Uploaded April 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Hyperspace gravity weapons called “gravity well projectors” are affixed to Interdictor cruisers, such as the Galactic Empires Immobilizer 418's. They generate gravitic fields which could remotely take control of a target starship travelling at FTL (faster than light) velocity within a (systems wide) quadrillion kilometre radius of the Interdicting mothership (equivalent to seconds of travel in hyperspace or hundreds of lightyears). The interdictive field remotely takes control of a target vessels FTL navigation first, by generating a guiding gravity well around the ship, before forcing it to emerge at low sublight velocity conveniently disabled & within turbolaser range of the Interdictor mothership.
Note at 00:52 Rebel Alliance crew report
"Commander, we've lost hyperdrive control"
And I emphasize, hyperdrive CONTROL, because the ship herself continued to fly at faster than light velocity for a further ten seconds after the fact before being forced to sublight. So clearly the interdictive field has some method of dictating a captured ships course while still at FTL, and asserting the destination at which the target vessel would be forced to emerge at sublight.
Sublight speed is enforced at 01:02
~10 seconds after hyperdrive control is lost
SCALE: Space is big. Really big!
One Astronomical Unit (AU) is a length roughly equal to the distance from Earth to the Sun, almost 150 million Km. The Kuiper belt which surrounds Terra's solar system is about 30 times more distant from the Sun.
But such distances are trivial compared to those covered in a mere instant by a ship travelling at hyperspeed. The speed of light itself is 299,792 kilometres per second (over a billion kilometers per hour), and it would take light one hundred thousand years to travel from one side of the (Milky Way) galaxy to the other.
HYPERSPEED: Hyperdrive is fast. Really fast!
A starfighter or ship equipped with hyperdrive can fly from one side of the galaxy to the other in just minutes or at most hours. A ship moving at hyperspeed is travelling between a hundred million & couple of billion times faster than the speed of light, and is thereby able to make trips last only minutes or hours which would otherwise take many thousands of years at lightspeed.
If you'd like examples, then remember when the rebel fleet flew from Yavin IV to Scarif in time to assist Rogue One on the ground (all within daytime hours)? Well galactic maps show that Scarif is located deep in the galactic south, while Yavin IV is located far north, so these two planets were separated by the breath of the galaxy! The rebel fleet probably covered this distance within an hour at most. http://i.imgur.com/DiQRKEJ.png
Or that time Obi Wan Kenobi flew a small one man starfighter from Coruscant located near the galactic centre to Kamino located beyond the edge of the main galaxy. Or back to Rogue One when X wings flew from Yavin IV to Eadu in mere minutes. Just a couple of examples...you get the idea! ;)
SENSOR and INTERDICTION RANGE of Gravity Well Generators
Footage reveals commander Sato's CR90 Corellian corvette had lost all control over FTL navigation a full ten seconds prior to sublight speeds being enforced... A ship moving at 'just' a hundred million times the speed of light, which could cross the galaxy in half a day, would cover about 300 TRILLION kilometres in those 10 seconds. This is a lower limit estimate for the interdictive range of a gravity well projector.
Three hundred trillion kilometres is equal to more than two million astronomical units or 32 light years. Alpha Centauri, the nearest neighboring star to Earth's Sun is located 4.37 light years away. However considering there are “millions” of inhabited planets in the Star Wars galaxy, and probably a few hundred billion stars, the odds of multiple significant star systems being in range of a single Interdictor cruiser would be thousands to one.
But yes in theory, gravity well projectors are equipped to interdict ships within a range encompassing multiple local star systems. The estimates above (100 million C hyperdrive speed & 32 lightyear range of Interdiction) are very conservative, dependent on velocities sufficient to cross the 100,00 LY diameter of the Milky Way galaxy in 9 hours, which is smaller than the Star Wars galaxy according to both canon & legends; on top of that there's good evidence to suggest a starship can cross the Star Wars galaxy in much less than half a day, perhaps less than half an hour.
Reasonable upper limits
Hyperdrive speed: 2 billion C
Effective range of Interdiction: 634 lightyears, 40 million AU, 6 quadrillion Km
Source: Star Wars Rebels: Stealth Strike
Season 2 Episode 9
Rogue One: a Star Wars story
Star Wars Episode III: Attack of the Clones
Galactic maps
"EMPIRE HAS ORDERED A SYSTEMWIDE BLOCKADE TO SEIZE REBEL SPIES. INTERDICTOR CRUISERS EN ROUTE. ALL SHIPS THAT DEPART PRIOR TO IMPERIAL INSPECTION WILL BE NOTED."
―Message from R2-D2 in Heir to the Jedi
Hyperspace gravity weapons called “gravity well projectors” are affixed to Interdictor cruisers, such as the Galactic Empires Immobilizer 418's. They generate gravitic fields which could remotely take control of a target starship travelling at FTL (faster than light) velocity within a (systems wide) quadrillion kilometre radius of the Interdicting mothership (equivalent to seconds of travel in hyperspace or hundreds of lightyears). The interdictive field remotely takes control of a target vessels FTL navigation first, by generating a guiding gravity well around the ship, before forcing it to emerge at low sublight velocity conveniently disabled & within turbolaser range of the Interdictor mothership.
Note at 00:52 Rebel Alliance crew report
"Commander, we've lost hyperdrive control"
And I emphasize, hyperdrive CONTROL, because the ship herself continued to fly at faster than light velocity for a further ten seconds after the fact before being forced to sublight. So clearly the interdictive field has some method of dictating a captured ships course while still at FTL, and asserting the destination at which the target vessel would be forced to emerge at sublight.
Sublight speed is enforced at 01:02
~10 seconds after hyperdrive control is lost
SCALE: Space is big. Really big!
One Astronomical Unit (AU) is a length roughly equal to the distance from Earth to the Sun, almost 150 million Km. The Kuiper belt which surrounds Terra's solar system is about 30 times more distant from the Sun.
But such distances are trivial compared to those covered in a mere instant by a ship travelling at hyperspeed. The speed of light itself is 299,792 kilometres per second (over a billion kilometers per hour), and it would take light one hundred thousand years to travel from one side of the (Milky Way) galaxy to the other.
HYPERSPEED: Hyperdrive is fast. Really fast!
A starfighter or ship equipped with hyperdrive can fly from one side of the galaxy to the other in just minutes or at most hours. A ship moving at hyperspeed is travelling between a hundred million & couple of billion times faster than the speed of light, and is thereby able to make trips last only minutes or hours which would otherwise take many thousands of years at lightspeed.
If you'd like examples, then remember when the rebel fleet flew from Yavin IV to Scarif in time to assist Rogue One on the ground (all within daytime hours)? Well galactic maps show that Scarif is located deep in the galactic south, while Yavin IV is located far north, so these two planets were separated by the breath of the galaxy! The rebel fleet probably covered this distance within an hour at most. http://i.imgur.com/DiQRKEJ.png
Or that time Obi Wan Kenobi flew a small one man starfighter from Coruscant located near the galactic centre to Kamino located beyond the edge of the main galaxy. Or back to Rogue One when X wings flew from Yavin IV to Eadu in mere minutes. Just a couple of examples...you get the idea! ;)
SENSOR and INTERDICTION RANGE of Gravity Well Generators
Footage reveals commander Sato's CR90 Corellian corvette had lost all control over FTL navigation a full ten seconds prior to sublight speeds being enforced... A ship moving at 'just' a hundred million times the speed of light, which could cross the galaxy in half a day, would cover about 300 TRILLION kilometres in those 10 seconds. This is a lower limit estimate for the interdictive range of a gravity well projector.
Three hundred trillion kilometres is equal to more than two million astronomical units or 32 light years. Alpha Centauri, the nearest neighboring star to Earth's Sun is located 4.37 light years away. However considering there are “millions” of inhabited planets in the Star Wars galaxy, and probably a few hundred billion stars, the odds of multiple significant star systems being in range of a single Interdictor cruiser would be thousands to one.
But yes in theory, gravity well projectors are equipped to interdict ships within a range encompassing multiple local star systems. The estimates above (100 million C hyperdrive speed & 32 lightyear range of Interdiction) are very conservative, dependent on velocities sufficient to cross the 100,00 LY diameter of the Milky Way galaxy in 9 hours, which is smaller than the Star Wars galaxy according to both canon & legends; on top of that there's good evidence to suggest a starship can cross the Star Wars galaxy in much less than half a day, perhaps less than half an hour.
Reasonable upper limits
Hyperdrive speed: 2 billion C
Effective range of Interdiction: 634 lightyears, 40 million AU, 6 quadrillion Km
Source: Star Wars Rebels: Stealth Strike
Season 2 Episode 9
Rogue One: a Star Wars story
Star Wars Episode III: Attack of the Clones
Galactic maps
"EMPIRE HAS ORDERED A SYSTEMWIDE BLOCKADE TO SEIZE REBEL SPIES. INTERDICTOR CRUISERS EN ROUTE. ALL SHIPS THAT DEPART PRIOR TO IMPERIAL INSPECTION WILL BE NOTED."
―Message from R2-D2 in Heir to the Jedi
