Trivia: When Skroob's ship arrives at Planet Druidia, Colonel Sandurz says the ship is preparing for metamorphosis to which Lord Helmet says "Ready, Kafka?" Franz Kafka wrote the book "The Metamorphosis."
Trivia: Mel Brooks allegedly waited so long to create his spoof of Star Wars as he wanted to spoof the entire trilogy.
Trivia: President Skroob's name is an anagram of Mel Brooks' last name.
Trivia: King Roland tells Lone Starr and Barf that Vespa's vehicle was near the Jupiter II system. Jupiter II was the name of the spaceship from the TV series "Lost in Space."
Trivia: When the commander is searching for "Spaceballs" in Mr. Rental, all of the movies shown are Mel Brooks' previous films.
Trivia: The Millenium Falcon (from Star Wars, one of the movies spoofed) can be seen parked outside the space cafe Lone Starr and Barf stop at.
Trivia: When Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz are fast-forwarding through the movie, only scenes with Dark Helmet are shown.
Trivia: The scene where Dark Helmet is playing with his "Spaceballs" dolls was improvised by Rick Moranis.
Trivia: John Candy, who plays Barf, operated his own tail.
Trivia: In the merchandising scene, the coloring book is a 1980's Transformers sticker adventures coloring book and the lunch box is a 1980's Transformers lunchbox from Aladdin (the company, not the movie).
Trivia: Mel Brooks asked George Lucas permission to parody "Star Wars" with this film. Lucas was very supportive of the film, and even gave Brooks stock footage from "Star Wars" to use and had Industrial Light and Magic help with the effects. Lucas reportedly loves the finished film.
Trivia: At the beginning, we're introduced to Sergeant Rico. "Johnnie" Rico was the main character in "Starship Troopers", who at one point would have been a sergeant. While the film "Starship Troopers" came out in 1997, the book itself was written in 1959.
Trivia: Barf is referred to in this movie as a "mawg"-half man, half dog. However, in the Russian version of the movie, the word "mawg" is translated as "chelobaka"-a portmanteau of the Russian words "chelovek" ("person") and "sobaka" ("dog"), but simultaneously a pun on "Chewbacca," the Star Wars character of whom Barf was a parody.
Answer: Its a reference to how the stars streak around the ships in "Star Wars". "Ludicrous speed" had to have a ludicrous color. It is also referencing 2001: A Space Odyssey, where this "tartan" effect occurs when Dave is in the pod towards the end of the film.
Grumpy Scot
Those answers are quite correct and possible, but how about this: Warp and weft are the two directions of yarn in weaving (of plaids and other things). It might be a very meta joke since plaid is at much higher level than warp. On the other hand, it's Mel Brooks. On the gripping hand, he was born in Brooklyn in the mid 20's and might have been exposed to the basics and vocabulary of the tailor at a young age.
Btw, it's also a clear reference to the sentence from Star Trek "They've gone to warp."