Re: Relative ship sizes in the B5 universe (and others)


"Jeffrey Kaplan" <nomail@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:da0233p1m3i5ehq7sucmf8f06dlulcdpt1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

We see it going on in the background. IIRC it's one of the things extras
are often doing.

You mean those things that look like hovering floor waxers? I thought
"A View From The Gallery" established that those things don't do
anything. :)

No, it established that Bo and Mack don't know what they do. ;)


...which bolsters my point. If Earth stuff was better or longer lasting
than what we have now, even the substandard stuff would be less
substandard.
B5 conforms to 20th/early 21st century expectations of failure rate,
therefore maintenance needs are not reduced by +200 years of technology.

Even the Minbari, the most advanced of the "younger races" have
technical breakdowns, and they have almost-god-level tech, with
refractive hull plating to disperse energy weapon hits, automatic
self-repairs, etc.

Don't forget artificial gravity and gravitic drives. IIRC, self-repair is a
whitestar ability that it gets from its vorlon side.


The EA ships still get their motive force by rockets. Maybe nuclear or
ion powered instead of a chemical reaction like we have now in reality,
but they still need a reaction mass to eject out the engine nozzles.
And that means some kind of actual fuel that needs to be stored and
replaced.

True. The power source of B5's time is undoubtably fusion, unless fusion
can't be miniaturized enough to fit on a starship. We know it is B5's
power
source. It probably in't a star fury's because we have several times
heard
people talking about getting the fighters "recharged."

And we've had at least one reference to a radiation leak in a 'Fury's
power core. IIRC, that's what killed Ramirez (he had a bet with
Franklin about the Mars baseball team).

A radiation leak from a pure-fusion core isn't going to kill anyone. Not
over the short haul. Fusion is not 100% clean but it's pretty clean. Over
time the gamma and neutron radiation will take its toll.


"Recharge" could simply be what they say in 2260 when we would say
"refuel". Or they could be referring specifically to the reaction mass
for motive power rather than the 'Fury's actual power plant.

True.


15 star furies don't have the same ammunition needs as 80+ jet fighters.
The omega's own missile racks are harder to judge since we know they have
them but they have never used them on screen.

If the PPG gun is any judge, storage needs for weapons gasses is minimal.
Characters on the show were more worried about the power source than the
ammo supply. Unless gas and power were co,bined into one unit, which
still
argues that storange needs are minimal.

It's a matter of scale. We've only seen on-screen the "cap" used in
the handguns, and there's a reference to the cap used in the rifles as
being bigger. The "cap" equivalent for the guns on a Starfury would be
much bigger. Based on scale and how many shots they'd need to have,
I'd say the ammo supply for one gun on a Starfury is probably about the
size of a modern-day thousand-pound bomb, and a standard 'Fury has two
of those guns.

There are vexing unknowns about this. How many shots are in your average
PPG cap?

How many shots are in a starfury cap?

Do people siphon the helium from a spent cap in order to talk funny at
parties?


When has B5's defense grid shot projectiles? Episode, please. The only
defense grid I can think of to use physical weapons was Earth's.

"The Fall Of Night", for one. The smaller guns that pop up have
rotating drum ammo feeds, and the barrels recoil after every shot. If
they were energy weapons they wouldn't need that.

They still shot little balls of light.

With PPG technology as the standard weapons technology, I have to assume
it's plasma if it glows.


Bottom line is there's no justification to assuming that the vast
majority
of Omega interior space is storage and justifying a ridiculously small
crew
on that basis.

Bottom line is that we just don't know. And rather than just complain
that +in reality+ it makes no sense, I'm providing hypothesis for why
in this fictional show it is that way.

I'm not a fan of retconning all sins. I sometimes prefer the honesty of
accepting that somebody dropped the ball when that seems to be what happend.

In Classic Trek's episode Balance of Terror, they call these things they're
shooting phasers but everybody understands they're really photon torps.

B5 is a show that makes much of its money on the fact that it's very intense
and very real. That means it's built with late-20th century precepts in
mind, which includes things breaking and needing repair, design and
construction flaws and all the rest. That means that people are going to be
fixing all that broken stuff and shoring up the more serious flaws if
possible.

It's easy to see how the pure gargantuan size of a 1500 meter ship might
elude a TV production company working in constant crunch mode to crank out
episodes. The 1100-crew figure is an error or the 1500 meter length is an
error. In a SF world that also tried to be real the way B5 tried to be
real, you can't have the super-nifty tech to allow that small a crew fly
that big a ship. Not and maintain the real-ness.

Me, I decided to take the 1100 crew and eject the 1500 meter ship. Your
mileage may vary.


--
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent

"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."

"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones


.

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