<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>You're
assuming that power's the main thing. What if it is the equipment that generates the jump-point? If that can't be reduced in size for one reason or another (the field it generates needs to be of a given size as far as anyone knows, or reducing component size would require some esoteric breakthrough in materials science) then the size of the jump-point generator determines the size of the ship that carries it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Well the engine itself can't be very large considering the size of quarters, hallways and the general thin shape of the whitestar. Seem's really tight enough as it is, with the hanger, weapons, bridge etc. The problem was always power generation I thought, that jump points require HUGE amounts of power. As explained by G'kar that the ship is out of commincation for a short time because of this when the Shadow ship blew up a Narn ship.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>As for sharing technologies - the Minbari are, by common agreement, the oldest and most advanced spacefaring people among the Younger Races. What are the odds that anyone else is going to have technology that exceeds theirs? This isn't to say that a Drazi scientist trained in Minbari technology can't advance it, just the the odds of his doing so are no greater because he's Drazi than those of a Minbari. He'd merely be one more guy using Minbari tools to advance what amounted to Minbari technology, in much the same way that many Third World scientists and physicians are currently advancing the state of the art in their fields - by using the largely Western scientific method.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Oldest and generally the most advanced doesn't mean they're superior in all aspects though. For example the abbai have more advanced shielding technology than the Minbari. Just like the Vree having a more efficient power source than the Minbari. Even the EA beat the Minbari in design, with the starfury.
Well EA did VERY well by converting Minbari technology for their own use, hell they managed to do it with a race a BILLION years more advanced than them to create the hybrid. Obviously it isn't 'that' difficult to convert technologies. I mean look at Narn/Centauri weaponary being intergrated into EA use. Now every ship has their weapons.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>But simply pooling the relative ignorance of the other races is unlikely to produce anything the Minbari don't already have, anymore than gathering tribal medicine men from many aboriginal cultures, with no knowledge of internal anatomy, is likely to do any good for a man with a ruptured appendix. If you train them all in modern medicine - well, they're not tribal medicine men, anymore are they? They are indistinguishable from any other modern physician.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Abbai have force fields, Pak'Ma'Ra have plasma shielding, Vree have anti-matter weapons (thus an anti-matter power source), EA have better designs, EA have cloak and there's probably a lot more. These things exceed the Minbari in those aspects. They can add these technologies to the Minbari, since EA have shown relative ease in converting technologies for their use, the more advanced Minbari should have an easier time of it. With the help of the Vorlons they made the whitestar pretty quickly, so with the help of the other races, why can't they intergrate the new technoligies to their own?
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>And if the Minbari depend on fusion reactors you can be certain that the Vree either don't
have matter/anti-matter engines or that the Minbari had good reason for rejecting the technology. (Again, the assertion about the Vree strikes me as a bit of fan-fun, not something ever stated on the show.)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Minbari fusion reactors were stated by Ivanova in ref. to the Trigati and the anti-matter weapon source comes from AOG. Stated by JMS to be canonical on a supplment review from JMS given with an AOG book. The Vree's weapon is anti-matter, that amount of anti-matter means they can make mass quantities of anti-matter. If we could do that today we'd use it as a power source but it's to expensive and pointless since we get so little today.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>So I still think that the development time for the "Bluestar" is probably closer to 20 years than to 5.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Generally military technologies today were in the prototype stage a few decades ago, could be built then but were tested thoroughly and the design updated and made cheaper over time.
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'The brighter the light, the darker the shadow... symmetrys a bitch' - Me
'Remember, light travels faster than sound. That's why some people seem bright until they speak.' - Me
Maya runs on either Windows NT/2K, IRIX, or Linux, with the Linux port being relatively new. Maya also eats RAM and CPU cycles like popcorn. (I'd also hope that GVFX would not use the internal Maya renderer, which is terrible. Most Maya shops also employ either RenderMan or Mental Ray as a standalone renderer for their scenes.)
