It may be a piece of junk to some people, but the Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship in the galaxy, as Han Solo so proudly proclaimed. After all, it made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs (however long that is)! But is it the fastest ship in all of sci-fi? Probably not. In fact, there are a handful of ships that are faster than the Falcon, even at faster-than-light speeds – and a few more that come awfully close.
With Star Wars having made a strong comeback last year, and Han Solo getting his own anthology movie, we thought it was time to see just how fast the Millennium Falcon is compared to other spaceships. Note that the speed of light (C) is 299,792,458 meters-per-second, and thanks to Fat Wallet, we know the Millennium Falcon has been clocked in at traveling 9,130,000 times the speed of light. With that in mind, here are 8 Sci-Fi Ships Faster Than The Millennium Falcon – And 7 That Come Close.
Note: For the purposes of this list, we’ve decided to exclude ships that do not consistently travel faster than the Falcon, which means no USS Voyager (which we know has gone Warp 10 once or twice). The first 8 entries are (arguably) faster than Han Solo’s go-to spacecraft, while the latter seven entries come awfully close.
15. Daedalus (Stargate)
Ever since Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s Stargate movie hit the big screen in the mid-’90s, the sci-fi world has been inundated with movies, games, and of course, TV shows related to the Stargate franchise. One of those shows, Stargate: Atlantis, a spin-off of the flagship series, Stargate: SG-1, featured a ship named the USS Daedalus, commanded by Colonel Steven Caldwell. Although it’s not the main ship in the series, the Daedalus played an integral part in the overarching narrative.
As far as we know, there is no ship that can travel faster than the Millennium Falcon but slower than the USS Daedalus, which makes the latter ship the closest ship in speed to the Falcon – but not that close. Whereas the Falcon can travel a little bit over 9 million times the speed of light, the Daedalus can travel at a whopping 60 million times the speed of light, thanks to its Asgardian hyperdrive.
14. Spaceball One (Spaceballs)
It’s only fitting that one of the ships that can travel faster than the Millennium Falcon is a ship from one of the world’s best Star Wars parodies: Spaceballs, directed by none other than Mel Brooks. In the movie, Darth Vader’s counterpart, Dark Helmet (played by Rick Moranis) is tasked by Skroob to force King Roland of Druidia to give them their air. So, Dark Helmet plans to accomplish this task by kidnapping the king’s daughter, Princess Vespa, on the day of her wedding.
Unfortunately for Dark Helmet, she fled her wedding before he and his tremendously large ship, Spaceball One, could arrive. The ship, commanded by Colonel Sandurz, is presumably the biggest and fastest ship in the galaxy, for it is outfitted with secret hyperjets. These unknown parts allow Spaceball One to travel at 1,360,000,000 times the speed of light – far greater than its Star Wars counterpart, the Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer.
13. Planet Express (Futurama)
In the long-running animated series Futurama, there exists a corporation known as Planet Express, founded by Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, that specializes in transporting goods across the planet – though they’re not really good at it. It’s a wonder how they’ve managed to stay in business for so long, and land big-time clients like Santa Claus, the Miss Universe Pageant, and even the Government of Earth. On top of all that, they only have one ship: the USS Planet Express Ship.
That ship, referred to as Old Bessie by the Professor, features an artificial intelligence system that has its own personality and communicates with the crew. It used to run on dark matter, supplied to the Professor by Lord Nibbler, which allowed the ship to travel at incredible speeds – 4,870,000,000,000 times the speed of light. Now, it runs on whale oil. Interestingly, though, the ship is inanimate. In fact, it doesn’t actually move, but rather moves the universe around it via the Dark Matter Accelerator.
12. Orion scout ship (Star Trek)
Fans of both Star Wars and Star Trek have spent decades arguing over which series is better, and part of that disagreement includes the speed of both the Millennium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise. Determining which spaceship is faster than the other seemed virtually impossible, but now we know that the Falcon can travel at 9,130,000 times the speed of light, and the Enterprise can only go 1,649 times the speed of light. But the Enterprise isn’t the only ship in the Star Trek universe.
An Orion scout ship used by the humanoid species from the planet Orion is capable of traveling virtually instantaneously across the universe, thanks to its state-of-the-art warp capability – Warp 10, to be specific. Its speed is convenient, for the ship isn’t well equipped with advanced weaponry. In fact, all it has to defend itself are standard phasers, which is why the scout ship tends to rely on its speed to get in and out of situations quickly.
11. Raza (Dark Matter)
Syfy’s latest science-fiction series, Dark Matter, follows the crew of the Raza, a group of the galaxy’s most notorious criminals who lost their memory and now spend their days surviving and, occasionally, protecting innocents.
Their ship may not be the strongest or fastest ship in the universe, but it is more than capable of defending itself in a fight. However, in the second season of Dark Matter, the crew happen to come across and steal a device known as the Blink Drive from one of the galaxy’s biggest corporations. It features advanced technology that allows any ship retrofitted with the Blink Drive to transport anywhere in the universe instantaneously.
While we’ve chosen to omit ships that do not consistently travel faster (or almost as fast) than the Millennium Falcon, the Raza is an exception, for the ship had the Blink Drive for almost an entire season, and it remains a significant part of the ongoing narrative.
10. Heighliner (Dune)
Another starship from an equally beloved sci-fi property that can travel faster than the MIllennuim Falcon is the Heighliner from Frank Herbert’s Dune series. What began as a novel in 1965 has expanded into a multi-media franchise, spanning across novels, movies, and video games, and a part of that franchise are the heighliners that transport people and cargo across the universe as part of the Spacing Guild’s transportation system.
Enormous in size, the heighliners can travel across the universe virtually instantaneously, much like the Planet Express Ship from Futurama. Similarly, rather than outfitting the heighliners with engines capable of faster-than-light travel, the ships fold space in order to travel great distances, much like a black hole. However, in order to do so, the ship requires a Guild Navigator to chart its course. The navigators have the ability to see events in the future, which allows them to determine how to travel from one point to another, for the ships don’t actually move.
9. The Tardis (Doctor Who)
Doctor Who is one of the longest-running sci-fi properties in entertainment history – and it’s still going! The series follows the Doctor in his undertakings as a Time Lord, an ancient extraterrestrial species who happen to possess and control time-traveling technology. The Doctor exploits this technology to travel throughout space and time in his sentient machine, TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), which happens to resemble a British police call box.
The TARDIS is one of the most recognizable things about the Doctor Who franchise, and its ability to travel at speeds exceeding 10,000,000,000,000,000 times the speed of light allows it to transport anywhere in the universe at any given moment. In fact, since it’s a time traveling machine, it technically can arrive at a location before it even left. This is all made possible by drawing power from the Eye of Harmony – the nucleus of an artificial black hole suspended in time – and utilizing the Time Vortex.
8. Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a beloved science-fiction franchise that has spanned decades, across various multi-media platforms, including radio, television, and film. In total sci-fi fashion, the series follows the last surviving man on Earth, Arthur Dent (who survived the destruction of Earth by the Vogons, who were building a “hyperspace bypass”).
Dent was saved by the humanoid alien Ford Perfect, who was writing the eponymous travel guide, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and together they journeyed across unknown space until they were picked up by Zaphod Beeblebrox and his ship, the Heart of Gold.
The Heart of Gold is equipped with what is known as the Infinite Improbability Drive. Disregarding the convoluted and comprehensive facts about the Infinite Improbability Drive, the device grants the user an advanced method of traveling across interstellar space. With its infinite speed, the Heart of Gold is the fastest ship in the universe – any universe – and much faster than the Millennium Falcon.
7. Battlestar Galactica (Battlestar Galactica)
Battlestar Galactica is one of the most beloved science-fiction franchises in television history, but for the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on Syfy’s re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series from 2004 and its eponymous spacecraft. In the series, there were about 120 Battlestars built by the Twelve Colonies, with the Battlestar Galactica being one of the original dozen to be built, and one of the few to survive the Cylon attack on Caprica.
The Battlestar Galactica was undergoing decommissioning when the Cylons attacked, and after that, the ship became the base of operations for not only the remaining Colonial Fleet members but also for the newfound government. It was an old ship, but it hadn’t lost its capabilities to fight Cyclons as well as travel across the galaxy searching for the legendary planet Earth – and its incredible speed surely helped.
Going 1,680,000 times the speed of light may pale in comparison to the Millennium Falcon, but it’s not bad for a Colonial ship.
6. Axiom (WALL-E)
The first half or so of Pixar’s WALL-E is set on Earth, with the eponymous robot cleaning up all the garbage left on the planet by mankind. After some time, the movie’s deuteragonist, EVE, a robot sent to Earth in hopes of discovering any form of vegetation (which would make the planet habitable again), accompanies WALL-E to his home and finds a growing plant. She immediately and compulsorily takes the plant, engages in a standby mode, and sends out a signal to be picked up.
After she is acquired, WALL-E follows EVE to the Axiom, one of the many starliner ships built by the Buy n Large corporation that houses a portion of the surviving humans. Although its purpose and functions are closer to that of a cruise ship, the Axiom (presumably the flagship starliner of the BnL fleet) has a powerful engine capable of traveling at speeds of 2,190,000 times the speed of light.
5. Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer (Star Wars)
Star Wars may be the biggest multimedia franchise the world has ever seen, and with all that we know of the Star Wars galaxy, it’s hard to believe that one of the very first things audiences were introduced to was the Galactic Empire’s Star Destroyer. While the opening scene of George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope features an Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer, the ship’s derivative, the Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer, is much more frightening.
The first time we see this ship is in the movie’s sequel, Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, in which the ISD Avenger, captained by Lorth Needa, leads the Imperial campaign on Hoth. Later in the movie, the same ship chases the Millennium Falcon through the Hoth asteroid belt.
The Star Destroyer showed the ability to mostly keep up with the Falcon at sub-light speeds, which means it should be able to do the same at FTL speeds, too. In fact, the Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer is capable of traveling at 2,285,000 times the speed of light. It’s not as fast as the Falcon, but it’s certainly faster than any other ship in the Imperial Fleet.
4. Trimaxion Drone Ship (Flight of the Navigator)
When one thinks of Disney, they usually don’t think about science-fiction, but the fact remains that the Mouse House has dabbled in sci-fi movies a number of times over the years. While the genre doesn’t seem to be all too profitable for them, they have made an impact on the industry with their movies, and one of those films was Randal Kleiser’s Flight of the Navigator – which follows 12-year-old David Scott Freeman and his trusty spaceship friend.
That spaceship, known as the Trimaxion Drone Ship, was tasked with traveling the galaxy and collecting various biological data. His mission led him to Earth, where he found David, took him back to his planet, studied him, and then returned him back home, all within a few hours – but it had been eight years for everyone else, thanks to time dilation. The ship, consisting of Phaelon technology, is capable of traveling at 4,460,000 times the speed of light, which is how it was able to travel 560 light years in approximately 4.4 hours.
3. X-Wing (Star Wars)
Along with the Millennium Falcon, perhaps the most famous ship in the Star Wars galaxy is the T-65 X-Wing Starfighter – the primary starfighter used by the Rebel Alliance. Furthermore, its successor, the T-70 X-Wing, became the primary starfighter used by the Resistance, following the uprising of the First Order.
Everyone knows what an X-Wing is and looks like, and everyone knows Luke Skywalker used one of them to destroy the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. (Well, in addition to using the Force.) But after the Rebel Alliance’s victory, Luke kept his starfighter and used it to traverse the galaxy. It may not have the space and capabilities of the Falcon, but it’s more than capable of fighting its Imperial counterpart, TIE Fighters, and traveling from one planet to another.
Doing so, though, will take a bit longer than the Falcon, for the X-Wing can only travel at 4,570,000 times the speed of light (roughly half the speed of the Falcon).
2. Samus’ Gunship (Metroid)
The intergalactic bounty hunter, Samus Aran, has traveled across the galaxy in various gunships throughout the Metroid series. However, she typically makes use of Hunter-class gunships, which is what we’ll be using as a comparison to the Millennium Falcon. Unlike most of the other ships on this list, Samus’ spacecraft doesn’t have a designation. Most of the time, it’s referred to as Gunship.
No matter which incarnation – both canonical and non-canonical – Samus’ Gunship’s features are almost always the same, especially the front end, which heavily resembles her helmet.
According to the official Metroid Prime website, Samus’ Gunship functions primarily as rapid transport, though it does contain various weapons and can be used for regeneration and record-keeping, among other things. Equipped with dual engines, the Gunship is capable of traveling at 6,500,000 times the speed of light, which allows Samus to escape almost any harrowing situation if need be.
1. Slave 1 (Star Wars)
It only makes sense that the ship in the galaxy – in any galaxy, and in any universe – that comes closest to matching the Millennium Falcon’s speed is Boba Fett’s Slave 1 ship. Although the first time audiences were introduced to the bounty hunter Boba Fett was during the Star Wars Holiday Special, we don’t see his precious Slave 1 ship in action until Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, the first movie in which Han Solo and Boba Fett face off.
Slave 1 is a modified Firespray-31-class interceptor, a Kuat Systems Engineering ship used to patrol the Oovo IV prison moon. Boba’s father, Jango Fett, retrofitted the ship with aftermarket parts (primarily advanced weaponry), although it’s unclear if he added any parts to enhance the ship’s speed. No matter, Slave 1 is equipped with an Ion engine that allows the ship to travel at approximately 6,500,000 times the speed of light – which is fast, but not quite as fast as the Falcon.
Are there any other sci-fi ships that you think measure up to the Millennium Falcon? Let us know in the comments.
