Battle for the Tylium Asteroid
| Battle of the Tylium Asteroid | |||||||||||||||||
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| Conflict | Second Cylon war | ||||||||||||||||
| Date | Day 36 | ||||||||||||||||
| Place | Asteroid field in interstellar space, specific location unknown | ||||||||||||||||
| Result | Colonial victory. Resupply of Tylium ore for fuel reserves. | ||||||||||||||||
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Battlestar Galactica and her fleet are in desperate need of refueling and liberate a tylium ore refinery from the Cylons. (The Hand of God)
After exhausting much of its fuel reserves from its initial fleeing from the Cylon forces (33) and after a difficult rescue of Kara Thrace (You Can't Go Home Again), Battlestar Galactica sends its Raptors to outlying star systems in search of the mineral tylium, used as a fuel for all ships in the fleet.
They locate an asteroid rich with tylium, but also occupied by the Cylons and fortified with Raider squadrons to defend it. Adama decides to take the asteroid with a daring plan, utilizing the recovering Kara Thrace to lead the attack plan and pilot Lee Adama to lead the Viper crew.
Galactica pulls a double-feint; it first uses a cargo carrier to lure the Cylons, which soon see a squad of Vipers that are approaching the asteroid from the opposite location. The Cylons believe the freighter to be a diversion.
Shortly after they break off their approach to the freighter and turn to engage the first wave of Vipers, a second squad of Vipers emerges from hiding from inside the cargo ships to attack the base. Lee Adama commands others to hold back as he successfully flies through the refinery to destroy the unstable tylium-precursor container on the refinery's surface. This ignites the refinery's stores and destroys the entire Cylon base with an explosion equivalent to a three kiloton nuclear warhead in magnitude. This made the Cylon Raiders incredibly disoriented and directionless, as well as unable to re-arm or refuel. Galactica and her Vipers proceeded to destroy any remaining Cylon Raiders with ease, before they could alert reinforcements.
Subsequently, ships from the civillian fleet mined a large amount of tylium from the asteroid (to be refined later on the mobile Refinery ship). This resulted in the remnant of the Colonial fleet led by the Galactica gaining enough tylium fuel reserves to last for several years.
As the entire first season of "Battlestar Galactica" atually took place in less than two months, this means that that Fleet probably won't run into another fuel shortage for the rest of the series' run (barring some form of accident).