Crom's Black Blade
Well-known member
By "RT" do you refer to Rogue Trader(1987) or another book? Because I did a quick search through the former, thanks to the link provided by @JagerIV , and found this:The RT figures, consistent in this regard with many other sources give several years on average to cross the whole damn galaxy.
With a caveat that a particularly talented and well equipped navigator can make the journey considerably quicker, down to about a year (though that's something only the likes of Astartes, Lord Inquisitors and well off Rogue Traders may pull off), and depending on warp events and lanes used, some legs of the journey will be much faster than others.
We're talking about 100k lightyears for the galaxy technically, or about 75k for Imperium itself, skipping the fringes. Even in the latter case, we're talking about averaging about 10-15k in a year, or 30-45 LY per day.
Rogue Trader said:Under the intuitive guidance of the navigator, a ship is able to traverse distances of tens of thousands of light years in a single jump. Perceived journey time is 1-4 days per thousand light years, equivalent to 1-6 months of real time. Even so, a journey from one edge of the galaxy to the other would take between 85 and 510 months of real time.
Which suggests the "several years" isn't the average but closer to a high end optimal figure with decades to cover such distance being possible even with the help of a navigator.
For the figure given for a thousand light year journey works out, assuming a 30-day month and rounding both of the year figures down for simplicity, should work out between 33.3 light years per day to 5.5 on the low end.
The from one edge of the galaxy offers similar figures with 39 LY per day to a low of 6.6 a surprisingly similar figure..
Now it's quite possible elsewhere in the book they give a different time figure, or you were referring to a different book entirely so I was curious if you happen to have the quote you were specifically referring too.