Need help on B5 station size

[Za_Ha_Dum]

Hi everybody,

I am having a discussing about which size is the B5 station. In the second season it is said that is "5 miles long". Now the hard question:

I have to convert MILES into KILOMETERS in order to understand B5 size. However, which MILES it is refering of. Is it Nautical Miles, or Terrestrial Miles?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Sindatur]

Good question, I always figured it was terrestrial miles, which is 8.05 Kilometers

 

[Za_Ha_Dum]

Good question, I always figured it was terrestrial miles, which is 8.05 Kilometers

Well, that´s the problem.

Where are you from?

In a technical point of view I assume we should consider Nautical Miles since that is the standard for the aeronautical industry. Am I right?

 

[Sindatur]

California, in the US.

And the reason I always just assumed Terrestrial miles, is, that until you asked the question, I was ignorant of the fact that a Nautical Mile was any different. Having become aware of that, it occurred to me you had a very good question, since the Navy (and Airforce?), would most likely use Nautical Miles

 

[A_M_Swallow]

An international nautical mile is 1852 metres.

So 5 nautical miles is 9.260 km.

The nautical mile is 15% longer than a Britsh (land) mile.

 

[Za_Ha_Dum]

Sindatur,

A.M.Swallow gave the technical answer.

Army, Navy, Air Force, Airlines, NASA, and Ships, as long as I know all use Nautical Miles. I know that because I wanted to be a pilot and I took courses. However i do not remember why exist two different miles measures, and who uses Land Miles.

 

[A_M_Swallow]

British car drivers use land miles, so do our mapmakers and the people who paint road signs. The word land is not normally used.

Basically the land mile assumes that the earth is flat. A simplification that works if you are only driving a few miles. It does not work if you are flying or sailing half way round the world. I half remember that a nautical mile exactly divides into the circumference of the world making calculations of latitude at sea easier.

 

[PillowRock]

and who uses Land Miles.

In the US, *everyone* for *everything*, except ship or aircraft navigation and speeds. And when they are specifying speeds in those contexts the tendancy is to use the word "knots" instead of "miles per hour", in order to avoid confusion.

In fact, in the US people will tend to assume that you mean statute miles any time you don't specify "nautical miles".


In a show written and produced by Americans, primarily (though not entirely) for the US market, I would expect the unmodified word "miles" to mean "statute miles", especially if it is not used in the context of navigation.



As for why two different measures exist:

Here is a web page with an explantion of where the statute mile came from (mile being based upon the distance of 1000, mille in Latin, paces of a marching Roman legion).

And here is a quote from my Multilingual Dictionary of Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry:

nautical mile (knot) - A unit of distance used principally in navigation. For practical navigation it is usually considered the length of 1 minute of any great circle of the earth, the meridian being the great circle most commonly used. Because of various lengths fo the nautical mile in use throughout the world, due to differences in the definition and assumed size and shape of the earth, the International Hydrographic Bureau in 1929 proposed a standard length of 1852 meters, which is known as the international nautical mile.

 

[Elenopa]

You can answer this from the show.

In the episode 'And Now for a Word', there is a caption at one point that tells you the specifications of the station. We find out that it is 8.0645 km long.

Hope that helps.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Just a nitpick:

Technically a "knot" is not equal to a nautical mile and is not a measure of distance. A knot is a unit of speed - one nautical mile per hour. That's why a ship's speed is expressed as "15 knots" or "20 knots" instead of "15 knots per hour" (Nobody says a car is doing "50 miles" when discussing speed.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Recoil]

Yo.

If they say the station is 5 miles long, you pretty much gotta go with regular everyday miles, not nautical miles or any whacked out shit. Just 5 miles man. Thats all.

 

[FreeBaGeL]

Yo.

If they say the station is 5 miles long, you pretty much gotta go with regular everyday miles, not nautical miles or any whacked out shit. Just 5 miles man. Thats all.

I agree, you guys are reading too much into this. They wanted to give people an idea of how long the station is, so they're gonna use something that people understand...normal land miles.

 

[KoshFan]

Besides, if nautical miles are based off the circumference of the earth, what bearing could that possibly have on a space station?

 

[Quagmire]

Pillowrock did compare knots to miles per hour. Just a nitpick of the nitpick.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Pillowrock did compare knots to miles per hour. Just a nitpick of the nitpick.

The post says that "knots" is used for "nautical miles per hour" because if people just said "miles per hour" when referring to navigation this could be confused with statute miles. This doesn't make it clear that "knots" is not simply an abbreviation for "nautical miles" and that it is used only to refer to speed, never to distance. (Nobody says, "The island is 30 knots from here", as they might say "30 klicks" when abbreviating "30 kilometers".)

And the definition PR quoted starts out "nautical miles (knots)", identifying the latter as a synonym of the former. My correction was actually of the quotation, not the rest of the post. (Just to nitpick the nitpick of the nitpicker.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[PillowRock]

And the definition PR quoted starts out "nautical miles (knots)", identifying the latter as a synonym of the former. My correction was actually of the quotation, not the rest of the post. (Just to nitpick the nitpick of the nitpicker.)

Yeah, the way that was stated in that definition sounded odd to me too, but it is exactly what is in that source. Of course, that is publication of the American Society of Photogrammetry, not a group where those kinds of nvigational distinctions are their primary focus (and linear distances and speeds, which do turn up in the equations, tend to be specified in metric units in those applications).

 

[Za_Ha_Dum]

Ok.

I understood. Thanks for all of you guys.

Somebody here said it is not important to specify the miles. But when you need to convert to metric measure it makes a great difference.

However I must say that, even though it is land mile because that is the usual way, in a technical point of view, space measures should be in NAUTICAL miles since that is the aeronautical way to measure distances. Space means flying....Same as airplanes.

 

[acheronb5]

When I first heard "5 miles long", I understood it was "normal and regular and common" miles.
I think it it this way because it was intended for everyone to understand.

But, noticing that EA HQ were in Geneva... they should probably use international metrical system instead of US measuring system for design and building specifications of the station. So, I guess "5 miles long" is just an intuitive measure for imagination....

P.S.
Remember that a Mars exploration satellite launch failed a couple years ago, as a result of a conversion error...
Couldn't be B1 or B2 or B3 destroyed by a conversion error like this instead of terrorists bombs ? I guess they are hiding the truth...

 

[PillowRock]

However I must say that, even though it is land mile because that is the usual way, in a technical point of view, space measures should be in NAUTICAL miles since that is the aeronautical way to measure distances. Space means flying....Same as airplanes.

I would argue that the nautical mile is not the "aeronautical way". It is the "navigation way". When you are specifying the size of a particular manmade object you aren't talking about navigation.

 

[Quagmire]

The line was written by an American writter and when the average american hears miles they think of distance on ground. It is just not a question that would occur to most of us so I doubt it occurred to JMS.