i just picked up the Season 1 box set of BSG and am in the middle of watching “33” again, and it reminded me of one of my favorite spaceflight maneuver scenes in the entire series, it’s a short (less than 4 second) sequence that just goes to show that the writers/directors/CGI animators just got it right…
“Starbuck, fire a burst across their bow”
“Copy that”
Starbuck’s Viper does a noseflip quickly facing 180 degrees away from her previous direction of travel, and they even put in the little touches of the ventral RCS thrusters firing to counter the inertia that the maneuver caused that would have kept her pivoting around the Viper’s nose
it takes longer to explain it than to see it, but for me, it was just cool to see a spacecraft flying like a spacecraft, fully utilizing all 3 axises (axese?) of movement available to them, i was so sick of the [announcer voice] Planes In SPAAAAAACCCE![/annc] type of flight, having spacecraft fly like atmospheric craft designed to fly against gravity, c’mon, you’re in space, you have all three axis points of movement available, and don’t have to deal with the effects of gravity, do some fancy flyin’…
Starbuck’s viper impaling itself on Apollo’s in the movie- the big battle scene near the end. The looks on their faces during the maneuver and the sexual innuendo of the move itself are priceless.
I loved how the new spaceflight vibe was set from the first moment of the miniseries, with the camera mounted on the exterior of the little shuttle as it made corrective maneuvers while approaching the negotiation outpost. It’s been gravy ever since then.
Also from the pilot: the squadron of Vipers flying in formation. Just hanging there in space, motionless relative to each other, no visible indication of their velocity.
From (I think) the episode where a Six-copy set up Baltar to be suspected then cleared of being a traitor: A view of an empty starfield telescopically zooms in until we see that some tiny specks are the Colonial fleet.
It’s not really space flight, so much as space fight, but I like when a Basestar shows up and the camera sort of pans out so we can see both the Basestar and the Galactica in one shot. There’s the Basestar just spewing out missiles & hundreds of Raiders towards the Galactica, and the Galactica is raining holy hell at the Basestar with its defensive guns. We know from the story that the Galactica can’t stand toe-to-toe with a Basestar, but at least for a few minutes, it can, and to me, it’s just really cool.
It’s not like Star Trek where one big ship swoops by and takes a shot at another large ship. This is two massive ships just going full at it, raining no-holds-barred, destructive carnage at each other. Then just when the Galactica can’t hold them a moment longer, blink! The Galactica FTL jumps away.
This sequence also included my favorite BSG line so far (I’ve only seen the first half of the first season though):
“Begin Defensive Supression Barrage.” Followed up by all the gun ports opening and the huge honkin turrets (each with their own cockpit with a gunner inside, no less!) rotating and elevating to face their enemies before quickly building a wall between them and the Raiders
That said, my favorite moments, both from the miniseries, are the initial Cylon attack on the Galactica, with all the Colonial pilots chattering over the radio as they try to intercept the Raiders (which I love just because they look like the Dralthi from the Wing Commander universe) and the space battle between Apollo’s Vipers and the Cylon Raiders, with the two groups of fighters flying through eachother, firing rapid fire minigun type weapons, with ships on both sides taking losses until only the better/luckier pilots are left and the fight evens out somewhat.
I’d say that the producers of “Battlestar Galactica” have learned a lot from some of the shows that were on after the original version of “BSG”. Not a criticism; I’m glad they did. The original show was trying to look like Star Wars; the new one has taken lessons from shows like “Babylon 5” (such as taking basic Newtonian physics into account) and “Firefly” (using zooms, focus changes, etc. to create verisimilitude). There have been space battle moments on the show that have literally given me a little frisson.
Another cool moment from the miniseries: when the first viper squadron to face the Cylons gets shut down via technical infiltration, they don’t come to a stop, they just start tumbling freely and banging into each other. Technically accurate, and even more effectively conveys just how fracked they are.
Although B5 got it right a good deal of the time, its creator/head writer, JMS, was not always on the mark where basic Newtonian physics was concerned:[ul][li]In one episode, a space ship had zero gravity on board, even though its engines were on. JMS publically stated on Usenet that this was not an error; he believed that the astonauts on board the space shuttle experienced zero G even when its orbital maneuvering engines were firing.[/li][li]In another episode that JMS wrote, a character said that the surface gravity of Mars was “40% less than Earth.”[/li][li]JMS also stated on Usenet that objects in low gravity (1/3 or 1/6 Earth’s surface gravity) fall just as fast as they do in full Earth surface gravity. His reasoning? Galileo established that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of how heavy they are. :rolleyes:[/li][*]In a quick on-screen display of the statistics on a particular make of space ship, the data said that the space ship’s “maximum speed” was 0.2 c. (One could argue that this meant how fast the space ship would go if it burned all its fuel, but the clear implication was that space ships had a top speed the same way that ships on the ocean do.)[/ul]
All this ignores the biggest physics error on the show, as explained to me by a guy at NASA a few years back:
If you rotate the ship/space station for gravity, while it will indeed make everything stay on the floor, it will also cause everyone to become incredibly naseaus if any of them try to move while on this spinning station. Something to do with centrifigal forces, the coriollis effect, and the fluids in your inner ear. Not the most practical solution to the problem of people floating around.
This is only a problem if people change their distance from the center of rotation. You should be OK walking around, but going up a ladder will mess you up, and standing up from sitting could make you nauseous depending upon how big the radius is.
My understanding was that you’d get dizzy just turning your head, because everything in your inner ear is being flung about at a certain angle, but when you twist your head, that angle is twisted around too.
I can’t remember the name of this effect, but I recall that planes with propellers have to deal with it, as any change of angle for the propeller causes the propeller to want to turn in a direction 90 degrees to where you were tryign to turn it in the first place. It’s weird. helpless shrug
I think the larger the rotating structure, the less significant any of these effects would be. I don’t recall how large B5 was, but if we ever build an O’Neil sized rotating space colony, we won’t have to walk about with barf-bags tied around our necks.
It’s the Coriolis effect; basically conservation of rotational momemtum means that movement toward or away from the axis of rotation leads to an apparent movement spinward or antispinward. The dizziness is caused by movement of fluid in the inner ear. The effect is proportional to the rate of spin, so a larger radius (for the same gravity at the rim) will have a much less pronounced effect. Anything much faster than about three RPM will lead to trouble, so centrifugal gravity isn’t practical except for really large space stations.
I’m sure we could find somewhere online where someone calculated the dimensions based on stuff like how big Ivonova is relative to the rest of the station in the intro. Apparantly B5 got some suprising stuff right, like how long it would take a person to fall from the axis tram that runs through the middle of the station to the “ground” below in the hydroponic gardens. The basic result being that while the person wouldn’t be moving fast when he landed, the ground would be moving fast enough relative to the person for the result to be similar to gently being lowered out the back of a van on a highway during someone’s daily commute.
