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.)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).
Anyway, we’re getting off-topic. Maybe we should add this conversation to a new thread and continue the discussion there?
**EDIT: I reposted the conversation on this new thread; http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Why-is-the-Unknown-Region-so-close-to-the-Deep-Core-Continued-discussion/id/46322 **