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Subject: Battlestar Galactica poorly designed?
slowball    2/15/2005 3:37:59 AM
After watching the new Battlestar Galactica series I cruised by some fan websites. I saw a facetious comment that the landing bays of the Battlestar Galactica have giant signs on them saying 'attack here'. It went on to say that this major design defect should have been corrected from the original series design. I smiled at first having thought the same thing for years but upon further thought believe the design to be both sound and innovative. My take is that the design, with the landing bays being on struts away from the main hull, allows for the isolation of damage. Much like the engine pod design of the A-10. Landing bays/decks are always going to be a prime target no matter where you put them. They will always be more vulnerable than the rest of the hull since they need to allow access for fighters to land. By isolating the landing bays from the rest of the ship (and each other) you provide greater protection for the main hull and the other landing bay. Better to have fuel and munitions kept away from the main hull. This also allows guns on the main hull to cover the landing bays and flight path of fighters on final approach.
 
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Treadgar       7/16/2007 5:48:13 PM
Ker, I both agree and disagree with you. It's just me talking, and not every man or women on the street. I find the technical details kind of exciting. It doesn't bother me to see that stuff. Making movies is a business, so you do have to appeal to a wider audience, otherwise you don't make enough money to keep in business. I for one, and I think most of the people who hang out here would agree, that if someone were to have a big budget to work with, and were really willing to take the advice of technical advisors, it would be a big hit. Unfortunately most the general population of this world would not agree, and it probably wouldn't be a big hit. But who knows? Remember 2001 A Space Odyssy? That was pretty hard core, and it did all right. It still looks good to this day, and the spaceship Discovery is likely
 very close to the interplanetary ships  you'll see in the future (at least I hope so). In the meantime I have to get my thrills form the stuff they do put out. I have to admitt I got lots of entertainment out of the new Transformers movie.

Treadgar 
 
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Treadgar       7/16/2007 5:48:28 PM
Ker, I both agree and disagree with you. It's just me talking, and not every man or women on the street. I find the technical details kind of exciting. It doesn't bother me to see that stuff. Making movies is a business, so you do have to appeal to a wider audience, otherwise you don't make enough money to keep in business. I for one, and I think most of the people who hang out here would agree, that if someone were to have a big budget to work with, and were really willing to take the advice of technical advisors, it would be a big hit. Unfortunately most the general population of this world would not agree, and it probably wouldn't be a big hit. But who knows? Remember 2001 A Space Odyssy? That was pretty hard core, and it did all right. It still looks good to this day, and the spaceship Discovery is likely
 very close to the interplanetary ships  you'll see in the future (at least I hope so). In the meantime I have to get my thrills form the stuff they do put out. I have to admitt I got lots of entertainment out of the new Transformers movie.

Treadgar 
 
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ker       7/17/2007 4:48:18 PM

Ker, I both agree and disagree with you. It's just me talking, and not every man or women on the street. I find the technical details kind of exciting. It doesn't bother me to see that stuff. Making movies is a business, so you do have to appeal to a wider audience, otherwise you don't make enough money to keep in business. I for one, and I think most of the people who hang out here would agree, that if someone were to have a big budget to work with, and were really willing to take the advice of technical advisor's, it would be a big hit. Unfortunately most the general population of this world would not agree, and it probably wouldn't be a big hit. But who knows? Remember 2001 A Space Odyssy? That was pretty hard core, and it did all right. It still looks good to this day, and the spaceship Discovery is likely
 very close to the interplanetary ships  you'll see in the future (at least I hope so). In the meantime I have to get my thrills form the stuff they do put out. I have to admit I got lots of entertainment out of the new Transformers movie.

Treadgar 

"I for one, and I think most of the people who hang out here would agree, that if someone were to have a big budget to work with, and were really willing to take the advice of technical advisor's, it would be a big hit."    
 
 ker-  I am like you.  I read history of NAZI improvisations on the eastern front for fun.  The possibility of shooting a low budget (night of the living dead/blair which) type war movie could make a surprising amount of money.  Use retire and on leave solders for writers and actors.  Use long shots of darkness punctuated with sounds.  Also have extended dialog wile people kneel around a map and talk about what which dumb option out of a long list of dumb options will get them killed in the least horrific way.  Then cut in a mocked up news room where people pretend to know whats going on because they can get away with it.  For FX's you could shave a pig and then shoot it.  make an extreme close up of that and cut it into the film to cause the viewer to think that it is a humans wound.  Then PeTa will do your add campaign for you.  (Not really)
Use cheap cameras so that when something blows up you can just trow the camera rather.  Cut stolen sounds in during post producion.  Cheaper than using explosives of any kind and give a different kind of feel to the pic. 
 
 
"Remember 2001 A Space Odyssy?"
 
ker-  Did they really make that movie or did you and I just have the same LSD trip?  The parts about the complexity of making machines that are smarter than you was hard since fiction as I see it.  The last real was shall we say psychological. 
 
I did have an idea for a space war film.  You have a small cast playing drafted math PHD's who are stuck in a little prison cell like box.  They analyze radar reports from battles and try to predict enemy tendency so as to optimize weapons programing.  They know a battle has happened when they feel the ship shake as weapons fire and know they won if they are still alive when the 30 sec. of shaking ends.  They don't have any windows because windows are heavy.  Because radio transmissions take years to cross the battle space they can't do their work anywhere but deep out in the big empty.  The ship that will come get them and bring them back to earth hasn't been invented yet but if they can win the war they can re-freeze and hope.  Oh and the war is not with aliens but with colonists who decided to not pay earth back for the trillions of dollars of space ships that they are living in.  The whole war is just one big mutiny.
 
I like fire works as much as the next guy.  But other stuff can work too.
 
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Treadgar       7/18/2007 9:39:16 AM

“I did have an idea for a space war film.  You have a small cast playing drafted math PHD's who are stuck in a little prison cell like box.  They analyze radar reports from battles and try to predict enemy tendency so as to optimize weapons programing.  They know a battle has happened when they feel the ship shake as weapons fire and know they won if they are still alive when the 30 sec. of shaking ends.  They don't have any windows because windows are heavy.  Because radio transmissions take years to cross the battle space they can't do their work anywhere but deep out in the big empty.  The ship that will come get them and bring them back to earth hasn't been invented yet but if they can win the war they can re-freeze and hope.  Oh and the war is not with aliens but with colonists who decided to not pay earth back for the trillions of dollars of space ships that they are living in.  The whole war is just one big mutiny.”

Or the whole war is a revolution or civil war. This scenario I consider to be most likely of all. Say five hundred years from now human populations in space would be large enough so the solar system looks something like Star Trek’s Federation. No aliens in this scenario, but with genetic engineering and humans being born in space they might look as alien to us as Klingons, Vulcans and Romulans. You might even have Borg-like creatures, cyborgs.

As for the mathematicians, yes I think the battles would likely be fast and largely automatic, and therefore calculated in advance. If you have human crew in the ships, they’ll suit up and strap in. They would have seen the enemy force coming from far off. They’d have lots of times to game the upcoming battle, and from this they’d program their actions. They might have the ability to make minor changes in ship disposition as the enemy fleet also makes adjustments. Like I’ve said before I see it like the quarterback in American football. The coaches give him the plays and some audibles. The teams line up at the line of scrimmage and the quarterback has less than a minute to look over the defense. If he doesn’t like what he sees he changes the play. He might send someone in motion to throw off defensive calculations about what they think the offense is going to do. But for the most part the strapped-in, suited-up crew is along for the ride. The two fleets plunge into the engagement envelope and the weapons go off. As you’re strapped there you hope to hell everything turns out all right. Your job, if you make it through, is to pick up the pieces after the ships have passed. I’m talking vital damage control here.

 But how would you make that exciting to watch? Before the battle you have some dialog about how powerful the weapons are, and about how easy it is to rip hell out of the ship, and how many different ways there are to die, some of them agonizingly slow. It could be done through training, and instructors are drilling new recruits, and one of the recruits asks, “Why are we doing this?” An alternative might be crew-planning sessions where experts discuss the upcoming battle.

 Finally you get to the battle. As the two fleets approach weapons release points the crew scrambles to ready the ship for battle. On the all call someone says “attention, we are at condition red, triple P conditions in effect,” meaning you clamber in to your battle station compartment suited up, then you strap in. Now you get lots of face shots through the clear helmet visors. Some people are nervous. There are lots of mechanical noises, lights flashing, situation displays flickering. You see lots of this reflected off the visors. You could have some external shots of weapons coming up out of storage compartments, rail guns snapping loose from travel lock. You’ve got count downs going on, various crew calling out they’re ready. You have spooky background music to help build the tension. Then the fleets clash.

 You still get more facial shots, lots of shaking, high pitched and tremulous voices from the crew. The ship gets hit. Alarm lights make lurid atmospherics in your armored battle station compartment, lots of damage reports. The ship starts to tumble. Now it’s a fight to fix the damage, and even though the battle is over you still might die.

 

Treadgar

 
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Ispose    Sci Fi Stupidity   7/18/2007 11:36:54 AM
I agree with the ridiculousness of smoe Sci Fi show...I love em, but they make stupid decisions. 
Star Trek...it's an unknown hostile planet...lets beam down the entire bridge crew, the Chief engineer, and 2 deaders with red shirts.
Space above and beyond...lets send in a squadron of Marine fighter pilots, have them park their Starfighters, have them gear up and fight as infantry...stupid use of resources...don't they have troop carriers and grunts?
Battlestar Galactica ..  again why use you precious fighter pilots as infantry?
Starship Troopers...horrible, horrible, horrible...The only time a trooper used aimed fire was to kill one of their own
 
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ens. jack    Fighters unnecessary   7/18/2007 12:20:09 PM
I do't see why fighters are even necessary. Space combat should be more like a battleship fight than a carrier battle. Use the big guns because in space, range won't be an issue, sure a shell could be knocked off course, but if its carrying a w 76 nuke and a proxy fuse, that shouldn't be an issue. The only use for small craft would be scouts, minelayers and the occassional boarding.
 
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Ehran       7/18/2007 1:21:39 PM

I do't see why fighters are even necessary. Space combat should be more like a battleship fight than a carrier battle. Use the big guns because in space, range won't be an issue, sure a shell could be knocked off course, but if its carrying a w 76 nuke and a proxy fuse, that shouldn't be an issue. The only use for small craft would be scouts, minelayers and the occassional boarding.



the only big guns that will be used in space are going to be lasers or particle accelerators.  for close in defense you might see rail guns though.  big guns like battleships just aren't gonna be useful for several reasons such as the weight involved and the rather limited velocity of the shell.  you get far more mileage out of missiles for long range combat.
 
there is an rpg called traveller 2300 which actually has a fairly good space combat set of rules.  you spend your time hiding from the other side and sending out sensor drones etc to find them.  first guy to find the other usually wins.
 
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Treadgar       7/18/2007 1:43:43 PM
I think the carrier analogy is a good one. Why? If you look at the types of propulsion systems that most likely will be available big carrier ships make sense when you're talking about long range expeditions. Ion drives have high specific impulses, but they have poor thrust to weight ratios. Because they can generate a long boost duration they can ultimately achieve high velocities and at decent fuel efficency. Even fusion drives probably won't get you significantly better thrust to weight ratios, but you could hook up an afterburner type arrangement by dumping hydrogen into the exhaust stream within your thrust nozzles. The essence of the matter is the big ships can't make quick changes in delta V. Smaller ships are better at that. But the small ships don't have the range. So the big ships carry the little ships to the battle area, just like aircraft carriers. The big carrier ships rely on smaller ships for protection, and to carry out both offensive and defensive operations. So what kind of propulsion systems do the smaller ships have? I'd say something more conventional, like rockets. But we'll have to improve the performance of those, so now I'm talking about atomic drives that offer a little more efficency and better thrust to weight ratios. It may be possible to attach these ships in parasite fashion to mounts (like in Footfall) on the big carrier ship where they would help nudge the carrier into a quicker trajectory change. Of course the carrier might have a secondary drive system with high thrust to weight ratios, say to boost the ship more quickly out of Earth orbit. When you start talking about manned fighters however, that doesn't make much sense to me. I'm also in for carrier escorts, ships analogous to destroyers, cruisers and what have you, maybe even battleships.

Treadgar 
 
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andyf       7/18/2007 3:45:21 PM
I think long range missiles maybe kinetic, possibly multiple warheads as your main weapon.
particle beams ,lasers as the CIWS
you could have some sort of spinal mount coilgun with guided rounds as a long range weapon
 
 
 
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Yimmy       7/18/2007 6:08:10 PM
Given that it isn't supposed to be possible to travel at light speed, at a reasonably realistic speed, how long would it take to get to our nearest neighbouring solar system or planet?
 
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