Kessel Run

This article is about the hyperlane. You may be looking for the phrase Kessel Run in Deal-slang.

Content approaching. Underworld Appendix: Swoops, Spice, and Wretched Rogues–class.

Parts of this article are no longer up to date.

Please update the article to include missing information, and remove this template when finished.

"You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?…It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs."

―Han Solo^[4]

The Kessel Run was a 20-parsec route used by smugglers to move glitterstim spice from Kessel to an area south of the Si'Klaata Cluster without getting caught by the Imperial ships that were guarding the movement of spice from Kessel's mines.

Description

An pursuing a on the Kessel Run — An *Imperial*-class Star Destroyer pursuing a YT-1250 on the Kessel Run

The route took travelers in realspace around The Maw leading them to an uninhabitable—but far easier to navigate—area of space called The Pit, which was an asteroid cluster encased in a nebula arm, making sensors as well as pilots go virtually blind. Thus there was a high chance that pilots, weary from the long flight through real space, would crash into an asteroid.

History

The Kessel Run was one of the most heavily used smuggling routes in the Galactic Empire.^[5]

Some time before the Battle of Yavin, smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca went on the Kessel Run in the starship Millennium Falcon to deliver a load of glitterstim for Jabba the Hutt. During the run, they were forced to take a shortcut dangerously close to The Maw to evade Imperial tariff ships. Thanks to the Falcon's speed, they escaped through hyperspace safely, and in doing so, broke the record by making the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs.^[6]

The smuggler BoShek actually beat Solo's record in his ship, Infinity, but without cargo to weigh him down. A few months later, Han Solo beat both his own and BoShek's records in a run he made with Luke Skywalker.^[3]

Behind the scenes

In A. C. Crispin's The Han Solo Trilogy, the Maw cluster of black holes distorts space and time, so the distance of the run is shortened by flying close to it. Han and Chewie make the time (and distance) while escaping from an Imperial customs ship.

Development

In the revised fourth draft of A New Hope in 1976, the description for "Kessel Run" is put as follows:

"It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!"
Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.

So It implies that the puzzling speech of Han Solo is "misinformation" and not truth, and it has nothing to do with the nature of the Kessel Run in any respect. Han means nothing other than impressing Obi-Wan and Luke with pure boasting.

In the A New Hope novelization, Han says "standard time units" rather than "parsecs."

In the commentary for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope DVD, George Lucas mentions that the parsecs are due to the Millennium Falcon's advanced navigational computer rather than its engines, so the navicomputer would calculate much faster routes than other ships could. Similar info can be found in the notes Lucas recorded together with Carol Titelman in July/August 1977 to start a knowledge database for the planned sequels:

"It's a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive – mostly to the navigation system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (parsecs)."