History Main / BlindJump

** It was dangerous and desperate, but they were already in desperate danger. This is why it was guaranteed to work; since it was infinitely improbable that it would save them from imminent destruction, the Infinite Improbability Drive made it a statistical certainty.

*** With a bit of AnachronismStew thrown in. They do the calculations with slide rules and "astrogation charts".

Probably never destined to be TruthInTelevision. Almost any calculation should be nigh-instantaneous with future technology, and space is overwhelmingly empty anyway-- who knows about SubspaceOrHyperspace. Then again, considering the fact that the dangers of this trope seem to be complete myth even in its respective fiction, maybe it will be. Assuming of course, that breaking the light barrier will ever be possible.

* The backstory to the Master of Orion series has the {{Precursors}} first sending criminals in blind jumps through an unstable wormhole, then later having to evacuate themselves in the same manner when doing has caused their star to become unstable. In addition, the precursors themselves were actually composed of a variety of different races who all ended up in a single central system due to blind jumps in the other direction.

* A definite possibility in Mikhail Akhmanov's ''Arrivals from the Dark'' series, although never actually done in the books. It is explained, though, that jump calculations need to be extremely precise with distance and gravity being major factors. While, theoretically, it is possible to instantaneously jump anywhere in the galaxy, nobody actually does this as they would not know where they would end up. As such, most jumps are relatively short-range (several parsecs). This is known to play havoc with any military plans, as each ship jumps individually, often causing them to end up spread out all over the system. On the other hand, in-system jumps are usually fairly precise.

* Kind of used in the movie ''Down Periscope'', as, per the plot, if Kelsey Grammer's ship and crew can destroy an 'enemy' ship before this other guy 'kills' Kelsey's crew, Kelsey will have won, and will get promoted. Kelsey and his crew don't have time to calculate a proper shooting solution, so they just shoot blind, going on instinct and a quick peek through the periscope ... just before his sub gets 'downed', giving Kelsey and his rival time to be smug at each other, just before the target ship goes down.

* Asimov later averts this with ''Nemesis'': the local [[{{FTL Travel}} FTL technobabble]] is set up in such a way that you can't kill yourself with a blind jump since on emergency, any obstacles are harmlessly pushed aside.

* In {{Anne McCaffrey}}'s ''{{Dragonriders of Pern}}'', dragons are able to teleport through an interdimensional space called ''between''. The original first book ''Dragonflight'' demonstrates the dangers by one of the characters relating a story of how, during excavations inside a mountain, they'd found one young dragon and his rider entombed in the rock after making an inaccurate jump. Additionally, when a dragon's rider dies, it causes such tremendous grief to their mount that invariably the dragon makes a blind jump ''between'' from which they never return (''between'' being airless and cold, and if you don't find your way out, you suffocate/freeze). In {{Anne McCaffrey}}'s "{{Talent/Brainship}} universe, when the Talents are 'pushing' the nonBrain ships, they are very careful to keep contact with the ship until the receiving Talent has hold, as there are stories of them being "lost".

* The StarWars EU elaborates on the dangers of a blind hyperspace jump: it's insanely dangerous since you're moving at ridiculous speed with no idea what's in the way, but if you're really lucky (or a jedi) you can ''maybe'' pull a few seconds in hyper to escape certain death.

* In {{Anne McCaffrey}}'s ''{{Dragonriders of Pern}}'', dragons are able to teleport through an interdimensional space called ''between''. The original first book ''Dragonflight'' demonstrates the dangers by one of the characters relating a story of how, during excavations inside a mountain, they'd found one young dragon and his rider entombed in the rock after making an inaccurate jump. Additionally, when a dragon's rider dies, it causes such tremendous grief to their mount that invariably the dragon makes a blind jump ''between'' from which they never return (''between'' being airless, and if you don't find your way out, you suffocate).

** ''Macross: Do You Remember Love'' has Hikaru and Misa blidly jump on Earth itself by accident when they attempt to escape the Zentradi at a beginning of a space fold.

* ''BattlestarGalactica'' is possibly the TropeNamer. Activating the jump drive without inputting any co-ordinates is known as a "blind jump", and inherently risky because you could end up ''anywhere''. This is notably how [[spoiler: Admiral Cain and the ''Pegasus'' escape the initial Cylon attack.]] In the finale, [[spoiler: Starbuck, not that that should be much of a surprise,]] enters random coordinates into ''Galactica's'' navigation, which [[spoiler: she derived from the music- the "All Along the Watchtower". It leads them to Earth and a place to settle.]]

** That novel was actually published before the original game so it wasn't retcon. And in the Halo 'verse blind jumps aren't so dangerous. It makes sense, because space is after all space is rather empty so the chances that you drop out of slipspace in a dangerous area is astronomically slim.

* In ''[[{{MassEffect}} Mass Effect 2]]'', the Normandy II uses this trick at least once to escape an enemy attack- possibly more than that, though only on one occasion does a character specifically state that there is no course plotted. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] as the ship is run by and AI who could plot a course to an acceptable location without constant instruction if necessary.

* BattleTech and its fiction have a variation on this. In theory, anyplace with sufficiently low local gravity is safe to jump to and from, including virtually all of interstellar space. However, since the interesting ''planets'' are usually too deep inside their star's gravity well to jump to and from directly, a system's two main 'jump points' are as close to the star as safely possible in the system's zenith and nadir (i.e., basically 'above' and 'below' the star itself, though still a respectable distance away). ''Or''...you can try to use a 'pirate jump point' much closer to your target by taking advantage of the fact that at some points in a solar system, local gravitic influences cancel out ''just'' enough to allow the jump drive to work after all. The problem with this approach is that as the smaller celestial bodies in a system move, so do its pirate points move with them...and while actual misjumps in the fiction are relatively rare, they do generally take out the ship involved for good (sometimes in a quite horrific fashion), so this isn't a risk a sane commercial [=JumpShip=] captain is likely to ever take. (The military, and the pirates the points were named for, are a different matter, of course.)

* BattleTech novels have a variation, there are two safe spots to jump to in each solar system near the sun. Using normal space travel, it can take weeks to reach the target planet from there, so there are so called pirate jumppoints, safe spots determined by current data from the solar system. Complete BlindJump s are rarely done, and the novels often mention their risks.

* This trope plays a critical role in the plot of [[TheThrawnTrilogy Dark Force Rising]], where the titular Dark Force, a legendary lost fleet of warships, is only found by the blind luck of a blind jump. Also a bit of a subversion, as more than half of the crew of the ship involved dies due to the mishaps involved.