Galactica too cramped

[andhol]

After looking at the picture of Galactica next to a Nimitz Class carrier, the crew size and Viper complement does not make sense. I was stationed on a Kitty Hawk Class carrier (a bit smaller than a Nimitz, but close enough) and when the ship was underway with the air wing, the crew was nearly 4500 people. Also a modern super carrier, has a complement of 90 aircraft, which are all MUCH larger than a viper. (i.e a F-18 is about 58 feet long and a MkII is about 28 feet long). Also, all of the pilots are crammed into a tiny berthing compartment, where on a carrier all of the officers have staterooms with sinks and much more storage space. It just seems to me that Galactica,even with 5000 people on board, there would still be plenty of room, and that it should be able to carry many more Vipers than 80.
http://media.battlestarwiki.org/images/1/1a/Bsg-2-cvn.jpg

[JDS]

I think RDM basically said "It's a carrier!" and transposed roughly equivalent numbers, but then he said, "It's a spaceship!" so he decided it had to be HUUUGE. And he never resolved that conflict.

Either that or Galactica has much bigger non-crew spaces. For example, Galactica needs to carry all her own water (whereas carriers just turn seawater into fresh water) and her engines are waaay bigger than a carrier's.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

Keep in mind that you also need space for many things, including the storage bays and massive machines that allow the battlestar to do its thing (life support, FTL drives, sublight drives, artifical gravity generation, etc.). Add to the fact that there must be some pretty massive machines to be able to retract and extend those flight pods!

[Sparrow]

As people here says Galactica have to deal with air-tightness issues.. it has to carry huge suply of water, food, fuel , FTL, ammo (since unlike carriers she works as a battleship as well .

The interior also has to contain much more than corridors.. full enviromental and life support systems to maintain air pressure and purity.

As for the air wing.. i suposse Galactica can carry more than 80 Vipers.. it has 80 launch tubes.. but at one point she carries about 90 Vipers + more than 20 Raptors in one pod. This means that Galactica type Battlestars can handle up to about 180 Vipers and abou t 50 raptors at the same time. Also the flight deck on Galactica type battlestars is extremely narrow.. most of the horizontal lenght of the flight pod is taken by launch tubes while the launch deck can barely take 2 Viper lenghts from bulkhead to tube door (meaning about 16m long). While the flight deck of a carrier measures about 40m wide.. plus in a carrier half air wing goes in the hangar and the other half goes in the deck.. now if we did that in Galactica take the near 200 Viper number and you can easily multiply it by 3..

Galactica surelly has even so space to take the 5000 crew number easily.. so we have to asume that they simply decided to design the quarters that way.. Its Ron after all .. you know.. its the characters stupid! :D

[UrsusArctos]

I wonder how the corridors on the Kitty Hawk compare to those on Galactica. The corridors in the battlestar struck me as being something of a waste of space.

Going by those numbers, Galactica should carry about 100 vipers and 25 raptors in each flight pod, giving a total of 200 vipers and 50 raptors. Peggy should've had double that number, instead of the 180-odd number we got.

Perhaps Galactica has much larger volume of space devoted to machinery and other equipment, but without a diagram of the vessels' internal arrangement, we can't tell where, or what takes how much volume. A direct comparision between the Galactica and a real-life Battleship or Aircraft Carrier just isn't possible without a diagram of the vessels' internal arrangement.

EDIT: fas.org has a diagram that seems adequate enough. Anything more detailed than this won't be publicly available.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn71diagram.jpg

[Alfonzo]

Galactica is supposed to survive a direct impact from a nuclear warhead, block out the resulting radiation, and continue to fight as though nothing happened.

In short - the ship must have a hell of a lot of its hull devoted to armor.

When you factor in the armor, engines, storage facilities, and all the other crap... well...

On a side note, we could say that the corridors had to be big, because of how the life support/gravity/whatever systems worked. The corriders could be smaller on Peggy because of more advanced technology. </fanwankery>

[Angarsk]

Oh! Alfonzo beat me to that armor comentary... that makes perfect sense... also...

didn't you know colonial humans are 12' tall?? that takes a lot of space :P

[joshwall]

I think that we're comparing Battlestars to a fully equiped air craft carrier, remember that Galactica is being decomissioned by the time of the fall, and Peggy is in space dock getting an overhaul, so it can be assumed that neither had a full complement of vipers/raptors. Also if i'm not mistaken carriers are not built for REALLY long hauls (please correct me if i'm wrong) and need to be resupplied with ammunition, food and fuel for their aircraft whilst the Galactica (we can assume) has massive ammo stores and fuel tanks (have you seen the size of those sublights?!) and it's own ammo factory. Along with this Galactica does have MASSIVE corridors, no idea why though. Maybe to aid in a conflict if the ship is borded maybe, or just extra space for people to go for a nice jog. Obviously the large corridors have a purpose TV wise as it would be difficult to get a camera crew and the actors, sound guys and Olomos' amazingness in such a small space as a carriers corridor.

Realisticlly Galactica is probably capable of carrying 5000+ comfortably but it must be rememberd that Battlestars are designed to survive long periods without coming back to spacedock as shown with it's water facilites.

[Alfonzo]

[snip]
Along with this Galactica does have MASSIVE corridors, no idea why though. Maybe to aid in a conflict if the ship is borded maybe, or just extra space for people to go for a nice jog. Obviously the large corridors have a purpose TV wise as it would be difficult to get a camera crew and the actors, sound guys and Olomos' amazingness in such a small space as a carriers corridor.[snip]
Also, we often see a lot of crap being stored in the big corridors. So, half the corridors can act as storage/cargo bays.

Also also, as I fanwanked earlier, it could be that Galactica needs large corridors as part of its life support system or whatever. Peggy had smaller corridors because of a more advanced life support system.

[Kikaider01]

All that extra space was for storing booze and cigarettes for the officers. Lower ranking people had to make do with a still. Seriously, 4 years after the fall of the colonies and Cottle still has enough cigarettes to still be chain smoking. lol

On the serious side, Battlestars being spaceships, I would imagine that there would be substantial space devoted to life support (air scrubbers/recycling). It was also noted in that episode "Water", that Galactica has the ability to recycle water unlike the other ships in the fleet. That means they're recycling all that piss and shit.

It was also shown that Galactica has its own ammunition fabrication facilities. They're actually manufacturing the rounds for the guns on their vipers.

Also, Galactica has four large sublight engines. I would theorize that substantial substantial space is provided for tylium storage and the infrastructure for those engines.

With all that said, Galactica should still be able to accomodate more people than has been shown.

[rider]

I'm just wondering, why are the large corridors necessary...

And, why build corridors just big enough for your not-so-friendly neighbourhood Cylon to perfectly fit into them?

[clonetrooper]

I'm just wondering, why are the large corridors necessary...

And, why build corridors just big enough for your not-so-friendly neighbourhood Cylon to perfectly fit into them?

hehe

[rider]

Seriously, building really small exit/entry holes would be a big bonus - Cylons would have to duck or do something similar while Colonials could just fire away at them for the time. And lowering the height of the coridors might force the Cylons to walk not upright but slightly bowed...

[Alfonzo]

I'm just wondering, why are the large corridors necessary...

And, why build corridors just big enough for your not-so-friendly neighbourhood Cylon to perfectly fit into them?
I'm guessing it had to do with the requirements of the life support systems, and the antiquated technology. Which is why the Pegasus had smaller corridors.

[andhol]

I wonder how the corridors on the Kitty Hawk compare to those on Galactica. The corridors in the battlestar struck me as being something of a waste of space.

To answer your question,
The passageways (p-ways) on a carrier vary greatly. On the 2nd deck (just below the hangar bays) the two main p-ways, one port and one starboard, are fairly wide, maybe 8ft or greater, to accommodate machinery and ordnance loading. As you get into the 01 level and up, (where electronics spaces, CIC, and ships self defenses are located) most of the passageways are narrow, sometimes you would have to move to the side to let someone pass if they were carrying something. I was also on a guided missile cruiser and it was similar, but the p-ways were even narrower.
To get a good idea on what naval vessel interiors are like, visit a ship museum such as the USS Yorktown in Charleston, SC or the USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC. I was very surprised to see how little the interior of USN ships had changed since WWII, compared the the 2 ships I was stationed on.

[rider]

Can anyone please tell me why does life-support necessarily mean large corridors? That's a part I can't understand. :P

[eps200]

So if the system craps outyou have enugh air to get it fixed also air circulation and pressure

[Angarsk]

I don't think the "life-support technology" theory would work, if anything, with older tech you would need smaller life-supporting spaces, which means less air to circulate, less space to keep pressurized, etc.
Anyway, I guess we all know the main reason for the corridors: Visuals; they look great on T.V. But is far more interesting making sense of it.
Maybe we only see the main corridors as andhol described, and the smaller ones never had much action in them (only near the end when chief Tyrol gets in a very narrow passage to disable FTL)...

[joshwall]

It seems to be a common thing in space dramas for large ships (1km plus) having crew complements of a modern day ship a quarter or it's size. I think it's become a sort of fasion for them, for instance in star ttrek ships around 500+ m long would have a crew of 300, it's just silly. I suppose the excuse is (in a show like that) that theres no need for so many people. But, in BSG we're shown a very realistic picture, so that would require everything from cooks to engineers to soldiers.

Though i stand by my previou statement that it's probably due to it being decomissioned that it has such a small crew.

I suppose the only way to truely answer this is ask Ron or wait for them to publish the show bible (please do!) :D

[rider]

Actually, I don't think we've ever seen a cook on BSG.

[Sparrow]

It seems to be a common thing in space dramas for large ships (1km plus) having crew complements of a modern day ship a quarter or it's size. I think it's become a sort of fasion for them, for instance in star ttrek ships around 500+ m long would have a crew of 300, it's just silly. I suppose the excuse is (in a show like that) that theres no need for so many people. But, in BSG we're shown a very realistic picture, so that would require everything from cooks to engineers to soldiers.

IT depends.. Russian submarines use much smaller crews than american ones due to heavy automation.. the summit was the Alpha (Lyra) class wich used 29 people, compare that to a 120crew of a LA class.. in Babylon 5 they had vessels up to 2.000m long , 1100m for the Hyperion class, 1700 for the Omega and 2000 for the Warlocks, and their crews were 250 - 350 and 350 respectivily (Omegas could carry up to 1000 depending on mission), they as with Star Trek are heavy automated ships , i dont thing is unrealistic.

In the other side of the coin we have Star Wars where 1.600m Imperator class destroyers (our beloved wedge shaped white beasts) acording to official sources state that they carry 32.000 crew plus 7000 troops.. meaning almost 40.000 people on a 1.600m long ship.

That is so ridicolous in SW universe (where not only whips are heabily automated and so, but they have sentiend droids able to even crew entire ships by themselves) that i thing thats the wet tought of some geek many years ago and that nobody else tried to fix it.. more recently one source (one X-Wing Alliance mission somewhere) stated a crew complement of 6.000 total including standard troops, that makes much more sense and its the number i like to adopt, its even quite near Galactica , considering that they carry probably 1000 or more troops.

Some SW sources are so uterly ridicolous that once they even went so far to say that one typical separatist cruiser carried a crew of 1 million droids..

yes i didnt made a typo.. 1 million, but we never saw them in more numbers than humans.. probably even they would need less since droids dont eat or sleep or use spare time

[joshwall]

Didn't they pack those little droids in little suit cases though? and they're not exactly fat so they don't take up that much space anyways.

really i wouldn't find it hard to see that they'd have 1,000,000 droids on one f their ships, though it depends on the ship, are you talking about the droid control ships seen in Phantom? or the cruiser seen in episode three?

ANYWAY

back to BSG bitches.

Frakin' sci-fi competition

[Sparrow]

really i wouldn't find it hard to see that they'd have 1,000,000 droids on one f their ships, though it depends on the ship, are you talking about the droid control ships seen in Phantom? or the cruiser seen in episode three?

It was Grievous flagship, the invisible hand, acording to the visual guide if my memory doesnt fail me.


It may be phisically possible but i find it pointless, in the biggest ground battle seen (Geonosis , ep2) Lucas stated that there were down there 5.000 clones vs about 25.000 droids (1 vs 5), imagine just one cruiser carryng 40 times that..
curiously the wiki of SW reduces the number to "just" 150.000

[Alfonzo]

Can anyone please tell me why does life-support necessarily mean large corridors? That's a part I can't understand. :P
My best guess would be that the life-support systems require a large surface area to work - thus bigger corridors and roomier control centres. Possibly because the CO2 scrubbers were bigger, or less efficient? They needed to come into contact with more air at a time (agrees with the area idea). As the technology got better, so did the CO2 scrubbers, so they could... scrub... air quicker, so they needed to sample less air at a time, and could thus be smaller, thus requiring a smaller surface area.

[Angarsk]

It was Grievous flagship, the invisible hand, acording to the visual guide if my memory doesnt fail me.


It may be phisically possible but i find it pointless, in the biggest ground battle seen (Geonosis , ep2) Lucas stated that there were down there 5.000 clones vs about 25.000 droids (1 vs 5), imagine just one cruiser carryng 40 times that..
curiously the wiki of SW reduces the number to "just" 150.000

Well... apparently they needed it, (the million droids) because even outnumbering 1 - 5 they still got their back circuits kicked.

[Palpat]

Well... apparently they needed it, (the million droids) because even outnumbering 1 - 5 they still got their back circuits kicked.
Usual "stormtroopers effect" of Lucas' stuffs.

[Angarsk]

Oh, no... with stormtroopers is different, I think their armor was so good that it reflected laser bolts so they bonced everywere killing 3-4 troopers with one shot ;)

[Sparrow]

Now that you mention it, the stormtrooper effect is also aplicable on BSG universe..

In Valley of Darkness only 5 centurions boarded Galactica and they played havoc (tought only 12 people were killed) throught the entire ship and were on the verge of wining the flag (i play too much ok?). In the last battle a fraking army of them boarded an even less protected Battlestar (they had other "good" centurions ok, but i asume most of them were still returning since whe only see one being killed inside Galactica) and they were far less aparently dangerous

[hewkii9]

Galactica had had time to prepare for the Cylons in Daybreak, whereas they were taken completely by surprise in Valley of Darkness.

[turkey]

Galactica's engines are way bigger than a carrier, but she seems to move about as fast as one ;)

30 knots, baby.

[Alfonzo]

Now that you mention it, the stormtrooper effect is also aplicable on BSG universe..

In Valley of Darkness only 5 centurions boarded Galactica and they played havoc (tought only 12 people were killed) throught the entire ship and were on the verge of wining the flag (i play too much ok?). In the last battle a fraking army of them boarded an even less protected Battlestar (they had other "good" centurions ok, but i asume most of them were still returning since whe only see one being killed inside Galactica) and they were far less aparently dangerous

Galactica had had time to prepare for the Cylons in Daybreak, whereas they were taken completely by surprise in Valley of Darkness.

This, and also...

Valley of Darkness was the first time the Galactica crew had fought with these new centurions. By the time Daybreak came, they had had years of fighting with them.

I also don't doubt that they received some training by the friendly centurions and the rebel cylons on how to better kill the centurions they will be expecting to fight.

[Angarsk]

The thing with daybreak is they were out of red shirts, so they didn't know who had tho die...

Turkey: They're in space, I'm sure Galactica moves way faster than that, it's just not apparent because of scale, I was surprised by the speed it picked in daybreak II to crash the colony, It had very little distance to make it's run.

[JDS]

The thing with daybreak is they were out of red shirts, so they didn't know who had tho die...Yes they did. Hello? Red stripers? Why do you think they had RED stripes???

[Angarsk]

Ok.. you got me, I was hoping those didn't count :P

[Sparrow]

T

Turkey: They're in space, I'm sure Galactica moves way faster than that, it's just not apparent because of scale, I was surprised by the speed it picked in daybreak II to crash the colony, It had very little distance to make it's run.

Well... some people doesnt realize the inmense power of aceleration the ships in this show have just because they dont seem or are in space..

Sometime ago i readed a study about the aceleration of the Colonial One (a "shitty" civilian space liner) wich could be calculated by one line of dialog in the mini (wich said how far they were from Caprica in how much time or Galactica or something like that) and the result was that Colonial had to put about 3.000Gs or more to do that at minimun (half the time acelerating half the time braking.. surelly they dont that so it may be even more Gs) and Vipers are capable of same aceleration at least (Lee was due to ride along Colonial Heavy 798 back to Caprica).. Galactica as a military ship surelly if not the same , must be near a civilian ship in terms of aceleration.
So if we take the "low" figure of 3.000Gs even in that distance of less than 1km away from the wall it should pick quite a speed.. still not as much as Pegasus against the other ship..

This G thing also proves that colonial ships have inertial dumpers too.. otherwise people would die as soon as the ship acelerated

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Navigation_in_the_Re-imagined_Series

(doesnt say 3000Gs, but it was 61million mph in a 5hour trip.. i would have to calculate the avergae aceleration again)


Oh.. and you people are right about the difference between Alley of Darkness and Daybreak.. in the first boarding it took them totally by surprise.. the second they were totally aware of what espect and had friendly centurions to aid them in how fight them the most effective way

[Prolescum]

inertial dumpers

My new favourite phrase.

[Mister Oragahn]

As other members have pointed out, a Battlestar is a carrier of its own kind. It is capable of long journeys, needs therefore vast room for storage of anything from fuel to goods.
Plus ammo and ammo production.
I also agree that we saw two Battlestars, but none were in good shape. For one, Pegasus might have lost a good number of Vipers and Bombers which would be located outside of the ship during repairs and maintainance. That and Cain launching daring attacks and probably losing numbers.
Galactica was screwed from day one. She even had one flight bay to use.

It would be interesting to think about how big an USS Nimitz would be if turned into a combat capable and heavily armoured long range space carrier, with the possibility to launch all fighters at once, or nearly all of them, and do all what a Battlestar can do.
The Nimitz would more than likely be three or four times bigger.

Sparrow:

3000 G does not seem to fit with what we see. It makes an acceleration of 29,400 m/². That is, in one second, from dead stop, the ship could cover 29.4 km.
With the gas lever pushed at max, the ship could cover a hundred meters or two during the first second of acceleration, at best.

[rider]

Acceleration can also increase by a geometrical line though, making the ship pass 10 meters during the first third of a second, 100 meters in the second third and perhaps around 300 during the third, I believe.

[thevarrior]

The weird aspects of the structural designs are because it was created for dramatic purposes, not for technical accuracy. Having big corridors looks cooler than small cramped ones.

[Sparrow]

3000 G does not seem to fit with what we see. It makes an acceleration of 29,400 m/². That is, in one second, from dead stop, the ship could cover 29.4 km.
With the gas lever pushed at max, the ship could cover a hundred meters or two during the first second of acceleration, at best.

It doesnt fit... but the numbers are:

Galactica was at least 335.5 million miles away from Caprica, and the travell took 5.5hours.. the average speed is 61 million mph.. now you have that to achieve that average speed in 5.5 hours you know the minimun average aceleration required wich would be half travel to acelerate (and same half to brake)..

[Apone 1337]

giving the galactica hundreds of vipers would deminish the apparent struggle of the pilots vs the cylons, "oh we lost a nugget", "never mind we got hundreds more"

Also giving the galactica such a big air wing would have probably meant loads of cash spent on additional extras as pilots and we would have spent less time getting to know our regular extras, like Kat and Hotdog

I also agree with all the other guys galactica has to be hugh to cope with sublights, FTLs etc and dont forget as she was about to be decommissioned she probably didnt have a full ships compliment.

Also in the miniseries we see a lot of the newer mark 7 vipers getting wasted when the cylons use the CNP program to disable the networks many of the new vipers are simply wiped out, scratch 40 or so pilots n kites.

[Sparrow]

giving the galactica hundreds of vipers would deminish the apparent struggle of the pilots vs the cylons, "oh we lost a nugget", "never mind we got hundreds more" .. Also giving the galactica such a big air wing would have probably meant loads of cash spent on additional extras as pilots and we would have spent less time getting to know our regular extras, like Kat and Hotdog


Galactica was about to be decommissioned, she had only one squad of mk.7s aboard.. wich was destroyed in the opening attack, aboard remained only a few mk.7s (probably about 10) , some of them down to maintenance or defective.. and for some weird reason (*) about 40 Viper mk2.. it makes sense and its part of the history.. same as why they noly had one pod working ..i dont think it was due to economic reasons.. after all.. in season 3/4 Galactica absorbs Pegasus air wing and the number of Vipers goes up to 80-100, plus about 20 or more Raptors.. they will not expend mroe money with more fighters.. they dont need more extras.. we kept seeing the same pilots over and over again..


I also agree with all the other guys galactica has to be hugh to cope with sublights, FTLs etc and dont forget as she was about to be decommissioned she probably didnt have a full ships compliment.
.

Galactica is stated to be half-crewed in the initial attack.. and remained that way until she absorbed Pegasus crew, support ships.. shuttles she surelly had about 3 or 4 mk.2 shuttles (to Ferry crew and supplies) , plus about 5-9 Raptors and the stated Vipers.. as she was to be retired..