Unrealistic scale...

Aramanthus said:
The Warlock should closer to the 2000m mark. And the Victory should be nearly 3km.

Don't we hear in the first (or a very early) ep of Crusade that ther Victory is 1 and a quarter miles long or about 2km?

That's what I seem to remember, can't use my VCR at the moment and I don't have the DVDs yet or I'd check. But that's what i remember, a quarter as long as B5.

LBH
 
As far as accurate B5tech,com is run by someone who was involved in the production of the show and from what I've heard thru my own sources is somewhere around 90 to 93% accurate!
 
Aramanthus said:
As far as accurate B5tech,com is run by someone who was involved in the production of the show and from what I've heard thru my own sources is somewhere around 90 to 93% accurate!

I've heard it's run by dsylexic baboons... discuss :)

B5Tech isn't pucka :( They have extensively used references from one of the guys involved in the show, Tm Earles, but he plain got some stuff wrong (Whitestar dimensions are a case in point) - he also notably couldn't remember how many weapon mounts he'd put on the Warlock so B5Tech gave a "12-18" range (or somesuch) on the number because it had been given to them by an "official" source. Frackwits :(

Basically there's good stuff there, but there's so much fan-wank as well, dressed up as "evidence".

Cue Roman... ;)
 
crizh said:
Having seen some discussion about telepaths and starship combat it has always been in the back of my mind that the starship combat scale might be a little on the large side.

It dawned on me yesterday that it should be possible to calculate the correct scale for starship combat from the ship designs.

A Starfury has an acceleration of 10 (12 with its afterburners) which means it can go from a standing start to 10 hexes, or 50,000 ft, per combat round in one combat round. That is a velocity of 2540 meters per second which makes the vehicles acceleration 423 meters per second per second.

That's 43 G's. (52 with afterburners)

No gravimetric drive, no inertial dampeners. Just a pressure suit and a seat belt.

That is almost exactly five times more than a human pilot can endure.

I hereby propose that the starship combat scale ought to be reduced to 1000ft per hex.

Comments?

Few points.

1. We see a EA shuttle go from Mars surface to orbit in less than 30 seconds. Thats a lot of G's.

2. We see Omega's traveling out of a planet sized structure from the center in seconds. With the mass, the fact they have a rotating system and the speed... again a lot of G's. We also see them turn like tops easily. Worth noting that during these manuevers, there are no physical effects on the crew who tend to be standing around.

3. Inertia dampeners are mentioned in a B5 comic written by JMS for an EA shuttle, apparently what helps svaes their lives when they lose control over the shuttle over mars.

4. Starfuries show quite often insane manuevers that would kill people instantly, a clear example is after the shadow war, the celebrations show starfuries going pretty nuts. In all scenes with the pilots we again see pretty much no physical effects.

5. In the Minbari war, sinclairs starfury mentions something about defencive shielding being down when it gets hit.

6. There are a few examples of EA ships crossing large distances in seconds. In thridspace the device is mentioned as being 3,000 km's away and is reached with crusing speeds seconds later. The shuttle I mentioned earlier. There is I recall a distance mentioned in crusade for when a Warlock drops off a politician in a shuttle and when starfuries have to keep up with the Excalibur as it escapes.

Put em all together its not as bad as you think.
 
Elizar said:
the fact they have a rotating system and the speed

Don't get me started on an Omega's rotating section........

JMS clearly went to a lot of trouble to get things as realistic as possible but even a genius occasionally makes a horrible mistake...
 
Elizar said:
6. There are a few examples of EA ships crossing large distances in seconds. In thridspace the device is mentioned as being 3,000 km's away and is reached with crusing speeds seconds later. The shuttle I mentioned earlier. There is I recall a distance mentioned in crusade for when a Warlock drops off a politician in a shuttle and when starfuries have to keep up with the Excalibur as it escapes.

Speed is different from acceleration, if you accelerate for long enough at 0.1m/s^2 you'll eventually be doing 0.1c, it'll just take you 3*10^8 seconds to get there. Also hyperspace being what it is, the sensor readings could have been wrong.

LBH
 
crizh said:
Elizar said:
the fact they have a rotating system and the speed

Don't get me started on an Omega's rotating section........

JMS clearly went to a lot of trouble to get things as realistic as possible but even a genius occasionally makes a horrible mistake...

If your complaint is about turning while the center section is rotating, then this statement from George Johnsen, CoProducer, B5, shows that they did think about torque issues. (Btw, ignore the first sentence as he came back and corrected himself.)

Re: Omega-class cruiser design
5 Apr 1997
Kevin-

Methinks you refer to the Aggie Class, not the Omega, as the O's have no
rotator.

Anyway- The Destoyers are all business. There is no need for extra
storage space onboard, and certainly no need for passengers! This
allows for a portion of the cylinder describing the same arc as the full
cylider ships. At one time, we strongly considered locking down the
rotator section during battle to increase manouverability, and not
using a cylinder or sphere would have made this concept more practical
in presenting a narrower target to the opposition. As it is, we
postulate that the control systems of the class can take into account
the additional torque generated by the spinning section.

Besides- we would have to spend a heck of a lot more on filming Zero G
sequences if we locked down, or strap all the actors to their seats.
Tough to do that acting thing in a 5 point belt for any length of time!


George Johnsen
CoProducer, B5

Link

Bolding added.

Kizarvexis
 
Elizar said:
1. We see a EA shuttle go from Mars surface to orbit in less than 30 seconds. Thats a lot of G's.

That's artistic license really - would you have watched the same shot for 5 minutes..?

Elizar said:
2. We see Omega's traveling out of a planet sized structure from the center in seconds. With the mass, the fact they have a rotating system and the speed... again a lot of G's. We also see them turn like tops easily. Worth noting that during these manuevers, there are no physical effects on the crew who tend to be standing around.

We don't see the crews of the Omegas though, only that of the Excalibur which has gravitic drive (and hence inertial compensation). The mass of the Omega means nothing BTW; 1g of acceleration is the same on 1kg as on 1tonne; Also when moving into the planet killer they were going at a rate of knots; It was a big space, with room to maneouvre, plus our shots of the ships were locked off pretty much in the frame of reference of the ships, so whilst it might look to us that they were making dramatic maneouvres, relative to the planet killer they probably weren't.

Elizar said:
3. Inertia dampeners are mentioned in a B5 comic written by JMS for an EA shuttle, apparently what helps svaes their lives when they lose control over the shuttle over mars.

Er, nope, the script wasn't written by jms; he supplied the outline... If the EA had that kind of technology, they wouldn't need rotating sections on ships...

Elizar said:
4. Starfuries show quite often insane manuevers that would kill people instantly, a clear example is after the shadow war, the celebrations show starfuries going pretty nuts. In all scenes with the pilots we again see pretty much no physical effects.

You have seen air displays haven't you..?

Elizar said:
5. In the Minbari war, sinclairs starfury mentions something about defencive shielding being down when it gets hit.

I'll have to check that one...

Elizar said:
6. There are a few examples of EA ships crossing large distances in seconds. In thridspace the device is mentioned as being 3,000 km's away and is reached with crusing speeds seconds later. The shuttle I mentioned earlier. There is I recall a distance mentioned in crusade for when a Warlock drops off a politician in a shuttle and when starfuries have to keep up with the Excalibur as it escapes.

Velocity and acceleration are not the same thing... To make even hypersoace travel possible, the kinds of speed they were travelling at would be necessary.

A steady 1g acceleration will get you to almost any velocity you desire (barring relativistic considerations) - for instance, a 1g acceleration capability would allow you to travel from the earth's orbit to that of jupiter in 140 hours (and be at a standstill at both locations). That's an average velocity of 4468837141 km/h.

And that's very comortable acceleration (in fact it would give you artificial gravity at an exceptional tolerable level for the duration... ;))
 
frobisher said:
Elizar said:
5. In the Minbari war, sinclairs starfury mentions something about defencive shielding being down when it gets hit.

I'll have to check that one...

I just checked "And a Sky Full of Stars" and here is what Sinclair's Starfury says after he is hit.

Aft stabilizers hit. Weapons systems at zero. Defensive grid at zero. Power plant near critical mass. Minbari weapons systems locking on.

Defensive grid is not necessarily a shield but could be some type of small interceptor system. Maybe using rifle size weapons to shoot down enemy missiles like a modern day phalanax system.

Kizarvexis
 
Kizarvexis said:
If your complaint is about turning while the center section is rotating, then this statement from George Johnsen, CoProducer, B5, shows that they did think about torque issues. (Btw, ignore the first sentence as he came back and corrected himself.)

Kizarvexis

I am more concerned with the whole 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction' thing.

We are looking at a rotating mass of some where in the region of ten million metric tons. The energy required to spin that thing up is huge. Every Joule that you spend causing it to rotate you have to spend another Joule to stop the rest of the ship rotating in the opposite direction at approximately 58% of the speed of the rotator.

That's not too much of a problem when you first spin it up, it's just very wastefull. Everytime you manuever however you must adjust the speed of the rotation section and compensate for the induced counter-rotation.

Nevermind the gyroscopic effect of 10 million metric tons of spinning metal.

A better solution is two contra-rotating sections (like B4 had) that use pulsed generators to drive their rotation off each other. The reaction works for you in that design.

Additionally you can borrow energy from the rotators to manuever faster!...
 
crizh said:
A better solution is two contra-rotating sections (like B4 had) that use pulsed generators to drive their rotation off each other. The reaction works for you in that design.

Mind you, who's to say (well, beyond common sense obviously ;)) that the Omega doesn't have such a design, with a contra-rotating cylinder of the same inertial moment located within the central spine that the external rotating section rotates about? You'd want the rotating sections to be as light as possible (because of the whole spin up/down/maintenace thing) so "counter balancing" it with a relatively dense medium (water) wouldn't be too hard (though there's the whole "slooshing" thing, so tanks would need to be highly compartmentalised to reduce that).

This would probably be the ships water tanks (which would be located there, in some rotating section or other anyway) as you'd want to keep that much mass to the centre of the ship as far as possible, plus you'd want a gravitational assist with the plumbing (no point pumping what the local g field will give you for nothing - recycling back upwards, yes, you'd need to pump that))
 
frobisher said:
[ "counter balancing" it with a relatively dense medium (water) wouldn't be too hard (though there's the whole "slooshing" thing, so tanks would need to be highly compartmentalised to reduce that).

This would probably be the ships water tanks (which would be located there, in some rotating section or other anyway) as you'd want to keep that much mass to the centre of the ship as far as possible, plus you'd want a gravitational assist with the plumbing (no point pumping what the local g field will give you for nothing - recycling back upwards, yes, you'd need to pump that))

Not bad.

Alternatively you could use it as your fuel tanks. If you do the math you'll find that water is a denser store of hydrogen than liquid H2. You could probably even freeze it to reduce the slooshing effect.

You just unfreeze and crack would the reactor needs using some of its own waste heat and electrical output. The released O2 from that process could also be used to suplement life support.

I'd still like to see the entire rotating section enclosed within the hull. That way the mechanism isn't so vulnerable and the armour protecting those areas doesn't have to be spun with them. Much more efficient.
 
crizh said:
I'd still like to see the entire rotating section enclosed within the hull. That way the mechanism isn't so vulnerable and the armour protecting those areas doesn't have to be spun with them. Much more efficient.

Ah, but that doesn't look as cool on the screen though. :) Not to mention that the ship would have to be really big to get around the coriolis effect of using spin rotation to generate gravity. B5 is big enough that it doesn't affect you appreciably until you get up near the core shuttle. Down near the hub of the rotating section of an Omega DD, you would have the same problems.

Kizarvexis
 
crizh said:
You could probably even freeze it to reduce the slooshing effect.

Though you'd probably want to maintain it as a liquid as that is denser than than ice at close to freezing (hence the entire ice cubes floating in water thing).
 
frobisher said:
crizh said:
You could probably even freeze it to reduce the slooshing effect.

Though you'd probably want to maintain it as a liquid as that is denser than than ice at close to freezing (hence the entire ice cubes floating in water thing).

It would depend on how complicated the tanks would have to be to counteract the 'slooshing' effect.

A 10% decrease in density might be outweighed by the mechanical complications of maintaining it as a liquid.

Either way is six or half a dozen. The basic concept is a hell of a lot better than the current design.
 
crizh said:
It would depend on how complicated the tanks would have to be to counteract the 'slooshing' effect.

Probably not too bad - essentially you'd have "spokes" of water, subdivided into a couple of "onion skins". You'd just make sure that the outer tanks stayed as full as possible (which again you have gravity on your side for).

But the whole thing (within the existing structure) would be quite a balancing act...

However, if you had tanks in both rotating sections, you could could pull a "sneaky" by slucing water between the two rotating sections to assist turns (by building up or dropping the moment of intertia of each rotating section).
 
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