B5 - Thirdspace

Of course I read everything in the thread,I might not agree with it all though

First we have to realise that any timing devices,nukes themselves and any other technology is from the future and we don't actually know how good or bad it will be.Perhaps perfect timing has been developed or a million other things.You can't say something would or would not of happened based on todays technology.

Heat does travel in space as we all know as we feel it when the sun comes up.It is only space itself that remains cold as there is nothing to heat up.As soon as the radiated heat comes into contact with something however whatever it is that object will become warm.

We see a nuclear blast take out a Minbari cruiser.It was not part of the asteroid that took the ship out but the blast itself so a warship can be taken out by a nuke.

Of course missiles can be shot down.However there is ways of getting them closer to their target as well,using star furies for example.We see Kamakazi attacks on Minbari cruisers,imagine if those ships were kitted out with nukes set to go off after impact.Goodbye Mr.Cruiser.While fighting for the survival of the species then all options would be explored.

Deliberate dirty bombs could make the whole radiation sickness thing come further into play.Most people would hesitate when faced with such a horrible fate.

If nukes were just to be used on ground targets then why was B5 equiped with them?It would never be in a position to use them against ground targets.That leaves me thinking they were for another purpose.That purpose is never explained in the series or films.

Okay, that makes sense now. And the mines used at Corianna 6 were also emplaced on asteroids, I think. Actually having the bomb in contact with the target's hull would clearly be ideal.

Perhaps the mines would operate in this way: they would remain "asleep" until enemy ships moved into their vicinity, and then on a signal from a controller somewhere they would find the nearest hostile ship and close in. So in a sense they were just missiles, but missiles that were undetectable until they were seconds away.

crazyhorse said:

Heat does travel in space as we all know as we feel it when the sun comes up.

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True, but heat (infrared radiation) has no standing mass, is easily shielded against, and is pretty poor at causing rapid motion (needed to break a ship structurally).

We see a nuclear blast take out a Minbari cruiser.It was not part of the asteroid that took the ship out but the blast itself so a warship can be taken out by a nuke.

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If so, I would be inclined to consider it either an inaccuracy of depiction, unlikely to happen if the events were to occur in reality, or the result of the nuclear plasma ball containing tens of tons of instantly vaporized matter, from the asteroid. How many tons of matter a bright fireball includes, would not be discernible for us viewers, but if the nuke was on the surface of the rock, or inside the surface (for concealment) the fireball must contain that.

Radiation with no standing mass, does not easily break your ship. Vaporized former rock as a big ball of plasma hitting your ship, can however break it, especially if it hits from an angle at which your ship is structurally vulnerable to collision.

This plasma contains lots of more protons (the other mass-giving component in ordinary matter besides neutrons, if we disregard electrons because their mass is tiny) than the bomb's own pieces would have contained. Protons have mass to move you, and electrical charge enabling them to "bump" into your ship's atoms.

Damage is enhanced by the fact that behind the plasma ball, is located another solid object (the rock) which means the explosion isn't free to dissipate in every direction. In fact, because the rock is massive, the plasma ball would be coming mostly in the way of the ship.

Deliberate dirty bombs could make the whole radiation sickness thing come further into play.Most people would hesitate when faced with such a horrible fate.

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Dirty bombs would again mainly affect planetary targets. Targets with an ecosystem which accepts incoming matter. Ships must by default be self-contained systems, already proofed against cosmic rays. Residual radiation from radioactive substances on their surface won't probably bother them much.

Now, neutron bombs however (nuclear bombs which convert more of their energy to neutron radiation, which passes through shielding better) might have perspective against armored targets, but nobody's yet learned how to make a nuclear bomb produce /much/ more neutrons. Only a little more.

then why was B5 equiped with them?It would never be in a position to use them against ground targets.That leaves me thinking they were for another purpose.That purpose is never explained in the series or films.

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This may sound far-fetched, but if you equip a space station, you might want to have something onboard in case someone flips an asteroid at your station. If you have early warning, you can then attach a bomb to the incoming rock, and blow it off course.

I agree that the whole ITB scene might not of been scientificly accurate.I don't reckon plasma from the asteroid would be the cause of the Black Stars destruction.Anything from the asteroid would have been pushed away from the ship by the explosion,not towards it as seen.

Of course all ships would have shielding against radiation but how good would it be and how much would be released by a nuke from 200 years in the future?Perhaps Neutron bombs are 10 a penny then.

Would it not be posible to load a nuke with a lump of super dense material in order to use it as a plasma shot?If this could breach a hull the radiation also comes into it again as it would be able to enter the ship.

Just think what radiation could do to the "living ships".Would it make them sick,cause them to mutate or anything else?

The Humans never attacked the Minbari Worlds as far as I knew so any nukes used on plantary targets would have to have been on Earth colonies during this war.I doubt Sherridan would of done that yet it is quite clear that his ship had used nukes or why else ask how many were left?Why do we see nothing of their use in the series or even hear about their use in the series?They are used 3 times that I know of and only once in space combat.

Personaly I believe it just comes down to people liking lasers and rayguns in their Scifi

Just think what radiation could do to the "living ships".Would it make them sick,cause them to mutate or anything else?

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It would depend on how good their genetic material's checksums are.

Our mechanisms for maintaining genetic integrity are pretty weak. The DNA molecules which carry our genes aren't known for big resilience, and the mechanisms for blocking harmful changes there, are mostly an unreliable patchwork.

The "genes" of a designed creature however, could be designed for great redundancy (imagine the same gene encoded several times, and translated only if all copies agree) or heavy error-checking (imagine the SHA1 checksum of each gene appended to it, and a protein which can calculate SHA1 decoding them - okay, that would have to be a bastardly smart protein ) and high stability (imagine a more resilient substance than DNA).

Finally, chances might be rigged insanely high in favour of a cell suiciding, as opposed to replicating damaged genetic material. Remember that Shadow Vessel disintegrating into dust at the end of the battle in "Shadow Dancing"? Perhaps it wasn't requested to go like that... perhaps it detected irrepairable corruption?

And finally, of course, designed biological systems could always ask their designers for advise on fighting a problem. While some of the designers might say "to hell with this remote drone, fly it into something", others, especially those aboard a passenger-carrying vehicle, might tell "all cells, download fresh self-defense algorithm now, and now apply it".

Why do we see nothing of their use in the series or even hear about their use in the series?They are used 3 times that I know of and only once in space combat.

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Probably because younger races in the B5 story were never depicted doing serious bombardment on a "really" inhabited world, excepting Centauri bombardment of Narn (and they were misers, so they let gravity do all the work). Mars, however, was not "really" fully inhabited, and when Earth Force needed to kill scores on Mars, it just broke the domes...

Personaly I believe it just comes down to people liking lasers and rayguns in their Scifi

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Well, ray guns get the goods there ASAP.

But some people depicted in B5, did go heavy on missiles. Where everyone else tentatively used a missile or bomb here and there, certain folks brought enough to blot out the sky. It's just that nobody knew if the warheads were nuclear, or something else. When required, they certainly made a big mess, and perhaps a bigger mess than the theoretical feasibility limits of nuclear weapons would allow.

I always thought the Shadows missiles were some sort of nuke although they could have a more powerful bomb.

I always saw the death cloud as a terror weapon.The manner of the attack and results would scare any other race stupid and make them more amenable to Shadow influence.

What I didn't understand is why they seemed to go for the little guys first.I would of took Minbar out first with the element of surprise on my side.The Alliance then loses it's most powerful ally.Wiping out a planet that could only offer light support first doesn't seem to make sense when you have gone into total war mode.All it would do would be give the other races time to prepare against the attacks which in fact did happen.

crazyhorse said:

What I didn't understand is why they seemed to go for the little guys first.

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Possibly because they weren't in a "total war", at least from their own perspective yet (after all, Vorlons were their enemy, and they weren't going directly at Vorlons) but still sought to convince others of something... even if that information was by that time, well and truly drowned out by the power output of weapons.

I one digs thoroughly at what they'd have possibly sought to convince of... then perhaps they sought to dissuade any cooperation with Vorlons, even involuntary, or any united action, even voluntary, even for sensible and independent reasons. And sure enough, they didn't notice themselves being highly united, voluntarily under the single senseless goal... of preventing others from doing precisely the same.

Meanwhile from the mirror-image viewpoint of Vorlons, deciding independently (even if the decision was quite sane, like self-defense) or having any link to Shadows (even unrequested links) had probably become a flaw to be punished for.

The Vorlons at least went for one of the bigger boys when they went after the Centauri.

I thought that after Sherridan's bombing of Zhahadum that there was in fact total war going on with the Shadows making the first move and the Vorlons joining in soon after.Then again it has been a while since I've seen the series.

I think the vorlons moved first, I think after the death of Ulkesh which makes sense. Kosh's death sent them all icy towards the younger races they were assisting. The death of a second vorlon could have been the intolerable step that pushed them over the edge. Why help the races if they have turned on their "parental" elders?

It seems the Vorlons and Shadows seemed to blame us for the mistakes they made in raising us. To them, we were rejecting (from each of their perspectives) their help in favour of the other side which they believed to be totally wrong. So they wiped out any planet that to their knowledge had been influenced by the other side. Presumably their intention was to start again with any races left and isolate those races from involvement by other races. Of course this was deeply flawed because all the races had been touched by both sides and there would be none left. Even some Minbari factions had become entangled with the Shadows.

Interestingly, Coriana 6 is referred to by sheridan as a Bronze tech world. does this mean Bronze Age as we understand it? If they were not spacefaring, they might not have had any contact with the other races... so was the battle above them going on without their knowledge? Were they in a similar technological position to the Narns circa 1200?

I can't remember who went first now although I'm pretty sure both of them did it in the same episode.

I looked up some stats on the warships in the series and although it was admitted that not everything was canon too many ships were said to have missile silos for me to discount it.I see no reason at all why these missiles could not be fired at targets in space as opposed to just at planetary targets.Do we ever see missiles fired in the series?OK,the Minbari might be safe with their cloaking technology from having a missile lock on but would this be true of EA ships?Were they used in the Civil War?I can't see Clarke being bothered about using them.

Joe was the destruction of the Black Star not in Sol's own asteroid belt?I'm sure I read somewhere that it was so,I'll try and find the info again so you can tell me if it is genuine.

Found it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Star_(Babylon_5)

During the course of the Earth-Minbari war,on September 30th 2245 the Black Star entered the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Captain John Sheridan tried to halt the ship's advance, but nothing worked. Finally he decided to mine the asteroid belt with nuclear weapons, and used a fake distress signal to lure the ship into the belt as it was standard Minbari doctrine to ignore all surrender pleas and destroy all Earth war vessels without mercy, regardless of any fighting ability (or lack thereof) the Earth vessels may have had. Sheridan detonated his bombs, which destroyed the war cruiser.

That's the relevant text.Wiki is normaly quite good with this sort of stuff or at least gives warning if something is in dispute.

The Wiki article is based on Sheridan's S2 description of his destruction of the Black Star. This is contradicted by what we see on-screen in In the Beginning. (The battle does not take place in the Sol system, for starters, since the Minbari don't reach the Human's home base until the very end of the war. And our asteroid belt looks what is shown.)

Regards,

Joe

If you want your stuff to be read it would help if you tried to make it readable. Solid blocks of unbroken text aren't. I don't know if this is an affectation, poor typing skills or what, but buy a f*****g spacebar already!

OK, I feel better. Nit-pick and rant over. We now join your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.

Heat does travel in space as we all know as we feel it when the sun comes up. It is only space itself that remains cold as there is nothing to heat up.

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Yes, infrared radiation does travel through space. Next question - how much of its mass will a nuclear bomb in a vacuum convert to infrared radiation? Not as much as you'd think. Most of the heat affect from a nuclear blast on Earth, once again, is due to the effect of the explosion on the medium in which it occurs. Air molecules absorb energy from the blast, rapidly slowing high energy particles like x-rays down and converting them to things like infrared. The kinetic energy of the bomb is also readily converted to heat in an atmosphere and in the objects - buildings, cars, people - that it vaporizes. Neither of these effects is a factor in a nuclear explosion in vacuum.

We see a nuclear blast take out a Minbari cruiser. It was not part of the asteroid that took the ship out but the blast itself so a warship can be taken out by a nuke.

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Answered above. We see a sphere of superheated plamsa, most of which used to be the asteroids, take out the Minbari cruiser. And it takes two such hits at close range to do it.

Of course missiles can be shot down. However there is ways of getting them closer to their target as well, using star furies for example. We see Kamakazi attacks on Minbari cruisers.

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Well, we see Sinclair attempt such a thing, admittedly without the nuke. But we also see him fail. The Minbari decide to spare him so they can capture and interrogate him, but if they can get a tractor beam on a StarFury on full after burners they can certainly hit one with a anti-ship missle or a beam weapon. I doubt the tactic would work very well, if at all.

Deliberate dirty bombs could make the whole radiation sickness thing come further into play. Most people would hesitate when faced with such a horrible fate.

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The living and working areas of deep space craft would have to be so heavily shielded against the ordinary radiation of the space environment (not to mention their own drives and whatever the background radiation level in hyperspace is) that a nuke going off in the area would hardly be noticed.

If nukes were just to be used on ground targets then why was B5 equiped with them? It would never be in a position to use them against ground targets. That leaves me thinking they were for another purpose. That purpose is never explained in the series or films.

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Lots of things are never explained in the series or films. Lots of things are never explained in real life, either. So what? The nukes could have been for self destruction. They also could have been part of a resupply inventory for EarthForce ships. Among its many other functions B5 would have been designed to serve as a base for EF vessels in time of war and would have been equipped to supply them with necessities, possibly including nukes.

Regards,

Joe

crazyhorse said:

Do we ever see missiles fired in the series?

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The Earth planetary defense system fired missiles at the fleet directed by Sheridan. Earth Starfuries fired them at Mars domes. If I remember right, Raiders bombarded some colony with them. Also if memory serves, a fleet of Drazi & some others fired missiles at the Centauri homeworld, along with energy weapons. Finally, the Drakh fleet tried to fire them at Earth.

But effectiveness of missiles in the B5 world seems poor.

The only party which effectively used missiles against armed ships... was Shadows, and they could have probably taken those ships apart using a number of ways.

When some Drakh later tried to recreate the Shadow weapon, they did something wrong, and apparently created something different. It had rigid structure and a central point of vulnerability, and it didn't work as advertised.

I just knew I couldn't be right

I couldn't remember if they even said where it was in the film.What would stop a Minbari warcruiser raiding within the Solar System?One of the things I've always thought about space warfare is that any target could be hit anytime.Who cares how many ships you bypass,just jump out of hyperspace near your target and start shooting.Of course you would probably get sensors that could warn of approaching ships making any direct assault on a defended position.Pre warned with time enough to call in reinforcements,a relief fleet coming up from behind what not be a pleasant thought for any military commander.A raider hiding out the way without a fixed target in mind should be able to hide easy enough though.

crazyhorse said:

Who cares how many ships you bypass,just jump out of hyperspace near your target and start shooting.Of course you would probably get sensors that could warn of approaching ships making any direct assault on a defended position.

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A lot of Hyperspace routes are probably bugged.

Younger races don't have ability to freely circumnavigate things in hyperspace. Seemingly because they lack a clue about something vital. Taking an off-beacon route somwhere is probably a tedious sequence of making errors and retrying for them.

Even warships with jump engines, which don't depend on jump gates, still seem to depend in some manner (at least for timely arrival) on the beacon network between jump gates.

Except possibly explorer ships. Those are probably hyperspace beacons in and of themselves, and equipped with a ample supply of positioning aids to spread on their return path. However precisely they do it, when their systems are OK, they somehow telescope out from an existing beacon, probably to try finding the hyperspace position of a given normal space landmark, to build a gate and install a permanent beacon there.

However, even the crew of the explorer ship Cortez which was depicted visiting B5, was pretty damn worried about sliding off beacon with damage in their systems.

Warships can probably go further off beacon than civilian ships, and also further than tiny autonomous spy probes, but if you plant spy probes on often used hyperspace pathways, you often seem to get early warning.

Mentions of hyperspace bugging:

When Lorien is traveling from Z'ha'dum to Babylon 5, I seem to recall the Brakiri representative (ambassador?) providing advance warning of having detected an approaching unknown ship.

Lorien could have probably chosen to go directly, not using a path beaten by younger races, but it chose like that. And for some reason, there seemed to be a "highway" at least temporarily used by Shadow vessels where Cortez got lost. Whether they flew there just because it was the "straightest" way between two Shadow installations, or because they used a beacon network of their own, is uncertain.

Also, when IPX people discuss in "Thirdspace" what the artifact might do, they mention that it might provide instant jumps to any location, thus making a valuable weapon capable of bypassing early warning systems.

What would stop a Minbari warcruiser raiding within the Solar System?

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The Minbari's own strategy. ItB clear suggests that they were systematically attacking Earth military and other strategic posts starting with those closest to Minbari and gradually working their way towards the Sol system. There's no indication that they ever leapfrogged into the Sol system itself for a raid and then left. (And since you can by-pass things, why stop to engage a small force in the asteroid belt rather than jumping to Mars to Earth itself with a larger force and ending the war. The problem with the "raid" theory is that the Minbari never got anywhere near the primary target, if the was really the Sol system they were in.)

Also the conversation aboard Sheridan's ship, about a ace cruiser "out here" and the fact that the patrol is seeking to make contact with the enemy suggest an effort to engage and defeat the Minbari far out in space. If they were looking for a Minbari task force raiding Earth's own system I think those scenes would have played with a much greater sense of urgency than the, "Well, they don't seem to be here, let's move to the next search grid" attitude they start with.)

Regards,

Joe

Sinclair failed in his attempt to ram a Minbari but you do see another starfury ram one of the fins of a Minbari cruiser in ITB.We even see a cruiser ram a Sharlin although I believe that cruiser was one of the 5 that shouldn't of been seen in ITB as they were supposedly comissioned later?

Probably wrong again

For plasma to have caused the damage the nuke would of had to have been on the other side of the asteroid than the ship otherwise the plasma would be blown in the wrong direction.It appeared that the mines were facing the ship as I watched the film.

In addition a shockwave is seen going in all directions or not?This would not be the asteroid unless the nuke was buried in it and we see it clearly on the surface.Scientificly accurate or not is this what we see against the shadow ships in the final confrontation as well.Probably just for dramatic effect like sound in space but there just the same.

I reckon this space thing must be an american thing

Seriously you don't see it on british boards a lot.I only started doing it here because somebody else complained.
This is how a new paragraph should be done

I wonder how you manage to read books or even Wiki online as they don't have spaces after virtually every sentance

Funny thing is,I've got an eye sickness and I can read block text no problem.I'll try and remember to do it more for you then :beer:

I thought all ships had to have a fix on a jump gate,that's why when the Explorer craft goes of course it had to be found quickly to save it.Can't remember the name of the episode but it was where the Shadows were seen in hyperspace for the first time.

crazyhorse said:

For plasma to have caused the damage the nuke would of had to have been on the other side of the asteroid than the ship otherwise the plasma would be blown in the wrong direction.

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Now ASCII art isn't exactly the way to do drawings, but that's how I thought it occurred...

Before:
(ship) ....................((bomb)asteroid)

At this point, the bomb is either on the surface of the asteroid, or slightly embedded in the surface of the asteroid (like covered by loose rock material).

After:
(ship) <----(explosion plasma)-> ((crater)asteroid)

At this point, the explosion has occurred. Since the asteroid is probably quite heavy, it most probably still where it stood. Most likely, a crater has formed on its side facing the ship. Rock which used to be there, has been turned into plasma. The plasma ball expands. Since it can't expand into the asteroid (the damn thing is just too heavy to move aside) it must expand elsewhere, so the asteroid is causing an increase in the amount of plasma expanding towards the ship.

Sorry for the awful ASCII art, I never was good at it.

I thought all ships had to have a fix on a jump gate

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I think the gates and beacons are separate, actually. A beacon would be like an address plate on a house, while the gate would be like a door.

A warship is equipped to pay a visit without having anyone open a door for it. An explorer ship is equipped to drop in without knowing the correct address. An ordinary passenger or merchant ship needs to know the address, and have someone open the door for them.

Now, this reminds me of one possible way Earth Force could have tried defending Earth against Minbari advance. Namely, they could have destroyed part or whole of the beacon network in space surrounding Earth's solar system.

That if anything would have slowed down Minbari advance, but... if Minbari warships would have possessed really high-quality inertial navigation, they might have still been able to plop out of hyperspace pretty close to necessary places. And they could have thrown their own explorer ships into the mix to aid navigation in murky conditions.

Of course, if Earth government would have destroyed the local portion of the beacon network, it would have been pretty much trapped too, uncapable of conducting a serious evacuation, or interstellar trade with anyone who sold useful weapons. Cutting off an exit route in hope of cutting off an entry route might have been perceived as too risky. Even during the Shadow war, jump gates and related beacons don't seem to have been attacked much.