#....technically. kind of. tbh it's mostly a shitpost with some logistics for flavour

[other-peoples-coats]

For reasons that don't need going into, I'm once again thinking about the logistics of hyperspace travel, and like.

Ok so you know how map makers put in trap streets and fake islands and alter the elevation of mountains and generally put in teeny tiny (or not so teeny tiny) errors to catch plagiarists? That, but hyperspace maps.

Like there has to be a fuck load of -- if not laws, at least generally accepted norms? about what you can and can't do, because... look, at the distances you (hypothetical GFFA space faring traveler) would be traveling, you're off by a fraction of an inch when you launch in the direction of planet funtimes-vacation-land and you end up like. 80,000,000,000 lightyears away from your goal, at planet oh-fuck-deathworld and/or in the literal middle of a moon and/or lost in deep space forever and ever, where no one can hear you scream.

So there has to be a sort of mutual agreement that hyperspace maps can't be like, 'oh yeah, there's def a planet here😉 it for sure orbits this totally real star😉😉 at 90000skm (space kms) a syear (space year)😉😉😉'; because, like. otherwise everyone would die and no one could use hyperspace ever, basically.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Only takes one 'whoops they were trying to avoid our fake planet and crashed into an inhabited planet, killing all 4 billion inhabitants via the most literal meaning of terminal velocity' to make hyperspace travel a wee bit dubious as a concept.

(and also get your particular cartography company/space-gps company sued out of existence, either by the people who survived Alderaan V-0.01, navigational error edition, or by the big scary conglomerates that had interests in the outer rim mining planet you just got blown up, as relevant.)

Ditto altering the speed at which planets (moons asteroids etc etc what the fuck ever space shit is out there) orbit their relevant local stars; again, fractions of a second off really adds up over that sort of scale.

I'm assuming that there has to be rival cartographic companies, simply because like. gffa is medieval end stage capitalism on steroids. There's multiple map companies, even if it's just that kuat drive yards have their hyperspace maps for their ships, and dodgy-joe's shonky ships have their maps for their ships, and the jedi temple have their maps (which they have to install on the jedi ships by way of jailbreaking/rooting the navigation systems, presumably, every jedi runs the equivalent of a mid 2010s iphone with a million sketchy apps sideloaded), etc etc.

Anyway. Fake planets (moons etc) are out for reasons of not turning random tourist space-bus no #7629 into the Death Star (analog edition), ditto altering the speed of existing planets, ditto, presumably, putting in things like extra space stations or fake hyperlanes or black holes or whatever.

Which basically leaves you with renaming things! presumably most mapping places go real world analogous, and pick something pretty easy to think is real - asteroid #12-z-3095-y labeled #13-z-l14r, or the 56th moon of ult'klssyk and the 59th having their names mixed up, etc-- but presumably at least some do like. the most obvious examples.

Long story short nine million words later there's at least one map that labels Alderaan as Coruscant and Coruscant as Mandalore and Mandalore as Alderaan, and the ensuing media shitstorm/spwitter hot takes/spunglr memes takes over the galactic news for like. a month and a half.

At the minimum.