Could a battlestar ever be built?

[daniel l.]

I love the series! Do you think humanity could build a ship like that by 2100?

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

I love the series! Do you think humanity could build a ship like that by 2100?

Depends. Could we build a spacecraft that looked like that? Sure, I suppose. Would it have the same capabilities? Probably not. 

[Spaceception]

16 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

I love the series! Do you think humanity could build a ship like that by 2100?

I'd love to, but I hope it won't have weapons.

[benzman]

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

 

[daniel l.]

Just now, Spaceception said:

I'd love to, but I hope it won't have weapons.

It will probably need them, Afterall we totally arent creating smart AI right now.  

1 minute ago, benzman said:

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

 

Its just too addictive i think, And even if we do... What if all that AI?....

[Nuke]

well a battlestar is essentially a carrier in space. though i find some of its design choices questionable. those big retractable pods could probibly be replaced with fixed pods and save tons on actuators and rail systems and the like. i suppose its nice to be able to decelerate your fighters while under cover provided by the bays, but i dont see why the whole thing needs to move. it would be easier to just stick a large hatch on the pods, collect your birds, and close the hatch. i also dont get why you need so many, galactica's 2 and pegasus's 4. you could probibly take it down to 1 large bay with redundant hatches.then you have a whole other system for launching fighters. why not just fly out the bays?

then why even go with a carrier? if you are gonna carry fighters, why not missiles instead? you can immediately ditch a third to half of ship's the bulk. you might still meed a raptor bay and a few vipers for recon and the like but not severa; squadrons. instead you have a bunch of missile tubes. or instead of tubes just a side hatch, eject your missiles and let them drift away from the ship before igniting the rockets and avoid altering the ships trajectory by firing ordinance. pegasus had those big railguns or whatever, and those could stay part of the design i suppose. i would make the projectiles semi-guided so they could apply some course corrections en route to the target. you impart all the kinetic energy from the launcher and use some lateral rcs thrusters to tweak the trajectory a little as a counter to evasive manuvers. the flak turrets would probibly be rather brutal for close in combat, even saturating a target's space with shrapnel would be rather devastating.

while were taking away their unobtanium jump drives and their seemingly inexaustable fuel (and booze) supply. you take away from the bulkiness of the structure and replace it with tankage (3/4 fuel, 1/4 booze), you are left with a rather thin skinned but well armed tank of explosive stuff that is going to spend most of its time getting shot at by cylons. they did do one thing right by putting the c&c down in the bowels of the ship instead of sticking it on top of everything like they do in star trek. even star wars had big exposed bridges on the massive capital ships with huge windows that you can crash an xwing into. so brownie points for that.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Nuke

[daniel l.]

3 minutes ago, Nuke said:

even star wars had big exposed brides on the massive capital ships with huge windows that you can crash an xwing into.

Why does the bride have windows?  I can tell that engagement wont work out!

 

In all seriousness you do have a point, Though the idea of a battlestar was to fight a robotic foe that can disrupt even the most basic of networked systems or autopilots, If you watch the episode here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz8uqh_s1e10-bsg-the-hand-of-god_lifestyle You will notice that the cylons can jam guided missiles. Making fighters and dumbfire kinetics necessary.

[Nuke]

please thats the only spelling error you could find? that post is full of them.

i suppose fighters work for their universe to a degree given the ai enemy. the whole ship was build low tech for that very purpose. if you really wanted to throw a monkey wrench in their plans, you would make the missile guidance analog.

Edited March 1, 2016 by Nuke

[daniel l.]

2 minutes ago, Nuke said:

please thats the only spelling error you could find? that post is full of them.

I was joking, It was so funny, Think about it, Picture a bride with windows, Being rammed by an X-wing.

 

But yeah. A battlestar is essentially a WW2 warship.

Edited March 1, 2016 by daniel l.

[Nuke]

lol

[Findthepin1]

On 1 March, 2016 at 6:11 PM, benzman said:

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

 

That is part of what makes us human. We can't take that away.

[Matuchkin]

On 3/1/2016 at 6:11 PM, benzman said:

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

 

Some people really do sound naive. War and armament production is not caused by childish fascination, or by any other such things. It is caused by pure necessity, to supply the numerous ongoing conflicts that we cannot leave from or escape.

[Bill Phil]

On March 1, 2016 at 5:11 PM, benzman said:

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

 

It's not childish. It emerged from skirmishes that occurred back in our tribal days, when we raided other tribes to get what was needed. 

The real problem is that war is a political tool. But that's politics...

[fredinno]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

It's not childish. It emerged from skirmishes that occurred back in our tribal days, when we raided other tribes to get what was needed. 

The real problem is that war is a political tool. But that's politics...

I'd say warfare is partially genetic.

[Nuke]

war exists because it increases the rate of entropy in the universe.

[kurja]

On 1.3.2016 at 1:51 AM, daniel l. said:

I was joking, It was so funny, Think about it, Picture a bride with windows, Being rammed by an X-wing.

And besides... It was an A wing

[cicatrix]

From an engineering standpoint I suppose we could build one (but then there must be some materials with fantastic values of yield and ultimate strength).

The bigger that thing - the bigger the load during maneuvers - the bulkier that thing needs be - the heavier and then again - tons of dead weight (dead = useless, pun intended). And the purposes is to carry relatively small fighters (and the crew of course). The crew needs radiation protection, oxygen, water, food, some free space and a TV screen, of course. Robots, from the other hand doesn't require all that. Carry a sea container of small disposable (kamikaze if necessary) drones with AI's and you get a fighting force relatively cheap and probably much more deadly. So, for the practical purposes - this thing has zero usefulness. If I had participated in space combat I could only dream of fighting against the enemy who builds such things. They're sooo expensive and so vulnerable that there would be a chance to bankrupt him sooner than I defeat him in battle.

 

Edited March 4, 2016 by cicatrix

[daniel l.]

19 minutes ago, cicatrix said:

From an engineering standpoint I suppose we could build one (but then there must be some materials with fantastic values of yield and ultimate strength).

The bigger that thing - the bigger the load during maneuvers - the bulkier that thing needs be - the heavier and then again - tons of dead weight (dead = useless, pun intended). And the purposes is to carry relatively small fighters (and the crew of course). The crew needs radiation protection, oxygen, water, food, some free space and a TV screen, of course. Robots, from the other hand doesn't require all that. Carry a sea container of small disposable (kamikaze if necessary) drones with AI's and you get a fighting force relatively cheap and probably much more deadly. So, for the practical purposes - this thing has zero usefulness. If I had participated in space combat I could only dream of fighting against the enemy who builds such things. They're sooo expensive and so vulnerable that there would be a chance to bankrupt him sooner than I defeat him in battle.

 

But then again you cant use robots on a battlestar, Its robots you are fighting in the first place and they could easily disrupt the ones you might attempt to use.

[Scotius]

I could never understand Colonials attitude towards computer tech. They are fighting an enemy that is more advanced at cybernetic warfare, ok. So, instead of beginning their own intensive R&D program to close the gap and equalise the battlefield, Colonials effectively crippled themselves? On Earth it would be like this: enemy uses cannons to destroy our fortifications. So, instead of switching to artillery and warfare based on maneuver ourselves - we would start building more and more massive fortifications. Mountain - sized castles with walls several meters thick. There might be a tactical advantage to such approach - but voluntarily giving the enemy free reign of the rest of the territory, never ended well for the defenders.

[Nuke]

if you watched the series you know that the newer battlestars were all being upgraded on the electronics front. galactica on the other hand was an old skool ship with an old skool commander, and thats why it was spared. also it didnt have #6 clones infiltrating every nook and crannie of their systems. i think the cylon's victories against the colonies were mostly successful because espionage level soviet.

[DerekL1963]

40 minutes ago, Nuke said:

i think the cylon's victories against the colonies were mostly successful because espionage level soviet.

The Cylon victories against the colonies were mostly successful because the plot required it.   Too successful, and there'd be no hope and no show.  Not successful enough, and there wouldn't anything worthy of a show for different reasons.   They had to be just successful enough for the desired plot to arise.

[daniel l.]

7 hours ago, Scotius said:

They are fighting an enemy that is more advanced at cybernetic warfare, ok. So, instead of beginning their own intensive R&D program to close the gap and equalise the battlefield, Colonials effectively crippled themselves?

They did so because the Cylons could easily disrupt advanced technology, Any connected computer network can be hacked and shutdown or exploited to do harm, IRL such a situation the internet would be shutdown. And reverting to weaker tech makes you impossible to hack.

[StrandedonEarth]

Of course a BattleStar could be built with today's tech, FTL notwithstanding. (note that the original 1978 version did not have FTL and topped out at 0.5c IIRC). As long as sufficient engineering manpower and funds are put into it, it's doable 

I find it amusing how the 1978 version exclusively used lasers, even for sidearms (that's the Star Wars influence for you), while the 2003 version went for more realism in the weaponry, using bullets, missiles, and nukes. (Edit: oh yeah, can't forget the flak-cannon defence umbrella) Now, IRL, we have US Navy ships getting fitted with laser systems for defence. 

As for the flight pods, it makes perfect sense to have more than one for redundancy, just in case one is out of commission because of, for example, getting hit by a nuke. I agree that having them retractable is a bit excessive. Note that the 1978 version had fixed flight pods. And yes, in the 2003 version, having obsolete computers is what saved the Galactica and its old-model, museum-piece Vipers from being hacked by the Cylons and disabled. 

Edited March 4, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[SargeRho]

Also note that, while the Galactica class Battlestars have retractable flight pods, the Mercury and Valkyrie type Battlestars have fixed pods.

The reason for the Galactica's retractable pods is that the older jump drives wouldn't allow her to jump safely with extended pods. That issue was solved with newer FTL drives. During the assault on New Caprica, Galactica used one of its FTL drives to jump into NC's atmosphere to launch vipers, and then jumped back out using her second FTL drive, with retracted flight pods, and remained relatively unharmed. But in the final episode, she jumped with extended pods, and was severely damaged, not just because of having been under heavy fire previously.
 

Edited March 5, 2016 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

On 3/1/2016 at 3:54 PM, daniel l. said:

I love the series! Do you think humanity could build a ship like that by 2100?

You'd need artificial gravity, otherwise the crew spaces would have to be designed in a fundamentally different way. Making a Battlestar design impractical.

 

On 3/1/2016 at 4:11 PM, benzman said:

Probably, but I sincerely hope not.  A forlorn hope, I suspect.  My most fervent wish is that humans will evolve past this childish fascination with war and weapons.

You don't have the right to call that "evolution". From a natural standpoint, the evolution of weapons is a good thing--natural weaponry helps a critter survive. From a civilized standpoint, the reason the innocent need weapons is because the guilty have them and will never get rid of them. So it's not your call. Evolution itself disagrees with you.

For whatever it's worth, there won't be any serious militarization of space for quite some time. One nation (probably the United States) is almost certainly going to beat everybody else to flying manned interplanetary missions by a wide margin. When no other nation has a presence in space, there's no reason for your ships to bother with weapons because there won't be anybody shooting at you.

If/when other nations become capable of manned interplanetary missions, it would still be much simpler, more damaging, and less expensive for them to fight each other ON EARTH. The battlefields of the future will not be in outer space, they'll be right here at home.