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."

Comments

Re:What i want to know....

[anti11es]

What's even funnier is that when these always upright ships lose power they "lose" the ability to stay upright and drift on their side or upside down.

Re:What i want to know....

[Apaturia]

What I find even more pathetic is when they have ships surrounding them and say "we can't go anywhere!". Have they not EVER heard of the third dimension? Ya know, UP or DOWN?

Reminds me of a Futurama episode, where people encircle a ship so that it won't move. The ship just moves up and speeds away. :)

Since that site is down...

[mansa]

Here's an interesting graphic comparing ship size.

-Mansa

SLASHDOT cache

[Wehesheit]

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?

Re:Slashdot logic..

[GigsVT]

Apparently the site isn't slashdotted. Even in the Mysterious Future, the index page was missing. Either they heard they were going to be slashdotted and took it down, or it was just very bad timing.

Another argument for having some sort of instant feedback to the editors on the red articles, if a link is broken on a story like this, what's the point of even running the story?

Where's the Sleeper Service? Or the puppeteers?

[edremy]

Can't see the site, but the image linked clearly isn't going to be covering any GSVs. Come on, they're only 80x30x10 kilometers or so.

And of course, they aren't even close to the true masters, the puppeteers and their home worlds.

What about Dr.Who/

[watzinaneihm]

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.

Red Dwarf

[bstadil]

Do not forget Red Dwarf.

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?

What about Moya?

[RobPiano]

Anyone know how big Moya from Farscape is?

Rob

Re:What about Moya?

[Anonymous Coward]

online:

The main setting for Farscape: a living starship, a female of a species called Leviathan. She's called bio-mechanoid, meaning part machine and part living organic matter. While she travels faster than lightcc no explanation has been given for exactly how her drive works. (See Starburst.) Her size has not been defined, either, but she's cavernous with hundreds of rooms (called chambers) and dozens of decks. She's a living home in space, but it's a bit of a pity that she isn't also armed. (See also Pilot.)

Re:Mighty Mouse vs. Superman

[martyn s]

Power per gram ratio is meaningless. We want to know who can beat the other one up.

And no way does the cheesy cartoony MM theme song beat the John Williams composed SM theme.

bit torrent

[minus_273]

im starting to think that bittorrent should be built into all browsers for webpages....

Re:bit torrent

[MQBS]

This is actually a really good idea. Distributed bandwidth for *everything*, if your algorithms are efficient enough it would create ad-hoc caches. The only issue would be websites with rapidly changing data. It would basically overcome the underlying idea of being an end-user, that you cannot pass packets. Instead, you would make every computer into a node and with enough bandwidth...

Cool. Someone get to work.

Re:How about the RingWorld?

[Saeger]

RingWorlds?

Oh, you mean those giant anthropomorphic orbitals of the far future that assume sentient life will still exist in an old-fashioned humanoid form requiring gravity, atmosphere, day/night cycles, etc.? Pfft.

RingWorlds are ultimately just as unbelievable as conventional spaceships are... unless... unless you can suspend your disbelief by pretending transhumanism is "Crazy Talk", and that spam-in-a-can is the way things will always be and SHOULD be. Yeeeehaw spacecowboys. :)

--

Re:What i want to know....

[1u3hr]

Since virtually all movie and TV spaceships have artificial gravity (even when they're still using some archaic V2-like rocket for propulsion, (because freefall is impossible to do on a budget), and the "real" acceleration is almost always going to be along the axis of the ship, it "stands to reason" (mine anyway) that the decks should be perpendicular to the axis, i.e. you're usually travelling "straight up" if you're standing on the deck. This would have the advantage of making the artificial gravity simpler (Don't have to worry much about sideways forces), and should the AG fail, at least you'd fall onto the deck (or more likely, get smeared over it from the thousands of g's they must pull, even on ST impulse power.

But instead, most seem to have their decks like a sea-going ship or an airliner, parallel to the axis.

One thing I have to day

[TerryAtWork]

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.

Andromeda has em all beat.

[Mulletproof]

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.

Possible other size compare chart?

[jake_fehr]

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?

Babylon 5

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Re:Babylon 5

[idontgno]

However, the ship design sucks rocks :)

Whose, Earth's? They looked pretty solid to me. Clunky, overfunctional, unaesthetic, boxy, like 21st Century U.S. Army stuff. Ugly, but structurally sound for the stresses you can statically design for (acceleration/deceleration, course change, some collision and weapons-fire resistance).

Besides, I seem to recall that a lot of Earth Alliance stuff is produced in the same system we use in the 21st Century: lowest bidder. Ugly and functional is usually cheaper than pretty and functional.

Some of the stuff from the other races (Mimbari, for instance) seemed more fragile, but after your technology has mastered localized gravitation control you can reinforce your structure with selective gravity polarization (like Star Trek "Structural Integrity Field"). Make your naval architecture as swoopy and ephemeral as you like, so long as you have still have power while you're maneuvering. (Which, by definition, you do--Newtonian universe, right?)

By the bye, earlier upthread someone was bemoaning how the stereotypical TV SF space battle always seemed to be atmospheric ("thick 2-D", I believe). B5 seemed to model the 3D Newtonian universe quite well...Starfury fighters cutting thrust, whipping around 180 degrees on the yaw axis, and blazing away with lasers or missiles at whoever's chasing them, coasting along all the while.

Re:Babylon 5

[Zirnike]

We'll skip the Vorlon and Shadow ships... They're way overtech, anyway, and are supposed to look pretty much imposible. A million years of design will do that.

Exactly what are you talking about, than? The Earth ships are remarkably realistic. The Starfuries are dead on the way I would design a starfighter. The engines are on the tips of the 'fragile wings'? You mean like a 747 or a B52? Why didn't the designers of those place all the engines in the main body?

What about capital ships? The Hyperion is a huge block. The only things hanging out are turrets, the habitat (I'm assuming, the spinning thing... which is massive, and not structurally unsound) and maybe antennas or something. And if the turrets are a problem, than the turrets on a Abrams are too.

Or the most fragile looking ships, the Mimbari capships. No weights in the 'wings', so there isn't a problem there that isn't in a basic modern plane. Or the White Star class... Outrigger engines (for maneuverability) held by support wings. Sure, the wings look nice, but so what? I'd design them that way if I didn't need to worry about drag, too.

Most of the rest of the alien races aren't that bad, either. Only the elder races.

Re:What i want to know....

[einhverfr]

I feel like a nerd, but I'd like to point out that this is a plot point in Star Trek. Kirk is fighting Khan and realizes that Khan is thinking about the battle in 2D because he's from a long time ago, so Kirk makes sure to make extensive use of all 3 axes.

Right-- but they never do this until it is pointed out ;-) It is like the whole point is that Kirk is thinking outside the box for just long enough to create an ambush and then back to 2D tactics ;-)

Here is the problem-- the closest thing we have to 3D combat today is aircraft. The problem is that aircraft operate in a sort of "deep-2d" in that up is a costly direction, and most of it happens along a sort of deepened plane..... Furthermore, orientation *is* important aerodynamically, so the things that would be commonplace in space are completely foreign to our existance today.

This is why I would like to see a completely Newtonian-based Space Combat simulator. Maybe have orbital mechanics for battles near planets.... Would be really cool....

What... no Sulaco or Nostromo??

[tjhanley]

Can't deny the Alien series...

Re:What i want to know....

[GMFTatsujin]

Check out Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. It's still got all the trappings of sci-fi combat (lasers you can see, FTL drive to get from place to place, etc) but the combat itself is based around a newtonian model. Fire up your engines and you accelerate, turn them off and you drift. It makes for some fun maneuvers, broadsiding capital ships and so on. It's also incredibly tough to get used to the first couple of times out, since you have to learn how so apply a deft touch instead of the usual all-out burn.

There's a also mod for the IWar series called Buda5 which re-creates the Babylon 5 universe, since newtonian physics was a highlight of the show's effects.
GMFTatsujin

A solution - temporary local mirrors on Slashdot

[WIAKywbfatw]

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?

Re:What i want to know....

[Rorschach1]

Terminus (http://www.vvisions.com/games/details.cfm?ID=28) does a pretty good job of it. Yeah, it's not true Newtonian physics - ships have a maximum speed, and exceeding it causes hull damage and eventually destruction. But it does serve to limit the difference in velocity.

The Terminus solar system is REALLY BIG. The fact that your top speed is limited means that pretty much anything interesting is going to be clustered around the vortex gate network. But that doesn't mean you have to stay there. I've actually flown from the Moon to the Earth in real time, without using the gate network. Took something like 12 hours. I've pondered the feasibility of flying from Earth to Venus or Mars, but it's not entirely clear if even my huge flying fuel tank of a ship would have enough juice to run the life support for that long.

The other problem is navigation. The nav comp won't lock on to anything outside your local gate node. You're limited to looking out the window to pick your target. I once flew to Amalthea from a moon with a vortex gate and proved the concept - just had to align myself with visible landmarks. I think the solar system is dynamic in the game, though, so Venus is going to be a moving target.

I'd recommend Terminus to anyone who likes playing around with games outside of a set story line. Not as fun as the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games as far as pure action goes, but much more like Elite.

Largest space structure size

[bradbury]

The largest integrated space structure size (that I've encountered) would be a highly evolved Matrioshka Brain which is a multi-layer Dyson Sphere constructed using molecular nanotechnology. This is significantly larger and a heck of a lot more intelligant than a Magog Worldship. There is not normally enough enough material outside of the star in a single solar system to construct one however, so it would require an extended harvesting process within a large gas cloud or perhaps an extensive process of star-lifting [1] to accomplish this. The maximum size of a Matrioshka Brain depends on the size of the star used as a power source and/or the size to which it is reduced. But a diameter of several light years is not unreasonable. This is determined by the heat radiation limits as specified by Stefan's Law. Unlike Niven's Ringworld or a Magog Worldship which may have significant problems with the laws of physics (holding them together is problematic), Matrioshka Brains do seem feasible.

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.

Solutions to your problems

[einhverfr]

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 ;)

Re:/.'ed but who cares?

[macshune]

What is the difference between DDoS'ing and Slashdotting? It's not like people are ignorant of the /. effect.

If you _know_ the site is gonna go down when the story gets posted, then it's the same as DDoS'ing, right?

Eureka!

[snilloc]

/. cannot ask to mirror a site for legal reasons, nor can they just go ahead and mirror it.

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.

Dyson sphere

[Apogaion]

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.

Re:Google

[vaylen]

Your V'ger size is WAY off. According to the script for Star Trek - The Motion Picture shot 91, http://www.geocities.com/ussmunchkin/Star_Trek_I.h tm V'ger is 82 AU's in diameter. An AU (Astronomical Unit) is the distance from the earth to the sun, or 149,597,870.691 km. That would make V'ger a ridiculously immense 12,267,025,396.662 km in size. Yes that's 12 BILLION as in Carl Freakin' Sagan! I think this size was so ludicrous that they changed the number to make it WAY smaller for the Directors Cut of ST-TMP that came out on DVD last year. I'd like to see that size chart with the 12.2 billion kilometer V'ger on it.

Let slashdot do the work

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Let's do it by ourselves, the community.

[clarkie.mg]

Offering to mirror articles on non-commercial sites locally for a week or so would be a good start.

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.h tml

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 ?