The Millennium Falcon

This Corellian stock light freighter may look like “a piece of junk,” as Luke Skywalker called it when he first saw the ship, but the Millennium Falcon is one of the fastest, best-equipped crafts in the galaxy, when some malfunction or other isn’t giving its crew headaches. For years, that crew has consisted of daredevil pilot and smuggler-turned-Rebel Alliance-hero Han Solo and his trusty Wookie Copilot and engineer, Chewbacca. The Millennium Falcon may appear old and battered, but constant modifications make it something special. Intimately involved in the destruction of both of the Empire’s Death Star battle stations, it’s probably the most famous ship in the Galaxy.

The Falcon apparently had a number of owners before it fell into the hands of roguish gambler Lando Calrissian, who then lost it in a sabacc game to Solo. (He actually won it back twice but eventually returned the ship to Solo.) The exterior of the ship is left dilapidated deliberately, its appearance helped Calrissian and Solo avoid both Imperials and Customs officials on their frequent smuggling runs. But beneath the skin of the Corellian Engineering YT-1300 transport beats the heart of a taopari. Inside the twenty-meter-long ship is a hyperdrive nearly twice as fast as any Imperial warship’s, although both it and the sublight engine can be very finicky due to all the modifications they’ve undergone.

The well-armored Falcon has a top-notch (if illegal) sensor-suite array to detect distant Imperial ships before they notice the Falcon. There are shielded smuggling compartments throughout the interior. For combat, the ship sports a top-of-the-line Imperial deflector shield system, two quad laser cannons, and two concussion missile launchers, along with a retractable light laser cannon. But its speed, which lets Solo get under way and leave the scene in an incredibly brief three minutes, and agility often makes the weapons’ use unnecessary.