Slashdot Mirror
Comparing Sci-fi Starship Sizes
LiberalApplication writes "It looks like someone has very lovingly created something that sci-fi fans everywhere will likely want to see; if not out of curiosity, then at least to revitalize the burning, seething, grudges between fanatics of rival science-fiction universes. Starship Dimensions places images of various starships from science fiction settings such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, ID4, Macross/Robotech, Lexx, Freespace, and Battlestar Galactica side-by-side, in scale! The author has also conveniently included football fields, humans, King Kong, and buildings for comparison. You can even drag them around the page and stage your own interstellar battle royale."
Anyone got a mirror out there?
Well, it looks like the battle happened before I got there... all the ships are gone already :(
And only after two posts!!!
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
Welcome to IIS
I guess comparing spaceship sizes is really important to /. readers. Always reminds me of the scene in "Stand By Me" where the kids argue over the superiority of mighty mouse vs superman.
-Sean
jesus mcFuckity christ!
Posted: 11:47CDT
Current time: 11:48:25 CDT
SITE IS NOT AVAILABLE DUE TO TOO MANY USERS
CONNECTING
not even the OPPORTUNITY to mirror!
Come on people, at least send the site owner an email or IM with a picture of Mr. Goatse and the caption "This is your web server in 10...9...8..."!
It's /.'d already please provide mirrors!
This guy has got to have way too much time on his hands.
:-D
Oh wait. Isn't there some kind of saying about people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing something... forget it. I forgot who I am and what I do for a second.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
What i've always wanted to know is how do sci-fi starships always manage to be the same way up?
I'd love to be watching star trek, and see a bird of prey fly along upside down in relation to the Enterprise.
Hahaha! It is amazing, when you think about it... What other force on the Internet is as powerful as /.? Within 60 seconds of the original article appearing on the front page of Slashdot, the linked site was already taken down.
Ethical question: Do we owe our linked site owners some advance warning before our herd of tribbles swarms onto their bridge?
Bonus Question: Is it possible to be karma whoring AND trolling at the same time?
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
has ANYONE had the opportunity to see the page?
it made me wonder how a "real-life" STARBIRD would compare
man I loved that toy
What ? No WV bug comparison ?
I'm sure none of those ships are as big as the one that they show during the opening scenes of SpaceBalls. That one was BIG!
"Ludicrous Speed!"
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I have to question the accuracy of something like this when they are not even geeky enough to have a web site that doesn't get farked^H^H^H^H^H^Hslashdotted with a couple of hits. Especially running IIS... gah
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Here's an interesting graphic comparing ship size.
-Mansa
Okay, even the google cache of this page has disappeared. Do you think the site will ever be seen again?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Fucking Slashdot should clue in already and stop DOS'ing website owners. It's not funny anymore, it's pathetic.
* Resolved zardalu.sytes.net to 156.34.159.224
* Resolved 156.34.159.224 to stjh1-2016.nb.aliant.net
in other words, its hosted on someone's home DSL/cable connection, sytes.net is a free thingie like dynip.. WAY TO GO TO LINK STRAIGHT TO THIS!
slashdot editors are morons
Superman is far greater than Mighty Mouse.
I don't know about that - on a Power per Gram ratio, Mighty Mouse beats Superman ...
Plus, MM has a better theme song ...
It's not the size of your space ship that matters, but how you use it.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Not even this mighty fleet of Star Ships can withstand the brunt of a slashdotting!
You can see the image discribed in the original post here Beware, there are a few popups from the link though...
Mass spectral analysis of the nasal mucus of Kirk and Picard. Who has the best boogers?
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
We brake for nobody.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
We really need a slashdot cache sometimes. You can easily tell this page was hosted on the guys personal webserver on a home DSL connection and it was directly linked to.... BOOM! Email the website owners and create a mirror on slashdot and keep it up for an hour or so. What good does it do to link to a story or cool geeky thing and then not be able to see the damn thing?
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
4. ....
5. Profit!
How about instead of this childish fixation on size, give us some specs on fuel economy and MTBFs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I've always wondered about that.
Say, the Vorlon planetkiller vs. the Gunbuster black hole bomb. Maybe the Grand Cannon from the Robotech series? Deathstar?
Comparing penis and breast size in Sci-Fi. "Wow, look at the talleywacker on Picard!"
How many Libraries of Congress is that?
No, wait...
I take it no one noticed the .sytes.net address. He was running that from his home connection via a no-ip type of setup. Odd are good the poor guys computer is now drooling on the floor. That will teach him for doing something geeky and not using the appropriate bandwidth.
To strive, to seek, but not to yield
Another site FRIED by slashdot.
Wouldn't it be possible for slashdot to actually cache the articles like google? or at least provide a google cached link or something?
Somehow I don't see slashdot being very popular with the owners of fried servers....
Plus a cache would provide better service to slashdot readers.
Just a thought
And it looks like someone else has not so lovingly posted a link to it to slashdot.
I mean, it's not like it is the nerd version of a pissing contest... oh wait, it is.
Nerd1: The Enterprise-E could SO waste a Star Destroyer!
Nerd2: Nuh-uh! Star Destroyers are so huge, you can't even see the windows most of the time. You can ALWAYS see the windows in the puny little federation starships.
Nerd1: Look, I don't care how big it is... One quantam torpedo from the Enterprise-E will make it a giant space junkyard.
Nerd2: You're such a dork!
Nerd1: No, you're the dork!
[begin pathetic, uncoordinated nerd brawl]
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
And of course, they aren't even close to the true masters, the puppeteers and their home worlds.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
How would they draw TARDIS from Dr.WHO series? It was supposed to be shaped like a london police box on the outside (kind of like a phone booth) but was supposed to contain virtually unlimited space on the inside.
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
The enterprise would probably start trying to open diplomatic relations with the Death star, and make a new ally, the Babylon 5 alien cruisers would go off against the cylon forces, And the robotechs would get accidently blown up by Stanley Tweedle.
Or how about a BitTorrent mirror of the site stuffed into a directory?
Damn. I *really* wanted to see this.
To be fair, we haven't yet designed an engine that will allow us to move faster than light. Maybe moving through subspace involves a force akin to wind resistance. I know that in Star Commander 2, normal physics applied in star systems and battle scenes, but interstellar travel forced you to use fuel the whole way.
Last post!
Site without images
SHIP NAME/TYPE: V'Ger (Voyager VI)
LENGTH: Approximately 98 km.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Originally built by humans and launched near the end of the 20th century for peacful reconnaisance purposes, the Voyager VI probe was intercepted by an evidently technologically advanced race who augmented the probe and sent it back to Earth under a new internal conciousness, resulting in a near cataclysm.
SOURCE: Star Trek, the Motion Picture (Film, 1982 Paramount Pictures), Drawn by Jeff Russell
Whale Probe from Star Trek IV, 74 km long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Whale Probe
LENGTH: Approximately 74 km. There are numerous conflicting sources for the length of the Whale Probe, but extrapolation from the film has led me to accept this length as being the most likely.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Unknown, although the device was able to communicate with humpback whales.
SOURCE: Star Trek IV, (Film, Paramount Pictures)
Marduk Base from Macross II, 50 km diameter
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Marduk Mothership
DIAMETER: Approximately 50 km. This is the stated length of the RPG version, although the movie version seems to be much larger. Further investigation is needed.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Marduk, the creators of the Zentraedi.
SOURCE: Macross II, (Animated Film), Drawn by Jeff Russell
Rama, 50km long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Rama
LENGTH: 50 km long, 20 km in diameter.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Large habitat ship
SOURCE: Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clark, Drawn by Jeff Russell
Vorlon Planet Killer, approximately 45km long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Vorlon Planet Killer
LENGTH: Approximately 45 km. There are numerous conflicting sources for the length of the Vorlon Planet Killer, but extrapolation from the show has led me to accept this length as being the most likely.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The Vorlon
SOURCE: Babylon 5, (Television Series)
Phobos, moon of Mars, 27km long at longest axis
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Phobos
DIAMETER: 27 km x 23 km x 20 km
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Moon of Mars
SOURCE: Discovered in 1877, August 12 by Asaph Hall; photographed by 'Mariner 9' in 1971, 'Viking 1' in 1977, and the Russian 'Phobos' probe in 1988.
City Destroyer from ID4, 24km diameter
SHIP NAME/TYPE: ID4 City Destroyer
DIAMETER: 24 km across, stated in the film.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: ID4 Aliens. Please see notes
SOURCE: Independance Day (Film), Drawn by Jeff Russell
Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars, 17.6km long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Executor/ Super Star Destroyer
LENGTH: 17.6 km. Please see http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd.html.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The Empire under Darth Sidious (human). Darth Vader's command ship.
SOURCE: Star Wars Episode V and VI, the Empire Strikes Back, and the Return of the Jedi, (Film), originally drawn by Chad Wilson
Cloud City, 16km diameter
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Cloud City
LENGTH: 16 km.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Bespin Mining Colony
SOURCE: Star Wars Episode V, the Empire Strikes Back (Film), Drawn by Jeff Russell
Lexx, 10km long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: LEXX
LENGTH: 10 km. From original Blueprints used in the design of the ship.
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The Empire under His Devine Shadow (human). This vessel is a wepon capable of destroying an entire Earth Size planet.
SOURCE: LEXX (TV series)
Babylon 5 Space Station, 8454.1m long
SHIP NAME/TYPE: BABYLON 5/ Deep Space Station
LENGTH: 8,454.1 m, from http://www.b5tech.com/babylonproject/babylon5stati on/babylon5station.html
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Human. "Babylon 5 is a 8,454.1* meter (five-mile) long, 840 meter diameter, 9.1 billion ton O'Neil class space station, located at a pivotal main jump gate in the Epsilon system."
SOURCE: Babylon 5 (TV series)
Macross I & II capital ships
SHIP NAME/TYPE: MACROSS Sta
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
"ACCESS DENIED
Site requires local access"
that sux biog time....
Based on the guy that paints the last letter in the intro Red Dwarf is around 1Km high, and 8Km long. Width is about 2X height.
Anyone has better numbers?
Help fight continental drift.
Everyone knows the Lexx would destroy all those other puny starships... its the most powerful weapon in the two universes! Whats the ship from robotech going to do throw that silly big ass hat the captian wears at it? and star trek will what, talk it to death? not to mention Xev is the hottest chick on any sci-fi show, ever.
Anyone know how big Moya from Farscape is?
Rob
Amid all this inane "oh my god, we slashdotted him" dribble, I'm more than a little bit surprised that no-one has brought up Iain M. Banks' Culture vessels (ie. Minds), which outsize just about any of the ships mentioned in the article. Although by just reading the article and not being able to see the actual comparison pages, it would seem this guy has limited his studies to TV/movie sci-fi vehicles (ie. ships of a size comprehensible to average couch potatos and Hollywood audiences) and by doing so left out a significant proportion of the more interestingly-sized candidates.
As long as the page is pretty simple, no server side scripting.
The Author would provide to Slashdot their site, compressed, tgz/zip/rar etc.
Then, we just share the compressed file on bitTorret.
Seemed to work pretty well for the Matrix trailer. (first use for me of bittorret)
Kyle
Is it just me, or am I the only person out there that doesn't like star wars and star trek? I prefer stuff like Orson Welles and things that are somewhat less "Hollywood" sci-fi.
This really is 'News for Nerds. Stuff that matters'!
"My favorite sci-fi series' starship is bigger than your favorite sci-fi series' starship..."
Perry Rhodan space ships dwarf them all.
-T
Larry Niven... or any from that universe?
Chuck
im starting to think that bittorrent should be built into all browsers for webpages....
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
What about the ships from "Space 1999", that stupid British ripoff of Star Trek?
MOD UP! This is the shit!
It's nice an all, but where is the 8086 of all ships, the one from 2001??!
Wow, I thought I was a real dork, but this really takes the cake. I feel better about myself already.
Have they included Spaceball One ? Can't see it, the site is /.ed.
... I mean, where are they? My favorite unit of measurement...
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Oh my god I actually got to see 1 page:
ID4 Mothership
Above are schematics of the colossal Mothership from the movie ID4. Each pixel in the image equals about 4 square kilometers (2km to a side). I have portrayed the Mothership as being roughly 800km long. Although there do not seem to be any reliable sources for this length, I was able to come to this conclusion in two ways:
1.) During the movie, it is stated that the ship is approximately 550km in diameter. From observations of photgraphs of the ship, we know it to be oblong in shape and therefor this measurement must be of one axis or the other.
2.) Upon observation of numerous images of the underside of the mothership we can infer from the known size of the city destroyers (24km dia.) that the longer axis would probably come to the length of roughly 800km, while the shorter axis does indeed come to approximately 550km. This keeps in line with the dimensions stated in the movie.
The movie also goes on to say that the ship has a mass of roughly one 4th the size of the moon, which seemed unlikely to me until my wife suggested a hull created from some incredibly dense material, which makes sense and would protect the vessel from interstellar debris and radiation.
The ship is at least partially hollow, much of the inside comprising of a vast cavern, a gargantuan open area tens of thousands of cubic kilometers in volume that seems to maintain a misty internal atmosphere. Gigantic towers of unstated purpose seem to span the entire height of the chamber at random intervals.
Up to 83 City Destoyers nest in large ports on the underside of the vessel until they are called for. The crew or population of the Mothership is not stated, but presumably ranges within the millions, as does probably the total number of auxillary and/or small fighter craft aboard.
Comparing these starships versus a BEOWULF CLUSTER!
Am I the only one thinking SVG would be perfect. And Google (The mother of all caches) would easily cache it and the text?
What about the starship in Spaceballs, the one that transformed into Mega Maid?
"Dear God, she's gone from suck to blow!"
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
I guess comparing spaceship sizes is really important to /. readers. Always reminds me of the scene in "Stand By Me" where the kids argue over the superiority of mighty mouse vs superman.
I just wanted to make a big battle and make laser noises:
Pshoo! Whap Whap Whap! zzt! zzt! etc....
just in case you hadn't actually read before posting... http://slashdot.org/faq/suggestions.shtml#su900
When was the last time any of us saw one of those?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Is Red Dwarf not included on the site? (I can't get there, for the site is currently down...)
:)
If memory serves (and this might just be randomly plucked from a dream), RD was around 5 miles long. How does that compare with the other ships?
And mod me down!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Battlestar Galactica was the only one that got it right.
It was an aircraft carrier in space whereas the Enterprise was a Battleship in space.
The Federation would have been overrun by a smarter enemy.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
That surely was bigger, no?
And how about the Total Perspective Vortex?
The largest ship I've ever read about is from David Weber's books, about Dahak. Dahak is a spherical warcraft, measuring some 8,000 kilometers in diameter. Truly awesome, along with the colossal firepower to shatter planets with gravitonic warheads.
I'm too sexy for you.
Incorrect. Impulse engines use the exhaust from a fusion reactor to move the ship; they are a Newtonian drive like any other.
Warp engines, on the other hand, use asymmetric peristaltic continuum distortion - they essentially "squeeze" the ship through a bubble of distorted spacetime. No local motion takes place, but with respect to the rest of the universe, the bubble of spacetime that encapsulates the ship is moving.
ph34r my n3rd1n355.
+++ATH0
Are you really going to try to to find better than moon sized spacecraft. Oops we're talking TV and movie scifi aren't we never mind.
fast mirror..for now.
Here's a partial mirror:
http://bshort.com/shipdim/shipdim.html
Please be gentle.
-B
Magog Worldship
Size: Approximately 1 AU
Composition: 20 plants structually interlinked within their various orbits orbiting/powered by a small artifical star.
Armament: Point singularity weapons (no others observed firing.
Maximum Velocity: Um, all ahead slow ensign.
Episodes 1-22 & 2-01
This has to be the largest moving ship I have seen in a movie or series. I don't include Niven's ring worlds or Trek's Dyson spheres simply because they don't go anywhere. Ships go places and blow things up.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:yUkcySXcpr4J: zardalu.sytes.net/000starshipdimensions.htm+starsh ip+dimensions&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
There's also the small matter of security as well.
Why not simply have people design web pages that are cache friendly?
Would anyone else like to see one of these made to compare the size of various anime mechs? It'd be like a police lineup of gundams, veritechs, SDF enforcement mechs (Pat Labor), Escaflowne (movie and series), etc....
Anyone out there with enough knowledge and free time reading this?
It's a religious debate, but for my money there's simply no comparison between B5 and just about any other sci-fi series out there. I've watched and enjoyed plenty of the others, but B5 is just something else. It has a fantastically intricate storyline and some great characters, all set in a universe that's futuristic but very credible. The visual effects still look good even today, several years after it was made. Even the theme music changes subtly from series to series to sound more in tune with the story. It's dramatic, funny, triumphant, tragic, poignant, insightful and the only sci-fi that has ever made me cry.
NB: The episodes are somewhat independent, particularly in the early series, but there is a major story arc that runs throughout. You want to watch it from the start. It only really takes off from about the second series, but there are so many little set-ups (though you won't realise it at the time) that the first series is still a must. I doubt any regular channels are still running it anyway, as the last series was made several years ago. I'd just go and buy the whole lot on DVD.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
When ddos'ers successfully crash your server, they move on to the next victim. When the slashdotters crash your server, they sit around bitching about your IIS POS, till you're back online, then they slashdot you again.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Slashdot Readers:
More power, dammit! Show us your pretty pictures!
Webmaster Scotty:
She can't taking anymore Captain! She's givin' us all she's got, but she can't take the slashdotting!
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
They've pretty much thrown every class of starship together in one fan-created universe. You've got Super Star Destroyers fighting alongside Mecha from Macross and other series slunging it out against ships from the EA and Starfleet. Check it out sometimes.
someone suggested, with the 'premium subscribers' of slashdot, that it would be an interesting business idea to buy a subscription to slashdot, and then the moment that an article is in 'the future' scope of slashdot, to immediately contact the homepage...and say "listen, you are going to be taken out. you can pay me $$ and i'll mirror you.". you wouldn't even need to ask for that much, would you? have a t1 or a cable modem with adequate broadband capabilities[ie, able to handle LOTS of connections at once]...poeple i don't think would mind a slow connection in return for actually being able to see what the article is talking about [and there could be a market for fast-connection,..but i don't think most owners of slashdotted articles could afford such a thing :) ]...so why havn't we seen this yet? i mean, i just upgraded from dialup myself, and i'm still on windows 3.1, and i'm too busy...so there's my excuse...what's yours?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Can't deny the Alien series...
---
http://solem.cs.man.ac.uk:8006/cgi-bin/mirror.pl?
Everyone, add the following URL to your shortcuts, it'll be dang handy if you're a slashdot regular.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~brejc8/mirror/index.html
Note that by going to the main distributed-mirror page, you can add to the list of mirrors (if you know of others, or if you are creating one yourself.)
Let us not forget the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, a collection of near industry-quality analyses of Star Wars tech, put toghether by a Ph.D with a lot of time on his hands.
There's a couple of weeks of engrossing reading there. Highlights include Warships of the Empire, The Endor Holocaust (an interesting examination of probably ecological fallout on the sanctuary moon due to the explosion of the Death Star II), and The Injuries of Darth Vader.
idono bout the rest of you but that borg cube was pretty scary...
up until i saw that babylon 5 station. _wow_. babylon5's world could 0wn the borg collective.
and Ds9 is a lot smaller than i thought it was. i thought it would have been about 10 times what it was...same with the star wars ships. sure surprised me.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Thanks!
I just noticed that the pictures can be dragged around for better comparison - even in the mhts I saved.
Which do you measure, the inside or the outside?
GMFTatsujin
Try Elite. It's super old, but you can also try to find its sequel, Frontier. Both are at the Home of the Underdogs.
Good Newtonian spaceflight for the time. I don't think that stars and planets produce gravity that affects starships, but otherwise spaceship flight is quite realistically implemented.
I got a better idea. Anyone with a big Slashdot bill? Send it to OSDN for reembursment. That's one way to force OSDN to face the consequences of their actions.
So what about the Death Star? It'd probably make a great background image for this site.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Unfortunately, I think this might be a side effect of the new "mysterious future" feature. If subscribers can see an article 30 minutes before the rest of the Slashdot crowd then that gives them 30 minutes in which to slashdot the relevant server and/or eat up all of the site owners bandwidth cap.
Looks like uber geeks who can't stand missing out on articles like this one will have to subscribe if they want a fighting chance of reading the relevant article(s). I know the editors here really don't give a damn about issues like site management any more than they have to (witness the number of headlines and summaries that are inaccurate, badly spelt and/or grammatically incorrect, the number of dupes, fakes, etc), but when it's someone else's bandwidth then they really should be trying to work with people rather than against them.
Offering to mirror articles on non-commercial sites locally for a week or so would be a good start. The story links could point to the local server mirror which after a week could be changed to s simple redirection page pointing back to the original source site. This solution would stop major slashdotting of small "mom and pop"-type sites, and benefit Slashdot readers, Slashdot and the site owners as well. (If ad revenue is an issue, I'm sure Slashdot and the site owner could agree on splitting the revenue that the locally hosted mirror generates. And I'm sure Slashdot could cover itself against any possible legal ramifications with a well-worded contract that clearly illustrates that the content and the consequences of publishing it are the responsibility of the original owner - just like ISPs do all the time and Slashdot does with posts at the moment.)
I'm not saying that this should be compulsory, but that it should be an option. It seems to be a win-win situation all around, so why wouldn't they consider it?
Any editors reading this have any comments to make?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
See this abusenet thread for the original debate, the Enterprise versus an Imperial Star Destroyer!
It's especially funny because you thought you were joking.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Can you tell us what's the hit rate at this time ? ;)
Why don't they compare them to, say, a small moon?
Interestingly, when you navigate a Matrioshka Brain one has to take the star with you -- so changing course or speed does take a rather long time.
1. D. R. Criswell, "Solar System Industrialization: Implications for Interstellar Migrations", Chapter 4 in Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience, Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, (eds.), University of California Press, (1985), pp 50-87.
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
..are belong to us. Iain M Bank's culture GSVs (General Systems Vehicles) own you all. ;).. 26km of pure power. 0:)
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
I'm replying to this one -- but any of these replies are pretty good.
We don't really list the 2001 robotic probe and guardian here, because although it had a nice, measurable size from a distance, up close it was -- well, huge.
"!*! It's full of stars!"
Anyhow, I liked the thought of 2001 when we think about scales. I also liked the reference farther down this list, about Earth, and being under recall.
Perhaps what really required is a web server that queues requests, especially for low bandwidth sites to a maximum of so many per hour, or something like that. The request itself is trivial to handle and throw away if some resource limit has been reached. I think a feature for apache is in the offing.
Its one damn thing before another. (Dick Bird 1999)
In one of Cordwainer Smith's stories ("Golden the ship was"), there was a spaceship the size of a solar system. Most of it was made from low-density foam; therefore, the overall weight of the ship was minimal, meaning that it was agile as fuck.
The cool thing is that the ship was totally defenseless. However, enemy fleets didn't know this, and were thereby scared shitless by the ship. Great story!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Something else I'd like to see is someone reposting the "mysterious future" articles somewhere else. That way everyone could get them for free. Why should Slashdot be able to extort money out of people to get something in advance? Especially when there's a question of inadequate bandwidth, e.g. slashdotting. I say fuck 'em. Put those articles on BitTorrent. Ruin this plum for subscribers, because we deserve that service without paying!
P.S. Yes, this is sarcasm. I just can't help noticing the irony.
Solutions are usually pretty obvious:
;)
PROBLEM: Any ship with more acceleration then the other ship can always escape. So to deal with this gameplay "problem", they made the enemy ship magically re-appear with magical acceleration so it can take another shot at you.
Solution-- for larger capital ships this would always hold true, and this is OK. But for the smaller fighters, assume they carry a limited quantity of O2. They can wait it out away from the battle, but they can't go too far or their life-support will run out and the pilot will die.
PROBLEM: Unless you use an unrealistically slow amount of thrust, you tend to have these ships zipping by each other at the very least hundreds of miles per hour, leaving you with a fraction of a second to meaningfully fire on the other ship, then it's turn back around and do it again. Since you're a human you can't whip around instantly, it take time to move the ship, so every time you miss and come around for another pass, you're going a little faster since you had more time to accelerate.
One of those jobs for a targeting computer. What do you think fighter airplane pilots use target acquisition radar for anyway? As for accelleration, it would likely be limited to the inertia you want to put on the human body...
PROBLEM: It is virtually impossible to tail someone. If you're matching their thrust vector, you're not pointing at them, you're pointing in the same direction they are. Now, if you had a gunner this might be OK, but when you're both piloting and gunning because whatever the ship info screen says your crew is, it's just you, this doesn't work.
Actually flying a fighter designed for manuverability is actually a major problem anyway. My suggestion is to have a tracking computer enhancement which enables one to guide the fighter in a computer-enhanced mode, where a dot on the HUD is moved with a joystick and the computer attempts to compensate. The same holds true for the landing problem. My solution would be to be able to operate thrusters in tracked or untracked mode and allow for computer assisted landings.
One would probably need some convention for FTL travel in order to make the game more interesting (I like the B5 sort of hyperspace, but other ways would be possible too).
Most of the problems could be handled by assuming computer enhancements for targetting, landing, and even manuvering... Of course, landing with a damaged computer could be interesting
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It's not the size...it's how you use it.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
...while we speak, TNN and Sci-Fi are going up against each other with different Star Trek movies... Star Trek V vs. Star Trek Generations.
Oh, the humanity! Which one do I choose? Supremely silly, or just somewhat silly?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
since were debating irrelevancies, who would win in a battle between Kirby and the KoolAid man? (this was the subject of a discussion between me and some friends a long time ago and I would like to open it up to /.). Remember, Kirby has ultimate sucking in and flying powers, but the KoolAid man can bust through brick walls without effort.
**When craziness is bliss, 'tis folly to be sane**
What is needed is for site authors to pre-emptively allow mirroring. This could be done with some kind of apache mod (as somebody has suggested below) or with a simple statement like "Please mirror this site if you're going to post a link to this site that is likely to generate massive amounts of traffic."
perhaps some sort of web content license that allows for mirroring... Just so that nobody has to ask before either posting to /. or mirroring.
Seriously though, anybody posting a site about dimensions of sci-fi starships must have some knowledge of slashdot and the possibility of getting /.ed.
.
(Okay, it was from far away. Do you think I'm stupid enough to get close? Don't answer.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
That's a few hours of my life I'd like to have back. I simply cannot believe that anything with Kei and Yuri (yes, that Kei and that Yuri) can have so little gratutious violence, such light property damage and such low body counts.
(And NXE sucked hard too. Worcester-3? Good lord.)
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Scranton, Pennsylvania/spindizzy drive
LENGTH: 5Km
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The first city to "go Okie", leaving an economically depressed Earth in search of paying jobs.
SOURCE: James Blish, "A Life for the Stars"
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Hern VI/spindizzy drive
LENGTH: 3000Km ("considerably smaller than Mercury")
BUILDER/COMMENTS: Flown across the galaxy by New Yorkers on a mission to destroy the Vegan Orbital Fort.
SOURCE: James Blish, "Earthman, Come Home"
SHIP NAME/TYPE: Mars/tweaked space-time elements of quantum descriptors
LENGTH: 6750Km
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The Federal Republic of Mars moved their planet to a new system 10,000 light years away in order to escape the oppressive politoco-economic expansionism of Earth's Greater East-West Alliance (GEWA). Mars's moon Phobos was used as a "scout ship".
SOURCE: Greg Bear, "Moving Mars". The novel won several awards, including the Nebula Award.
SHIP NAME/TYPE: none.
LENGTH: 90 million miles
BUILDER/COMMENTS: The ship was a gigantic dummy, the largest scarecrow ever conceived by the human mind. It was used at least twice, once to frighten away nonhuman agressors from a forgotten corner of the galaxies, once to serve as a diversionary action in the destruction of the dictator Lord Raumsog and seventeen million noncombatants with carcinogenic poisons.
SOURCE: Cordwainer Smith, "Golden the Ship Was -- Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Taxation without representation is tyranny! Statehood for DC, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands & Pacific Territories!
I remember playing Elite on my C64 - wireframe graphics and all. It was awesome. Everbody I showed that game to loved it. I loved the way you had to match rotation of the bases in order to dock, and if I recall correctly, it had the music from 2001 in it - or maybe it was just in our heads.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
While most of your post contains very good ideas, with the number of stories, working out pay arrangements for the revenue for each site listed does not seem like a workable solution at all. Not that I have a better solution for the ad revenue.
He's talking about Frontier when he says that the true Newtonian space doesn't provide much fun.
The site Ex Astris Scientia concentrates on measuring and comparing Star Trek ships, but it's still an impressive effort.
%$#^$@ American-centric media - No mention of the Liberator!
The Macross? A Star Destroyer? Even a Babylon station? Pah! I scoff at your puny toys! Folks, the Marathon was Deimos. *DEIMOS!*
That picture is completly incorrect. It claims intrepid class starships are 343 meters in length. That is completly untrue. Intrepid class ships are 345 meters in length.
Missing from this list is the biggest space structure I've ever heard proposed, the solid Dyson sphere, a modification of a concept proposed by the astronomer Freeman Dyson. A solid Dyson sphere is a shell constructed around a star, so that all the star's energy is contained. One of these built around the Sun at the radius of the Earth's orbit would have a diameter of 3x10^8 km.
There's an episode of ST:TNG in which the NCC-1701-D crew finds Scottie marooned on the surface of a Dyson sphere, where he has trapped himself in a transporter loop for several decades in order to survive.
This account verified sig-free since..., uh, never mind.
Damnit dude! If you're going to compare this to a nerd pissin contest at least put it in a language they can understand! You idiot! What dork in a pissing contest speaks like that anyway.
Well being a devoted slashdotter, I thought I'd translate his humerous post into something the rest of us uber-nerds can read:
n3rD1: TH3 En+ERprise-3 C0ULD $0 w@$+e 4 $T4R des+rOY3r!
NErd2: NuH-UH! 5t@R d35tr0y3R$ @R3 so Hu93, j00 C@N't 3v3n $3E the W1ndow$ mO$T 0pH t3h T1m3. J00 c4N Alw4Y5 533 t3h wiNDoW5 iN teH pUnY l1Ttle f3Der@+IOn $t4rShIP5.
nERD1: LOOK, i dON'+ caRe H0w 8ig It 1S... 0N3 Kw4NtAM tOrPed0 FROm +eH 3N+eRPRi53-3 wILL m@ke 1+ 4 9I@NT 5P4c3 junKy4rD.
n3Rd2: You'rE 5UcH 4 DOrK!
n3RD1: nO, Y0U'Re +HE DoRK!
[83Gin p4+Het1C, UNcOOrdIn@t3D n3Rd 8rAWL]
1. universe always expanding from arbitrary central start point.
2. all matter energy projected outward from time=0
3. depending on time (i.e. existance) and location (x,y,z offset from center) particle density differs.
4. thus size always differs
qed
...if only she'd do anything beyond pouting and getting it on with anyone who's not completely ugly or called Stanley H. Tweedle. As it stands she's just dull most of the time. Yawn.
Would never work. It would come across as blackmail. "Would you like to pay us to cache your site? You are free to say no but then your site will be trashed tomorrow"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The parent of the thread linked to even mentions it. I don't think the Star Destroyer would stand a chance against Berman's stable of "writers". After all, all they have to do is route warp power through the phase inverter and modulate with bursts of flugeron particles and couple the energy through the main deflector dish. This will cause zepton instability in the Star Destroyer's engines and cause them to implode into a quantum singularity. Ditto anything you can trot out from any other sci-fi universe. Of course, the Treknobabble will have to be adjusted accordingly.
is the acrronym of the day now DRTFS?(where the first word is a negative conjunction and the last a word referring to a cohesive set of paragraphs)
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Unfortunately, my Star Trek Technical Manual shows the Constitution Class and the Galaxy Class in different scale. On his site, the original Enteprises ship class looks about half as big as the Galaxy Class, which it's not, it's about 1/4 - 1/3. But seeing the size of the Sovereign Class as it compares way up there to the Super Star Destroyer (and it's comparison to the original unfinished Death Star) was even more cool.
This guy should get an award from someone for his patience.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
Anyone else want to step up to the plate? We're taking all comers!
Well as I cant see the site to know, but im sure if somsoen posted to JMS he woudl be able to give the designed sizes of all the ships
Air Marshall Dowling fixed that problem during WWII, building the RAF Fighter Direction Center that controlled the Battle of Britain. Information from many sources (radars, ground observers, codebreakers) came in, maps and displays were updated (manually), and orders went out. Ever since, successful air forces have used some comparable system.
Space is even bigger. A real space battle will require a real command and control system.
Reality and gameplay don't match up well here.
Somebody set up us the mirror!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/systems/jupit er/photos/jupiter%20size%20comparison.jpg
See if you can break that link..
That does raise an interesting point. With the new 'subscribscription only' feature of previewing articles 30 minutes in advance, It should be possible then to provide a small amount of 'heads up' room for the target server and try to get the content mirrored off somewhere. Perhaps the mirror would be like Google Cache and provide a local, high bandwidth/capacity server for the content, but say expire the cached content after a few hours to save on space and relieve the initial torrent of hits that the front page ultimately generates
/. DDOS attack. Mainly, if the ad revenue was so important, maybe an agreement could be made to split the revenue generated from a /. local mirror between the host (Slashdot) and the original site. For one, they would be getting far more traffic than their server was capable of, and they get revenue. Slashdot would get their articles read without any possible DOS claims and they get revenue from the ads as well.
The parent post puts forward a very nice solution to the
It would be very nice to see if the 30 minute delayed posting could be used for more overall useful effect such as a 'buffer' time to set up a mirror
Slashdot's in a frenzy! Every mirror listed so far is also down!
I really liked the game "Warhead", as well as a Newtonian model, you got a pile of different auto-pilots. They didn't let you cheat so much as do things like stop your ship from spinning crazily out of control after some combat. Also programs like "match course/speed" and "get the hell outta here".
Also, the Elite manual had a good chapter where David Braben explained why and how he used a Newtonian model.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Great... trying to /. the US Military...
What's next?
The Winnabago should beat them all... ;)
That was one of the great things about the show, IMHO. I always liked Ivanova, and CC was brilliant at delivering some of her lines; the "Who am I?" speech was perfect.
Of course, there were also all those throwaway lines throughout the series that tied up the loose ends four series before you knew they existed. Want to know what happens to Londo and G'Kar? There's a visual cue in the very last episode, but actually you've known since the first episode of series one. Amazing thing, a series around 100 episodes long, spanning five years and dozens of recurring characters, and yet with barely a major loose end throughout.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
No Puppeteer Fleet-Of-Worlds?
No Ringworld? (In one of the books, it was mentioned that the Ringworld could be moved by making the sun jet plasma.)
> "C:\My Documents" a concept invented by idiots and only supported by idiots.
/home/$USERNAME is The One True Way.
Meanwhile,
...and then a week after that, the editors post a dupe :)
Marsoid: My people worked themselves into extinction converting our planet into a navigatiable space vessel using similar technology tested and proven on another nearby planet!
Zim: Why would you do all that?
Marsoid: Because it's cool.
...to ask the U.N. for support. "Homepageless victims of /. Relief fund"
sponsored by the UN, The Body Shop, Nike and Enron.
Unlss you will count the Death Star - and even them,
I'd nedd it's specs, because OLD MAN station
is probably still larger, Perry Rhodan - a German Sci Fi series, is the clear winner.
With 2.5 Kilometers in an ordinary battle ship,
Weapons ranging to tenths of millions of kilometers, they are unmatched.
-><- no
Ringworld was stationary(it spun around and moved, but it didn't go anywhere) and would have collapsed without a star in the center IIRC. It was the puppeteers kempler rosette system that was fleeing the galactic explosion.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
they can certainly ask. the editors don't ask because they don't give a flying crap about a site they link to. if they cared, they'd ask, and put something like this in the story: "original story [here], mirrors [here, here, here, here]. enjoy" its NOT THAT HARD.
/."
if the site says no, then editors put in "[site] declined our request to mirror their page. smash 'em,
if slashdot mirrors a site with ads, iframes can keep ad-revenue where it belongs. the original site can host the contents of an iframe, (a lot use iframes for ads anyway), so the views and impressions go where they need to go, and the money goes where it needs to go.
the slashdot editors get PAID for this. this is their JOB. if I did so little improvement over 5 years of my employment somewhere (my estimate of the life of slashdot), i would have lost that job about 4 years ago. revolution is in order.
you people who say that mirroring is illegal don't know what you're talking about - if you get permission, its legal - PERIOD. all material is automatically copywritten by the person or company writing it and/or publishing it. mirroring without permission is illegal, but mirroring with permission is ENCOURAGED!
bottom line: slashdot doesn't mirror because they don't give a rats ass. the proof is in the pudding: to this day they still fsck sites up the ass, and don't even have the common courtesy to give them a reach around.
most of the news already has a day delay anyways. except for war news, I haven't seen much first news source stories coming out of slashdot.
Why not have the slashdot servers check the links every 10mins or so. If the site is down then swap the links in the article to a slashdot page that apologises and offers you a cookie that will remember you and link you wanted. So next time you come to slashdot, and site is backup, it will remind you of the article and link you wanted to follow?
What would really be nice to see is a comparison chart to show compatible docking collars... I mean, seriously, they don't expect to moor disparate ships with rope, do they?
Where's the Death Star? It'd also be interesting to see some of the Culture ships (from Iain M. Banks' novels), like the gigantic General Systems Vehicles (which are so large they not only transport other giant craft, but even have landscapes built in).
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
For those of you who have missed out, he has been working with Robotech.com for the past few days and he will have a chart dedicated to Robotech/Macross/Mospeada/Southern Cross on Robotech.com this week.
The section on Robotech.com will feature all-new drawings that were previously unavailable on his current website.
For those of you who have missed out, he has been working with Robotech.com for the past few days and he will have a chart dedicated to Robotech/Macross/Mospeada/Southern Cross on Robotech.com this week.
The section on Robotech.com will feature all-new drawings that were previously unavailable on his current website.
For those of you who have missed out, he has been working with Robotech.com for the past few days and he will have a chart dedicated to Robotech/Macross/Mospeada/Southern Cross on Robotech.com this week.
The section on Robotech.com will feature all-new drawings that were previously unavailable on his current website
That's not blackmail, it's a protection racket.
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
Ooh, excuse my innocence.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
with warp power to the hard drives!!
Because you can! Why else?!
Offering to mirror articles on non-commercial sites locally for a week or so would be a good start.
h tml
I think we can wait a thousand years or so before the slashdot team creates such a feature, even for subscribers (imagine how frustrating it must be for subscribers when they preview a site and it's already slashdotted).
So let's move and make such a mirror by ourselves. All we need is a URL - say http://www.mysite.net/mirror/ - and when a site - say http://obscure-url.com/slashed.html - is slashdotted, the reader can read the mirror on http://www.mysite/mirror/obscure-url.com/slashed.
The site owner could even redirect the page and choose to mirror it. Otherwise, a benevolent member of the community would access the mirror site and ask to mirror.
Any other ideas ?
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
yes, because we all know the FAQ is the be all and end all of human knowledge. has it occurred to you that no matter what the FAQ says, slashdotting of sites is a problem? perhaps the policy on mirroring sites needs to be changed...
There's some awesome rendered battle movies here.
Pity the site hasn't been updated since 2000.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
that would be great, but until bittorrent is integrated into my web browser transparently, I'm not going to waste time downloading a zip for a site that may be only a curiosity.
You are on the right idea... the web being an entity of data, rather than a server/client model would help quite a bit.
although a few years of that, and a decade or two of advancements in broadband, and we'll be showing how well the server/client model beats patchy cloud arcitectures.
oh well... eventually we'll get it right.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
or whatever it was called that they did a fly-by several times in the last few episodes. Must have been several km in length. (Judging by John's ship, Moya looks like she's in the neighborhood of 600-1000 feet long?)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Looks like the site is still down, dammit. Anyone got a mirror (Hey, possibly the site was up a minute in the meantime, eh?) ?
I never got to see the site, but was there any mention of the ships from the Wing Commander series?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Hello eveyone,
Wow, now I see what it means to get "Slashdotted"! My poor little router's toast. Rest assured I am working my butt off to get STARSHIP DIMENSIONS back online ASAP, and am also looking for a mirror, in the meantime thanks for your patience!
If you are in los Estados Unidos and have cable, you can see it on Sci-Fi channel at 9 AM. (Or, more accurately, you can tape it and watch it insead of Enterprise. ;) If you can start tomorrow (15 Apr) do it. "Believers" is an episode which will kick you in the head.
Otherwise, probably your best bet is to look up The Lurker's Guide, and IIRC they have a guide to where it is elsewhere in the world.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Jeff Russell here;
here is STARSHIP DIMENSIONS 'lite' (stripped down to accomodate the new traffic):
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/merzo/
Happy scaling!!
Ok here goes, here is STARSHIP DIMENSIONS 'lite' (stripped down to accomodate the new traffic):
http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca/merzo/
Happy scaling!!
The game you are asking for is Warhead. It is old and looks crap on todays hardware but the plot, tech, and aliens were great. And it had "real space physics": you could fly in any direction and shoot in any other direction. With real inertia, of course ;-)
Sadly lacking are the ships from Iain M. Banks' Culture universe. These not only have great names but are much more realistic than in most scifi. Even a small General Systems Vehicle (GSV) would be up there with a Super Star Destroyer sizewise (and has millions of inhabitants) and a Torturer Class Rapid Offensive Unit (ROU) would kick the shit out of any other scifi warship (couple of hundred metres long, over 90% engine, the rest weapons, controled by an AI, 0 crew).
It is actually fairly easy to estimate what what warships in space would be like, from a little physics and common sense. Most scifi fails miserably in this regard. The most obvious fact that has a bearing on space warships is that space is empty or nearly so. There is no where to hide and therefore it is very easy to guess what colour a warship would be, black. For the same reason it can also be guessed that the temperature of a warships hull will be 2.73 K (2.73 degrees above absolute zero), to match the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Any hotter and its thermal emission will give away its presense, any cooler and it will stand out as a shadow against the CMB.
Of course there is still many effects (such as passing in front of a star) that could give you away. A critical parameter which determines how battles would play out is at what distance, on average warships could detect each other. Since the speed of light is around 300,000 km/s, if ships can only be detected at less than a million kilometers battles are likely to very short, few second affairs, where the first ship to detect the other and fire a laser (or similar) wins. In this case the sophistication of sensors and camoflage technology will be the deciding factor.
However if the average detection distance is much greater than a million kilometers then the travel time of the fastest weapon will many seconds or even minutes. Even ships moving at only a few kilometers per second could move a considerable distance in such time. Using laser like weapons would have much of the quality of contempory battleships shelling each other. With significant light travel times you would need to accurately predict the motion of the target to stand any chance of hitting it and evasive action by the target would be possible (although they would not be able to see a laser pulse coming).
At short ranges lasers or the like would be the weapon of choice but if you are engaging ships at distances of a hundred million kilometres guided missiles, if they could move at a significant fraction of the speed of light, might be of use as well, since at such a distance the light travel time would be many minutes and you are unlikely to hit something at that range with a laser if it is doing any manouvring.
It should be noted that engagements at very small distances such as those portrayed in Star Wars, B5 etc. would be rather unlikely. Not only is it unlikely that ships would be undetectable down to distances of a few kilometres but if this was the case ship combat would be virtually impossible. Considering just the inner solar system and confining oneself to the within a million kilometres of the plane you are faced with a volume of the order of 10^22 cubic kilometres. Thousands of ships could wander around in such a volume for ever without meeting if they needed to pass within a few kilometres in order to see each other.
When you consider the whole galaxy it quickly becomes clear that conventional war loses all meaning. I think it is unlikely that ships would detectable at even lightdays if they were trying to be inconspicuous, given the huge amount of gas, ice, dust and rocks that is floating around and reflecting starlight. But even if you could seeing where a ship was days ago is not a great step forward in fighting it (a lightday is very roughly the size of the solar system). The volume of the galaxy
"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is
weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me
the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,
unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous
desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must
learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a
short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
-- Don Juan
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...