Talk:Battle of New Caprica/Archive 1

Holy frak. (And that was from the first 30 minutes.) --Spencerian 20:05, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

You took the words right out of my mouth. Most excellent! --FrankieG 20:45, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

I know! Holy frakking frak. --Talos 20:47, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

My Grandchildrens' childeren will kmow about this episode! --FrankieG 21:03, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

Was so good... I am posting my own option.... 100 out of 10. ;-) --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 21:39, 20 October 2006 (CDT)

Losses

We've said "dozens" or "hundreds", but we should decide on one, because frankly I support "dozens". Nobody died in Pegasus, and on New Caprica it didn't look like "hundreds" died considering that's a big number for these people. So what will it be? --Sauron18 17:51, 21 October 2006 (CDT)

For starters, we don't know that there weren't fatalities aboard the Pegasus (people may have died from hull breaches or whatnot before Adama gave the order to abandon ship). I do agree, however, that it was probably dozens, maybe less than a couple hundred at max (and that's stretching it, IMHO) that died planetside. I would list "Losses currently unknown" until we start getting a fleet population count again, then work our way from there.--み使い Mitsukai 18:10, 21 October 2006 (CDT)

Actually, "unknown number" would work better, since we do not know specifically either way. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 04:45, 22 October 2006 (CDT)

Which Three is this Three?

...Meanwhile, Baltar and Caprica Six attempt to stop D'anna Biers from activating a nuclear device. After the Cylons lost control of the ground situation, the majority of the agents left on a Heavy Raider and left Biers with the responsibility of activating a nuclear device to "clean up"; however, she can't find it.

How exactly was it detemined that this Three was the D'anna Biers Three? I would argue that this three was the one that tried to have the "War Heroes" boxed in Downloaded. D'anna, (assuming she died on Cloud 9, we don't know) was still alive and with the fleet according to the Timeline.

And how did we determine that Three "couldn't find" the nuke? It appears that she made a beeline for the oracle, as presumably the nuke would be located inside the "green zone". Belay-down-your-burdens 00:41, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

Actually, she was named as D'anna by Baltar, which is pretty interesting. Somehow she must have been able to avoid being exposed by Anders for over a year, until the arrival of new resurrection facilities. --Peter Farago 01:12, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

Look at the "Number Three" article talk page. I posted a section on some research I did to find out which Three it was :p --Sauron18 05:59, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

As interesting as this discussion is, it is more relevant for the Exodus, Part II or Number Three page rather than the page for the battle. I'm cutting down the last paragraph about this sequence for the same reason. My rationale: once the civilian ships depart, once the basestars are destroyed/debilitated, once Galactica is away, a potential squabble between Baltar and whichever Cylons happen to remain on the surface matters very little. There is very limited militarily decisive action; it ought not get more than a cursory review in a battle summary, especially with as much as we must assume to make the description accurate. - Keithustus 11:40, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

I concur with Keithustrus. Battle pages are not for episode or character narratives. --Spencerian 19:49, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

Atmospheric Heating Effects

Of course it looked cool, but I am not really sure why the underside of Galactica would have been superheated as it descended toward New Caprica City the way it was protrayed in the episode. Such superheating is not the result of free-falling through the atmosphere, but actually the result of friction with the atmosphere due to extreme velocity. Which is precisely why skydivers do not burn up after jumping out of an airplane but space craft deorbiting (traveling initially at about 5 miles per second coming from low Earth orbit as an example) do. Galactica jumped into the atmosphere over New Caprica City, it did not (strictly speaking) reenter the atmosphere. It is possible, of course, that any velocity Galactica had prior to jumping was imparted to or else retained by Galactica after the jump. However, one might be pardoned for supposing that any such velocity would have been along the ship's main bow-to-stern axis (though this is not necessarily true), and not stright along the free fall axis the ship was clearly heating up on (i.e., from dorsal to ventral side). I would also point out that Galactica did not appear to be traveling at a sufficient speed in its fall to cause superheating, though of course this may be the subject of debate. Anyway, just a thought. The dramatic effect more than made up for any possible technical inaccuracy. --Felix Culpa 19:08, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

That's a good technical error to add to one of the science articles, if the general article. Galactica would have had to be moving much faster than the rate she was falling. The Space Shuttle Orbiter superheats at less than 17,000 MPH as it reenters, and its much higher. Science be damned, though--it was thoroughly badass. :)--Spencerian 19:42, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, can you give me a suggestion as to which article(s) to bring this up in? --Felix Culpa 22:59, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

But don't forget, that data is based on the chemical makeup and density of our own atmosphere. Its possible that New Caprica's atmosphere is quite a bit different than Earth's, even though it is still inhabitable. And for all we know, FTL travel causes the surface of a vessel to heat up. This is all hypothetical, but its justification for the appearance of the atmospheric heating.

Yes, but we have to assume that New Caprica's atmospheric makeup is at least somewhat similar to Earth normal (which carries the underlying assumption that the Colonials are used to something along those lines), or else we would notice some sort of profound difference, such as a difference in rate of combustion, sound transmission, or any number of other things. I just do not think we have any reason to believe New Caprica is any different (atmosphericaly) from any Terran-type planet. (Probably does not hurt that they actually film the episodes on Earth. ;-) --Felix Culpa 22:59, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

That's a good bit of study but there is another very big factor and that is the sheer size of the Galactica. Nothing that size has ever been witnessed to enter Earth's atmosphere and the incredible mass of it adds a multiplier. What we are seeing is a large release of energy and energy is force through a given distance and force is mass and exceleration, therefore energy = mass x acceleration x change in distance or = mass x velocity squared. Those are 3 equal parameters to energy. We know that the space shuttle superheats at 17,000 mph or thereabouts and lets assume that the gravity of New Caprica is equal to the gravity of Earth, that is g = 9.8 m/s^2. Let's also assume that the distance that they dropped was 90,000 m - a guess from the dialog but really it's just a guess but what seems a theorical large enough distance for the depicted sequence of events to have occurred. Given these parameters, if the Galactica was 654,820 times larger than the space shuttle, then it would release the same amount of energy. (I could bore you with the math but I don't think that is necessary. Ya'll get the idea.) However, I am certainly willing to bet that the Galactica is many million times larger than the Space Shuttle and therefore would release many times more energy which would account for the same superheating effect seen on screen, though objects falling fair slower than the space shuttle, and of much less size cause the same superheating effect. Case in point, the Mercury-Redstone 3 carrying Alan Sheppard to be the 1st American in space only traveled to less than 10,000 MPH (it didn't reach orbital speeds) and was 1/2000 times the size of the space shuttle and it returned superheated. There was this super-rich dude (sorry, I can't remember his name. I'll come back later with a site but right now I can't remember the dudes name.) who recently did a superhigh jump from .... I think it was 80,000 feet and he had to wear heat shielding to protect himself. Again, much smaller object and starting from a relative standstill getting superheated. Normal parachute jumpers only jump from a few hundred to a few thousand feet but no more. You gotta face it! The Galactica is one big ole vessel and it had to jump from a very high altitude to pull off that stunt and it doesn't move through atmo without consequences.--Straycat0 23:55, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

Re-imagined Series definition: all-purpose vulgarism; Colonial version of "fuck" (see: frak)

Re-imagined Series definition: all-purpose vulgarism; Colonial version of "fuck" (see: frak)

Re-imagined Series definition: the process of using the FTL engines to make an near-instantaneous apparent faster-than-light transport of a ship from one point in space to another

Re-imagined Series definition: technology enabling travel across distances faster than the speed of light would permit, see: FTL