SU

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The SU or 'stellar unit'^[1] is a Colonial unit of measurement in the Re-imagined Series.

Usage

In the episode "The Captain's Hand", Lee Adama reports the distance of the missing Raptors from Pegasus in SUs.

In the episode "Guess What's Coming to Dinner" Dualla reported that the Rebel Basestar jumped in at a range of 15 MSU, apparently a subunit of the SU.

Starbuck reports that the tidal stresses around black hole orbited by the Colony would destroy the Galactica before it could get within 10 SU Daybreak, Part 1.

The final six digits of Galactica's jump coordinates represent its jump range in SUs^[2], suggesting that the ship's maximum jump range - or at least the maximum inputtable distance - is 999,999 SUs (or 15.81 Colonial light-years).

Notes

• The real-world equivalent of the SU is the astronomical unit (AU), which is approximately equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun. Because distances in the Colonial solar system are very likely to be different, the SU cannot be assumed to have a value close to that of the AU. However, the relationship between the SU and the Colonial light-year (which would vary from ours based on the difference between the year of the Twelve Colonies' reference point - possibly Caprica's orbit around its star - and our own) is the same as that between AU and Terrastial light-years. Character ages in the series are similar to our own, suggesting that the differences between Terran and Colonial references are minimal, if not negligible^[3].

References