Talk:Propulsion (TOS)/Archive 1

Article Need

Since the FTL article is primarily about the more-detailed aspects of lightspeed travel in the RDM series, a separate article, albeit brief, seemed appropriate to do here for TOS. I didn't want to mix up the two, and text here would be lost to the bulk of the FTL article if merged. Thus, I kept it separate with this article, which also helps contrast them. If anyone has the shot of Old-School Galactica moving away (her stern to us) at lightspeed, it would be good here. --Spencerian 14:08, 12 June 2006 (CDT)

Scientific accuracy

Should there maybe a note stating how nonsensical the show's reliance on sublight propulsion is? They regularly visit new solar systems and there are even a few references to them moving to another galaxy. All that is impossible at such low speeds. --Serenity 10:37, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

Sure. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 10:46, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

Please do. --Spencerian 11:14, 11 October 2006 (CDT)

Lost Planet Ref

Should any mention be made of the discussion that Lucifer and Baltar have regarding lightspeed in Lost Planet, I? --Steelviper 10:58, 16 January 2007 (CST)

The part about Galactica being only as fast as the other ships, is already in the 2nd paragraph, but can be cited with that episode. Aside from that it's one the few direct references to lightspeed, so I'd say yes. --Serenity 11:34, 16 January 2007 (CST)

LOL. We made the same edits at the same time. --Serenity 12:03, 16 January 2007 (CST)

I pulled the duplicate quote, but I think everything else can stay. Now we've got an episode cite on the slowly moving second paragraph, and the unsubstantiated is now "rarely mentioned". I still don't understand how the Cylons didn't easily catch up with them whenever they wanted if they had lightspeed and the Colonials couldn't... whatever. --Steelviper 12:05, 16 January 2007 (CST)

FTL for real

Well, that's a rather useless piece of text, isn't it? Also highly inaccurate. The talk of "going to lightspeed" is not going FTL at all; it's simply the fastest speed the Galactica reach using conventional speed; and it's no doubt the reference to how fast the ions that move the ship forward are accelerated out of the engines.

The FTL technology used in TOS is very close approximation of the following: Alderson Drive. One can infer this rather easily. The Galactica (and Cylons) indeed have no active FTL drive, but they do jump from solar system to solar system. Once reaching such a system, they invariably send out patrols. These patrols are quickly out of communications range. These patrols also don't go looking for hostiles, since they mostly know the Cylons are behind them. What remains; is that the vipers are looking for something; and not simply planets. There seems to only one logical conclusion; they are looking for the same something that brought them there: Star's Langrange point. These are places where two stars gravity and other emissions form a bridge, a tunnel, that can be accessed with the right technology. Once found, the fleet takes the best of any such points founds, and goes through it.

This fits with all that we've observed in TOS - the only sad thing is, that it was never explicitly shown, or explained - very possibly due to lack of budget. It also requires a complete ground up rewrite of the article, making clear distinctions between STL propulsion (the ion drive) and the FTL propulsion (the Alderson drive) and dropping just about all of the disparaging remarks, and requiring one to have an open mind, and look a bit deeper than the superficial.

It's late here, and I'm wondering how much a complete and total rewrite would go over, with remarks like the above in these discussion pages.