Why is the Unknown Region so close to the Deep Core? (Continued discussion)

Reposted from the TFA thread.

EDIT:
POTENTIAL SPOILERS since this whole thing started with the galaxy map for the new Disney canon.

ZkinandBonez said:

imperialscum said:

ZkinandBonez said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

ZkinandBonez said:

joefavs said:

And here’s something really interesting. Empire Magazine gives us our first canonical map of the galaxy:

Tobar said:

UGH, they kept the Unknown Regions as a giant blot that reaches right next to the Galactic Core. So DUMB.

I’ve always maintained that the Unknown Regions should have been one of the spiral arms of the galaxy. At least that would have made some sense.

Hasn’t it always been like that in SW canon though?

It’s still stupid.

It takes Yoda – what? – a couple hours to take a trip from Coruscant to Moraband, but no one from Coruscant’s ever sent explorers into the Unknown Regions, which is significantly closer to Coruscant than Moraband is?

Personally, I feel that when the powers-that-be decided to reintroduce the Unknown Regions, either the Unknown and Known Regions of the galaxy should have swapped places (making the Republic/Empire/etc. a smaller corner of a larger, unexplored galaxy) or the Unknown Regions should have been made to completely surround the Known Regions, like a ring.

It is a bit odd, but then again we had Vikings in real life travelling as far as to the Midlle East (possibly even China), yet hardly anyone ever thought about travelling across the Atlantic ocean. Once you’ve established trade-routes in one direction, you usually have very few reasons to travel in the other direction. It’s just a waste of time and money.

Also is there any canon-for how long these journeys really take? For all we know a trip from Coruscant to Moraband might take days, if not weeks. And even if it doesn’t take that long, it does help to have light-speed when you know exactly what planet you’re aiming for. Space is mostly just emptiness, and exploring the Unknown Regions regardless of how close the borders are would still just be a very slow sub-light-speed scan of mostly empty space. When the other half of the galaxy is explored, why waste your time and money on the other?

Having said that, however, I would have preferred it to be a little bit further away from the core. But it also does kind of make sense, so I’m not going to waste any effort getting annoyed at it.
I would however be very interested to hear why they specifically decided to design the SW-galaxy like that. I still find it an oddly specific thing to add to the canon.

The thing is that unknown regions as they were/are on the map were probably intended to be a state from the old republic era (KOTOR), i.e. 4000 years before OT. Your example about Vikings would make sense for that period. But to assume they remained unexplored for 4000 years is just stupid.

I’m not saying it’s brilliant, I’m just saying that the galaxy is pretty friggin’ big and exploring a big chunk of mostly empty space might not be a big priority once you’ve already mapped most of the other half of the galaxy. I’m guessing that the mapping of the “eastern” part of the galaxy was achieved through the races that the people from the core-world met along the way. F.ex. you find one planet that’s inhabited, and you learn about 10 more planets from them. Exploring those 10 you discover 5 more, and from one of their civilizations you discover 10 more, etc, etc. And before you know it you established trade routes, political ties, and explored a large part of the galaxy. The “western” half on the other hand may never have had that first meeting which eventually lead to what is an almost exponential growth in knowledge/expansion. Without that first meeting you are essentially just faced with what is 99,99% empty space and no real starting point for exploration. So even with lightspeed technology it’s far from impossible to spend the next 4000 years not knowing what lies in the “western”-half of the galaxy even if it is right next to you.

(And as for the whole Viking-analogy goes. During a roughly 3-4000 year period of seafaring capabilities there was only one known expedition over the Atlantic ocean. They eventually figured it wasn’t worth their time since everything they needed as far as trade went was east of them anyway, so they simply decided to leave America alone, and for another 1000-ish years it was assumed to have just been some small-ish, uninteresting island somewhere west of Greenland.
Also space is a hell-of-a-lot larger than any areas we’ve ever had to explore on our own planet. At least we can make a full journey around the planet if we get lost. If you explore space however, you could be travelling through nothingness for an eternity.)

ZkinandBonez said:

imperialscum said:

Sorry but your analogy is not very convincing. It is completely out of scale. Vikings might have ventured briefly to America but that doesn’t mean they explored/settled any significant portion of it, let alone half of the world (which is required to meet our Star Wars example). They effectively explored and used a very small portion of the world. On the other hand, our Star Wars example dictates that half of the galaxy was completely explored (and used) while the other half was unknown. If you have the capability to discover/colonise half of the world then the other half will naturally follow very soon, as in the case of 16th-17th century European discoveries and colonisation.

“our Star Wars example dictates that half of the galaxy was completely explored”
When was that established? I’m pretty sure there are still unexplored planets, and solar systems even within the “explored” half of the galaxy. There’s even some pretty large empty spots on the map even within the “eastern” half.

Also my Viking-analogy wasn’t meant to perfectly fit with the SW universe-lore, I was just pointing out that even on our small planet something as gigantic as the American continent wen’t undiscovered for a very, very long time. And since space exploration, even with lightspeed, would still be an extremely time-consuming and arduous task, taking thousands of years just to discover a fraction of it. And in SW lore the Republic is about 25 000 years old, meaning that all that is on the map (the old one) has been mapped out in roughly that same period of time. And I doubt that they simply flew around in empty space and happened to come across all the planets that are on the map. Keep in mind that lightspeed only works if you know exactly where you are going. This means that in order to find a planet you need to travel in sub-light speed, and of course that can take an infinite amount of time unless you’re really lucky. Also like I suggested in my previous post, they probably discovered most planets through other civilizations over the course of those 25 000 years. Each civilization having explored their own sector at sub-light speed, sharing their star-maps with others that they come across, and quickly you’ll have a decent amount of planets to travel to. However, even then you’ll need thousands of years to map an area as large as the one on the map above.
The main reason it never takes any of the SW characters any time to travel across the galaxy is because they already know the coordinates. Warping into the unknown region would be dangerous and pointless as there’s a tiny fraction of a chance that they would hit anything at all. And for that sake they could actually literally “hit” something. Without anyone to guide their way over the course of thousands of years it’s essentially just pointless, mostly-empty space until someone makes contact or some crazy, lucky explorer comes across something (and on the maps there’s at least 5 or so planets that they seem to have found that way).

ZkinandBonez said:

Reposted from the TFA thread.

ZkinandBonez said:

imperialscum said:

Sorry but your analogy is not very convincing. It is completely out of scale. Vikings might have ventured briefly to America but that doesn’t mean they explored/settled any significant portion of it, let alone half of the world (which is required to meet our Star Wars example). They effectively explored and used a very small portion of the world. On the other hand, our Star Wars example dictates that half of the galaxy was completely explored (and used) while the other half was unknown. If you have the capability to discover/colonise half of the world then the other half will naturally follow very soon, as in the case of 16th-17th century European discoveries and colonisation.

“our Star Wars example dictates that half of the galaxy was completely explored”
When was that established? I’m pretty sure there are still unexplored planets, and solar systems even within the “explored” half of the galaxy. There’s even some pretty large empty spots on the map even within the “eastern” half.

Also my Viking-analogy wasn’t meant to perfectly fit with the SW universe-lore, I was just pointing out that even on our small planet something as gigantic as the American continent wen’t undiscovered for a very, very long time. And since space exploration, even with lightspeed, would still be an extremely time-consuming and arduous task, taking thousands of years just to discover a fraction of it. And in SW lore the Republic is about 25 000 years old, meaning that all that is on the map (the old one) has been mapped out in roughly that same period of time. And I doubt that they simply flew around in empty space and happened to come across all the planets that are on the map. Keep in mind that lightspeed only works if you know exactly where you are going. This means that in order to find a planet you need to travel in sub-light speed, and of course that can take an infinite amount of time unless you’re really lucky. Also like I suggested in my previous post, they probably discovered most planets through other civilizations over the course of those 25 000 years. Each civilization having explored their own sector at sub-light speed, sharing their star-maps with others that they come across, and quickly you’ll have a decent amount of planets to travel to. However, even then you’ll need thousands of years to map an area as large as the one on the map above.
The main reason it never takes any of the SW characters any time to travel across the galaxy is because they already know the coordinates. Warping into the unknown region would be dangerous and pointless as there’s a tiny fraction of a chance that they would hit anything at all. And for that sake they could actually literally “hit” something. Without anyone to guide their way over the course of thousands of years it’s essentially just pointless, mostly-empty space until someone makes contact or some crazy, lucky explorer comes across something (and on the maps there’s at least 5 or so planets that they seem to have found that way).

Sorry but your entire argument is now based on a rather dumb assumption that the galaxy is like a planet where you cannot see what is beyond the horizon. We are relatively primitive civilisation, yet we know quite precisely the layout of our galaxy (past and future), let alone other galaxies. That is because you can simply look into the sky and apply basic physics. So coordinates of the planets are not the issue at all.

I think everyone is taking my Viking analogy far to serious. My point was simply that if you already know what’s in one direction, why waste time and money on the unknown in the other direction. Going beyond my earth-analogy, space is considerably larger, so the stakes are much more higher than they have ever been to any of us in real life, so again, why bother to go into the great unknown, when the other half of the galaxy is a large web of trade-routes and filled with allies.
Exploring the Unknown Regions would simply be a pointless and unnecessarily risky endeavor when you got all you need elsewhere. Even looking at the map you can sort-of see how the expansion took place from it’s starting point at the core. It builds outwards to meet up with smaller pockets of inhabited planets, and the further out you get to less explored areas there are in between the clusters.

Also, if as joefavs suggested, the Rakatans aren’t exactly friendly, then the Republics ability to expand in that direction is greatly hampered. Like I mentioned earlier, I really doubt that the Republic just flew off into empty space and happened to bump into Kashyyyk, or Nar Shadda, they probably learned of them from someone. It probably started with the nearest planets; Anaxes, Brentaal, Tython, etc. and from whoever lived there they might have learned of other nearby planet. And after thousands of years of this kind of hopping from planet to another based on each planets knowledge of their nearby neighbours, the eventually reached Hutt Space on the far “eastern” side of the galaxy, and so forth.
However, if there never was any planets on the “western” side to start this kind of chain reaction, then that part of the galaxy would remain unexplored. And from what I’ve gathered from the Rakatans wookieepedia article, they’re not to friendly, so they definitively wouldn’t be of any help.
Also keep in mind that this chain reaction of exploring the “eastern” half of the galaxy took over 25 000 years, which kind of makes sense if you consider the scales we’re dealing with here.

However, I will admit that my assumption about them not knowing what to look for is somewhat wrong. But even if they can find the coordinates of several planets in the Unknown Regions I still question the wisdom of just going there for no other reason than exploration. And of course someone clearly have tried their luck and explored, hence there a planets on the map like; Ilum, Csilla, Rakata Prime, Lwhekk, etc. But as evidenced by Rakata Prime, the Republic may have simply deemed it to dangerous to expand in that direction.

You may want to mark this as a spoiler thread.

Frank your Majesty said:

You may want to mark this as a spoiler thread.

Spoilers?

New planet names? Personally, I don’t care, but someone folks here may want to avoid all kinds of spoilers, so stumbling over Starkiller Base might be a rather big discovery.

ZkinandBonez said:

so again, why bother to go into the great unknown, when the other half of the galaxy is a large web of trade-routes and filled with allies.

Why did we bother to start eating meat when vegetables were sufficient? Why did we ever bother venturing out of the caves and build cities? Why did already wealthy European empires with well established trade routes between themselves bother going to America? Why does a millionaire want another million?

imperialscum said:

ZkinandBonez said:

so again, why bother to go into the great unknown, when the other half of the galaxy is a large web of trade-routes and filled with allies.

Why did we bother to start eating meat when vegetables were sufficient? Why did we ever bother venturing out of the caves and build cities? Why did already wealthy European empires with well established trade routes between themselves bother going to America? Why does a millionaire want another million?

All I’m saying is that space is pretty big and scary, and when there’s so much nice stuff going on in one direction, the other might not be that desirable, especially not considering the civilizations they’ve encountered in that direction so far. I may have started out with an earth-example/analogy, but like I’ve said since, we’re dealing with a considerably larger scale here. And some pretty mean Rakatans, I might add. This is an EU map after all.

However, like I’ve more or less said before, if I had been given the task to draw a galaxy map for SW, I sure as hell wouldn’t have drawn it as they have. I’m simply saying that there is a logic to be found in the current design, especially when you start to look into the history they’ve added to it (I’ve posted links to the “history” of the galaxy’s exploration below).
Also if you skim through the wiki-article it seems like they’ve decided to put emphasis on the Rakatans, even having made it canon that they owned most of the galaxy at some point long before the Republic came around. So it seems that joefavs explanation was the right one; the Rakatans simply don’t want visitors in that direction.

The Rakatan empire (30000 - 25000 BBY); http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/81/Rakatan_Empire_Atlas.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090906172018
Post Rakata galaxy;
http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/1/11/Atlas_pre-republic.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101121120917
Galactic exploration (27,500 - 25 BBY);
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/a/a6/GalacticExplorations.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090903055148
Alsakan conflict & Contispex’s Crusades (ca. 17000 - ca. 12000 BBY);
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/6/66/Alsakan_Conflicts_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150825163745
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/9/99/Pius_Dea_Crusades.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150816191635
The New Sith Wars (ca. 1000 BBY);
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/8f/New_Sith_Wars_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151008122308
Early years of the Galactic Empire - Conquest of the Rim (19 - 17 BBY);
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/9/93/Reconquest_of_the_Rim.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151029161051

The reasons for why half the galaxy remains unexplored may be convoluted, but it’s not illogical.
It’s just another over-the-top EU explanation of things, as evidenced by the fact that there was never any kind of map until about fifteen years ago. There wasn’t even that much of a demand for it until then. From what I’ve gathered from the wiki, most of this has to do with the lore of The Knights of the Old Republic games.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rakata

Whoever was in charge of filling the Unknown Regions with content for the EU really wanted it it be an inhospitable place;
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Unknown_Regions

Having skimmed through the article, it seems like everything there wants to kill you.

However, even the article seems to take a stab at the idea of it being so close to the Core.
"The depiction of the Unknown Regions varies from source to source. Some fans would like to limit the term to areas outside the plane of the galactic disk. It is supported by movie canon, which describes a Galactic Empire, and in which the entire galaxy can be surveyed for any lost planet, fugitive, or Rebel base."

Even the people who’s added to the EU seems to have been confused by it’s placement, even going so far as to make up some excuse about a mass of dark matter in the region that creates “gravitational anomalies that hindered navigation.” The article also talks about "hyperspatial gravitic ripples" and the "intentional construction of a barrier, possibly by the Celestials to hedge the expanding Infinite Empire (That would be the Rakatans) or to contain Mnggal-Mnggal" (the weird creature that darklordoftech mentioned earlier).
Translation; nobody knows why the heck the guy who drew the map drew it the way he did.
(Some of these explanations sound like something straight out of Star Trek.)

ZkinandBonez said:

Translation; nobody knows why the heck the guy who drew the map drew it the way he did.

Well I guess some random insignificant EU author first draw it like that. The sad part is that instead of just discarding his/her stupid design, subsequent authors adopted it and tried to come up with all sorts of stupid explanation for it. Now in the end, it seems it even made its way to new official canon.

Tobar said:

I think it traces back to the early WEG days. WEG provided the very backbone, the foundation, for everything we know about the Star Wars universe outside of the films.

They did a lot of awesome work expanding the universe BUT there was one aspect of it that was eventually abandoned but the echoes of which could still be felt going forward. That aspect being that the original contention was that most of the galaxy was still unexplored and it was new founded Empire that was leading this charge to explore what was out there and to conquer, exploit and enslave anything and everyone they came across.

For the longest time, it was a fact that Mon Cala/Dac was a newly discovered planet within the OT timeframe.

So with that context in mind, the Unknown Regions being laid out as they were made some sense. But it should have been readdressed loooooooong ago. That they’ve not done so at this opportune moment in time with the new canon is a massive failure on their part.

Well, hasn’t the EU more or less always implied this? Even in the early Marvel comics they talk about how each different species/culture have different starmaps. Han Solo talk about buying starmaps from aliens in order to find unknown/unexplored planets to hide his cargo on. It’s implied that these planets are hiding in-between the well-populated sectors (Hutt space, Corporate sector, etc.)

I also seem to recall from the WEG Sourcebook for Tatooine that they referenced how the planet had been discovered and it’s location added to the Republic’s starmap database, but since it was just an empty desert world of little use it remained unsettled for several thousand years. By the time of Luke’s birth there had only been humans there for a few centuries (roughly, I can’t remember the exact numbers).

So it seems that the EU has always, although to various degrees, been not to far away from what been suggested on this thread so far. That the Core world have always been aware of what’s around them and where they can go, but for economic reasons, not to mention safety, they’ve only explored so many places.
One could also argue that planets like Hoth and Endor were undiscovered until the Rebels and Empire found them. And they’re a fair distance from the Unknown Regions. And according to the WEG EU, there were planets in Hutt Space (e.g well explored regions) that were ignored for thousand of years due to economics.

PS. In which WEG book was it established that the Mon Calamari were recently discovered in the OT? Was it a Sourcebook, or the book called “Death in the Undercity”? (I have a copy that book, but I haven’t looked through it yet.)