History Main / CasualInterstellarTravel

Contrast GenerationShip, where interstellar travel to another planet takes an entire generation.

* ''Manga/TwilightStarSuiAndNeri'': Thanks to significant leaps in technology for over five centuries, casually travelling from Earth to other planets is now akin to a real-life public transit.

* ''[[Film/CommandoCody: Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe]]''. In this 1953 FilmSerial our hero fights The Ruler, who plans to conquer Earth and then the Universe from his lair on Venus. Fortunately Commando Cody has invented an atomic rocketship that can fly to Venus and stop his evil plan. So the Ruler decides to punish Earth by putting out the Sun. Naturally this means moving his lair to another planetary system, to which Cody flies off to in his rocketship without the slightest mention of him having invented FasterThanLightTravel. Then again it's obvious from the title that ScienceFictionWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale.

* Louis Wu from the ''Literature/KnownSpace'' novels has spent most of his centuries of life hopping from planet to planet, merely out of restlessness. Indeed, when he gets fed up with human company in general, he takes off in a private spacecraft and starts traveling ''in a random direction'', with no concern for the expense or the difficulty which returning to the inhabited parts of Known Space might pose. Louis is, however, quite wealthy, and it's explicitly mentioned that this penchant for "sabbaticals" is very definitely considered eccentric. Overall interstellar travel seems to be portrayed as roughly the equivalent of early 20th century steamship travel--expensive, but possible and relatively "routine".

** Played with. In the setting, the only mode of interstellar travel is through the Spacing Guild and its heighliners. The process is treated as straightforward: board a spacecraft, get into orbit, dock with a heighliner, and sit back while the Guild's Navigators chart a course and take you to your destination. In fact, the process would be completely mundane if it weren't for the fact that the Spacing Guild has a complete monopoly on interstellar travel and charges exorbitant prices for the privilege, meaning it's out of reach for all but an elite few and those whose engage in interstellar commerce. This is justified in-story by a religion-based ban on computers (justified in-universe), which means that only the Guild's Navigators (who live in tanks of concentrated spice and have been physically and mentally mutated by it to the point of being StarfishAliens) are capable of piloting a ship through hyperspace without it being destroyed. As such, more than a few characters complain about that monopoly and the high cost of that travel. However, by ''Literature/HereticsOfDune'', Ix has truly broken the monopoly by skirting around the Butlerian Jihad's conventions and producing machines that could substitute for the Guild's prescience.

* In ''Literature/ChakonaSpace'', we have a situation much like what we see with ''Franchise/StarTrek'' seen below. Governments, big corporations, and the seriously wealthy (as well as the occasional {{space pirate|s}}) can all potentially own ships capable of sailing between distant worlds many lightyears apart in a matter of days or weeks.

** Kryptonians can travel to the literal edge of the universe by merely flying there in a ridiculously short time. Back in the [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks Bronze Ages]], Superman and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} -[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 the latter being known to take less than a full day to cover the distance between Earth and the center of the universe]]- casually zipped through the cosmos and visited alien worlds. Nonetheless, they also own a starship to travel fast to worlds where her powers don't work.

** Played with In the setting, the only mode of interstellar travel is through the Spacing Guild and its heighliners. The process is treated as straightforward: board a spacecraft, get into orbit, dock with a heighliner, and sit back while the Guild's Navigators chart a course and take you to your destination. In fact, the process would be completely mundane if it weren't for the fact that the Spacing Guild has a complete monopoly on interstellar travel and charges exorbitant prices for the privilege, meaning it's out of reach for all but an elite few and those whose engage in interstellar commerce. This is justified in-story by a religion-based ban on computers (justified in-universe), which means that only the Guild's Navigators (who live in tanks of concentrated spice and have been physically and mentally mutated by it to the point of being StarfishAliens) are capable of piloting a ship through hyperspace without it being destroyed. As such, more than a few characters complain about that monopoly and the high cost of that travel. However, by ''Literature/HereticsOfDune'', Ix has truly broken the monopoly by skirting around the Butlerian Jihad's conventions and producing machines that could substitute for the Guild's prescience.

** The only mode of interstellar travel is through the Spacing Guild, which has a monopoly on interstellar travel. This is justified in-story by a religion-based ban on computers (justified in-universe), which means that only the Guild's Navigators (who live in tanks of concentrated spice and have been physically and mentally mutated by it to the point of being StarfishAliens) are capable of piloting a ship through hyperspace without it being destroyed. As such, more than a few characters complain about that monopoly and the high cost of that travel. However, by ''Literature/HereticsOfDune'', Ix has truly broken the monopoly by skirting around the Butlerian Jihad's conventions and producing machines that could substitute for the Guild's prescience.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' is so completely based on this trope that it's really hard to come up with concrete examples. They're everywhere. Even the Death Star--large enough to be mistaken for a moon--goes traipsing around the galaxy freely. In the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', people have worked out the speeds of hyperdrive travel based on evidence in the movies and the EU, and a good course in a fast ship will get you across ''the galaxy'' in ''a week''. In the films, cross-galactic travel is accomplished in mere hours (unless you think Obi-Wan and Luke spent days and weeks on the ''Millenium Falcon'' on the trip from Tatooine (Outer Rim) to Alderaan (Core World)). There's also Padmé's trip from Coruscant (Core World) to Mustafar (Outer Rim). Spaceships can be purchased at [[HonestJohnsDealership Honest John's Dealerships]], as in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear''. Planets with economies based on offworld tourism exist, famous for shopping, or beautiful scenery, gambling opportunities, super-friendly locals...

* Interstellar travel is moderately casual in ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm''. While regular travel by spaceship is slower-than-light, the spaceships are generally relativistic and experience time dilation, and most people (or things, or things who are people) are immortal anyway and can go into suspended animation or turn themselves off if they get bored. Also, the wormhole network does allow for more or less casual fast interstellar travel within the terragen bubble for those who can withstand the limitations.

* ''Literature/AlmostNight''. While Stella's trip from colony Gamma to colony Tau is expensive, there is an entire running spaceport taking people to various destinations. And the trip takes a couple weeks.
* Interstellar travel in the plot-relevant areas of the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' setting has almost always been described in this fashion, generally using whichever "mainstream" FTL drive was currently ''en vogue''. While the comparison to automobiles may be stretching it a bit (people who actually have their own ship to, say, fly to Vega over the holidays would still be a distinct and fairly small minority), small groups and even individuals routinely do personally own commercial or private starships (in sometimes-varying states of repair and readiness) as a matter of course.
* The ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' of Creator/AlanDeanFoster plays SpaceIsAnOcean fairly freely--while interstellar travel isn't necessarily cheap {{canon}}ically, within the story most characters consider it to be no more inconvenient than a long plane trip would be to us. In perhaps the most over-the-top example, ''Mid-Flinx'' features a character who travels to a barely-documented planet, only to be followed by ''three other ships'' which are looking for him. This would seem far less improbable if he hadn't gotten there by pointing in a random direction and instructing his ship to take him "that way". Then again, Flinx is the ChosenOne of his particular universe, so it's quite likely his venture there was [[YouCantFightFate not entirely random]].

* Louis Wu, from Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'' novels, had spent most of his centuries of life hopping from planet to planet, merely out of restlessness. Indeed, when he gets fed up with human company in general, he takes off in a private spacecraft and starts traveling ''in a random direction'', with no concern for the expense or the difficulty which returning to the inhabited parts of Known Space might pose.
** Louis is, however, quite wealthy, and it's explicitly mentioned that this penchant for "sabbaticals" is very definitely considered eccentric. Overall interstellar travel seems to be portrayed as roughly the equivalent of early 20th century steamship travel--expensive, but possible and relatively "routine".
* Partially used in Dan Simmons's ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' books--during the first half (''Hyperion''), travel to any given point is quick, through a system of teleporter gates called Farcasters. The entire galaxy has melted together into one gigantic metropolis, since any given city is never further away than the nearest Farcaster. Particularly rich people have their houses divided over several planets, with Farcasters instead of ordinary doors. However, in ''Endymion'', [[spoiler:a major plot-twist at the end of ''Hyperion'' has destroyed this system, and interstellar travel is now only available to particularly powerful organizations and the enormously wealthy...]] In ''Endymion'' [[spoiler: the only remaining mode of instantaneous travel ''kills you'' when it is used.]] And then it turns out that [[spoiler: Aenea can teach people]] a way to teleport themselves to any planet in the universe that has life on it. Instant teleportation without needing a spaceship defines this trope.

* "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_story%29 The Road Not Taken]]", a short story by Creator/HarryTurtledove, is the uber-example of this trope. It posits that anti-gravity and hyper-drive are easy to discover, but lead societies away from further advances. So the galaxy is populated by a bunch of species who all have ''interstellar'' {{Global Airship}}s--and black-powder muskets '''at best'''. One such species tries to invade Earth with disastrous (for them) results.
* In the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series, it is explained that it's cheaper to ship bulk cargo from one system to another than to ship something from two locations on the same planet. The catch is that you must be ultra-rich to afford even the tiniest spaceship, and interstellar travel is not exactly safe or fast.
** Especially if you can't use a Junction transit, which can shave ''months'' off of a trip.
* In the ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' Chronicles, the only mode of interstellar travel is through the Spacing Guild, which has a monopoly on interstellar travel. This is justified in-story by a religion-based ban on computers (justified in-universe), which means that only the Guild's Navigators (who live in tanks of concentrated spice and have been physically and mentally mutated by it to the point of being StarfishAliens) are capable of piloting a ship through hyperspace without it being destroyed. As such, more than a few characters complain about that monopoly and the high cost of that travel. However, by ''Literature/HereticsOfDune'', Ix has truly broken the monopoly by skirting around the Butlerian Jihad's conventions and producing machines that could substitute for the Guild's prescience.
** In the ''Literature/LegendsOfDune'' prequel trilogy, the pre-Guild interstellar travel is more in line with this trope. The League of Nobles spaceports are always bustling with activity. The mechanism is not made explicit, but it is clear that the ships available at the time used some form of FTL propulsion. It is clearly stated several times that it would take a month to travel between Selusa Secundus, the League capital world, and Corrin, the central [[RobotWar Synchronized World]]. The difference with the later invention of foldspace engines and their need for prescient navigators or forbidden computers is that folding space gets you to your destination pretty much instantaneously--which is why nobody's fast enough to keep up with it unless they've already seen the safe path.
* In Jerry Oltion's ''The Getaway Special'' and its sequel ''Anywhere But Here'', a MadScientist invents a faster than light teleportation drive that runs on car batteries and can be built with parts from Radio Shack for about $200. The only limitation on the drive is that it cannot jump "into" another mass - even atmosphere. Launch from anywhere, deorbit with parachutes. Result: extrasolar colonization in [=RV=]s! And Homeland Security breaking up extrasolar trailer parks with {{Colony Drop}}s...
* ''[[Literature/CommonwealthSaga Pandora's Star]]'' by Creator/PeterFHamilton starts off with this but then inverts it. Humanity develops wormhole technology that allows them to treat interstellar travel like an airport or a train station so they never really develop spaceship technology too much. When they finally do need to develop spaceships they do so by jury rigging the wormhole technology but it is very much an inconvenient form of interstellar travel.
** The ''Literature/VoidTrilogy'', set 1500 years after ''Pandora's Star'', has a lot more spaceships. There are commercial spaceships, the Commonwealth Navy, and private spaceships. Think of them as [[SpaceIsAnOcean like ships nowadays]]: the biggest and most efficient are company or government owned, but there is a significant number of leisure yachts.
** From the same author: In what is likely the most extreme example of this trope, the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Kiint]] from the [[Literature/NightsDawn Night's Dawn Trilogy]] have [[spoiler: the capability to teleport instantly [[ExaggeratedTrope across multiple]] ''galaxies'' at a moment's notice]]. In the same trilogy, regular space travel is available and people own private starships, but it's still difficult enough that it couldn't be used to effectively reduce the population pressure on Earth.
** Hamilton runs the gamut of this trope in his various novels. It's completely averted in ''Literature/FallenDragon'', where space travel takes months and is so costly that it has been nearly abandoned, and the only companies still doing it are just invading planets they own the rights to and stealing all their stuff to try to make a profit.
* Parodied in all ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'' media. Hyperspace is treated in a manner similar to the highway system is on Earth (which is why the Earth is destroyed in the first place). The infamous Infinite Improbability Drive used by the protagonists allows for travel over ridiculously vast distances with some rather trippy side effects if you don't happen to be in the cabin. In a later book, interstellar travel that is even ''faster'' than the IID is facilitated via an ''Italian restaurant''. As well as being ridiculously fast, it has the enormous benefit of not randomly turning planets into banana fruitcake as it passes.
* Creator/AndreNorton's science fiction books feature Free Traders who travel from star to star carrying trade items. Their ships use a {{FTL}} drive that allows interstellar travel in a few days.
** Similarly, in ''Literature/TheZeroStone'', Jern and his master can wander the space ways in the jewel business.
* ''Literature/CoDominium''. Starships had the Alderson Drive, which allowed instantaneous jumps from star to star. The setting had merchant starships, such as those owned by Horace Hussein Bury. The only limitation is that the relative positions and natures of stars determine where the jump-points lie, and one must still use ordinary reaction drives to move about in-system and between jump points.
* Creator/EEDocSmith's ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' series, after the Bergenholm inertialess drive was created. Some ships could go up to 90 parsecs (294.4 light years) per hour. Later books add the hyperspatial tube, which doesn't cut the travel time much (if at all) but does let you traverse the distance unseen (except at the point of emergence).
* ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' novels, while mainly focused on the military, make no secret that it's ridiculously easy for any private citizen to obtain a [=FTL=]-capable ship. Travel time can be anything from a few minutes to hours and days (no longer than that, usually), depending on how deep into [[SubspaceOrHyperspace Hypersphere]] a ship is capable and the pilot is willing to go (the deeper the faster). It gets to the ridiculous extent that a previously-unknown race of HumanAliens is able to purchase a battlefleet online along with enough HumongousMecha to wage a war on humanity.
* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium'' trilogy, being very loosely based on ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion'', this trope is played perfectly straight. HyperspaceOrSubspace travel is cheap, relatively, and accessible to almost anyone (it's treated as someone buying a plane ticket today). It takes only days to get anywhere, weeks at most. Additionally, the relatively cheap and mass-produced ''Grasshopper''-class ships are mainly designed for in-system travel, but they do possess hyperdrives with enough fuel for a single jump. It's mentioned that many companies use them as the equivalent of a company car, provided you're willing to spend hours in a cramped vehicle without ArtificialGravity, eating the kind of space food that hasn't changed since mid-20th century.
* In Creator/MikhailAkhmanov's ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'' series, this trope is played straight for some alien races, but not humans. In the first novel, humanity doesn't even have [=FTL=] drives. In subsequent books, only the military has [=FTL=]-capable starships. However, the rapid expansion of humanity makes it clear that humans will play this trope straight eventually. Contour drives require little energy and can transport a ship anywhere in the galaxy nearly instantly, although no one has ever tried such a long jump, as even small jumps require extremely precise calculations. Jumps are usually done in series.
** Averted in Akhmanov and Christopher Gilmore's ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'', where interstellar travel is achieved via a relativistic drive that feels like a fraction of a second for anyone in the ship but takes decades in real time. While humanity has settled dozens of worlds, colonization is a costly venture that only governments on rich planets can afford, usually when overpopulation becomes an issue. The only people for whom space travel is routine are space traders, including the titular protagonist. Due to this, space traders are greeted on almost every populated world and treated as royalty. Without them, there would be no interaction between planets. Even interstellar communication is a rarity, as it requires large orbital transmitters and receivers to be set up and maintained, and any message would still take years to arrive. Even with this, a ship still has to travel for months under normal power in order to get away from deep gravity wells, as they mess up calculations. It is also risky, as a jump can deposit the ship near a star or inside a planet. There are, probably, no more than several hundred space traders in this 'verse and a few thousand settled worlds 20,000 years since interstellar travel became feasible.
* Creator/JamesBlish does this with cities and indeed entire planets in the ''Literature/CitiesInFlight'' series, where a new law of physics shows that the larger an object is, the easier it is to move at hugely FTL speeds. At one point it is stated that a spacecraft is crossing the solar system at FTL speeds powered by a few ordinary batteries.
* The short stories [[http://theopinionguy.com/OG25.pdf "Assumption" (scroll down)]] and [[http://abyssandapex.com/201004-black.html "The Black Sheep of Vaerlosi"]] by Desmond Warzel.
* Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's two-part novel ''Literature/TheStarsAreColdToys'' is premised on humans discovering FTLTravel in the early 21st century, resulting in most countries having their own space programs and American space shuttles and Russian ''Buran'' spacecraft lifting off into space using the usual means and then activating the jumper device, which instantly sends a ship slightly over 12 light years in a given direction. The distance is always constant. By sheer coincidence, the first interstellar jump results in humanity encountering the Conclave, a conglomerate of alien races ruling this part of the galaxy. Unfortunately, there is a strict hierarchy between the Strong and Weak races, and humanity is classified as the latter. The alien method of FTL travel are considerably slower, often taking months, although they still fit this trope. Then you have the [[spoiler:[[HumanAliens Geometers]]]], who have managed to combine both technologies into a highly-efficient method of interstellar travel to the point where moving entire star systems isn't that big a deal.
** The human jumper has the added bonus of only allowing humans to survive the jump with their sanity intact, which is good for humans, as the Conclave has a habit of destroying races that serve no useful purpose to it (even if they don't pose a threat). The greatest fear is aliens learning to survive the jump, and all pilots have standing orders to destroy the ship in the event this happens (they may even choose the means to do so: self-destruct, fry the jumper which earns you a slow death, or enter into an uncontrollable series of {{Blind Jump}}s until you run out of power). Oh, and humans feel the greatest high possible when jumping.
* Played mostly straight in ''Literature/{{Lacuna}}'', where the jump drive allows the crew to travel to anywhere in the galaxy where there's no significant gravitational pull. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, doing so has a slight chance of creating a horrific, ever expanding NegativeSpaceWedgie which very very slowly destroys the universe. The Toralii know about this and attack anyone who possess jump drive.]]
* Partially justified in Creator/RogerZelazny's ScienceFantasy, ''Literature/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness'', where many of the characters are actual Gods, and not subject to the rules of nature. However, the Steel General seems to ignore light-speed when mounted on his MechanicalHorse, Bronze, whose every stride covers twice the distance of the previous one. Even for ordinary humans, interstellar flight seems fairly routine, and humanity has spread far across the universe.
* Superlight travel is accomplished via subspace in ''[[Literature/RieselTalesTwoHunters Riesel Tales: Two Hunters]]''. Through this method, the average starship can cross a light-year in about 45 seconds. However, a straight-line, cross-galaxy trip would still take nearly two months.
* Played straight and averted in the ''Literature/{{Eldraeverse}}''. While the [[PortalNetwork stargates]] do flip you instantly from star system to star system via wormhole, in-system travel (including between stargates on long trips) has to take place at low accelerations, which is where most of the journey time is used up, and to get the stargates in place in the first place requires long sublight voyages.
* Partly played straight in ''Literature/MasterOfFormalities''. While private citizens aren't shown to be able to afford spaceships of their own, passenger interstellar travel is fairly common and treated as commercial air travel is these days, except much more uncomfortable (passenger liners don't even have bathrooms; instead, people are given pills that temporarily suppress a number of their bodily functions, although it's not uncommon for the effects to wear off before the arrival). Similar to air travel, getting to your destination often requires multiple hops, although individual flights are usually about as long as mid-range air flight. [[FeudalFuture Planetary rulers]] do have their own ships, both luxurious private yachts and warships for their militaries.
* In ''Literature/ChakonaSpace'', we have a situation much like what we see with ''Franchise/StarTrek'' seen below. Governments, big corporations, and the seriously wealthy (as well as the occasional {{space pirate|s}}) can all potentially own ships capable of sailing between distant worlds many lightyears apart in a matter of days or weeks.
* In ''Literature/DeathOrGlory'', this is played straight for the five dominant alien races of TheAlliance, who zip around the galaxy with ease and have even visited the globular clusters "above" and "below" the galactic disk. Meanwhile, humans, despite having FTL, crawl from one star to another, and the human sphere of influence only extends to a few hundred light years from Earth. This changes by the second book, taking place a century and a half later. With the influx of alien tech, humans become one of the most ubiquitous races in the galaxy, and a private ship owner can cross the galaxy in about a week of constant jumping.
* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
** "Literature/ImInMarsportWithoutHilda": Characters make reference to the Capellan system being outside the jurisdiction of their Federation. Space travel is common enough that there's an [[FantasticDrug anti-space sickness medicine]] that people use on a regular basis.
** "Literature/TheLastQuestion": The second scene involves FTL through [[SubspaceOrHyperspace hyperspace]], an invention by the Planetary AC computers which allow humans to colonize new worlds. This, along with immortality, begins to cause new issues as the population of the galaxy is increasing rapidly. The fourth scene has EnergyBeings of mankind which can [[SmallUniverseAfterAll traverse intergalactic distances]] with only the effort of their minds.
** "Literature/MirrorImage": The Spacers are on a short (a few weeks) trip between Spacer solar systems, and stop by Earth because it isn't out of the way and Detective Baley might be able to resolve a problem the captain has been given.
** "Literature/MotherEarth": Earth has colonized roughly fifty worlds within one hundred parsecs of itself. Roughly, because Hesperus (the furthest of the new planets) is the first world colonized by humans from the Outer Worlds rather than humans from Earth. Metals, food, technology, and more is traded amoung the fifty-one worlds on a regular basis.
* ''Literature/LandInTheStars'': All space travel is conducted using {{Solar Sail}}s and possesses an almost ''Franchise/StarTrek’’ foundation of how speed is measured.
* In ''Literature/TheGoblinReservation'', the galaxy is covered by a transporting network, whereby objects are instantly transmitted between any two nodes as infinitely-fast "wave patterns". The network itself, though, is expanded by slower-than-light spaceships.
* Averted in ''Literature/JunctionPoint''. It takes an absurd amount of energy, and the most advanced technology Earth has to offer, just to get to a 'nearby' star, and it still takes around 14 years. (5, for the crew).

* In ''Literature/LucifersStar'' by Creator/CTPhipps, the Spiral (Orion's Arm) is a place that depends on CasualInterstellarTravel. Almost every planet is interdependent on other planets with only a few being self-sufficiently. Trillions of tons of cargo are shipped from one world to the next every day in the same way as a standard planet due to the existence of jumpspace as well as a wholly integrated spacer culture. An ApocalypseHow happened centuries ago when interstellar space travel was briefly rendered impossible.

* The original ''Literature/PlanetOfTheApes'' novel has a FramingDevice in a time where "Travel between planets was common; between stars, unexceptional." The actual action happens at a much earlier time with the world's first experiment at interstellar travel.

* ''[[Literature/{{Accelerando}} Glasshouse]]'' by Creator/CharlesStross has interstellar teleportation, though as the characters are practically [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Sufficiently Advanced Humans]] this may be unsurprising.

* In ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'', the Andalites are like this thanks to their knowledge of z-space, the negative space that let them pop in at one point and out at another--although Z-space is notoriously unpredictable and always shifting. The Yeerks stole the tech and have equivalent capabilities.

** ''Yoda: Literature/DarkRendezvous'' has some Jedi trying to sneak off Coruscant on a budget passenger liner belonging to "Kut-Rate Kruises." They're all horrified to various degrees by the crowding, delays, security, and so on that they usually get to bypass. After maintaining their cover on public transporation proves to be impossible, they give up and buy a cheap freighter from an HonestJohnsDealership. Similarly, ''By the Emperor's Hand'', a Mara Jade comic, features Mara getting transport on an even cheaper ship with passenger areas that are basically like cattle cars, with all the passengers sleeping on the floor and no security. The benefit of ''that'' ship is that they don't really check for ID, so refugees and petty criminals can reach different places.

* Combined with InterplanetaryVoyage: In Creator/SabanEntertainment's ''The Why Why Family'', Baby Victor's Grandpa Matic is an expert on UsefulNotes/TheSolarSystem who [[SpeaksFluentAnimal Speaks Fluent Dog]] with a dog named Zygo and in most episodes takes him and Victor on a journey through outer space on a CoolSpaceship in order to study the wondrous ways of the universe.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'' is so completely based on this trope that it's really hard to come up with concrete examples. They're everywhere. Even the Death Star--large enough to be mistaken for a moon--goes traipsing around the galaxy freely. In the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse and ''[[Franchise/StarWarsLegends Legends]]'', people have worked out the speeds of hyperdrive travel based on evidence in the movies and the EU, and a good course in a fast ship will get you across ''the galaxy'' in ''a week''. In the films, cross-galactic travel is accomplished in mere hours (unless you think Obi-Wan and Luke spent days and weeks on the ''Millenium Falcon'' on the trip from Tatooine (Outer Rim) to Alderaan (Core World). There's also Padmé's trip from Coruscant (Core World) to Mustafar (Outer Rim). Spaceships can be purchased at [[HonestJohnsDealership Honest John's Dealerships]], as in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear''. Planets with economies based on offworld tourism exist, famous for shopping, or beautiful scenery, gambling opportunities, super-friendly locals...

** The fastest portrayal of this in the films is likely ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith''. Palpatine notes that "I sense Lord Vader is in danger", gets in a ship, and travels from Coruscant (located in the center of the galaxy) to Mustafar (located in the Outer Rim). Assuming he was referring to Obi-Wan's duel with Anakin, and, as his dialogue implies, it was happening at that moment, that suggests Palpatine got halfway across the galaxy in the space of a single swordfight, arriving right when it ended.