Kessel Run/Legends



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 guarding the movement of spice from Kessel's mines. Worlds along the Kessel Run included Fwillsving, Randa, Rion, and possibly Zerm.

It took travellers 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 enceased 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.

Behind the scenes
In the A New Hope novelization, Han says "standard time units" rather than "parsecs". Therefore, the Kessel Run is most likely a retcon to explain George Lucas's confusion of time and distance units.

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 it's engines, so the navicomputer would calculate much faster routes than other ships could.

Appearances

 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (novel)
 * Droids: The Kalarba Adventures
 * The Hutt Gambit
 * Rebel Dawn
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Way of the Wookiee
 * The Second Kessel Run
 * Wedge's Gamble
 * Heir to the Empire
 * The Secret Tales of Luke's Hand
 * Jedi Search
 * Junior Jedi Knights: Anakin's Quest