VWBB - Babylon 4

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Posted by Boron Shark on 06-06-2003 03:02 PM:

IIRC, Babylon 4 was moveable, although very slowly. It was designed to relocate to wherever was the most useful place to be. Babylon 5 was built with a far reduced budget. As it didn't have the counter rotating sections, it would be impossible to move it large distances due to the torque inherent with single rotation. I think B4 should have an engine, but be limited to a very slow speed - say 5 units?

D.

Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-06-2003 04:25 PM:

see these big red panels:

Well, if they'd shown the station moving in the show, you'd have seen these panels slide back and the biggest ion engines ever made slide out.
Four groups of engines, one on each "corner" of the station, and they're adjustable so the station can manoeuvre itself.

Okay?

BTW, full counter-rotation works okay.

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Posted by karajorma on 06-06-2003 06:58 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Xaphod_x
Well, if they'd shown the station moving in the show, you'd have seen these panels slide back and the biggest ion engines ever made slide out.
Four groups of engines, one on each "corner" of the station, and they're adjustable so the station can manoeuvre itself.

Okay?

You do realise that you've now set yourself up for someone to ask if your model will do that too and if not, why not?

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Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-06-2003 10:41 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by tomcat
Muhahhahahahhah Muhahhahahahhah
Destruction rulez

beat ya!

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Posted by Sigma957 on 06-06-2003 11:16 PM:

Looks great Xaphod

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Posted by Kazan on 06-07-2003 12:29 AM:

the babylon station was suppose to be mobile - ie completely able to relocate itself under it's own power, jump drives and all

Babylons 1 - 4 were made to those origional specs, that ability was cut from Babylon 5 due to budget restrictions, just like it having an inferior defense grid.

having one sections clockwise and another counterclockwise is easy as pie

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Posted by FlakBait on 06-07-2003 03:07 AM:

In one of the books there is metion made of a faster or counter-rotating section somewhere within the alien sector for species requiring higher grav environments.

I don't remember that much I haven't had that book for a loooong time. (It was book 5, Clark's Law)

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Posted by Jokoto on 06-07-2003 03:12 AM:

Not just in books... Sinclair talked about the differently rotating sections to Lyta in The Gathering, too.

Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-07-2003 01:05 PM:

alterations in gravity could be simply attained by moving different distances from the central axis.

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Posted by Jokoto on 06-07-2003 09:21 PM:

Yes, naturally, but only for variations between 1 and 0 g. I didn't bother stating that.
Something that cannot be done with that are the higher gravities than are experienced right on the outer hull. If a species lives on higher-than-1-gee environment, rotating one section faster than the rest of the station creates that. This, by the way, must be quite an engineering problem to solve! How do you integrate that into the rest of the station, retaining easy access into and out of there? The only place you can get there would be from core shuttle area...

Something else I wondered sometimes were the lower gravity areas... In the show we obviously only saw the areas on 1 gee or near, and the core shuttle 0 gee area. How much space there is for the familiar near-earthlike environment, and are the lower gravity areas filled with equipment or are they too primarily in use for housing, business and so on? Are the quarters there cheaper or more expensive? What is the difference in gravity between decks? (This could be easily calculated, I just never bothered to.) Etc. etc.

Posted by Triggy on 06-08-2003 08:58 PM:

Why can't the outside of the hull be 2-3G? This would make C&C about 0.5-1.0G and would allow there to be decks of both greater and lesser gravity than Earth standard!

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Posted by karajorma on 06-08-2003 09:24 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Triggy
Why can't the outside of the hull be 2-3G? This would make C&C about 0.5-1.0G and would allow there to be decks of both greater and lesser gravity than Earth standard!

The higher the gravity you want the faster you have to rotate that part of the station. It is almost certainly easier to make a two part station that has one small part that rotates fast than it is to make a one part station and try to rotate the much bigger mass rotate at the same speed.

Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-08-2003 09:37 PM:

that's actually not right.. Triggy is correct - the force depends on both on how fast the spinning is, and how far from the central axis you are. The further out you are, the higher the force of gravity.
it makes sense that the very outer sections (lower floors) would have a higher gravity than 1g.

I don't think the counterrotational section of B4 was there simply to allow for different gravity accomodation for alien species.. because that can quite simply be attained by moving closer or further away from the axis point.
I think it was because no matter how fast or slow the station spins, there would only be a small part of the carousel that is 100% comfortable for humans and the many other aliens that are comfortable in earth-level or similar gravity.
Therefore to extend this space they would either have to make the station even longer.. or add another section further out which spins slower, which is what they did.
Why it spins the other way?
Possibly because the simplest way to gear it would to have the same motors turning both the inner and outer sections at the same time, kinda like this: hull of inner section->|O|<-hull of outer section.
Or perhaps because it looks pretty.

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Posted by karajorma on 06-08-2003 11:36 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Xaphod_x
that's actually not right.. Triggy is correct - the force depends on both on how fast the spinning is, and how far from the central axis you are. The further out you are, the higher the force of gravity.
it makes sense that the very outer sections (lower floors) would have a higher gravity than 1g.

I think you misunderstand me (my fault I didn't explain well enough). Even though the two parts are connected the speed the outer ring would have to be moving at must be faster since it has to complete 1 revolution in the same time as the smaller 1G ring does.

Let me put it this way. Take B5. The outer layers are designed to have a 1G force on them. If you want to have a 2G zone you would have to move it further out. That hugely increases the mass of the entire station. It becomes much harder to spin such a big station up to speed.

Now suppose that instead of increasing the size of the 1G habitat you simply build a second ring and by the system of gearing you've suggested make it turn faster. You've still got a lot of effort involved but since the 2G habitat is less massive it takes a lot less effort to spin it up to speed.

Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-08-2003 11:57 PM:

I believe the laws of momentum say that, a section spinning twice as fast, but half the size would require the same force to keep spinning as a section twice the size spinning at half the speed.

f=ma I think.. so 4=2*2 and 4=4*1.

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Posted by Jokoto on 06-08-2003 11:58 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Xaphod_x
Why it spins the other way?

To balance the station. A station with just a single rotating part would be tricky to move. Ever tried to hold a bicycle wheel, while it spins, and turn it? Two rotating sections make up a more stable whole, you now have the two sections and engines mounted between them. They still fight against turning, you can't get rid of that, but it won't twist like madman anymore.

Creating over-1-gee on the outer hull would seriously cut the comfortable Earth normal real estate on the station. You have most room on the outer radius, so you'll probably want to put it to good use! I don't think there's much sense to use most of the human-populated station for alien environments... such special cases have special solutions.

Posted by Xaphod_x on 06-09-2003 12:13 AM:

actually most of the very outer sections of B5 are taken up with waste management and downbelow.. so it stands to reason that they would be more than 1g.
The reason I thought the outer edge of the populated areas would be more than 1g was because I think the populated areas would be across a spectrum of gravities close to 1G, with the 1g areas being in the middle of that spectrum.

That reason for the counter rotating section makes sense.. why do you think Omegas don't have that problem?

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Posted by Jokoto on 06-09-2003 03:04 AM:

Yes yes, I didn't want to start splitting hairs. (Btw, downbelow isn't "down", they're the underbuilt parts of the station - brown sector mostly.) To get most out of the space available, the outermost living areas are probably slightly over 1 g, so you'll get a 1 g area with acceptable variation both ways. That's quite obvious.

Yes, Omegas do have that problem. B5 is the most accurate show so far in these things, but it's not perfect. Also, there's lots of things that weren't shown but probably are or would have to be there to make stuff work - just do a [url=http://groups.google.com/]Google Groups[/url] search in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 (and rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated) or http://jmsnews.com/ for rotating sections in battle. Don't think we're the first ones to get these ideas.

Posted by karajorma on 06-09-2003 07:44 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Xaphod_x
I believe the laws of momentum say that, a section spinning twice as fast, but half the size would require the same force to keep spinning as a section twice the size spinning at half the speed.

f=ma I think.. so 4=2*2 and 4=4*1.

Yeah but you're assuming a linear relationship there. I haven't bothered to work out the maths but I doubt it would be that simple. The smaller ring would probably have a mass of less than half of the big ring which would make my point valid

Think of it this way. When you double the size of a sphere you don't just double it's volume. The same would apply to the mass. The 2G areas would take up more space than the 1G area and therefore would have a much greater mass.

Posted by Aggamemnon on 06-09-2003 09:08 AM:

The relationship isn't as simple as F=ma. You have to consider the rotational torques on the system, by looking at a differential equation. I can't cut and paste equations in here, so bear with me. The torque is given by the moment of inertia of the object (and for a cyclinder or a disk it is 1/2*m*r^2 - half the mass x the radius squared) multiplied by dw/dt (delta omega [the angular velocity] over delta time).

Not sure if that makes much sense! To those of you who understand rotational kinematics I would imagine you know this anyway, but for those of you that do not but know what a differential equation is it should make sense.

The counter rotating sections in B4 are there to simplify the movement of the station. Why doesn't the Omega class have counter rotating sections you ask? Well, according to JMS posts it is because the flight control system on those ships can deal with the torques generated. Presumably Babylon 4 couldn't, possibly due to it sheer size of the rotating sections involved.

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