Battlestar Galactica II (No Joke)

[Cylapse]

Those things really piss off fans (like in the case of Star Trek TNG & DS9 fans that watched Voyager and Enterprise) and the Ratings dropped and dropped.

LOL, What happened with Enterprise? DS9 was my favorite, and I couldnt stand that god damn Voyager. But Ent Im actually half interested in. Not to mention its the only fooken thing on these days, someone needs to pick up and air DS9.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Krakenup:
It's not a big difference, it's a HUGE difference. For example, an F-16 can perform a 9-G turn (until the pilot blacks out) using aerodynamic forces. Its thrust-weight ratio, however, is generally less than one so its acceleration using just the engine is less than 1 G.

Heh, I was pretty much talking out my behind there wasn't I?

Aircraft almost exclusivly change directions by use of aerodynamic forces. I didn't mean engine thrust there at all. Or if I did I was nuts. I was trying to differentiate in my mind between the amount of vector change that is a result of manipulating the control sufraces, and the amount of vector change that is a result of banking so that the lift of the wing surface is pushing the aircraft in the direction you want to turn. But it's all so interrelated you would need to know a whole lot more about it than I do to separate those two elements.

I was trying to contrast that to a space ship in a vacuum where the "control surface" is a retro, and there is no lift. Got my self a little tied up. Thanks for pointing that out Krak.

Geo

[Krakenup]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Aircraft almost exclusivly change directions by use of aerodynamic forces. I didn't mean engine thrust there at all. Or if I did I was nuts. I was trying to differentiate in my mind between the amount of vector change that is a result of manipulating the control sufraces, and the amount of vector change that is a result of banking so that the lift of the wing surface is pushing the aircraft in the direction you want to turn. But it's all so interrelated you would need to know a whole lot more about it than I do to separate those two elements.

I was trying to contrast that to a space ship in a vacuum where the "control surface" is a retro, and there is no lift. Got my self a little tied up. Thanks for pointing that out Krak.

Geo

The main wing control surfaces, the leading- and trailing-edge flaps, are used at low speed (takeoff and landing) to increase the wing's effective camber (curvature) to increase the lift. The other control surfaces are used to control the direction of the aircraft. At speed, vector change is accomplished by using the control surfaces to reorient the aircraft so that the wing lift provides the required force. In space, you would just use thrusters to reorient the main engine thrust vector and fire. It would take huge engines to maneuver effectively (dogfight) in space.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Krakenup:
It would take huge engines to maneuver effectively (dogfight) in space.

Right, not to mention that by any process of propulsion that we can even theorize about it would take a tremendous amount of fuel to do the things they do in all these shows. Star Wars, BSG, B5, SAAB. They are all guilty of that "little fudge".

The Apollo space craft that went to the mooon and back travelled for several days, but all together the engines fired for what, maybe twenty minutes total? Including the launch from earth probably around twenty minutes. The rest was just inertia.

But space fighters are just so darn cool.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

Yeah, we prefer to see what we understand, even if it's incorrect. Fighting in space will probably be unlike anything we're familiar with now if it occurs.

What's funny is that even now 'dog fights' hardly occur anymore. We've reached the point where long-range radars can spot incoming planes and missiles can be fired before there is any hope of direct engagement. Maybe when non-US airforces clash there are still dogfights, but right now we've got such an advantage over every other airforce in the world that I don't think our pilots have done anything but training dogfights for decades.

[ June 26, 2002, 22:08: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Baron Munchausen]

[quote]Originally posted by Krakenup:

It's not a big difference, it's a HUGE difference. For example, an F-16 can perform a 9-G turn (until the pilot blacks out) using aerodynamic forces. Its thrust-weight ratio, however, is generally less than one so its acceleration using just the engine is less than 1 G.

Well, I know that both the F-15 and the F-16 can fly straight up for a considerable distance. I clearly recall that the F-15 can reach 50,000 feet faster than the Apollo moon rockets could. Is the difference really all attributable to the very slow vertical lift-off of the Apollo rockets? I'd have thought that the F-15 and F-16 would have a better thrust-weight ratio than "slightly" more than 1-1. They are suppose to be able to make a start down the runway & then flip the thing into vertical before they would have reached horizontal take-off speed.

[disabled]

DS9, sadly, won't be picked up by many networks mainly because it went into a gray area of character development where good guy abd bad guy got mixed. While more realistic, it requires story arcs and such that dropped Ratings.

Voyager was supposed to fix that by have all episodes unrelated. That did even worse since all the characters were made to fit the writer's wet dreams.

What I'm hoping for is Berman to be reduced in power... ALOT so that trek can grow a bit. DS9 and TNG did well because Berman kinda stayed out of it, just handling the studio affairs and supervisor top level crap. He went nitty-gritty on Voyager for season 1-5 and that series went to crap, he totally abandoned Voyager for Enterprise in seasons 6 & 7 and that really sent it to the crapper.

Lesson to be learned- Berman is interested in money.