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The various chemicals, elements and other substances found in the Re-imagined Series vary from the familiar to the outright strange.
The Fleet's Eats[edit]
Colonial technology is sufficiently advanced to allow battlestars to work almost autonomously for years, but for the motley of stranded civilian ships that form Galactica's charge, the matter of food and drink for nearly 50,000 humans while migrating through interstellar space is a very serious matter.
It was through a matter of good fortune that the Fleet comprises of many ships that provide the raw materials needed for generating food products. Most of these ships were freighters that were making their routine commercial runs between Colonial ports-of-call, much like America's interstate trucking system delivers goods between cities. Some ships, such as the Kimba Huta, carried actual foodstuffs such as meat. Others, such as Galactica and the Celestra were built for long-term spacefaring. Most of the other ships of the Fleet, like the Virgon Express, were never designed for long-term flight and are missing the basics needed for extended flight. In particular, food and drink must be provided for through other means.
In "Water," Dr. Gaius Baltar notes the amount of consumables he estimates that the Fleet's citizens require each week:
"The current civilian population of 45,265 will require, at minimum, 82 tons of grain, 85 tons of meat, 119 tons of fruit, 304 tons of vegetables and ... 2.5 million jps of water."
Water[edit]
As stated in the episode, "Water," battlestar Galactica has the ability to recycle almost all of its water supply. However, it must tank off water to ships which cannot recycle as efficiently.
Dr. Baltar uses the term "JP" as a unit of liquid volume for water. Unfortunately this unit of measure is not further defined. However, if Baltar's estimation of water units per week is divided by the population count, we have:
2500000/45265 = 55.2303
The result is the number of JPs needed at minimum per survivor per week. Divide this number by 7 (assuming that the Colonial week has seven days as it does on Earth, given no other official reference that can be used):
55.2303/7 = 7.9 JPs per colonist per day
On the real-world Earth, a minimum average of 1 gallon, or approximately 4 liters, is needed for a typical human. As water is also used for personal hygiene, cleaning, and shipboard functions related to cooling or heating a spacecraft per person, the unit of JPs, if approximated as liters, means that Dr. Baltar's numbers are reasonably realistic: Each Colonial requires 8 or so liters of water per day.
The matter of water consumption for ships that cannot recycle is still a question not answered in the series. Galactica was fortunate to find a planet containing water to refill its stores, and it is logical that the Fleet took in as much water as it could reasonably carry to all ships. However, waste will still occur. The only way that the Fleet can manage to stay space-borne is to "close the loop," or recycle the water that cannot normally be recycled. When Pegasus was in the Fleet, this process might have been easier if other Fleet ships are able to tank off their waste water to either of the two battlestars, then tank up with potable water as the battlestar's recycling abilities refreshed the waste water.
Food[edit]
Dr. Baltar uses "tons" to measure out the amount of food required per colonist.
As noted in "The Farm," the Fleet has ships that carry frozen food that was intended for export to other cities or colonies.
In the episode "The Passage," viewers are given more information on how the Fleet feeds itself. In the episode, the Fleet suffers another supply shortage. The Fleet's raw food storage has been contaminated in some way. Based on dialogue, there is a primary "good food" storage and a recycled storage where it is reprocessed for use. The episode's writer, Jane Espenson, notes that, in an draft of the script, the Fleet's meat was generated from cloning[1].
Food is measured in energy by calories (technically, kilocalories) on the real-world Earth. Battlestar Galactica has not provided any counterpart to this unit of measure, nor is there any indication as to the type of foodstuffs generated by the Fleet's food system--that is, the "nutrition facts" for the food in carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and vitamins. For now, it is impossible to determine how effective the Fleet's food system is in keeping everyone sufficiently fed.
The Fleet (after a harrowing trek through a dangerous star cluster cloud) finds a planet containing algae that can be reconstituted into food. Dr. Cottle noted that the algae, while tough to digest, was also almost pure protein. For the most part, this should satisfy the nutritional needs, as the human body can also convert most proteins into the body's fuel, carbohydrates, thanks to other organs in the body. This same process is also what happens when your body has too little energy: in a starvation state, the body will break down its own muscle tissue into fuel.
The Tylium Question[edit]
Tylium is a curious substance in the universe where the Twelve Colonies resides. Used by both Colonials and their foes, tylium has the properties of a mineral or fossil fuel in as that the substance is mined and refined. Like some fossil fuels, tylium isn't useable until refined. While the ore can't be detonated, its precursor (similar to refined crude oil before its refinement into gasoline and other products) is very explosive. The fuel itself isn't as explosive as precursor, however.
So, is tylium a made-up substance or would it have a counterpart or comparative substance to the elements we know of here on the real-world Earth?
One speculation is that tylium can possibly be similar to Helium-3[2]. Helium-3 is a primordial component in the Earth's crust, is deposited via solar wind on moons and asteroids. But, while helium-3 has potention as an energy source, the amount of energy needed to ignite it (fusion) would be more than the energy it would expel for use as an energy by-product.
There is a problem with this speculation in that helium-3 is a gas, not a mineral or solid element. A tylium counterpart should be a solid, non-radioactive, and likely non-organic substance. Coal would fit the tylium concept were it not a fossil fuel, which would suggest that life forms existed and died on the celestial bodies where the substance is mined. Perhaps another element from the Periodic Table could be a counterpart of tylium.
Tylium could be an exotic primordial compound. Research by astronomers, spectrographic analysis among them, has found compounds which do not normally form on Earth, but are formed and stabilized within the unique conditions of space. Tylium could be one such compound, which would in part explain why the Colonial scouts were looking at asteroid belts rather then planets to find it. Tylium could be a primordial compound that is destabilized on contact with other elements, such as oxygen, that are commonly found on terrestial worlds.
Familiar Elements and Chemicals[edit]
Plutonium is a man-made element used primarily as the explosive in a nuclear weapon[3].
Gaius Baltar mentions the use of tetrahydrocycline for his Cylon detector.
Drugs[edit]
Diloxin is used in chemotherapy for cancer patients. Laura Roslin chose to take chamalla extract instead, which did little for her cancer, but granted her remarkable side-effects.
Other drugs such as morpha, stims, and serisone have a logical counterpart to real-world drugs such as morphine, stimulants such as amphetamines, or fluid-reduction treatments.
An unnamed drug (or course of drugs) was administered to Gaius Baltar in order to provoke an intense state of hallucinatory anxiety (Taking A Break From All Your Worries). These drugs had been the property of the Colonial Military prior to the fall of the Twelve Colonies.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Jane Espenson on post-The Passage questions," TV Squad, weblog, December 11, 2006.
- ↑ See Wikipedia's article on Helium-3 and this article by a private firm on the concept.
- ↑ The existence of this synthetic element means that the natural element it is derived from, uranium, exists in the world of the Re-imagined Series. (Etymological purists on the origins of the names of the Lords of Kobol may find it disturbing that the Greek pantheon parallelism to the Lords of Kobol is disturbed again, for plutonium is named for Pluto, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Hades.