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."
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.
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.
Here's an interesting graphic comparing ship size.
-Mansa
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!"
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.
Anyone know how big Moya from Farscape is?
Rob
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.
;-) 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 ;-)
Right-- but they never do this until it is pointed out
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....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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
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.
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.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey