MCU Space Ships

[lynnenne]

Hello, and welcome to your weekly Sunday discussion post! This week's topic is about space travel in the MCU.

We see a lot of ships travelling really fast in the MCU cosmos, from the Benatar to the Kree ships in Captain Marvel. In other franchises (most notably Star Trek, but also Battlestar Galactica) the mechanics of these ships are explained in some detail. Every ST fan knows that warp drive is critical to faster-than-light travel. But such mechanics play a pretty small role in the MCU; as far as I can remember, it's never really explained how these ships can travel from one planet to another in a matter of hours.

Now, it's possible that it was explained at some point, and I just missed it or forgot. What's your interpretation? Do you understand how ships travel between star systems in the MCU? Do you have any comics knowledge or head canon that might explain it? Or is your opinion more along the lines of, "WHO CARES, IT'S A PEGASUS!"

Comments

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I don't think there is anything world building in MCU related to speeds needed for interstellar travel. Basically, narrative requires people to get around and there are aliens sufficiently advanced so they've got ships up to the task. I think Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1 & 2 would be our touchstone if there were one. I've seen both pretty recently and nada. We don't even really know how Peter had the Benatar considering he just had a backpack when Yondu grabbed him for Ego and then thought better of turning over yet one more kid.

[lynnenne]

We don't even really know how Peter had the Benatar

I was wondering about that! I thought maybe I just forgot, but it sounds as if canon never really explains it.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Canon doesn't explain how a young boy in Missouri knew enough about Modern painters to use Pollock in a fairly pigsty joke. I figure the Benatar was seized at some point in the past, wasn't worth trying to sell and Peter was getting underfoot.

Why yes, that is a very suburban explanation for Outer Space Economics. But I figure they've given it less thought than I have. There may be some amount of his share of booty or sweat equity rebuilding it involved.

[sholio]

The Benatar or the Milano? It's a different ship - the Milano is the one that he has throughout GotG 1 and most of 2, and then he has a different (though similar) ship in Infinity War.

I assume he got the Benatar at some point between GotG2 and Infinity War as a replacement for the Milano after it was (mostly) wrecked in GotG 2.

As for the Milano .. he says in one of the movies that he's been flying it since he was 10, and it's one of a small fleet of M-class ships that the Ravagers have (several more of which we saw in the big fight at the end of the first movie, and in the hangar bay in the Ravager mothership in the second). So basically each Ravager cell consists of a mothership and a number of smaller raiding ships. The movies aren't at all clear on how Ravagers deal with ownership of those small ships, though - if each ship has a designated captain, or if they fly interchangeable ships from a central fleet. So based on canon, it's impossible to say if the Milano was Peter's ship and that's perfectly normal, or if Yondu gave it to him and that's unusual, or if he stole it from the Ravagers when they parted ways. My guess would be some combination of the last two, but that's just headcanon and not really actual canon-canon. It would be nice to know for sure!

(I think the general lesson here is that I've watched these movies WAY too many times. XD)

[kore]

if Yondu gave it to him and that's unusual,

You did not just do that to me

or if he stole it from the Ravagers when they parted ways

That sounds more plausible! but less heartrending. Maybe Yondu was like "I'll look over here while you steal the ship."

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Now, I wonder if boosting your first ship is a right of passage and Yondu 'helped' since Peter was doing this possibly at a younger age?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Ah! I didn't even catch on that the Benatar wasn't the original ship, though I probably knew the first ship was pretty toast after vol. 2.

The question then becomes, was the Milano's Pollack under blacklight solely Peter's doing or a team project of the Ravagers as a whole?

[lazaefair]

The third possibility is that the Milano's interior isn't painted in bodily fluids. It sounds exactly like the kind of macho exaggeration (if not outright lie) a fuckboi like Peter Quill at the start of Vol. 1 would make.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

True. Still, Pollock? Was there an issue of Life at the correct time or prior?

[sholio]

In the Guardians movies they explain it in terms of jump points, which I assume are access points where you can enter FTL space. And you're limited in how many jumps you can do at once without putting too much stress on yourself. But the actual mechanics of it seem to depend on the plot of any given movie. Even GotG isn't particularly consistent about whether you have to physically get from one jump point to another once you enter the first one -- that is, they're not equidistant from each other because you have to go through a certain number of jumps to get anywhere, but once you go through the first one, do you jump to the second and physically travel to the next jump point, or just keep jumping indefinitely until you feel that it's a good idea to drop out for awhile? It's kind of vague.

Basically I think it's safe to say that in the cosmic MCU it's wormholes, not speed, but how the wormholes actually function (I mean, not just the actual physics, which of course a space-opera type movie isn't going to explain, but how they work from a user endpoint perspective) is totally up in the air. My best guess based on what we've seen in the movies is that they typically go through a couple of jumps at once and then physically fly to the next jump point, but I don't even think all the movies reference using jump points at all (though we see the Kree ships do it at least once in Captain Marvel; there's a fairly distinctive boxy-squares effect when they do) so, yeah. VAGUE. And therefore it's probably up to whatever an individual fanfic writer wants to write, because that seems to be what the movies are doing anyway. XD

[lynnenne]

Yes, I got the impression too that wormholes were the method of faster-than-light travel, but I've never heard it explained very well. Glad to know I'm not the only person confused! :)

[lazaefair]

I think it's pretty clear that you have to physically travel from jump point to jump point. And navigation computers/algorithms can calculate the shortest route between jump points and/or the optimum selection of jump points to minimize in-between travel - or the opposite. So navigators normally plot their courses based on the ship and crew's physical capacity for enduring jumps, how much Space Fuel they have, how long they want the trip to take, etc.

So Rocket just puts in the one coordinate to the other side of the freakin' galaxy and the navcomp spits out the fastest route, which is the route with absolute minimal travel time between points, which probably means an abnormally high number of jumps because the algorithm is selecting clusters where the points are closest together (as we see in the scene where they zoom from one point to another above the Watchers' heads). Hence the poor dears being turned inside out.

[lazaefair]

Yeah, jump points. I assume it's the bullshit comic book science equivalent of ley lines: at certain coordinates in the universe, Physics(TM) bends or converges in such a way that either a natural tesseract forms (and is just hanging about available for any object to go through) or someone at some point figured out some technological means to exploit the Physics(TM) of these points to create a temporary tesseract.

But you still have to physically travel to these points in order to jump. Which is why it was such a big deal in Captain Marvel that someone had figured out true faster-than-light travel: now your group/species/empire can conduct commerce, colonization and military movements everywhere, not limited to areas with sufficient or convenient clusters of jump points. And presumably that's why the Tesseract Cube is also a big deal (/was used to derive an FTL engine), because you can create your own personal tesseract wherever you want.

[lynnenne]

Which is why it was such a big deal in Captain Marvel that someone had figured out true faster-than-light travel: now your group/species/empire can conduct commerce, colonization and military movements everywhere, not limited to areas with sufficient or convenient clusters of jump points.

Huh, I hadn't thought of that. It wasn't clear to me in that film whether the Kree got their hands on that technology - I'm presuming they did, and that's how they built their empire?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

It wouldn't be how they built their empire, since that's longstanding (unless we've totally flipped Skrulls and Kree) but it would explain increasing their Empire recently OR they desperately want to expand the Empire.

I've watched things so nonsequentially and interspersed with reading 616. It seemed that Judge Law's character was minding Vers for a reason though, but there are so many to choose from.

[lazaefair]

No, they didn't get that tech, because Carol and Co. killed the Kree squad, the flerken swallowed the Tesseract Cube, and Carol flew away with the Skrull refugees to find somewhere out of reach of the Kree.

[glitteryv]

As I understand it, space travel in the MCU is similar to what was shown on the rebooted BSG: space has been (mostly) mapped out and everyone uses wormholes/portals to go across large distances.

I think I didn't notice it much until I watched CM and EG. It's just a tad loopy since space maps seem to be 3D instead of the usual 2D paper ones?

For the most part, I'm on the WHO CARES, IT'S A PEGASUS side of things, LOL.

[lynnenne]

I think I didn't notice it much until I watched CM and EG.

I completely forgot about the space maps in those movies! Having jump points at specific locations would make sense, then, if they need maps to guide ships to them.