Text 13922, 81 rader
Skriven 2007-04-24 16:23:12 av Vorlonagent (285.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Relative ship sizes in the B5 universe (and others)
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"Jeffrey Kaplan" <nomail@gordol.org> wrote in message 
news:bs4s2392l59ih31c1lsl9bgl0btl1ujhl5@gordol.org...
> It is alleged that Vorlonagent claimed:
>
>> OTOH we have the Nimitz class carrier.
>> 1092 feet long (333 meters)
>> Crew: 3200 before we even talk about the air wing (another 2800).
>>
>> Now let's talk about the effect of size on volume and mass.  An 
>> Omega-class
>> destroyer is 1500 meters long.  If we want to super-size a Nimtiz class
>> carrier into that range, we're talking 4.5 times the size.  That means 
>> 4.5x
>> the length width and height for  91x the interior space, 91x the mass. 
>> The
>> Typhoon class would need an 8.6x multiplier to get to the same size as 
>> the
>> Omega, which would mean 636 times the mass and volume.  It's safe to say 
>> the
>> crew is increasing too, by many, many multiples, but dunno if it strictly
>> multiplies with volume.
>>
>> The resources the US used/will use to build its entire fleet of 10
>> nimitz-class carriers would only buy Earth 1/9 of a single Omega-class
>> destroyer.  Let's not even talk about a Warlock-class destroyer.  This is 
>> an
>> insane amount of ship to expect a crew of 1150 or so to handle
>
> First off, it's not just Earth building the Omegas, it's the Earth
> Alliance, a multi-planet nation, and they were built off-world. Second,
> it may be an "insane amount of ship" based on +today's+ capabilities,
> but this is what, 200 years in the future?

One word.  Maintenance.

A ship that large has a correspondingly large amount of stuff that is going 
to continually break down.  Earth ships don't have the nifty self-repair 
systems that the Whitestars have.

Controling the ship doesn't take the people.  Maintaining it does.

If B5's any judge, Earth stuff still breaks down and has failure rates more 
or less on a par with the present day.  You're taking 1/3 the crew of a 
Nimiz class carrier and expecting them to take care of 91x the ship.  I'm 
all for automation, but expecting it to multiply a crewman's 
effectiveness --in maintaining the ship--by a factor of 270 or so seems a 
bit much.


> For comparison, in Moore's Battlestar Galactica, compare the Galactica
> to the Pegasus.  The Pegasus is what... half again as big as the
> Galactica?  Twice as big?  Yet it needs only half the personnel to be
> fully crewed.  Not only is it simply newer, it's also got a lot more
> automation.

I really don't accept one SF show as justifying assumptions made in another.


> And one more point about the Omegas:  only about one third of the total
> length has any kind of gravity effect at all, which places its own
> limit on how large the crew can be.

No it doesn't.  The Hyperions seem able to have crews without any rotating 
section.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent

"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."

"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

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