci-fi", A Fire Upon the Deep is an amazing book.

[chuckwilson]

Another outstanding video -- and timely, too! 😉 You've touched on a lot of my favorite book series, and added some fun context by showing distances and location. Looking forward to what you tackle next.

As far as FTL travel in the Dune series, I think its description morphed as Herbert wrote more novels. But using one of the later books, it's definitely not instantaneous. There are some travel scenes where Bene Gesserit strategy meetings are held while en route to other planets. Individual ships are docked within the Heighliner, which then travels FTL, and offloads the ships at its destination. Seems like that's how the Atreides entourage traveled to Arrakis, too. But Herbert usually focused more on the characters than the technology, leaving readers to theorize on specifics...