Star Wars - Outbound Flight

Star Wars: Outbound Flight is a science fiction novel by the American writer Timothy Zahn, published in 2005 by Del Rey and set in the Star Wars galaxy.

The book goes back to a period before the Clone Wars, when the Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth petitions the Senate for support for a project that has never been tried: a single vast vessel carrying six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi Knights and fifty thousand men, women and children beyond the known galaxy, to make contact with intelligent life and settle worlds that no one has reached. The mission is called Outbound Flight, and the novel follows what happens to the people on board as the politics of the Republic work against them and as forces outside the Republic take an interest in a ship that cannot be allowed to succeed. Zahn wrote the novel around a voyage that the later Star Wars stories only refer to, and it sits alongside his earlier books about Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose career intersects with the mission.

The vessel is built for years of travel and carries everything a settlement would need, which is what makes the project's political footing so fragile.