History SciFiWritersHave / NoSenseOfUnits

* There are about 7200 {{Comicbook/Green Lantern}}s to patrol the entire Universe. Considering how big 1/7200th of the Universe is, it is little wonder the Green Lantern Corps has failed to stamp out evil in the cosmos: sheer lack of manpower.

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (think LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (think DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool just sounds cooler]], having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope. Do they think [[ViewersAreMorons that we're just dumb]] and that we'll confuse it with that thing people get for broken arms?

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (think LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (think DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool just sounds cooler]], having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope. Do they think [[ViewersAreMorons that we're just dumb]] and that we'll confuse if with that thing people get for broken arms?

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (think LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (think DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool just sounds cooler]], having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope. Do they think [[VeiewersAreMorons that we're just dumb]] and that we'll confuse if with that thing people get for broken arms?

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (i.e. LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (i.e. DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool just sounds cooler]], having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope.

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (i.e. LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (i.e. DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCooljust sounds cooler]], having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope.

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" (i.e. LeaveItToBeaver) works differently than a "sling" (i.e. DavidVsGoliath), (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool]]just sounds cooler, having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope.

*** Sci-fi writers apparently having no idea that a "slingshot" works differently than a sling (which is the "circular-motion accelerating forward momentum" imagery that they were looking for, "slingshot" [[RuleOfCool]]just sounds cooler, having the word "shot" on the end) should be its own trope.

* Perhaps the most infamous example is in ''StarWars: ANewHope''. When asked if the Millenium Falcon is fast, Han Solo gleefully informs Luke and Obi-Wan that "It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs," implying that "parsec" is a unit of measurement for time. The term - which has been used by astronomers since 1913 - actually defines ''distance'' [[hottip:*: namely, 'a distance corresponding to a '''par'''allax of one '''sec'''ond'. The specific distance is about 3.26 light years]]. The initial novelization fixes this by implying it was all part of the ruse. This was retconned in the expanded universe by saying that the Kessel Run was actually 18 parsecs long, but Han Solo managed to cut his journey down to 11.5 by utilizing the gravitational power of black holes.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', Coruscant is described as one big city, with a population of one trillion. A population of one trillion spread evenly across an entire planet would have an average population density of only a few thousand people per square kilometer, and yet we see huge, sprawling, skycraper-laden areas that are almost completely full of people (Manhattan has a population density in the tens of thousands per square kilometer, now imagine multiple layers of that) . However, this does not have to be a contradiction population density isn't necessarily uniform across the entire planet. There are marginally inhabited factory areas (like what Dooku flew over) and landing zones (like what Anakin crashed into), and the hugely populated parts in the movies are in the same general area, so it may simply be the (or simply ''a'') "downtown" sector of the planet.

* In the ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'' movie, there was a mention of two hundred thousand units being ready and a million more well on the way. [[AllThereInTheManual Cracking open the movie novelization]], we find out that the million more well on the way equated a million clone warriors ([[UnitConfusion the term "unit" was referring to a unit of production]]). 1.2 million clones for a million star system Republic? Coruscant alone has a trillion people on it. Later Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse sources upped that to three million clones. Not. Much. Better.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', Coruscant is described as one big city, with a population of one trillion. A population of one trillion across an entire planet would have an average population density of only a few thousand people per square kilometer, and yet we see huge, sprawling, skycraper-laden areas that are almost completely full of people (Manhattan has a population density in the tens of thousands per square kilometer, now imagine multiple layers of that) . However, this does not have to be a contradiction population density need not be uniform across the entire planet. There are marginally inhabited factory areas (like what Dooku flew over) and landing zones (like what Anakin crashed into), and the hugely populated parts in the movies are in the same general area, so it may simply be the (or simply ''a'') "downtown" sector of the planet.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', Coruscant is described as one big city, with a population of one trillion. A population of one trillion across an entire planet would have an average population density of only a few thousand people per square kilometer, and yet we see huge, sprawling, skycraper-laden areas that are almost completely full of people (Manhattan has a population density in the tens of thousands, now imagine multiple layers of that) . However, this does not have to be a contradiction population density need not be uniform across the entire planet. There are marginally inhabited factory areas (like what Dooku flew over) and landing zones (like what Anakin crashed into), and the hugely populated parts in the movies are in the same general area, so it may simply be the (or simply ''a'') "downtown" sector of the planet.

* In ''Franchise/StarWars'', Coruscant is described as one big city, with a population of one trillion. A population of one trillion across an entire planet would have an average population density of only a few thousand people per square kilometer, and yet we see huge, sprawling, skycraper-laden areas that are almost completely full of people (Manhattan has a population density in the tens of thousands, now imagine multiple layers of that) . However, this does not have to be a contradiction population density need not be uniform across the entire planet. There are marginally inhabited factory areas (like what Dooku flew over) and landing zones (like what Anakin crashed into), and the hugely populated parts in the movies are in the same general area, so it may simply be the one of the "downtown" sectors of the planet.

** There obviously wasn't much coordination between the writers, since the EU droid numbers were in quintillions. For some perspective, a quadrillion droids represents an occupation force of about 1 billion droids per star system in the million system Republic. The quintillions figure offered is even more ridiculous, seeing as that translates into trillions of droids per star system in a galaxy where planets like Coruscant are the exception, not the rule. Furthermore, the Separatists represented a small percentage of that Republic plus a few greedy major corporations, and yet they're supposed to have an army that could occupy it a thousand times over? And given how many of the Separatists were basically in it for the money and were under the impression that a destabilized galaxy could increase their profit margins, just how cheap are battle-droids that one could deploy quadrillions/quintillions of them (and all the requisite maintenance and transport), and still come out with a profit? Eventually, the ''RepublicCommando'' books retconned it such that the quintillions figure was merely propaganda, [[ContinuitySnarl which created]] [[InternetBackdraft it's own problems.]]

** Of course, the inconsistency is a ret-con. When it was written, the Battle of the Wolf was supposed to be a massive loss of Starships, until people wrote in concerning this trope. It was ret-conned to be only the fleet stationed on Earth itself, and the tragedy was that those were 39 of Starfleet's best ships with their best crews. It would be similar to Britain losing the entire Royal Guard to a single group of terrorists. Numerically, it wouldn't significantly harm the army, but it would be a massive psychological blow.

* The "Coruscant has a population of one trillion" thing that's often thrown around simply doesn't add up. Assuming the planet is relatively Earth-sized, a [[SingleBiomePlanet city-wide planet]] would result in a population density more closely resembling Mongolia (1.8 per km) than, say, Tokyo (2600 per km). Furthermore, Coruscant is repeatedly noted to have multiple layers of city, with underlevels so deep they never see natural sunlight, and skyscrapers reaching literally kilometres into the sky. One trillion people on a planet like that would be effectively deserted, not the bustling metropolis depicted. Though there are large areas depicted that don't have huge swaths of people, like the seemingly unpopulated (most likely automated given that it was powered) factory area Dooku flies over in AOTC, and the landing zone Anakin crashes on in ROTS, so the population density is not necessarily universal.

* In one of [[AllThereInTheManual the technical manuals]], a starfighter's main guns are about 1/200,000,000th that of a capital ship's heavy guns, and yet starfighters still try to shoot at enemy capital ships like they can do more than annoy the enemy captain by obstructing his view out the bridge. The series that book belongs to throws out words like kilotons for star fighter weaponry, megatons for Slave-1's weaponry, and gigatons for capital scale weaponry. All this for weapons which, for the films that they're detailing, display yields that rarely stack up to the more extreme episodes of ''{{Series/Mythbusters}}''. The light ion cannons on the Invisible Hand are supposedly throwing out as much heat as a 4.8 megaton thermonuclear bomb, which is strange when compared to the Hoth Ion cannon, a weapon that disabled an Imperial Star Destroyer in a handful of shots and yet didn't produce enough heat to melt the surrounding snow. In general, you could probably knock off about six to nine orders of magnitude on anything written in those books and you'd still get way too much.
* Han Solo's infamous (in nerd circles) boast that his ship is so fast that it "made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs." A parsec is a unit of ''distance'', not time or speed (and it's a blatantly Earth-based terminology, so we'll assume TranslationConvention). Later explanations had included some really complex technobabble that doesn't actually address the speed of the ship (though it does mention that the Falcon's Hyperdrive computers being so good they can find shorter routes, which could translate into faster speeds). The original novelization and script refers to Obi-Wan seeing through Han's transparent lies.
** The film does too, just in a more subtle way... watch Obi Wan's face after Han says the line. Supposedly the actual original script included "Ben reacts to Han's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation".
** The ''Literature/JediAcademyTrilogy'' states that the Kessel Run involves skirting around several ''black holes'' and thus it would take a fast ship to cut closer to the holes, thus shortening the route, without getting sucked in. This is more of a {{retcon}}, since said black holes, as well as Kessel itself, are incorporated into the story of the novels.
** Either way, it's probably a subtle jab at this instance when, in one of his many ''Star Wars'' parodies ("Star Wars Cantina"), [[http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/notbyal.html Mark Jonathan Davis]] corrects it by introducing Han Solo as having "a smile 12 parsecs wide".
** This sort of claim is also attributed to such navigators as Anakin Skywalker. A comprehensive knowledge of the system in question (or a connection to the force) is needed to avoid obstacles while in hyperdrive, especially since more of the galaxy remains uncharted than everyone would like. Those not in the know are forced to take more well-travelled routes, not necessarily the shortest.
* Writers in the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse generally are aware that space is big, and they try to avert this (although a depressingly large number keep revisiting the planets established by the movies for no good reason). In the first book of ''TheThrawnTrilogy'', Luke flees from a Star Destroyer by going into hyperspace, and since his X-wing is damaged it falls back into realspace after he's gone about half a light year - and he's stranded impossibly far from anything, only likely to be found on accident since his communications systems have gone out. On two occasions TIE fighters, which have no hyperdrives, struck out on their own and couldn't really get that far before life support ran out: an alien fleeing genocide nearly died before reaching the nearest system, and a handful of deserters had to turn back to the ship they'd abandoned when they ran out of atmosphere scrubbers.
** In ''TheNewRebellion'', after casually lampshading the idea of {{Two-D Space}}, Wedge takes a turbolaser cannon and shoves aside the targeting computer - he doesn't have TheForce, but [[BadassNormal he's confident in his own abilities]] and, while normally targets are too far away to get a visual, ''this'' one is close enough to see.
** Some authors apparently decided to balance these efforts by putting in some {{egregious}} errors. For example in ''NewJediOrder'' Sernpidal, a planet that orbits its star at the same distance our moon orbits Earth. While this could potentially work were [[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110330150854.htm Sernpinal's star a White Dwarf]] it is also the third (or fifth, there are conflicting accounts on Wookiepedia) planet of that star system.
* One of the biggest time examples comes in ''Film/ANewHope'' with Obi-Wan's line that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of the Old Republic "for over a thousand generations". A generation is about 25 years (defined as the time from one generation's birth to their giving birth to the next generation), so 25 times a thousand equals... 25,000 years?!? Just for reference, that's the same amount of time that's passed between the end of the Neanderthals to the present day. The Expanded Universe kept faithfully to that number, even though it means that the Republic has gone the whole length of human civilization with no major advances or changes, and even managed to keep the same overall government. GeorgeLucas may have eventually thought better of it: the prequel trilogy has Palpatine saying instead that the Republic's stood for "a thousand years", which seems like a more reasonable estimate. Of course, nowhere is it suggested that Obi-Wan was just being figurative.
** As if to prove how stubborn people can be, later Expanded Universe material continues to state that the Republic ''did'' start 25,000 years ago, but it reformed in the "Ruusan Reformation" about 1,000 years before the films, which is what Palpatine refers to.
** It could be argued that since a trainee "graduates" to Padawan at about 10-13 years of age, 1000 generations of Jedi would only be about 10,000 to 13,000 years. Still a ridiculously long time of stagnancy, but a little less crazy than other ideas.
* Similar to the ''{{Dune}}'' example, ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' has planets, cities, societies, and even technology virtually identical to the six movies. Despite ''[=KoTOR=]'' being set 4,000 years prior. There are minor changes, particularly in the size of warships, but nothing significant.

* The "Coruscant has a population of one trillion" thing that's often thrown around simply doesn't add up. Assuming the planet is relatively Earth-sized, a [[SingleBiomePlanet city-wide planet]] would result in a population density more closely resembling Mongolia (1.8 per km) than, say, Tokyo (2600 per km). Furthermore, Coruscant is repeatedly noted to have multiple layers of city, with underlevels so deep they never see natural sunlight, and skyscrapers reaching literally kilometres into the sky. One trillion people on a planet like that would be effectively deserted, not the bustling metropolis depicted. Though there are large areas depicted that don't have huge swaths of people, like the semi-deserted (and most likely automated given that it was powered) factory area Dooku flies over in AOTC, and the landing zones Anakin crashes on in ROTS, so the population density is not necessarily universal.

* The "Coruscant has a population of one trillion" thing that's often thrown around simply doesn't add up. Assuming the planet is relatively Earth-sized, a [[SingleBiomePlanet city-wide planet]] would result in a population density more closely resembling Mongolia (1.8 per km) than, say, Tokyo (2600 per km). Furthermore, Coruscant is repeatedly noted to have multiple layers of city, with underlevels so deep they never see natural sunlight, and skyscrapers reaching literally kilometres into the sky. One trillion people on a planet like that would be effectively deserted, not the bustling metropolis depicted. Though there are large areas depicted that don't have huge swaths of people, like the semi-deserted factory area Dooku flies over in AOTC, and the landing zones Anakin crashes on in ROTS, so the population density is not necessarily universal.

* The "Coruscant has a population of one trillion" thing that's often thrown around simply doesn't add up. Assuming the planet is relatively Earth-sized, a [[SingleBiomePlanet city-wide planet]] would result in a population density more closely resembling Mongolia (1.8 per km) than, say, Tokyo (2600 per km). Furthermore, Coruscant is repeatedly noted to have multiple layers of city, with underlevels so deep they never see natural sunlight, and skyscrapers reaching literally kilometres into the sky. One trillion people on a planet like that would be effectively deserted, not the bustling metropolis depicted.

* Galactus is often called the "slayer of millions", when he has been devouring inhabited worlds at a rate varying from once a century (early in his life) to once a month (more recently) since shortly after the Big Bang. This is...[[FromACertainPointOfView technically accurate]], but not really indicative of the real scale of things. Even if the "millions" is a count of worlds, he would already be well into the billions by now.
* There are about 7200 Green Lanterns to patrol the entire Universe. Considering how big 1/7200th of the Universe is, it is little wonder the Green Lantern Corps has failed to stamp out evil in the cosmos: sheer lack of manpower.

* In ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'', the Earth-Minbari War was the most significant war in human history. However, in terms of deaths it's a little lacking, as the human death count was only 250'000 and the Minbari significantly less. For comparison, World War 2 had a death toll in the tens of millions.
** In fact, most battles in B5 are like this, even ''planetary bombardments'' only have a few thousand deaths the only one with a more than a million had asteroids (and that took weeks of nonstop dropping), its rather narmy.
*** However, one of the canonical novels says that 600 million Narns died in the bombardment. Given that one of the producers on the show ensured that a ship mentioned in this novel as being at the first encounter between the humans and Minbari was represented in a flashback to the event in the series itself, this was taken seriously at the time. However, in Season 3 Straczynski said that only '5 or 6 million' Narns had died, which seems preposterously unlikely.
** The significance of the Earth-Minbari War was not the numbers lost, but that fact that, during the entire war, the Minbari annihilated almost every human starship sent against them, while losing only one capital ship (and an unknown number of fighters). The whole thing was totally one-sided, and promised to end with humanity's near-extinction.
** According to some estimates, during the war, Earth had tens of thousands of warships. While that number seems mindboggling, especially given that we don't see nearly as many ships on-screen, there is an episode of ''Series/{{Crusade}}'' that seems to indicate that Earth has way more ships than most people think. When the ''Warlock''-class destroyers are first introduced, Gideon mentions that these are extremely rare and valuable, with only 50 having been built so far. Given that the ''Warlock''s are the first Earth warships capable of going toe-to-toe with a Minbari ''Sharlin''-class warcruiser, it would seem likely that a hell of a lot more would be on the way.
* ''DeepSpaceNine'' tells us about one of the Klingon Empire's most epic battle. Ten thousand warriors attacked a city. Considering that Alesia involved 60,000 legionnaries fighting and defeating 330,000 Gauls, the Klingon Empire's battle history is very small scale.
** The number of fighters involved in a battle is not necessarily an indicator for the "epicness" of said battle. Battles like the Alamo or the Battle of Thermopylae were fought between just a few thousand participants on both sides, and they are still regarded as "epic battles".
** Unit numbers also fluctuated wildly between the series. The original series said there were only 12 ''Constitution''-class ships, and showed little evidence of any others on Starfleet's possession; in ''[[StarTrekTheNextGeneration The Next Generation]]'' there were intially only six ''Galaxy''-class ships built, with another six on order, and a loss of 39 vessels against the Borg at Wolf 359 was apparently a total catastrophe that crippled Starfleet. By ''DeepSpaceNine'', the Federation was regularly committing as many as six hundred ships at a time to individual battles with the Dominion; and in response to questions about the unexpectedly-high registry numbers of ''Voyager'' and ''Defiant'', Ronald Moore went on record as saying that Starfleet probably had at least thirty thousand ships.
** That might be explained just by the event of Wolf 359 as Star Fleet might have decided to build more ships in case something like that happens again, plus the buildrate would probably have increased even further during the Dominion war.
*** Still, to go from dozens to thousands is a little drastic, not to mention building an infrastructure to support that many ships.
**** One could assume that Starfleet registries cover everything from Starships to shuttles to orbital transports. That might help matters some.
**** Or it refers to just one ''class''. There were only 16 Tribal class destroyers built for the Royal Navy. That does not mean there were just 16 destroyers in the entire Royal Navy.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "Voyage of the Damned", one of the tourists confesses to her husband that to pay for this trip she incurred a debt that they, a couple of middle-class shopkeepers, will never be able to repay. At the very end of the episode we learn the exchange rate, which makes their hopeless debt equivalent to a few hundred pounds.
** If you listen to dialogue, it's more assumed that whatever the currency used by the civilisation is worth far less ''per unit'' for services when compared to the Pound Sterling (compare the Yen and the old Italian Lira for real examples of this). The debt run up was probably still genuinely huge in materiel terms, and the comparison to the Pound is irrelevant due to both there not being an exchange rate ([[FridgeLogic why would there be?]]) and the established "Pounds Worth More" is more down to an individual character failing at maths and basic economics.

* ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' has this off and on, likely as a result of the huge number of different writers and developers who have worked on it. At times, distances, timescales and the number of soldiers needed to launch a sector-spanning crusade are handled "realistically," but just as often a few hundred [[SuperSoldier space marines]] purge an ''entire world'' in a few weeks. Bear in mind that it's easy to interpret it as Imperial propaganda. Also, five Space Marines would certainly be more than sufficient to, say, assault a rebel governor's palace and decapitate the government, making it easy for the Imperial Guard to roll in and mop up.
** This is borne out in much of the fluff, as the Space Marines seem to be employed to turn the tide, taking a strategic location quickly before being redeployed to another, or taking out an enemy commander. After that, it's the Guard's (or the Planetary Defense Force's) job to sustain casualties and win the war.
** One should also note that this isn't as ridiculous as it seems: excluding tanks and artillery, most worlds lack any weaponry capable of actually damaging Astartes.
** In one of the background books, it is mentioned that it took around twenty years to totally pacify a sector (this is with the combined strength of an entire Crusade) and that this is a remarkably short time.

** One of the ways that the game rules attempt to justify this is that it takes significantly more damage to disable a BattleMech than another vehicle of comparable tonnage. A "decent anti-tank rifle" will accomplish squat against a 'Mech under the rules, as a well-armored 'Mech can shrug off dozens of anti-vehicle missiles without suffering systems damage. Realistic? No, but it does serve the purpose of the game (giant robots pounding away at each other) better than more realistic rules would.
** There is a crossover FanFic in the works on Spacebattles Forum,''[[http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=150127 An Entry with a Bang!]]'', where the authors took this and ran with it. There the Earth of our present day (actually, the one from the novels of TomClancy, but that's close enough) gets transported into a BattleTech times, and some enterprising Sphere lord decide to stage an invasion. So far, the mechwarriors were getting trounced quite convincingly, even if the cost is significant. At one point, an Inner Sphere ruler asks one of his agents to obtain data about the 21st century Earth (nobody knows that's the case, but he has some suspicions) and give him an estimate of a force capable of conquering it. She states that not only is is impossible by the existing states, the old '''[[TheEmpire Star League]]''' armies would have had a hard time doing it without glazing the planet over.

* In the ''AttackOfTheClones'' movie, there was a mention of two hundred thousand units being ready and a million more well on the way. [[AllThereInTheManual Cracking open the movie novelization]], we find out that the million more well on the way equated a million clone warriors ([[UnitConfusion the term "unit" was referring to a unit of production]]). Really? 1.2 million clones for a million star system Republic? Coruscant alone has a trillion people on it. Later EU sources upped that to three million clones. Not. Much. Better. And there obviously wasn't much coordination between the writers, since the EU droid numbers were in quintillions.
** The droid numbers are also a bit sketchy in the opposite direction. A quadrillion droids represents an occuption force of about 1 billion droids per star system in the million system Republic. The quintillions figure offered is even more ridiculous, seeing as that translates into trillions of droids per star system in a galaxy where planets like Coruscant are the exception, not the rule. The Separatists represented a small percentage of that Republic plus a few greedy major corporations, and yet they're supposed to have an army that could occupy it a thousand times over? Or more, given ThePhantomMenace movie novelization implies the Republic only has 100,000 worlds? And given how many of the Separatists were basically in it for the money and were under the impression that a destabilized galaxy could increase their profit margins, just how cheap are battle-droids that one could deploy quadrillions/quintillions of them (and all the requisite maintenance and transport), and still come out with a profit? And that's not even counting the idea that Palpatine orchestrated his rise to combat the Yuuzhan Vong threat, and yet disposed of this army for whom the 365 trillion dead wouldn't even represent 1%. Eventually, the RepublicCommando books retconned it such that the quintillions figure was merely propaganda. [[InternetBackdraft Some readers didn't take it very well.]]
** In ''{{Shatterpoint}}'', Mace Windu points out that the million-odd clones work out to roughly one per system, and suggests that the majority of the fighting, especially in the less-critical areas, is being done by regular militia forces.
** Meanwhile, there seems to be only one military academy - admittedly one which takes up most of a planet - for the '''entire galaxy'''. For comparison, there are four in the US alone. And that's not counting the three major service academies. There are others referred to occasionally, but one gets the spotlight far more disproportionately than the others.
** 10,000 Jedi. How exactly are 10,000 Jedi supposed to keep peace across the galaxy? That's something like 1 Jedi per 10 to 100 Republic worlds. At least in MassEffect, [=SPECTRE=]s work in conjunction with numerous other militarized organizations.
* It gets even worse in the NJO novels when the New Republic, losing planets to the invading Yuuzhan Vong left and right, is described as having problems finding shelter and food for '''millions''' of refugees.
** There are two reasons for that: one, the Vong are invading the underdeveloped backwater end of the galaxy, and two, [[FridgeHorror most of the population didn't survive long enough to become refugees]].
* Some of this is the result of the StarWars EU having an extremely inconsistent portrayal of its basic scale. The movies give numbers in the range of "tens of thousands of worlds", including a lot of marginally developed worlds, while some EU sources bump this up to "millions of worlds" with a lot more development. Somewhere along the line, the math is bound to not add up.
* Little bit of math fun here: Han Solo owed Jabba the Hutt the price of a dumped shipment of spice. 17,000 credits, apparently (based on Solo and Jabba's discussion in Ep IV from Special Edition onward), works out to Solo's original debt plus an extra 15%. Now, Han was smuggling glitterstim spice, which is considered rare and exotic. According to certain sources, exotic spice is worth 20 credits a ''gram''. This, however, means that the 14,782 credits Jabba lost (14,782.6, if you want to be exact) adds up to about three-quarters of a kilogram of spice. Unless this stuff is less dense than the average sparrow feather, 0.73 kilos should be small enough in size to fit into nearly any small compartment (or possibly up Chewbacca's butt ... hey, these are professional smugglers).
* In one of the StarWarsExpandedUniverse technical manuals, a starfighter's main guns are about 1/200,000,000th that of a capital ship's heavy guns, and yet starfighters still try to shoot at enemy capital ships like they can do more than annoy the enemy captain by obstructing his view out the bridge. The series that book belongs to throws out words like kilotons for star fighter weaponry, megatons for Slave-1's weaponry, and gigatons for capital scale weaponry. All this for weapons which, for the films that they're detailing, display yields that rarely stack up to the more extreme episodes of ''{{Mythbusters}}''. The light ion cannons on the Invisible Hand are supposedly throwing out as much heat as a 4.8 megaton thermonuclear bomb, which is strange when compared to the Hoth Ion cannon, a weapon that disabled an Imperial Star Destroyer in a handful of shots and yet didn't produce enough heat to melt the surrounding snow. In general, you could probably knock off about six to nine orders of magnitude on anything written in those books and you'd still get way too much.
* For a big universe, Star Wars is extremely small. In ''{{Knights of the Old Republic}}'', where did the Sith hide their maps? Tatooine, Korriban, and Kashyyk. Rancors turn up all over the place. We mostly bump into the same few races. Luke flies off to Dagobah, and happens to crash-land -- out of an entire planet -- next to Yoda. The only possible explanation is [[AWizardDidIt "The Force makes it so".]]
** Actually, Luke theorizes in TheThrawnTrilogy that Yoda Did It.
* ''StarWars'': Han Solo's infamous (in nerd circles) boast that his ship is so fast that it "made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs." A parsec is a unit of ''distance'', not time or speed (and it's a blatantly Earth-based terminology, so we'll assume TranslationConvention). Later explanations had included some really complex technobabble that doesn't actually address the speed of the ship (though it does mention that the Falcon's Hyperdrive computers being so good they can find shorter routes, which could translate into faster speeds). The original novelization and script refers to Obi-Wan seeing through Han's transparent lies.
** The film does too, just in a more subtle way... watch Obi Wan's face after Han says the line.
** Supposedly the actual original script included "Ben reacts to Han's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation". It's later explained in the JediAcademyTrilogy that the Kessel Run involves skirting around several ''black holes'' and thus it would take a fast ship to cut closer to the holes, thus shortening the route, without getting sucked in. This is more of a {{retcon}}, perhaps, since said black holes, as well as Kessel itself, are incorporated into the story of the novels.
** Either way, it's probably a subtle jab at this instance when, in one of his many StarWars parodies ("Star Wars Cantina"), [[http://www.com-www.com/weirdal/notbyal.html Mark Jonathan Davis]] corrects it by introducing Han Solo as having "a smile 12 parsecs wide".
** This sort of claim is also attributed to such navigators as Anakin Skywalker. A comprehensive knowledge of the system in question (or a connection to the force) is needed to avoid obstacles while in hyperdrive, especially since more of the galaxy remains uncharted than everyone would like. Those not in the know are forced to take more well-travelled routes, not necessarily the shortest. In the Kessel run case, the run requires navigators to take a circuitous around a giant black hole cluster, with the more daring, stupid, desperate, or insane navigators trying to shave off distance by skirting as close to said black hole cluster as possible.
* Writers in the StarWarsExpandedUniverse generally are aware that space is big, and they try to avert this (although a depressingly large number keep revisiting the planets established by the movies for no good reason). In the first book of TheThrawnTrilogy, Luke flees from a Star Destroyer by going into hyperspace, and since his X-wing is damaged it falls back into realspace after he's gone about half a light year - and he's stranded impossibly far from anything, only likely to be found on accident since his communications systems have gone out. On two occasions TIE fighters, which have no hyperdrives, struck out on their own and couldn't really get that far before life support ran out: an alien fleeing genocide nearly died before reaching the nearest system, and a handful of deserters had to turn back to the ship they'd abandoned when they ran out of atmosphere scrubbers.
** In ''TheNewRebellion'', after casually lampshading the idea of TwoDSpace, Wedge takes a turbolaser cannon and shoves aside the targeting computer - he doesn't have TheForce, but [[BadassNormal he's confident in his own abilities]] and, while normally targets are too far away to get a visual, ''this'' one is close enough to see.
** Some authors apparently decided to balance these efforts by putting in some {{egregious}} errors. For example, [[NewJediOrder Sernpidal]], a planet that orbits its star at the same distance our moon orbits Earth. While this could potentially work were [[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110330150854.htm Sernpinal's star a White Dwarf]] it is also the third (or fifth, there are conflicting accounts on Wookiepedia) planet of the Solar System.
*** The same planet gets half destroyed and knocked out of its orbit by an impact with its own moon when aliens pull said moon out of orbit. Considering that Sernpidal is described as being roughly Earth-sized in most sources, while Dobido (the moon) is about twenty kilometers wide. Such an impact should have rendered the planet almost uninhabitable for a few years (see: the K-T event on Earth), but would have been nowhere near powerful enough to shatter the planet as depicted.
*** Although, given that they were later seen strip-mining the remains to build a worldship, the Vong almost certainly came along after the moon had hit and finished the job.
* One of the biggest time examples comes in ''[[StarWars A New Hope]]'' with [[TheObiWan Obi-Wan's]] line that the Jedi Knights were the guardians of the Old Republic "for over a thousand generations". A generation is about 25 years (defined as the time from one generation's birth to their giving birth to the next generation), so 25 times a thousand equals... 25,000 years?!? Just for reference, that's the same amount of time that's passed between the end of the Neanderthals to the present day. The ExpandedUniverse has kept faithfully to that number, even though it means that the Republic has gone the whole length of human civilization with [[MedievalStasis no major advances or changes]]. GeorgeLucas may have eventually thought better of it: the prequel trilogy has Palpatine saying instead that the Republic's stood for "a thousand years", which seems like a more reasonable estimate. The EU justifies this by claiming that the Republic ''did'' start for 25,000 years ago, but it reformed in the "Ruusan Reformation" about 1,000 years before the movies (nowhere is it suggested that Obi-Wan was just being figurative).

** Or perhaps the "generations" aren't generations of humans, but (say) generations of Ewoks, or some other creature that matures in one year.
* Similar to the ''{{Dune}}'' example, ''StarWars: {{Knights of the Old Republic}}'' has planets, cities, societies, and even technology virtually identical to the six movies. Despite ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'' being set 4,000 years prior.
** Some sources suggest that a massive galactic civil war (yes, another one) about 2-3 thousand years before the movies forced most of the galaxy into a sort of dark age (apparently, Jedi and Sith armies fighting with iron weapons were not unheard of). Given this, it seems technology is doing pretty well just to be in the same place. And it ''is'' somewhat more developed, especially with capital warships -- the ''Endar Spire'' in [=KotOR=] is a Republic Hammerhead-class cruiser, the backbone of the fleet. It's small enough that details like bridge viewports and individual escape pods are clearly visible even from a distance. They're not much bigger than ''Tantive IV'', let alone Star Destroyers.
*** The novelization of ''Star Wars: The Clone Wars,'' (the pilot movie) has Jabba in discussion for a material used in hyperdrive production, which he is bidding low on because he knows that said material is going to be replaced by a much better material in a few years, and new fighters brought out in the New Jedi Order series are stated to be much better than previous generations, so there ''is'' advancement in the Star Wars universe... just not as fast as, say, Earth society advanced from the year 1900 to 2000.
* The Yuuzhan Vong War, in Star Wars, seems to get this one about right. The agreed-upon figure seems to be 365 trillion dead over the course of a 4-year war, which comes to about 3 million people ''every second''. The death rate on Earth is about 2 people/second, so the war is equivalent to the death rate on 1.5 million Earths. There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy - so if the galaxy in Star Wars is of a similar size, and one in every 70,000 stars has an Earth-equivalent inhabited world, then the war just about matches the natural death rate. So the 365 trillion figure, despite sounding ridiculously large, is actually probably on the low side, depending on how densely the galaxy is assumed to be populated.
** The problem with the 365 trillion number is the size compared to the Republic's population. Remember that their invasion path occupies less than a quarter of the galaxy, and that in most cases they don't make an effort to actually ''wipe out'' the defenders. And consider how big the Republic is: sure, Coruscant has a trillion people, but planets like Corellia have a much more Earth-like population density, and given the prominence of each one there can't be that many worlds this size. Most of the worlds in the Republic seem to have far, far fewer people. Their fleets aren't going to make up the balance either, since even one trillion people makes up the crew of some thirty ''million'' Imperial Star Destroyers.