nBSG compared to Babylon 5

[NecronLord]

The attack on the colonies is shown in the new 'The Plan' where MIRVs are used to attack the colonies. I can't tell what size they might be offhand, and the 50 megaton was a colonial estimate of what hit Caprica City anyway, so it might be only for the combined total of the MIRVs.

[Sarevok]

In the pilot Adama stated a nuclear device in 50 megaton range was detonated over Caprica city. So presumably he was talking about one individual warhead. Its also possibile the writters did not consider MIRVed warheads back then

[MKSheppard]

Fact 1. Minbari ships can be destroyed at quite a distance with nuclear devices.

Fact 2. Oboslete battlestars can withstand point blank hull surface initations of a nuke (ref Galactica in Mini).

Fact 3. Modern battlestars can survive three nukes hitting at once. (ref Pegasus), and only suffer relatively minor damage.

[Darth Wong]

Fact 1. Minbari ships can be destroyed at quite a distance with nuclear devices.

Fact 2. Battlestars (even old obsolete buckets like the Galactica) can withstand point blank hull surface initations of nukes.

What are Battlestars made of? Some kind of Star Trek/Star Wars type of armourtanium?

[MKSheppard]

What are Battlestars made of? Some kind of Star Trek/Star Wars type of armourtanium?

Heavy armor; most likely composited with graphite. Remember, in the 1950s, they placed a graphite coated sphere next to a nuke, and they finally found it quite a bit away, with only a little of the graphite coating ablated away. This gave rise to Project ORION.

[Anguirus]

But all nukes are not created equal.

Sure the Black Star was destroyed by two 2-megaton nukes at some distance (first one damaged it, the second destroyed it). But the Galactica was almost destroyed by one nuke (probably 50 kT, as it was fired by a Raider) because it threatened to ignite the fuel lines.

What are Battlestars made of? Some kind of Star Trek/Star Wars type of armourtanium?

I don't recall anyone mentioning any specific metals, but it is tough stuff. Galactica was a 40 year old war veteran at the start of the series and survives a nuking, lots of pounding with standard missiles, and jumping into a Earth-like planet's atmosphere at a starting velocity sufficient to cause some serious heat.

All this pounding (and jumping, which creates hull stress) does take a serious toll. By the end of the series (MAJOR SPOILER) the major structural members are failing, and despite last-ditch repairs it is set to be evacuated. However, they decide to basically "use up" the ship in a final attack, in which it is given a good minute's worth of pasting by heavy artillery, shot up by Raiders, and rams a moon-sized space station. When it makes its final jump out of there, the members give way and the ship visibly deforms, venting atmosphere from many points on its surface. However, most of the crew survives even this ordeal, and the ship's sublight engines are in good enough shape to accelerate it into the sun.

Battlestars are tough...when the plot demands. However, a battlestar of the same class is blown to PIECES by non-nuclear ordnance in a flashback scene. Don't ask me (it is stated that the ship would be lost if fuel lines or magazines were ignited IIRC...also, its own nuclear ordnance might have been detonated one supposes).

[MKSheppard]

Sure the Black Star was destroyed by two 2-megaton nukes at some distance (first one damaged it, the second destroyed it). But the Galactica was almost destroyed by one nuke (probably 50 kT, as it was fired by a Raider) because it threatened to ignite the fuel lines.

Actually, the nukes hitting Galactica had more power than the 2 MT nukes hitting the Blackstar. A little something called the "inverse square law" comes into play here.

[Stofsk]

Battlestars are tough...when the plot demands. However, a battlestar of the same class is blown to PIECES by non-nuclear ordnance in a flashback scene. Don't ask me (it is stated that the ship would be lost if fuel lines or magazines were ignited IIRC...also, its own nuclear ordnance might have been detonated one supposes).

Which flashback scene? The ones in Razor? The attack on the Scorpion yards coincided with Cylon sabotage. Or are you talking about the flashback to the original war, with young Agama flying in the Viper Mk II cockpit? Because we don't know how long Atlantia was battling the Cylons and what damage it sustained.

Unless you're talking about The Plan, which I haven't seen yet.

The thing I like about Battlestar Galactica is that throughout the whole show, she takes a huge pounding - and it shows. RDM purposely set out to do the complete opposite of Voyager and show that battles result in persistent damage that can't be repaired because the whole infrastructure that supports fleets and starships is non-existent.

[Darth Wong]

What are Battlestars made of? Some kind of Star Trek/Star Wars type of armourtanium?

Heavy armor; most likely composited with graphite. Remember, in the 1950s, they placed a graphite coated sphere next to a nuke, and they finally found it quite a bit away, with only a little of the graphite coating ablated away. This gave rise to Project ORION.

How heavy was this sphere?

[NecronLord]

Fact 1. Minbari ships can be destroyed at quite a distance with nuclear devices.

Fact 2. Oboslete battlestars can withstand point blank hull surface initations of a nuke (ref Galactica in Mini).

Fact 3. Modern battlestars can survive three nukes hitting at once. (ref Pegasus), and only suffer relatively minor damage.

Fact 4: The nuclear weapon in 1 is 40 times more powerful than those in 2 and 3.
Fact 5: Minbari beam weapons are on the order of magnitude of tens of kilotons per second, in absolute terms, nearly the equal of raider nukes, and in practical terms, far more dangerous as they cannot be intercepted or effectively defended against.
Fact 6: Minbari ships also carry nuclear missiles 400 times more powerful than those of a cylon raider.

[NecronLord]

Sure the Black Star was destroyed by two 2-megaton nukes at some distance (first one damaged it, the second destroyed it). But the Galactica was almost destroyed by one nuke (probably 50 kT, as it was fired by a Raider) because it threatened to ignite the fuel lines.

Actually, the nukes hitting Galactica had more power than the 2 MT nukes hitting the Blackstar. A little something called the "inverse square law" comes into play here.

Yes. See a few pages back. The upper limit for what the Black Star took from the second bomb is something like 100 Kt. As opposed to less than 25.

Never mind that to win an engagement with the Minbari, they'd have to get close to something that doesn't appear on their radar, and has weapons vastly more powerful than anything they've ever encountered. Earth had no problem *doing the damage* - merely getting a lock in order to do it, however, is a serious achievement.

[DrStrangelove]

Babtech puts the Blackstar taking somewhere between 102-1000Kt from the 2 nukes

[NecronLord]

102 is not a lower limit, it is quite a high figure.

However, the thing is, as that page shows, the Minbari ships aren't necesserily stronger than their rivals, just quieter and more dangerous.

[Sarevok]

The thing I like about Battlestar Galactica is that throughout the whole show, she takes a huge pounding - and it shows. RDM purposely set out to do the complete opposite of Voyager and show that battles result in persistent damage that can't be repaired because the whole infrastructure that supports fleets and starships is non-existent.

Not really. They manufactured more vipers onboard Peagasus than voyager made shuttles. At least USS Voyager had the execuse of replicators and federation tech. The Ragtag fleet on the other hand became like a space rts game such as Homeworld. They were making ammunition, spare parts, fuel, designing new ships from ground up all just fine. Hell the fact that that after 5 years of isolation all of them ate good food and dressed in spotless, ironed brand new clothes should be daming enough. The resource crunch only became a problem as a cheap drama creating device. Like in last half of season 4 when they were all going to die despite existing as a perfect space based civilization. They did not need planets anymore. Yet eventually they go to live in caves because they cant make a simple bronze age society when they were magicking up starship parts from thin air few years back.

[Anguirus]

Or are you talking about the flashback to the original war, with young Agama flying in the Viper Mk II cockpit? Because we don't know how long Atlantia was battling the Cylons and what damage it sustained.

I was talking about Razor, yes (nitpick: it's the Columbia that's destroyed). And I agree, we don't know, but we don't see any nuclear initiations in the part of the battle that we do see.

[MKSheppard]

1 kiloton is 4.18 E12 Joules.
30 kt is thus 1.26 E14 Joules.
2 MT is thus 8.37 E15 Joules.

The Inverse Square Law Works out as:

Power Density = Power / 4 * Pi * Radius^2

Thus:

2 MT nuke initated 3 shiplengths (3,000m) from Black Star: The Black Star receives 7.4 E7 Joules per square meter of surface in line of sight of the nuke.

30 kt nuke initated 10 meters from Battlestar Galactica: the Galactica receives 9.99 E10 Joules per square meter of surface in line of sight of the nuke.

To put this into some context:

TNT has 4.6 MJ per kilogram (roughly). So this means:

Black Star takes 16 kg of TNT per square meter of exposed area and blows up.

Galactica takes 21,714 kg of TNT per square meter of exposed area and survives.

Battlestar Galactica takes a nuke at point-blank range in the Mini.





The Black Star is destroyed by a puny nuke at a distance.

[Ted C]

Fact 1. Minbari ships can be destroyed at quite a distance with nuclear devices.

Sheridan used 2-megaton warheads, IIRC, and it took two detonations in pretty close proximity.

Brian calculated that the Black Star couldn't have absorbed more than 860 kilotons from the first blast and probably less than 100 kilotons from the second (of course, it was already severly damaged at that point).

[NecronLord]

Did you get that 3000 m figure from Babtech? Because if so you're using the default of the blast intensity calculator which is for a shadow battlecrab. There's no reason to give a distance for the Drala'fi, there's no really adequate reference aside from a mysterious planar ring in that second shot. You would be far better doing what Babtech does and simply using pixels and calling it an upper limit. But of course, that doesn't generate a nicely one sided number for you.

[MKSheppard]

Did you get that 3000 m figure from Babtech?

No, I got it from an earlier thread back in 2006 over precisely this issue. Someone did calculations based off that Image; and used the "three shiplengths" figure for distance; and since the Black Star is 1,000m long.....

[NecronLord]

Did you get that 3000 m figure from Babtech?

No, I got it from an earlier thread back in 2006 over precisely this issue. Someone did calculations based off that Image; and used the "three shiplengths" figure for distance; and since the Black Star is 1,000m long.....

Mm. That's called asspulling.

In any case how long is it?

Of course, there are problems with that (though a cargo greater than the ships mass can make sense, especially if it includes fuel), and Black Star was said to be a big flagship.

[MKSheppard]

Of course, there are problems with that, and Black Star was said to be a big flagship.

Of course in that ancient thread from 2006; it was stated that the Black Star statistics as shown on screen were laughably inaccurate.

And I am not impressed with Brian Young's calculations.

Just do a simple inverse square law calculation using the power of the nuke (it's given as 2 MT), then figure out the total surface area in square meters for the Black Star at different aspects (Head on, broadside, slight angle); and multiply that by the inverse square law density figure; and you've got how much energy the Black Star took.

Instead, he goes on a long rambling digression that I can't follow easily.

[Ted C]

Of course, there are problems with that (though a cargo greater than the ships mass can make sense, especially if it includes fuel), and Black Star was said to be a big flagship.

The Warcruiser page is another that was due for a rewrite, but we haven't actually done any work on the site for a while.

We have images of Warcruiser's next to Babylon 5 for scaling, and the interesting result is that there have to be at least two classes of warcruiser that are much different in size but otherwise quite similar. We have some shots of a warcruiser in front of the station that give an upper limit of 800 meters in height, and we have others of warcruisers behind the station that give a lower limit of 1300 meters in height.

Assuming the Black Star to be an example of the larger class, it's a damn big ship.

[NecronLord]

Of course, there are problems with that, and Black Star was said to be a big flagship.

Of course in that ancient thread from 2006; it was stated that the Black Star statistics as shown on screen were laughably inaccurate.

Thread for those who're observing.

The number given for its size is the only one particularly out of place. The objections raised to the Legacies screenshot are particularly amusing; oh dear, a military display doesn't specify if it means metric or imperial tons, must be junk!

While there's reason to think it's much bigger, the three shiplengths is an asspull.

And I am not impressed with Brian Young's calculations.

Just do a simple inverse square law calculation using the power of the nuke (it's given as 2 MT), then figure out the total surface area in square meters for the Black Star at different aspects (Head on, broadside, slight angle)

There is no reliable way to get anything but a crude estimate for meters off that scene. It could be less than a thousand meters away.

and multiply that by the inverse square law density figure; and you've got how much energy the Black Star took.

Instead, he goes on a long rambling digression that I can't follow easily.

The fact that you can't follow it does not invalidate it.

[Ted C]

Instead, he goes on a long rambling digression that I can't follow easily.

The summary is that the first blast delivered an upper limit of about 860 kilotons, and the second delivered an upper limit of about 100 kilotons.

As we noted, the Minbari don't rely on surviving hits to their ships; they avoid getting hit with their stealth tech.

[NecronLord]

Of course, there are problems with that (though a cargo greater than the ships mass can make sense, especially if it includes fuel), and Black Star was said to be a big flagship.

The Warcruiser page is another that was due for a rewrite, but we haven't actually done any work on the site for a while.

It would be interesting.

We have images of Warcruiser's next to Babylon 5 for scaling, and the interesting result is that there have to be at least two classes of warcruiser that are much different in size but otherwise quite similar. We have some shots of a warcruiser in front of the station that give an upper limit of 800 meters in height, and we have others of warcruisers behind the station that give a lower limit of 1300 meters in height.

Assuming the Black Star to be an example of the larger class, it's a damn big ship.

As I recall, it was said to be 'one of their biggest ships' which might imply it being a member of a larger class.