Earth With nBSG Technology

[Corvus 501]

Let's assume that in the end of the series, instead of flying their ships into the sun, they buried them somewhere in the solar system, like on far side of the moon, or any similar airless rock. Further assuming that we 1: actually get there (say by the 2030's-50's) and 2: have a few equivalent pieces of tech to replace a few things like tylium reactors, (like conventional fast fission, or fusion) and that they at least left jump drives and grav plates, many questions come up.

[Borgholio]

Well we'd certainly take a shine to the jump drive and power systems. The hull armor would be valuable since whatever material able to shrug off direct nuclear hits has got to be strong stuff. The railguns would would be desired by the military for obvious reasons. I don't know exactly what DRADIS is, if it's radio like modern RADAR or some other kind of energy, but if it's something other than radio, I can see the military wanting that too.

[Joun_Lord]

Earth would probably get a tech upgrade and have quite a few questions about our origins solved and further ones raised assuming records were left.

Probably get a defense spending boom from all nations both to exploit the tech found and to defend against genocidal robots that are probably still out there.

The good Cylons might show up to investigate the reactivated Galactica and fleet and probably lead to some tenseness. The good Cylons might also be flying a big ass white ship and look like humans in white assuming that fan theory is correct (though if it was the Nu-Galactica tech would be outdated by Earth tech thanks to the the older newer Galactica).

[Corvus 501]

Where would the fleet be hidden? For that matter, without tylium for drives, how would we get there, plasma drive, fusion torche, ion drive, solar sail?

[Corvus 501]

Edit: fusion torch

[lord Martiya]

The railguns would would be desired by the military for obvious reasons.

Since when they have railguns in that series?

[Borgholio]

Since when they have railguns in that series?

Nevermind. I always thought the big guns were railguns but in the very fine microprint on the BSG Wiki it says they're not railguns, but it's never described EXACTLY what kind of gun they are. So if they're somewhat conventional rocket-propelled shells, that's really nothing special.

[lord Martiya]

Could be still useful: I don't remember even seeing a spent case (at least from the small arms: would be strange seeing the spent shell getting ejected from the Vipers and the big guns), and if there's actually no spent case instead of me just not noticing they could be caseless weapons... And that's a technology the military's researching but can't make work yet.

[Purple]

Yes and no. Caseless weapons are not beyond us technically. Hell, WW1 battleship guns were caseless. The main problems these days with caseless small arms are cooling and to a lesser extent making a cartridge that won't chip and crumble easily when manhandled by idiot conscripts. With a cased weapon you have this nice brass or plastic case to take all the heat in and get ejected and to prevent damage. Without a case all that heat remains in the chamber. With spacecraft mounted weapons however you can presumably just have an alternative cooling system.

[Darth Nostril]

The question is how would they go about storing the ships in the first place. They left most of their useful gear behind on New Caprica, even if they did have some left would it work in a vacuum?
How would you go about preserving the ships? Teams of people in spacesuits digging pits on the far side of the moon by hand with shovels then covering over the landed ships?
Let alone how the hell do you land the Galactica, she was never designed to land, even in one sixth gravity it's not going to be easy. And if you did manage to get her down in mostly one piece that means leaving Sam up there on his own until the power gave out.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Add to the fact that Galactica was broken as all hell after arriving at Earth. Even if she could have survived landing on the Moon when she was fresh out of the shipyards, by that point her back was broken, her bows wrecked, big chunks of hull missing, and the whole damn ship flexed by a silly amount on her long axis. And the fact that her jump drives weren't in great condition either, and I'm struggling to see how anything would be salvageable after the crash-landing on the Moon.

[Corvus 501]

Use the remaining nukes to dig some trenches and bury the ships. Partly dissemble the Galactia and/or fill it up with lunar gravel to add some support. Remove the jump drives, hide it under some armor plating, and generally prep it for a few thousand years in near vacum and low gravity. Alternantly, you choose another rock, one with lower gravity than Luna.

Frankly, the ships themselvs wouldn't be of much use, they would just be in storage for the Colonial's descendants to study and reverse engineer, not directly use. The Galactica may have been a hastily built example of shoddy wartime production, but the design philosophy behind it, and the technology it contained would be worth studying, if only to solve the age old Sci-Fi question of battleship, carrier, or hybrid (battlestar)

[FedRebel]

Well we'd certainly take a shine to the jump drive and power systems. The hull armor would be valuable since whatever material able to shrug off direct nuclear hits has got to be strong stuff.

Catch is, how would we copy it?

It'd be like giving a Roman blacksmith a piece of Chobham armor and telling him to make more.

The railguns would would be desired by the military for obvious reasons.

Not much, the US is already toying with railguns, infrastructure is the only real obstacle.

Pretty much the same amount of time would pass for clones of Colonial weapons to enter use as it would take for purely native equivalents.

I don't know exactly what DRADIS is, if it's radio like modern RADAR or some other kind of energy, but if it's something other than radio, I can see the military wanting that too.

I think it literally is Radar, the Colonials just went for a different acronym.


The only thing Colonial tech would provide is propulsion systems. Vipers and Raptors being single stage to orbit, the anti-gravity system on the Raptor giving it helicopter behavior, and the FTL drive. Fuel would be the biggest damn problem though.

Where would the fleet be hidden? For that matter, without tylium for drives, how would we get there, plasma drive, fusion torche, ion drive, solar sail?

Nuclear Pulse Drive, all that other stuff is purely on paper. until Limited Test Ban killed it Project Orion got fairly well advanced. LTB and successive agreements make Pulse Drives double illegal (can't get around a high altitude nuclear detonation to achieve escape velocity...and because you're using a very specific "propellent" design the ship has to be military controlled.)

Earth would probably get a tech upgrade and have quite a few questions about our origins solved and further ones raised assuming records were left.

I wouldn't count on that, Colonial language would likely be untranslatable (unless we're seriously going to say they used 100% identical American English.)

after 150,000 years it's safe to say anything paper is long gone (some microbes eating it all into dust.)

Probably get a defense spending boom from all nations both to exploit the tech found and to defend against genocidal robots that are probably still out there.

In theory only one nation would have the capability to mount an expedition if it set it's mind to it. Most other world powers lack the economy, resources, and/or infrastructure.

Alliances would be stalled by bickering, this is after all for the salvage rights on extraterrestrial starships, not nobly venturing to an airless rock.

The most likely scenario is the US going "screw the rules" withdrawing from LTB etc. (which will make them nobody's favorite.) And 15-20 years later making Dyson's dream come true by launching a 4 MILLION ton Orion drive ship that'll 'one go' establish a colony to recover and study the Galactica.

[Corvus 501]

To FedRebal: Orion drive ships are probibly the most theoretical of all the listed drives, except for dues ion torch drive. Solar sail, and ion drive are already in use, and plasma drives are undergoing large scale lab testing already. Orion drive? A few small scale tests with conventional explosives.

If we send anyone into deep space, it will probibly be by ion or plasma drive. The technology exists, and it's pracale.

[Borgholio]

It'd be like giving a Roman blacksmith a piece of Chobham armor and telling him to make more.

Not quite, it would be like telling him to learn from it and TRY to copy it. He wouldn't be able to reproduce the materials exactly but he could learn from the idea behind a composite armor and make something along the same vein with materials he IS familiar with. Then given time, materials science could catch up and let them reproduce it more exactly. In our case, if it's just a unique alloy of steel or titanium, we could probably reproduce that easily. If it's a new method of bonding armor or rolling it, we could probably emulate that. If it's a totally undiscovered element, then that could prove to be problematic.

Not much, the US is already toying with railguns, infrastructure is the only real obstacle.

The problem we have with railguns is that they wear out very quickly. If the big guns on the battlestars were railguns, it means they would have solved the problem of the barrels wearing out after a handful of shots. That is something our weapon designers would love to know.

[Joun_Lord]

I wouldn't count on that, Colonial language would likely be untranslatable (unless we're seriously going to say they used 100% identical American English.)

after 150,000 years it's safe to say anything paper is long gone (some microbes eating it all into dust.)

With reams of books and computer systems to study I'm sure we could find some way to translate the Colonial language. And being on an airlock rock like the moon microbes would probably be not much of a problem. When setting down the Fleet they wouldn't leave them full of oxygen just because of the long term damage that can cause with microbes and oxidation that can cause systems to be badly damaged or destroyed over time.

In theory only one nation would have the capability to mount an expedition if it set it's mind to it. Most other world powers lack the economy, resources, and/or infrastructure.

Alliances would be stalled by bickering, this is after all for the salvage rights on extraterrestrial starships, not nobly venturing to an airless rock.

The most likely scenario is the US going "screw the rules" withdrawing from LTB etc. (which will make them nobody's favorite.) And 15-20 years later making Dyson's dream come true by launching a 4 MILLION ton Orion drive ship that'll 'one go' establish a colony to recover and study the Galactica.

I'm sure Russia, China, and Europistan would dig up the monies to go to them moon even if it might temporarily harm their economy. The rewards of alien tech so damn close would be far, far too great to pass up. Plus letting only one country have access to it would be something very few countries would tolerate. Even if the expedition was a mainly American thing (which seems unlikely given the current sorry state of NASA and the fact this trend will probably continue well into the future) other countries would be trying to play nice so they too can go pow straight to the moon.

The benefits are just too damn great for nations to pass up. While for them it would be a gamble we out of universe know that onboard the Fleet they will find fighter sized craft with engines capable of going to orbit no sweat, anti-grav tech, FTL tech, super armor capable of withstanding nuke strikes, weapons tech, and Tigh's stash of 150,000 year old booze. Plus again there are probably books and computer records that would make any historian and archeologist have a combination heart attack and orgasm.

Plus us dicking around onboard the Fleet pushing buttons and such might make the friendly neighborhood Red Stripe Cylons pop in to see whats up. If we don't go to war with them we might get an ally that probably has a better understanding of Colonial tech and could help us out. Might also tell us to quit enslaving our Roombas and DiscoRobos.

Also they might now look like wingless angels flying a giant glowy Cylon Basestar.