Kessel Run/Legends

"Easier than the Kessel Run!"

- Han Solo

The Kessel Run was an 18-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. Worlds along the Kessel Run included Fwillsving, Randa, Rion, and possibly Zerm.

It took travelers in real space around The Maw leading them to an uninhabitable&mdash;but far easier to navigate&mdash;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.

Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs." The parsec is a unit of distance, not time. Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance. However, parsec relates to time in that a shorter distance equals a shorter time at the same speed. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs. 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.

Behind the scenes

 * "Kessel" means "kettle" or "cauldron" in German, and is used to describe a "pocket of encircled military units". The Kessel Run most likely gets its name from the real "Kessel runs" that took place in World War II, during the Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Stalingrad. During Operation Uranus, the Soviet army managed to encircle about 250 000 soldiers, primarily Germans and Romanians. To aid the units trapped inside this pocket, the Luftwaffe tried to create an "air-bridge" to supply the besieged army. However, the relief effort met with disaster, as a lack of available aircraft, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire and Soviet interceptors made the "Kessel runs" unsuccessful.
 * In the A New Hope novelization, Han says "standard time units" rather than "parsecs". Therefore, the reduced distance of Solo's Kessel Run is most likely a retcon to explain George Lucas's confusion of time and distance units.
 * In the original draft of A New Hope in 1976, the description for "Kessel Run" is put as follows:

HAN: 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 a "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 a pure boasting. Indeed, even in the final version of the script, the parenthesis attached to Han's line states that he is "obviously lying."
 * 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.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace novel
 * Jedi Quest: Path to Truth
 * Jedi Quest comic
 * Echoes of the Jedi
 * Droids: The Kalarba Adventures
 * The Hutt Gambit
 * Kessel Run
 * When the Domino Falls
 * Rebel Dawn
 * All the Extras
 * Smuggler's Blues
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Star Wars 2: Six Against the Galaxy
 * A Bitter Winter
 * Star Wars Empire 22: Alone Together
 * Star Wars Empire: Idiot's Array
 * Way of the Wookiee
 * The Second Kessel Run
 * Star Wars: Rebellion
 * Star Wars: X-wing Alliance
 * The Glove of Darth Vader
 * X-wing: Wedge's Gamble
 * Heir to the Empire
 * The Secret Tales of Luke's Hand
 * Jedi Search
 * Junior Jedi Knights: Anakin's Quest