"Other worlds said I was daft to build a station in deep space, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em! It blew up, so I built a second one. That blew up. I built a third one. It burned down, fell over, and then blew up. So I built a fourth one, that disappeared... But the fifth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get, lad--the strongest space station in this quadrant!"
I always go with the rule of thumb. If it blows up, blame the shadows. If it disappears, blame the Vorlons. And if it’s stolen and moved to a different show, blame the feringie.
I do love how B5 was smaller than B4... Rather than building the biggest and best to impress the other races they decided to scale back the costs because it was just going to blow up anyways.
Two of the vulnerabilities you point out do, in fact, become plot points for various episodes. A ship does indeed crash in the landing bay, shutting down all ingress and egress to the station for a fair bit of time (By Any Means Necessary). And an assassin in a stolen Starfury does advance on the windowed front part of the station to make a final attempt on Sheridan's life (No Compromises). Whether these design "flaws" were intentionally placed to allow these kinds of episodic plot points, or whether the script writers recognized the flaws and saw the opportunity to exploit them for a plot point, I can't say either way, but the show does take advantage of them at least once in each case.
Is there a term for a space vehicle/Station that has the traits of a Mary Sue? Because B5 shows why stations need flaws. You can guard those flaws, establish protocols to protect them... But a ship with flaws for whatever reason breeds drama... Just look at Battlestar Galactica. Her flaws were... She's old. Lacks ammunition, (solved by raiding a depot), understaffed, has to look after a fleet that Galactica's old water recycle unit has to replenish the fleets water... Etc etc
I think in the episode in question, it wasn't C&C the Starfurie approached, but an observation deck with even bigger windows. Though there was an episode where a ship took a shot at the windows of C&C and Evoniva called for the blast doors to be closed as she backed up against her railing. Fortunately for her and every one else there, the blast doors held.
@@Krahazik You're thinking of Severed Dreams. It was Sheridan commanding from the CIC; Ivanova was in a Starfury leading the charge. She ended up colliding with an enemy ship and ejecting in the nick of time.
First Contact: "The first rule of government spending, why build one when you can build two for twice the price?" Babylon 5: "The first rule of Earth Alliance spending, why build one when you can build five?"
I mean, yeah... but the original plan was for it to go *forward*, and the series was supposed to be two five-year series, with B4 becoming 'Babylon Prime' to replace B5 in the second series.
Fun fact, JMS actually got the numbers right wherever they could be figured. Perfect case in point being the scene where Captain Sheridan needs to jump out of the tram that runs the length of the open habitation area to avoid a bomb. Ivanova is quoted as saying Sheridan is in free fall but will hit the "ground" at 60mph. The "floor" of this area is well inward of the outer skin and the tram is closer to but not at the axis of rotation with the difference meaning that someone jumping out of that tram actually would have a difference of 60mph from the speed the "floor" of that central open space rotates at.
I remember seeing that episode and thinking it was pretty well done, as it was a rotating system, and not falling due to gravity. Though there was one episode when Sheridan and Garibaldi were playing baseball, and I was thinking what it would have been like to try simulating the coriolis effect to the motion of the ball, and have it curve off in a crazy way ( think they did that on the expanse at one point really well). Guess I;m just a bit of a physics nerd!
@@fuzzblightyear145 I think they did that with a baseball in Interstellar. I remember being disappointed in JMS's rep for details because I figured the rotational speed would be more like 140mpg iirc at the outer edge and at least 80 at the inner face so I assumed either the line got flubbed, a measurement changed or she was talking about how fast the tram was going. Only more recently did I consider the track isn't dead center and is a hundred meters or so from the center spine making the difference between his rotational velocity where he jumped and where he'd "land" pretty much 60mph. Never doubt JMS's math.
The Minbari and Centauri contributions of money makes some sense for the humans- all 5 of the stations were built in the same area, so since they were able to recycle the exploded bits, they were able to save money while making a bigger station! And then #4 disappeared, so they were having to start from scratch. Which is expensive.
One point regarding the station's gravity. It doesn't have to top out at 1g and can account for much higher g's on a case-by-case basis. In the pilot episode, "The Gathering", Sinclair mentions when he and Lyta Alexander are passing through the Alien Sector on the way to Red 5, that they can even "change the rotation of some sectors to vary the gravity". So it could be assumed that they could accommodate higher g species if needed. Great channel by the way.
It was probably economically sound to use the other races artificial gravity generators to make only special sections in the alien habitation ring in those spaces, while building a spinning cylinder system. Our venerable shipyard master mentioned the issues from the massive spinning gear and transmission systems required for this 'sort of kind of' O'neill cylinder, but I always figured they'd used an electromagnet or infused rare earth magnet ring system, or similar; to make the contacts free but balanced on those rings. Even then if they didn't use alien gravity generators an extra series of inner rings could work to generate more than 1g of inertia for the aliens in that sector.
@@dragonsword7370 Gravity control was a very closely guarded secret. I think only the Minbari and the old races had it... maybe the Technomancers too. IIRC, humans (and probably other races) thought that the Minbari had rotating sections within their ships. I seem to recall someone being surprised by that not being the case. Oh, and Delen's ring thing... That was also shown as secret tech that is basically Clarke-tech (indistinguishable from magic) to the other young races.
I think they retconned that after that episode. It was said that B4 and earlier stations designs could do this (hence the multiple concentric rings) but not B5, as it was cheaper and only had one big spinning drum.
2:00 kinda hilarious how a single space shuttle fails and everyone just nopes on out but these people can have 3 stations blow up and 1 pop out of existence and STILL be confident enough to do the same thing again.
A possible offloading method from ZeroG to 1G: Cargo is lowered into 1G. 1G section has a conveyor belt (probably many) counter rotating around the station that matches the motionlessness of ZeroG. When all cargo is offloaded, the conveyor belt(s) are slowed to a stop. Rethink. The hull of the station is the floor of 1G. The spinning station would need a series of opening and closing hatches to line up with the ZeroG part. Cargo is raised into a hatch, and the rotational velocity of the station will scoop the cargo, like a spatula. Opening and closing of hatches will have to be well timed, like firing a bullet through one's own propeller.
It could be as simple as a ring just above the main bearings that rotates at variable speed with a platform on each side. It starts stationary with one side, gets loaded, spins up to match the other side, and gets off loaded. It might take a little while to change speeds depending on mass, but it could transfer a considerable amount of cargo.
Nah, just have two parallel disks centered on the axis of rotation, a standard cargo container width + a bit more "for equipment" apart, and fastened to the rotating section. Mount passive maglev systems to your cargo container, and force it into the gap- if you've engineered it correctly, then centrifugal force will keep it moving "down", with the maglev systems fighting against the relative motion of container and disks, resulting in a low-speed landing of the cargo container at the bottom. Limit the rate and locations where the containers are dropped, and engineer things such that containers that reach the bottom automatically get moved out of the way of the next container, and you have absolutely no need for human involvement in that bit of the system; returning Starfuries could be returned to their launch bays with the same system. You can do a similar sort of thing for escape pods, and for transferring containers from the spin sections to the non-spin sections, the only thing you really need is the "adjustment cylinder" (or escape chute, for escape pods), and a passive (so passively safe) speed control system.
aft section distributes cargo, why brown sector is brown sector, low paying menial labor. all cargo sorted for areas and sections, loaded onto skips, sent into the rotating section mechanically, no people catching boxes >.< easier to match rotation, handle and pack cargo aft where you don't have to worry about anything rotating until it's moved into the main ring from the hub to radiate deeper into the well rather than trying to push against it from the outer ring. once in the ring it cargo containers can be moved entire to whatever section they need to be and broken apart in the case of discrete shipments...more labor, humans going to human. as to bearings, magnetic would be fine. superconducting magnetic bearings is something we could do now given a fusion powerplant ^_^
B5 being decommissioned was a sad moment. I know it was inevitable _(just like one day our space station in real life will be abandoned and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere)_ but so much history, important history at that, happened there and it felt like tearing down a cathedral.
The station map answers your questions. It shows a "rear entry" (no jokes), concentric personnel transfer system, and "mag-lev bearings." Magnetic bearings are already used by NASA for high-speed carbon-fiber flywheel energy storage systems that have flown in space. The Concentric Transport System looks like it moves along the axis where the rotation is slowest and easiest to engineer, compared to match the much higher speeds of the outer decks. Although, the forward "mag-lev" bearings are mentioned in-line with a transfer mechanism, so maybe you're right about high-speed transfer, at least along the forward collar, which is still significantly inward of the 1g decks, at around .5g or less. I don't know if these transfer points are in vacuum, which would be better for friction, or use sliding seals (a maintenance nightmare) or some sort of shield (plasma windows to maintain atmosphere have been tested in the last two decades). I designed a couple rotating space stations for my own hard sci-fi writing project and had to answer the same questions. Sometimes my answers were the same, and sometimes they were different. The differences were usually due to changes in setting or goals, such as economics, politics, culture, design philosophy, etc and not due to physics. Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I thought the weapons systems were mounted on the non-rotating sections, like the spine and collar. I'm rewatching the series right now and currently in S5 and will have to pay close attention the next time a battle scene comes up. For my story, I also have mobile turrets (more like main battle tanks) that move along the skin of a ship or station with magnetic wheels, or that can grasp and roll on an outboard grid of rails like roller-coasters do. You can imagine the tactical abilities this could provide.
Maglev bearings and Hall effect plasma seals would indeed be prudent. Not sure about the mobile turrets: detaching them, and, giving them slow drives and reactive mass recoil dampers (spring loaded massive blocks that move in the reverse direction) would offer better defence-in-depth, like tanks do. Although they would need to be supplemented with fighters, this combined arms military doctrine is already decades old.
B5 station design is just hard sci-fi. It is an O'neill Cylinder done the way we think we might actually eventually build one (circa 1990). The story and a lot of the other design is space opera, which is fine too. IIRC, the relative 'realism' of the station itself was very intentional to give those less realistic elements a (metaphorically) grounded setting.
Your grid like tank defense layer sounds like a bad idea. As soon as the first mobile turrets are shot to garbage they block the way for the others to replace them leaving your station with more and more weak undefended spots. So the mobile idea gets stuck by its own components. Your turrets become stationary, more or less. 🤔 Another factor to consider is energy. As soon as you need energy to move things around you cannot use that energy for other purposes like firing to enemy vessels. Mobility makes sense if you want to either get closer to a target to bring it into firing range or to get away as fast as possible. That's why you have fighter and bomber squadrons to get more strategic and tactical options. A space station is already something like the last line of defense. It requires a different set of features depending on the type. If you're designing a trade station then obviously in case of emergency when an enemy fleet is about to show up then it's prime objective is to evacuate inhabitants and cargo as fast as possible. That in mind you could think of a modular design where subsections for cargo and living areas have their own engines and fuel / energy reserves and can detach in an organized protocol to act as escape pods, just bigger and capable of traveling to the next space station or planet in reach. Your station would be more like a flexible 3d grid where things are attached and detached based on the situation. And you do not need separate escape pods which are most of the time not used and if used too small to actually rescue your inhabitants for longer than a few hours until they die either because of lacking food, oxygen or fuel (and therefore being helpless when going into atmosphere or asteroids or other things which you cannot avoid during travel). For smaller research stations you can simply add an engine so most of the time your station does not move, but in case of emergency it can navigate its way home. For larger ones, where thousands of people live permanently, like in a city with agricultural districts and the like you have a different scenario. Essentially you have a small planet. Hopefully resourcefu enough that the enemy is more interested in conquering it than destroying it. Here you need a layered defense. People will gather more at the center and you will have to come up with ideas to make it costly to reach the core for the invader. Think about citadels. Instead of having one wall around a city a citadel has sharp edges and towers and all in order to concentrate firepower from different angles with a combination of small and heavy arms. Sure in space you have to think 3 dimensions, so on your outer hull armor you should have towers as well as turrets on the ground to cover these towers. Good enough to catch enemy fighter squads. If you want to keep some kind of mobility then you can think about a plug in system. So your guns and rocket launchers etc can be pulled back into the armor hull and moved to a deeper level. Then the outer hull is acting like a shield wall. And the next inner ring is preparing for another line of defense. This kind of layering makes it really hard for an enemy to beat your station and turns it into a siege. Who knows? Maybe you let some parts of your shield simply explode in a controlled way which takes down a bunch of invasion forces? Or maybe you let a section use its mass to fly directly into the nearby capital ship to either destroy it or keep them busy wasting ammunition to get that thing out of the way? In any case the effect is that your commander gains time. Could be just enough to get some ally fleet into range or to dry out the enemies resources. They either run out of ammunition or food or fuel. That's what I mean by make it costly.
The armor on a rotating station is also hard to burn off since it’s constantly moving and changing targeting calculations to hit the same damaged area. Though considering “on axis” would be like the forward and aft 15 degrees, that’s a fairly narrow cone when the jump gate isn’t on that axis, so any naughtier neighbors get a face full of weapon plasma.
I was thinking that a ship could match the rotation of the station to stay focused on one spot as well as minimize weapons platforms fire, but that does still have some fuel cost, and require certain maneuvering capabilities that not all ships in 'verse have.
Absolute love this series, remember recording the pilot ages ago and would scramble to the Lurker's Guide after each episode aired. What a magical time that was, when we watched it in Memphis usually late Sat nite/early Sunday morn and about 5 minutes after our viewing ended, the episode guide would be updated with a treasure trove of info and JMS Speaks. Star Trek is what we squishies aspire to be, B5 is a lot more honest about our future.
I always imagined the spine was the cargo transfer system, in that cargo would be transferred along it, held in those large pods, or transferred into the station at the front or rear where it attaches into the spinning portion, where rotation would be much less of an issue. Then it would be more like stepping onto a moving walkway or escalator, not trying to match speeds with a freight train passing by.
Could be. The show almost never references the null-g sections, aside from occasional B-roll of cargo being moved in and out of the forward hold, and one of the mandibles being blown off in combat.
There were a few cargo transfer points outside the station so at the very least only supplies that were needed in the station itself went down the spine. Any other ship to ship transfer could be floated at the transfer points while commerce too place on/near B5.
@@SacredCowShipyards - if you watch a few of the episodes where it shows the dockworkers handling cargo, you can see that they are often in the forward section near where the shuttles dock, and that they are offloading cargo in partial to full gravity both from the ships AND from some kind of lift in the background off to one side. It looks like the connection point at the front of the spine has an elevator that does precisely what you mentioned and drops the cargo down into the core where it is then distributed by additional lifts and trams throughout the station. You can also see (albeit briefly) additional trams and tubes on maps, in the background when they show the core spine tram, and so on, so there appear to be freight trams and lifts all over the place to facilitate the dispersal of cargo.
B5 spins about 30 meters per second along the outside (if my math is right). On the keeping it spinning and frictionless bearings: We already have magnetic bearings that are pretty good. Magnetic bearings in a vacuum would be even better. Our electric motors are pretty good at isolating stators and rotors. IRL we'd probably wrap that spinning can in a stationary asteroid to block radiation and other stuff, but other than that B5 was probably the most realistic space show until the Expanse, and in some ways surpasses even that. I like Stargate slightly more than B5, but that's mostly due to the hugely more content available for SG and the executive meddling that ruined part of one of the later seasons.
iirc, there were only two points of contact between the rotating habitation and the non-rotating utility spine and power plant the front hub and at the rear of the habitat section - two big-ass hubs. more likely magnetic bearings than material ones. the *seals* are the part that bugs me.
The Babylon Station History sounds like a Monty Python Sketch "When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."
As far as I’m aware, the spinal 0g storage thingy is really only connected to the spinning part at the aft side, between the reactor and Brown Sector. So basically, every bit of required material would need to be dragged through the miles of the spine, then down to the central axis before it could be introduced into the rotating part….
I would like to point out that by the diagram the axial interface between cargonia and the main station is through grey-sector as the entire cargonia land is technically grey sector per the map you used. That would make a lot of sense. The reactor, service shunts (power, water, atmo) are run along the core, where the railway is in the series (the one that the centauri blow up.. which brings up other serious questions considering the design and the effect of a BOMB in your core axial service duct.. why would you want people near it and how CiC is all forward of the civilian sectors where they can technically interrupt power and services via sabotage). So rearward of Grey sector does not rotate.. arguably there must be some sort of interface methodology going on in grey sector since we see in the show that there is gravity in grey sector.. but details details, it was a good show but clearly grey sector was supposed to be FIXED and represent the industrial/cargo/systems zone where the rotating section connected to the non-rotating sections. Meant also that cargo had to take the "long way around". Not very efficient. But again, the spine cargo docs make sense. In the show we clearly see ships loading and offloading cargo into the spine storage depots and it's all quite busy and independent of shipping traffic that actually docs. I imagine that smaller cargo is handled internally while bulk, chem, hazard, is all handled externally.
I read somewhere that after Babylon 4 disapeared the Earth Alliance was going to call it quits. It was the Minbari that convinced them to build a fifth one.
for goods transfer you can technically use a rotation syncing system thingy. you simply have a "train" or secondary rings in the Rotation hub that has holes in the top and bottom of it so things can be passed through. you put your stuff on the train/ring in the 0g part and then you make the train/ring synce up with the rotating part. then you simply unload it though ports in the rotating part and you got your stuff in. and you can have multiples of those in one row.
To transfer materials, you could use a free-moving ring between the rotating body and stationary portion that connects to the stationary section to be loaded, then accelerates to the angular velocity of the rotating portion and connects to that to unload, then decelerates to reconnect to the stationary section again.
In the original pilot movie that aired a year before the show began, The broader sections of the main cylinder were shown to be rotating at a different rate than the main cylinder, in fact in one shot one of those was from rotating the opposite direction. Adjust the spin of some sections to accommodate people with different gravitational needs. When they re-cut and re-edited the pilot on TNT in 1997, they cut out that line of dialog and removed the 2 or 3 variable-spin shots, since that had never been referenced or shown in the series proper, which made that stuff confusing. The first four Babylon Stations were also co-funded by the Minbar. (Details unclear: i've heard it said that it was 1/3rd earth, 1/3rd Minbari, and 1/3rd the other species combined. I've also heard it was half earth, a quarter minbar, and a quarter "other.") there is behind us was that the Minbari I very much want to do avoid another war, but at the same time they didn't really trust humanity so they were not allowed to give us any technological items we didn't already have, apart from Data crystals, oddly. The official technological ranking of the species is (from most to least) 1- shadows/vorlons 2- minbari 3- centauri 4- human 5- Narn 6- everyone else. Minbari had been interstellar for more than a thousand years, Centauri had been interstellar for s beral hundred years prior to the show, humanity had been interstellar for just about a century, and the Narn had really only been interstellar for about 50 years or so at the time the show starts. Oh: they didn't know what was on the planet when they built B5. They scanned it and found nothing. The Great Machine wasn't revealed until late in the 1st season.
Transfer of goods between the spine and the rotational section would be easy enough, they've had THAT problem solved since the 1930s or so, in battleship turrets. Give it cargo bays in a freewheeling rotating ring. To transfer goods directly from vessels or the spine, bring the hold to a stop relative to the spine. Rotating the holds to bring fresh stowage inline might be necessary. To bring goods and stores into the main living spaces, accelerate the holds to match the living space rotation and lift it in. This system would also potentially give you a way to replace worn bearings; the tracks between the spine, the cargo ring, and the habitable section, could all be brought to a stop relative to each other without "turning off the gravity" as it were, and allowing worn components to be accessed without turning some poor maintenance tech into a bloody smear.
Nice example of KISS engineering, that is much easier than matching individual cargo units. With maglev bearings on the full ring, it should be possible to use eddy current brakes as magnetic "clutches" on both sides of the hold accelerate/decelerate to whatever rotation is required. No moving parts is definitely nice for something that can't really be stopped. Ferrofluidic seals could work as no-contact pressure seals from 1atm to space, but this project is starting to look like it might eat a few asteroids worth of rare earth minerals just for magnets...
@@martok_sh oof, no... you don't want a brake on a rotating space station... just spin the thing up and down properly, and then lock it in place, or you'll be sending your station into interesting tumbles every time you attempt a cargo transfer.
If you haven't looked into it, I'd love a look into the Firefly class ships from the tv show Firefly! Ofc, it's not necessary to do, but it's a very fun show!
Just once it would have been nice to see Draal wreck the ever loving sh*t out of something. Like, the more insubstantial the threat was, the funnier it would have been. Ivanova: "Captain, there's a single raider fighter that is approaching on an attack vector, estimated time to firing range, 2 hours" Sheridan: "Screw it, I'm busy, tell Drall to send a nuke or 12"
The station was already built when they found what lived on the planet and it was moved closer to the planet. The first 3 stations were destroyed by terrorist that though humanity should remain on earth, mainly because they wanted to control humanity.
To retcon, I could see having a separate rotating sleeve, ringed around the main tube. It would have a blister on it that passed through the stationary cargo section. Bulk cargo could be transfered by spinning the ring up to the rotation rate or vice versa to slow down and dock with the zero G section. You'd need to create seals and have airlocks involved.
As for the moving stuff between the Zero G and the spinning section, I always thought of it like the mail bag catches for trains you see in Western movies. Basically just a giant hoop on the end of a bag that you loop around a hook as it speeds past
B5 just happens to be my all time favorite scifi... yet... despite the huge mass of the station being a rotating mass, the solar panels and top section somehow remains unaffected by all that torsional force that is attached to it. (I see you brought that up later in the episode) Most O'neil cylinders are drawn to have a docking port at the middle of the hub. to be fair, the CnC window had solid panel shutters to protect from impact that was actually used once during the show that I recall. as for cargo transfer, they did indicate that there is a docking system that attaches the cargo or shuttle craft to the docking bay allowing them to transfer cargo under reduced gravity. I recall seeing your star fury episode, yet did not recall seeing this episode... and yes while there where point defense systems, it was shown that the front section was venerable... at one point the pickle fork even got partially sheared off
It's said nowhere in the lore, but there's a (magnetic, to elaborate) clutch that let's the cargo docking bay and the aft outside warehouses to rotate along the spinning section. So I've said to myself. Outbound cargo is just let loose while the clucth is engaging. Oh, there are other options down in the comments.
about the spinning/stationary sections, i believe the use maglev "bearings to rotate and prevent friction? don't know if i heard that somewhere or i just imagined it.
Conservation of Angular Momentum will keep it spinning once it's spun up. You'd only need bearings to keep the non-rotational sections fixed, since they have a much lower moment of inertia than the much, much larger station. The bigger problem is that anything that large with a nonzero angular momentum is going to be horribly difficult to point in a different direction. So if B5 and the jumpgate weren't at one of Epsilon-3's Lagrange points, B5 would _appear to_ slowly pivot as it orbited Epsilon-3 - because in reality it would always be pointing in _the same direction_ … just like a gyroscope does.
I find it crazy that they have completely different designs for each station. Look how long it takes "real world" to design. Just design! A new aircraft carrier.
Oh, they probably had a huge global contest where huge conglomerates had to more or less build the thing in the vicinity of Earth, for testing etc. Probably plans for using them in other projects. So when the first one went off - not due to any construction errors, but because of sabotage and freakish events in local space - there was already another one in the woodworks. A few bribes and some political pressure and, voila!, Bob's your uncle.
actually there is a zero friction bearing, its called an air bearing, the nearest analogy is one of those table football games with the puck and the air cushion, that's basically how it works.
Gonna butt in here a little late, buuuut… With regards to the chokepoints for cargo handling, the show writers don’t seem to treat it as something that “just works”. We get a look into their cargo handling and how the work is long and intense. We see multiple instances where cargo traffic was backed up or otherwise jammed by these constrictions. The design itself may be questionable, but the writers damn well knew that and played into that for the show. If you look back at the B-rolls of the null-g docking bay, you’ll frequently see multiple ships entering and leaving at the same time, and in ways that look INCREDIBLY close together.
There are a few blips here and there - notably the dockworker strikes - but this would be a constant, endless blessed nightmare that would almost necessitate some sort of null-g transshipment point for people trying to actually get into the station. I'm still amazed that "blowing the one airlock that lets into the landing bays" wasn't somehow a plot point in the stories.
@@SacredCowShipyards John Ringo has a 3 book series about a spacestation/battlestation where that becomes a issue. He goes into alot of station Ops. Live Free or Die, Citadel and Hell's Gate. John's Posleen War series is excellent too.
@@readhistory2023 You get a thumbs up and "Hell yeah!" for the Troy Rising series reference. David Weber's Honorverse books get a nod for practical design notes and combat tactics.
@@SacredCowShipyards I... yeah. I can properly agree with you there. Maybe the new show will give us a better look into that particular topic. As for the attack thing, hooo boy you're even more right. That'd be like sabotaging the spinal bay doors on a Venator. Just a totally crippling move to one of its primary functions.
I'd like to point out that there are (technically) frictionless bearings around that work especially well in space. Magnetic levitation bearings, which also work nicely as motors. With that kind of bearing, its comparatively easy to keep the stationary part of the station stationary.
Eh, sorta frictionless. They don't cause conventional abrasion, but you do still get the reduction in relative speed, as well as heat generation, and a very slow (usually completely irrelevant) mechanical creepage of the magnetically interacting materials.
The way to transition? A third rotary component. Installed on the core, you park it, load it, then spin it up to rotation seperately, then unload, load it with exports, and spin it down again to restore a zero relative rotation.
When you talked about docking to the spinny side of B5, it reminded me of Tycho Station from the Expanse, where ships do actually dock on the outer edges of the centrifuge hub. However, in case of Tycho, the docking is assisted by automated tug drones and the ships are neatly clamped down by docking armes to prevent getting yeeted off from the station. ^^ Also, the part about the spinny bits, Im pretty sure that they dont have actual ball bearings to keep things rolling, rather the entire system works like on the basis of electromagnetism, like those fancy monorails. Basically, the spinny bits and the fixed bits never really touch. ^^
@@SacredCowShipyards To follow up on your other point, it being very hard to dock on the outside of a spinning cylinder, it's not at all. You don't need to approach, match rotation, then slowly pull inwards -- which would be extremely hard for the reasons you mention. What you need to do instead is set up a course that is a precise tangent to the outer surface of the cylinder, and then approach on that course at the exact tangential velocity of th surface, which would only be somewhere around 60-100 mph or so. The moment you reach the tangent's contact point, the relative velocity between you and the surface will be exactly zero. That's when a docking clamp will reach up and make secure contact with your ship, which will then be undergoing the same constant acceleration (1g or so) as the inside of the cylindrical surface, and be following the station's rotation. There won't be a sudden yank when the clamp connects; there will only be a sudden onset of acceleration, something that a ship designed for space travel in a Newtonian universe should be able to handle with no issue. Edit: I would argue that is would be *easier and less dangerous* to dock on the outside than to maneuver into a tiny rotating hole.
You can't expect a military outpost disguised as a diplomacy/trade station to sit at the bottom of a gravity well. That's just asking for an enemy to yeet kinetic weaponry or natural bodies at the station that is essentially a fish in a barrel.
Magnetic levitation in a vacuum, with the occasional thruster firing, that's the only way I can figure that "outer cargo dock" can keep in place while the station spins. Bearings would have worn out long, long ago.
I thought the rotation was caused by a complicated powered gyroscope system in the same way as EA ships. Two gyroscopes going in opposite directions with one going slower than the other would cause one part to be "static" and one part to "rotate". The "static" side includes the non-rotating cargo section and the non rotating fusion core and is the only part of the cargo section that you can get into the main station. Both the gravity and the rotational speed at this point is much lower and allows easier transfer to the rest of the station. As an bizarre point to the contrary , there were numerous times when various enemies used boarding pods that connected to the outer skin of the station. Either there was a way to counter the "spin off into space effect while not get splatted by sticky out bits of station moving very fast" or someone did a booboo. This leads to the centre dock. If Earth doesn't have artificial gravity then EVERYBODY who arrives at the station undergoes a period of zero-g including those who get seriously sick in cars let alone flying and also those who are very inappropriately dressed for zero-g. Don't wear robes while going commando or you'll flash the galaxy. Edit: If I'm reading the B5 plan correctly, the "bearings" are "mag-lev" which suggests there is no physical contact in the massive "rotation bearing" and the only bearings that are in physical contact are the "passage" bearing (for people and cargo) which can be far smaller and easier to repair.
I've always thought that the Babylon rotation system would be bearingless more like giant superconducting Rings held in a magnetic field and that's where you'd get your zero friction.
I would imagine handoff between the cargo section and cylinder could be done with some kind of elevator that is on the edge of the cylinder that can move opposite the rotation, making it stationary at the cargo section, open a door to load up people and supplies, and then accelerate to match the cylinder again, making the cargo door into the floor and using a different door to get back into the cylinder. A bunch of these would act like an air lock with extra steps to make transfer relatively easy, if the system can be automated to ensure that the elevator things always end up in the right place
7:41 I know I've brought the game up like four times now. But in Elite dangerous we call that the "mail slot/toaster rack" The game itself has a "auto correct" system that helps pilots land and keeps your ship some what in line with the rotational axis but you can shut the system off and fly in flight assist off or even use a module with a auto dock and just sit back and let the computer do everything wile listening to "An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314"
You should look up videos from sci-fi RUclipsr Isaac Arthur about O'Neil cylinders and how they work and the kind of designs you can get. Also his orbital ring and orbital infrastructure videos.
Just a few design ideas for stations like this: Regarding the issue of bearings, they could use maglev bearings, where permanent magnets can hold the axis in place while electromagnetic coils can be added to adjust the rotation and maintain the fields of the permanent magnets so they don't lose their strength too quickly. The outside of the centrifuge can also be lined with electromagnetic rails for support pylons or for cargo staging to transfer items between small ports on the spine and on the centrifuge. These carts would match the speed and position of their target, transfer items, then slide along to transfer items with the other section. This way you don't need to toss boxes around with precision. I'm not sure if this could be safe for passengers.
You asked why they didn't relocate the station's operations to the nearby planet when they discovered what was down there - the main reason was that what was down there said no. For quite a while the people who were in the know on B5 about the Great Machine were sworn to secrecy about what was down there. Then there's also the complications of dealing with a gravity well. Sure, all the races have the tech to climb out of said gravity well, but it's an extra unnecessary time/energy burden.
the gravity in the control center would be almost zero cargo is probably transferred at the center of the back where the rotational section meets the stationary section
I believe that there were thrusters placed around both the turning section and the stationary section. In one of the episodes the station had to do some station keeping and whatnot for ......reasons.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a space station in the space swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It exploded. So I built a second one. And that one exploded. So I built a third. That burned down, exploded, and then sank into the space swamp. The fourth one got built. Then it disappeared. But the fifth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest station in all of space.
"Are there little tiny engines on the outside of the spinning sections that keep it spinning or are there little tiny engines on the stationary section that keep it stationary?" Well, friction is cancelled with motors (the magnetic bearings), which do both at the same time. But if you are asking about where the RCS thrusters sit: The most sensible spot would be as far outwards as possible, i.e. on the tips of the solar panels. It doesn't matter that much, though. The station usually doesn't need to change its angular momentum at all. The only time when a huge change was necessary was during construction. They may even have initially spun the cylinder up by placing a few warships on temporary outriggers. But to adjust the gravity during normal operations, I personally would keep the total angular momentum mostly constant and (instead of using thrusters) keep some huge flywheel ready for the cases when they want to temporarily change the gravity.
You can create a zero contact gear using magnets. With a ring of magnets you could easily make a holding collar that has zero actual contact with the drum of B5. You would need to provide constant electrical power to run the motor at the rings to ensure everything is kept spinning in alignment. BUT, with solar cells and a neuclear reactor, that's not an issue. And even if it failed, it could easily be engineered to be fail safe by installing rollers in the baring. And worst case scenario, b5 would end up spinning as a single block at a slower speed with all loose objects thrown sideways in the direction of spin as the drum slows down.
Regarding bearings and friction, there are actually patents out there for magnetic bearings used to suspend the crankshafts for pumps used in natural gas pipelines. (It's very exotic stuff, but it does exist - and it has actually been used in production environments) It seems to me that a larger version of that same concept could be used between the spine and rotating sections of B5. Perhaps not Frictionless, but damnably close to it. (and hey - this is science fiction, right?)
You can use magnetic bearings to make the station spin without having anything touch anything else, the schematics even say "maglev bearing points", no friction in magnets. You could also have a internal ring at the brown sector, where the largest anchor to the cargo facilities seem to be, that can not spin to be loaded/unloaded from/to the cargo facilities and spin to be loaded/unloaded to the brow sector.
@@SacredCowShipyards For air you can keep as much of the structure as possible in vacuum. For efficiency you can make your magnets superconducting, through cold or some invented material. The station also has a massive fusion reactor, you could just brute force it.
If the box catchers were to hang around near openings for boxes from the zero G spine, then they'd need not worry as said boxes would be popping up through holes in the floor. They'd just need to stand clear, and ensure their zero G buddy was tossing the boxes with enough force that they'd clear the hole and then drop down on the deck. The real sucky job would be those box catchers working towards the central axis of the O'neal cylinder, as then the boxes would be falling from holes in the ceiling. Or they could make the box catcher job easier by just designing a station that was entirely one piece and create a spin gravity via thrusters. Although then all boxes would rain down from the ceiling 🤔. I always presumed the cylinder was contained within a maglev style ring, and that it is not physically attached to the stationery spine section.
Transferring between Rotating and Non-Rotating sections. The Omega Destroyers seems problematic in this way too. I'm assuming the majority of crew resides in the rotating habitat, yet the important functional parts of the ship are on the spine. and it absolutely has to be some kind of clunky 'window catch' method, because we've seen the Nova the thing is based on, the main framework of the ship must occupy the center, so there's no space for a Hub transfer method. Seems like a likely logistical problem to get people to and from their duty stations.
so @11:25 i think it shows you the top vs entry.. it goes across the entire top, a warehouse & maintenance systems all together i bet, along with Zero G manufacturing. things going in have a probabbly bigger hole ( or same size as front ) thats just circular and they push it through there.
My only idea for the bearings is magnetic. It accounts for the spin as well set both to positive and only feed as much power as is required to keep the spin to 1G. And yes don't piss of the Great Machine.
The Swamp Castle of space stations... "So I built a space station, it blew up. So I built another one. It lost orbit and blew up. Then I built another one. It lost orbit, spun itself apart AND blew up... But the fourth one stayed up! Wait, what's those weird distortions?!"
The CIC was protected by blast shields and some of the defense grid, so not totally a vulnerability, however it is show at least once that a ship did attack the CIC and crash into it, causing significant damage, but not enough to take it out. And really, if a fighter going a fairly appreciable speed didn't cause it to be combat ineffective, I'd say that's well defended enough. However, the same rule as the Star Trek bridge applies here; there's no reason why a future ship/station shouldn't have the CIC buried as far into the armor as possible, same as any Navy ship built today. You have cameras, sensors and other options to remove the humans running the tech, from the outside world where the threats come from. A backup option is great in case that tech gets taken out, but it shouldn't be your #1 choice for running things during GQ, much like how there are multiple steering positions on a ship today in case one gets taken out, but they aren't all equally armored or functional. And there is shown a few times during the series' run defense grid stations on the stationary "spine" of the station, rather than the rotating sections. There may be some on the rotating sections, but it's implied via the CGI and on screen displays inside the station that they are on the spine, at least primarily. (Sinclair at one point orders the defense grid realigned for long range fire rather than point defense, and the graphic points out the PD stations, which are all on the spine above the rotating section. This could have changed during the upgrade during the episode GROPOS, not sure.)
For zero-g to simulated gravity transfers you can have one or several sort-of train tracks running on a ring around the outer skin of the cylinder, and a matching track section on the stationery part. A train would sit between the two tracks, one side of wheels on the "top side" engaging with the zero-g track, another set on the "bottom" that roll freely against the track on the spinning section. (top and bottom there relative to the orientation B5 has on screen. For a passenger, once the train start to gather speed it would hang below the station, since the simulated gravity on a spin station is radially inward.) The train is docked to the zero-g section and loaded. Then it releases, and spins up to the same speed as the outer skin of the drum, adjusts its position to dock with a station in the drum. Transferring the other way is the same process in reverse. The same method could also be used to go between the nested contra-rotating sections of b4.
I assume that B5 has engines they do mention station keeping from time to time so it should have engines since the spin might wounder a bit and it is near that planet so must be in a wired part in space
I seem to remember some episode where B5 loses the rotation of the rotating section and restores it afterwards. I seem to remember that it used thrusters to do that.
Near the end of the pilot episode, _"THE GATHERING,"_ a large explosion throws B5 off axis, numerous emergency thrusters have to be activated to correct it.
Just found this channel somehow. Liking it. Babylon 5 is one of the sci fi series I largely missed on the first run. Trying to get it from my local used book store.
Neat enough the bearings question can be answered with 20th and 21st century hume technology: magnetodynamic bearings (contactless assembly) and plasma windows (to keep the air from escaping at the gaps.)
Its possible to dock on the outside of a rotating station like this using a trapeze system, such as were used for launching and docking aircraft from zeppelins and the B-52.
I wonder how much JMS got his ideas for the station from the old Tom Swift book “The City in the Stars” from 1983? It is a huge spinning tube that has transport cycles in the zero G center of the station. The similarities are interesting.
For the Record, You Don't Need Bearings in Space. You can achieve the same effect using Magnetically Coupled Super conductive material, which are easily achieved in space thanks to the cold environment. You basically coat one piece with a Super conductor material and you apply a Magnetic field to the other piece and the two pieces will be locked together as if they are connected without them needing to ever touch. Then you can set one of the pieces spinning while the other stays stationary and they will never decouple. And as to how to move from the 0G spine to the spinning parts, you said it yourself, you move down the spine along the length of the station then inwards at the connecting point until you reach the central axis of the station where there is 0G too.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
'So they built a fifth station' *galaxy explodes*
I mean, given what happened in the series, you're not technically /wrong/....
How will this end?
(Spooky noise) In fire
"Other worlds said I was daft to build a station in deep space, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em! It blew up, so I built a second one. That blew up. I built a third one. It burned down, fell over, and then blew up. So I built a fourth one, that disappeared... But the fifth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get, lad--the strongest space station in this quadrant!"
Let's not arrrrgue and bicker 'bout ooo killed ooo , it's a time for rejoicing.
A classic. well done!
What about the curtains?
Ni!
@@carloshenriquezimmer7543 Its only a model.. Shhh
I always go with the rule of thumb. If it blows up, blame the shadows. If it disappears, blame the Vorlons. And if it’s stolen and moved to a different show, blame the feringie.
ouch! :-D
I do love how B5 was smaller than B4... Rather than building the biggest and best to impress the other races they decided to scale back the costs because it was just going to blow up anyways.
Also, Babylon 4 had a propulsion system, which undoubtedly made it a LOT bigger.
B4 was Squat and bulkier. B5 was leaner and more simplified. B4 was also made mobile because Mimbar needed it for a certain function.
Even in the future we keep doing disposable crap tsk tsk.
@@barrybend7189 Spoilers, man ;)
@@infostorm618 I didn't say anything but that Minbar needed it. Heck its no spoiler that Minbar needed B5.
Two of the vulnerabilities you point out do, in fact, become plot points for various episodes. A ship does indeed crash in the landing bay, shutting down all ingress and egress to the station for a fair bit of time (By Any Means Necessary). And an assassin in a stolen Starfury does advance on the windowed front part of the station to make a final attempt on Sheridan's life (No Compromises). Whether these design "flaws" were intentionally placed to allow these kinds of episodic plot points, or whether the script writers recognized the flaws and saw the opportunity to exploit them for a plot point, I can't say either way, but the show does take advantage of them at least once in each case.
Is there a term for a space vehicle/Station that has the traits of a Mary Sue? Because B5 shows why stations need flaws. You can guard those flaws, establish protocols to protect them... But a ship with flaws for whatever reason breeds drama...
Just look at Battlestar Galactica. Her flaws were... She's old. Lacks ammunition, (solved by raiding a depot), understaffed, has to look after a fleet that Galactica's old water recycle unit has to replenish the fleets water... Etc etc
I think in the episode in question, it wasn't C&C the Starfurie approached, but an observation deck with even bigger windows. Though there was an episode where a ship took a shot at the windows of C&C and Evoniva called for the blast doors to be closed as she backed up against her railing. Fortunately for her and every one else there, the blast doors held.
The window broke before the blast doors did...
... I REGRET NOTHIIIING!!!
@@Krahazik You're thinking of Severed Dreams. It was Sheridan commanding from the CIC; Ivanova was in a Starfury leading the charge. She ended up colliding with an enemy ship and ejecting in the nick of time.
First Contact: "The first rule of government spending, why build one when you can build two for twice the price?"
Babylon 5: "The first rule of Earth Alliance spending, why build one when you can build five?"
Also, spoilers:
Hold old were you when you realized that Babylon 4, which went back in time, was called B4 and therefore "Before"?
... huh.
Today years old, huh? ;)
@@ErinPalette Years are "a vestigial mode of time measurement based on solar cycles, it’s not applicable."
Also, I didn't get you anything.
@@SacredCowShipyards B4 = before, and B4 went back in time before any of the Babylon stations were built. So B4 existed before B4 was built.
I mean, yeah... but the original plan was for it to go *forward*, and the series was supposed to be two five-year series, with B4 becoming 'Babylon Prime' to replace B5 in the second series.
Fun fact, JMS actually got the numbers right wherever they could be figured. Perfect case in point being the scene where Captain Sheridan needs to jump out of the tram that runs the length of the open habitation area to avoid a bomb. Ivanova is quoted as saying Sheridan is in free fall but will hit the "ground" at 60mph. The "floor" of this area is well inward of the outer skin and the tram is closer to but not at the axis of rotation with the difference meaning that someone jumping out of that tram actually would have a difference of 60mph from the speed the "floor" of that central open space rotates at.
I remember seeing that episode and thinking it was pretty well done, as it was a rotating system, and not falling due to gravity. Though there was one episode when Sheridan and Garibaldi were playing baseball, and I was thinking what it would have been like to try simulating the coriolis effect to the motion of the ball, and have it curve off in a crazy way ( think they did that on the expanse at one point really well). Guess I;m just a bit of a physics nerd!
@@fuzzblightyear145 I think they did that with a baseball in Interstellar. I remember being disappointed in JMS's rep for details because I figured the rotational speed would be more like 140mpg iirc at the outer edge and at least 80 at the inner face so I assumed either the line got flubbed, a measurement changed or she was talking about how fast the tram was going. Only more recently did I consider the track isn't dead center and is a hundred meters or so from the center spine making the difference between his rotational velocity where he jumped and where he'd "land" pretty much 60mph. Never doubt JMS's math.
A sci-fi writer who actually does the math. What a novel concept in the 90s, that I think still is pretty unusual.
@@Yora21 You are right, they make sows "grittier and more realistic" but plot trumps most things, and plot holes trump everything
@@Yora21 It was more normal back in the 90's, than it is now. Now, the writing is 100 times more lazy.
The Minbari and Centauri contributions of money makes some sense for the humans- all 5 of the stations were built in the same area, so since they were able to recycle the exploded bits, they were able to save money while making a bigger station!
And then #4 disappeared, so they were having to start from scratch. Which is expensive.
One point regarding the station's gravity. It doesn't have to top out at 1g and can account for much higher g's on a case-by-case basis. In the pilot episode, "The Gathering", Sinclair mentions when he and Lyta Alexander are passing through the Alien Sector on the way to Red 5, that they can even "change the rotation of some sectors to vary the gravity". So it could be assumed that they could accommodate higher g species if needed.
Great channel by the way.
It was probably economically sound to use the other races artificial gravity generators to make only special sections in the alien habitation ring in those spaces, while building a spinning cylinder system. Our venerable shipyard master mentioned the issues from the massive spinning gear and transmission systems required for this 'sort of kind of' O'neill cylinder, but I always figured they'd used an electromagnet or infused rare earth magnet ring system, or similar; to make the contacts free but balanced on those rings. Even then if they didn't use alien gravity generators an extra series of inner rings could work to generate more than 1g of inertia for the aliens in that sector.
@@dragonsword7370 Gravity control was a very closely guarded secret. I think only the Minbari and the old races had it... maybe the Technomancers too.
IIRC, humans (and probably other races) thought that the Minbari had rotating sections within their ships. I seem to recall someone being surprised by that not being the case. Oh, and Delen's ring thing... That was also shown as secret tech that is basically Clarke-tech (indistinguishable from magic) to the other young races.
I think they retconned that after that episode. It was said that B4 and earlier stations designs could do this (hence the multiple concentric rings) but not B5, as it was cheaper and only had one big spinning drum.
2:00 kinda hilarious how a single space shuttle fails and everyone just nopes on out but these people can have 3 stations blow up and 1 pop out of existence and STILL be confident enough to do the same thing again.
A possible offloading method from ZeroG to 1G:
Cargo is lowered into 1G.
1G section has a conveyor belt (probably many) counter rotating around the station that matches the motionlessness of ZeroG.
When all cargo is offloaded, the conveyor belt(s) are slowed to a stop.
Rethink.
The hull of the station is the floor of 1G.
The spinning station would need a series of opening and closing hatches to line up with the ZeroG part.
Cargo is raised into a hatch, and the rotational velocity of the station will scoop the cargo, like a spatula.
Opening and closing of hatches will have to be well timed, like firing a bullet through one's own propeller.
It could be as simple as a ring just above the main bearings that rotates at variable speed with a platform on each side. It starts stationary with one side, gets loaded, spins up to match the other side, and gets off loaded. It might take a little while to change speeds depending on mass, but it could transfer a considerable amount of cargo.
Nah, just have two parallel disks centered on the axis of rotation, a standard cargo container width + a bit more "for equipment" apart, and fastened to the rotating section. Mount passive maglev systems to your cargo container, and force it into the gap- if you've engineered it correctly, then centrifugal force will keep it moving "down", with the maglev systems fighting against the relative motion of container and disks, resulting in a low-speed landing of the cargo container at the bottom. Limit the rate and locations where the containers are dropped, and engineer things such that containers that reach the bottom automatically get moved out of the way of the next container, and you have absolutely no need for human involvement in that bit of the system; returning Starfuries could be returned to their launch bays with the same system. You can do a similar sort of thing for escape pods, and for transferring containers from the spin sections to the non-spin sections, the only thing you really need is the "adjustment cylinder" (or escape chute, for escape pods), and a passive (so passively safe) speed control system.
aft section distributes cargo, why brown sector is brown sector, low paying menial labor. all cargo sorted for areas and sections, loaded onto skips, sent into the rotating section mechanically, no people catching boxes >.< easier to match rotation, handle and pack cargo aft where you don't have to worry about anything rotating until it's moved into the main ring from the hub to radiate deeper into the well rather than trying to push against it from the outer ring. once in the ring it cargo containers can be moved entire to whatever section they need to be and broken apart in the case of discrete shipments...more labor, humans going to human.
as to bearings, magnetic would be fine. superconducting magnetic bearings is something we could do now given a fusion powerplant ^_^
OK, This compressed into a cube thing... What about the BORG? Already a cube. LOVE your channel.
They get a smaller cube.
B5 being decommissioned was a sad moment. I know it was inevitable _(just like one day our space station in real life will be abandoned and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere)_ but so much history, important history at that, happened there and it felt like tearing down a cathedral.
The station map answers your questions. It shows a "rear entry" (no jokes), concentric personnel transfer system, and "mag-lev bearings." Magnetic bearings are already used by NASA for high-speed carbon-fiber flywheel energy storage systems that have flown in space. The Concentric Transport System looks like it moves along the axis where the rotation is slowest and easiest to engineer, compared to match the much higher speeds of the outer decks. Although, the forward "mag-lev" bearings are mentioned in-line with a transfer mechanism, so maybe you're right about high-speed transfer, at least along the forward collar, which is still significantly inward of the 1g decks, at around .5g or less. I don't know if these transfer points are in vacuum, which would be better for friction, or use sliding seals (a maintenance nightmare) or some sort of shield (plasma windows to maintain atmosphere have been tested in the last two decades).
I designed a couple rotating space stations for my own hard sci-fi writing project and had to answer the same questions. Sometimes my answers were the same, and sometimes they were different. The differences were usually due to changes in setting or goals, such as economics, politics, culture, design philosophy, etc and not due to physics.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I thought the weapons systems were mounted on the non-rotating sections, like the spine and collar. I'm rewatching the series right now and currently in S5 and will have to pay close attention the next time a battle scene comes up. For my story, I also have mobile turrets (more like main battle tanks) that move along the skin of a ship or station with magnetic wheels, or that can grasp and roll on an outboard grid of rails like roller-coasters do. You can imagine the tactical abilities this could provide.
Maglev bearings and Hall effect plasma seals would indeed be prudent.
Not sure about the mobile turrets: detaching them, and, giving them slow drives and reactive mass recoil dampers (spring loaded massive blocks that move in the reverse direction) would offer better defence-in-depth, like tanks do. Although they would need to be supplemented with fighters, this combined arms military doctrine is already decades old.
B5 station design is just hard sci-fi. It is an O'neill Cylinder done the way we think we might actually eventually build one (circa 1990).
The story and a lot of the other design is space opera, which is fine too. IIRC, the relative 'realism' of the station itself was very intentional to give those less realistic elements a (metaphorically) grounded setting.
I will do _all_ the rear entry jokes, thank you very much!
Your grid like tank defense layer sounds like a bad idea. As soon as the first mobile turrets are shot to garbage they block the way for the others to replace them leaving your station with more and more weak undefended spots. So the mobile idea gets stuck by its own components. Your turrets become stationary, more or less. 🤔
Another factor to consider is energy. As soon as you need energy to move things around you cannot use that energy for other purposes like firing to enemy vessels. Mobility makes sense if you want to either get closer to a target to bring it into firing range or to get away as fast as possible.
That's why you have fighter and bomber squadrons to get more strategic and tactical options.
A space station is already something like the last line of defense. It requires a different set of features depending on the type.
If you're designing a trade station then obviously in case of emergency when an enemy fleet is about to show up then it's prime objective is to evacuate inhabitants and cargo as fast as possible. That in mind you could think of a modular design where subsections for cargo and living areas have their own engines and fuel / energy reserves and can detach in an organized protocol to act as escape pods, just bigger and capable of traveling to the next space station or planet in reach. Your station would be more like a flexible 3d grid where things are attached and detached based on the situation. And you do not need separate escape pods which are most of the time not used and if used too small to actually rescue your inhabitants for longer than a few hours until they die either because of lacking food, oxygen or fuel (and therefore being helpless when going into atmosphere or asteroids or other things which you cannot avoid during travel).
For smaller research stations you can simply add an engine so most of the time your station does not move, but in case of emergency it can navigate its way home.
For larger ones, where thousands of people live permanently, like in a city with agricultural districts and the like you have a different scenario. Essentially you have a small planet. Hopefully resourcefu enough that the enemy is more interested in conquering it than destroying it. Here you need a layered defense. People will gather more at the center and you will have to come up with ideas to make it costly to reach the core for the invader.
Think about citadels. Instead of having one wall around a city a citadel has sharp edges and towers and all in order to concentrate firepower from different angles with a combination of small and heavy arms. Sure in space you have to think 3 dimensions, so on your outer hull armor you should have towers as well as turrets on the ground to cover these towers. Good enough to catch enemy fighter squads.
If you want to keep some kind of mobility then you can think about a plug in system. So your guns and rocket launchers etc can be pulled back into the armor hull and moved to a deeper level. Then the outer hull is acting like a shield wall. And the next inner ring is preparing for another line of defense.
This kind of layering makes it really hard for an enemy to beat your station and turns it into a siege. Who knows? Maybe you let some parts of your shield simply explode in a controlled way which takes down a bunch of invasion forces? Or maybe you let a section use its mass to fly directly into the nearby capital ship to either destroy it or keep them busy wasting ammunition to get that thing out of the way?
In any case the effect is that your commander gains time. Could be just enough to get some ally fleet into range or to dry out the enemies resources. They either run out of ammunition or food or fuel. That's what I mean by make it costly.
@@harryd5571 I'm pretty sure they ran out of spare resources just building those 5 stations
Babylon stations 1 thru 3 were built using an new alloy called "explodium".
You could say the development of _"explodium"_ caused a *BOOM* in the construction of large space stations...😉
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman Take your like and go stand in the corner.
@@MonkeyJedi99 >>> Do I have to be _"All alone in the night?"_ 😉
The first 3 stations were said to have been destroyed by internal sabotage. Earth Alliance internal politics were pretty messy.
You keep putting out Babylon5 content and it’s a reminder that the show is on HBO right now and I’m going to give it a rewatch
glad you mentioned the planet, it made for quite the boon as the series progressed.
The armor on a rotating station is also hard to burn off since it’s constantly moving and changing targeting calculations to hit the same damaged area. Though considering “on axis” would be like the forward and aft 15 degrees, that’s a fairly narrow cone when the jump gate isn’t on that axis, so any naughtier neighbors get a face full of weapon plasma.
I was thinking that a ship could match the rotation of the station to stay focused on one spot as well as minimize weapons platforms fire, but that does still have some fuel cost, and require certain maneuvering capabilities that not all ships in 'verse have.
Absolute love this series, remember recording the pilot ages ago and would scramble to the Lurker's Guide after each episode aired. What a magical time that was, when we watched it in Memphis usually late Sat nite/early Sunday morn and about 5 minutes after our viewing ended, the episode guide would be updated with a treasure trove of info and JMS Speaks. Star Trek is what we squishies aspire to be, B5 is a lot more honest about our future.
it does have thrusters all over it, they show that in some episodes. So yes, they can alter rotation as they want.
I always imagined the spine was the cargo transfer system, in that cargo would be transferred along it, held in those large pods, or transferred into the station at the front or rear where it attaches into the spinning portion, where rotation would be much less of an issue. Then it would be more like stepping onto a moving walkway or escalator, not trying to match speeds with a freight train passing by.
Could be. The show almost never references the null-g sections, aside from occasional B-roll of cargo being moved in and out of the forward hold, and one of the mandibles being blown off in combat.
There were a few cargo transfer points outside the station so at the very least only supplies that were needed in the station itself went down the spine. Any other ship to ship transfer could be floated at the transfer points while commerce too place on/near B5.
@@SacredCowShipyards - if you watch a few of the episodes where it shows the dockworkers handling cargo, you can see that they are often in the forward section near where the shuttles dock, and that they are offloading cargo in partial to full gravity both from the ships AND from some kind of lift in the background off to one side. It looks like the connection point at the front of the spine has an elevator that does precisely what you mentioned and drops the cargo down into the core where it is then distributed by additional lifts and trams throughout the station. You can also see (albeit briefly) additional trams and tubes on maps, in the background when they show the core spine tram, and so on, so there appear to be freight trams and lifts all over the place to facilitate the dispersal of cargo.
B5 spins about 30 meters per second along the outside (if my math is right).
On the keeping it spinning and frictionless bearings: We already have magnetic bearings that are pretty good. Magnetic bearings in a vacuum would be even better.
Our electric motors are pretty good at isolating stators and rotors.
IRL we'd probably wrap that spinning can in a stationary asteroid to block radiation and other stuff, but other than that B5 was probably the most realistic space show until the Expanse, and in some ways surpasses even that.
I like Stargate slightly more than B5, but that's mostly due to the hugely more content available for SG and the executive meddling that ruined part of one of the later seasons.
I'm doing a rewatch right now and in S2 Sheridan mentions that the outer hull is at 1.1G but doesn't specify the gravity at the inner layer.
iirc, there were only two points of contact between the rotating habitation and the non-rotating utility spine and power plant the front hub and at the rear of the habitat section - two big-ass hubs. more likely magnetic bearings than material ones. the *seals* are the part that bugs me.
The Babylon Station History sounds like a Monty Python Sketch "When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."
As far as I’m aware, the spinal 0g storage thingy is really only connected to the spinning part at the aft side, between the reactor and Brown Sector. So basically, every bit of required material would need to be dragged through the miles of the spine, then down to the central axis before it could be introduced into the rotating part….
I would like to point out that by the diagram the axial interface between cargonia and the main station is through grey-sector as the entire cargonia land is technically grey sector per the map you used. That would make a lot of sense. The reactor, service shunts (power, water, atmo) are run along the core, where the railway is in the series (the one that the centauri blow up.. which brings up other serious questions considering the design and the effect of a BOMB in your core axial service duct.. why would you want people near it and how CiC is all forward of the civilian sectors where they can technically interrupt power and services via sabotage). So rearward of Grey sector does not rotate.. arguably there must be some sort of interface methodology going on in grey sector since we see in the show that there is gravity in grey sector.. but details details, it was a good show but clearly grey sector was supposed to be FIXED and represent the industrial/cargo/systems zone where the rotating section connected to the non-rotating sections. Meant also that cargo had to take the "long way around". Not very efficient. But again, the spine cargo docs make sense. In the show we clearly see ships loading and offloading cargo into the spine storage depots and it's all quite busy and independent of shipping traffic that actually docs. I imagine that smaller cargo is handled internally while bulk, chem, hazard, is all handled externally.
I read somewhere that after Babylon 4 disapeared the Earth Alliance was going to call it quits. It was the Minbari that convinced them to build a fifth one.
tbf..... they fucking KNEW what happend to 4 xD and also had some idea that the 5 will not blow up
for goods transfer you can technically use a rotation syncing system thingy. you simply have a "train" or secondary rings in the Rotation hub that has holes in the top and bottom of it so things can be passed through. you put your stuff on the train/ring in the 0g part and then you make the train/ring synce up with the rotating part. then you simply unload it though ports in the rotating part and you got your stuff in. and you can have multiples of those in one row.
To transfer materials, you could use a free-moving ring between the rotating body and stationary portion that connects to the stationary section to be loaded, then accelerates to the angular velocity of the rotating portion and connects to that to unload, then decelerates to reconnect to the stationary section again.
Babylon shipyard workers: "I'll fucking do it again"
In the original pilot movie that aired a year before the show began, The broader sections of the main cylinder were shown to be rotating at a different rate than the main cylinder, in fact in one shot one of those was from rotating the opposite direction. Adjust the spin of some sections to accommodate people with different gravitational needs. When they re-cut and re-edited the pilot on TNT in 1997, they cut out that line of dialog and removed the 2 or 3 variable-spin shots, since that had never been referenced or shown in the series proper, which made that stuff confusing.
The first four Babylon Stations were also co-funded by the Minbar. (Details unclear: i've heard it said that it was 1/3rd earth, 1/3rd Minbari, and 1/3rd the other species combined. I've also heard it was half earth, a quarter minbar, and a quarter "other.") there is behind us was that the Minbari I very much want to do avoid another war, but at the same time they didn't really trust humanity so they were not allowed to give us any technological items we didn't already have, apart from Data crystals, oddly.
The official technological ranking of the species is (from most to least)
1- shadows/vorlons
2- minbari
3- centauri
4- human
5- Narn
6- everyone else.
Minbari had been interstellar for more than a thousand years, Centauri had been interstellar for s beral hundred years prior to the show, humanity had been interstellar for just about a century, and the Narn had really only been interstellar for about 50 years or so at the time the show starts.
Oh: they didn't know what was on the planet when they built B5. They scanned it and found nothing. The Great Machine wasn't revealed until late in the 1st season.
Transfer of goods between the spine and the rotational section would be easy enough, they've had THAT problem solved since the 1930s or so, in battleship turrets. Give it cargo bays in a freewheeling rotating ring. To transfer goods directly from vessels or the spine, bring the hold to a stop relative to the spine. Rotating the holds to bring fresh stowage inline might be necessary. To bring goods and stores into the main living spaces, accelerate the holds to match the living space rotation and lift it in.
This system would also potentially give you a way to replace worn bearings; the tracks between the spine, the cargo ring, and the habitable section, could all be brought to a stop relative to each other without "turning off the gravity" as it were, and allowing worn components to be accessed without turning some poor maintenance tech into a bloody smear.
Nice example of KISS engineering, that is much easier than matching individual cargo units.
With maglev bearings on the full ring, it should be possible to use eddy current brakes as magnetic "clutches" on both sides of the hold accelerate/decelerate to whatever rotation is required. No moving parts is definitely nice for something that can't really be stopped.
Ferrofluidic seals could work as no-contact pressure seals from 1atm to space, but this project is starting to look like it might eat a few asteroids worth of rare earth minerals just for magnets...
@@martok_sh oof, no... you don't want a brake on a rotating space station... just spin the thing up and down properly, and then lock it in place, or you'll be sending your station into interesting tumbles every time you attempt a cargo transfer.
If you haven't looked into it, I'd love a look into the Firefly class ships from the tv show Firefly! Ofc, it's not necessary to do, but it's a very fun show!
Well, he's certainly familiar with _Firefly_ since he quotes River elsewhere in this comment section.
@@boobah5643 ah, I hadn't seen that.
Just once it would have been nice to see Draal wreck the ever loving sh*t out of something. Like, the more insubstantial the threat was, the funnier it would have been. Ivanova: "Captain, there's a single raider fighter that is approaching on an attack vector, estimated time to firing range, 2 hours" Sheridan: "Screw it, I'm busy, tell Drall to send a nuke or 12"
The station was already built when they found what lived on the planet and it was moved closer to the planet. The first 3 stations were destroyed by terrorist that though humanity should remain on earth, mainly because they wanted to control humanity.
Silly. The station blew up or disappeared because Jinxy left.
To retcon, I could see having a separate rotating sleeve, ringed around the main tube. It would have a blister on it that passed through the stationary cargo section. Bulk cargo could be transfered by spinning the ring up to the rotation rate or vice versa to slow down and dock with the zero G section. You'd need to create seals and have airlocks involved.
"Zathras knows about the 4th station."
Nobody listens to Zathras.
_"You take, Zathras die. You leave, Zathras die. Either way, it is bad for Zathras."_
SCS : that brings us to Babylon Five
CinemaSins: Roll credits !
As for the moving stuff between the Zero G and the spinning section, I always thought of it like the mail bag catches for trains you see in Western movies. Basically just a giant hoop on the end of a bag that you loop around a hook as it speeds past
B5 just happens to be my all time favorite scifi...
yet... despite the huge mass of the station being a rotating mass, the solar panels and top section somehow remains unaffected by all that torsional force that is attached to it. (I see you brought that up later in the episode)
Most O'neil cylinders are drawn to have a docking port at the middle of the hub. to be fair, the CnC window had solid panel shutters to protect from impact that was actually used once during the show that I recall.
as for cargo transfer, they did indicate that there is a docking system that attaches the cargo or shuttle craft to the docking bay allowing them to transfer cargo under reduced gravity.
I recall seeing your star fury episode, yet did not recall seeing this episode...
and yes while there where point defense systems, it was shown that the front section was venerable... at one point the pickle fork even got partially sheared off
It's said nowhere in the lore, but there's a (magnetic, to elaborate) clutch that let's the cargo docking bay and the aft outside warehouses to rotate along the spinning section. So I've said to myself. Outbound cargo is just let loose while the clucth is engaging.
Oh, there are other options down in the comments.
Pulling tech from Gundam, Babylon 5 uses magnetic bearings, no physical contact of parts. LMAO
about the spinning/stationary sections, i believe the use maglev "bearings to rotate and prevent friction? don't know if i heard that somewhere or i just imagined it.
Maglev radically reduces friction, but there's still resistance from the fields.
Conservation of Angular Momentum will keep it spinning once it's spun up.
You'd only need bearings to keep the non-rotational sections fixed, since they have a much lower moment of inertia than the much, much larger station.
The bigger problem is that anything that large with a nonzero angular momentum is going to be horribly difficult to point in a different direction. So if B5 and the jumpgate weren't at one of Epsilon-3's Lagrange points, B5 would _appear to_ slowly pivot as it orbited Epsilon-3 - because in reality it would always be pointing in _the same direction_ … just like a gyroscope does.
I want this guy to try to disect the galaxy railways anime and break his mind trying to get why they thought trains in space was a good idea.
The more I watch these, the more I see where mass effect got its inspiration. The Citadel from Mass effect is the B5 on steroids
I find it crazy that they have completely different designs for each station. Look how long it takes "real world" to design. Just design! A new aircraft carrier.
Oh, they probably had a huge global contest where huge conglomerates had to more or less build the thing in the vicinity of Earth, for testing etc. Probably plans for using them in other projects. So when the first one went off - not due to any construction errors, but because of sabotage and freakish events in local space - there was already another one in the woodworks. A few bribes and some political pressure and, voila!, Bob's your uncle.
The _need_ to *AVOID ANOTHER MINBARI WAR* was probably an influence as well....
actually there is a zero friction bearing, its called an air bearing, the nearest analogy is one of those table football games with the puck and the air cushion, that's basically how it works.
Corsair uses magnetic levitation bearings for PC case fans. Those are also zero-friction.
Gonna butt in here a little late, buuuut…
With regards to the chokepoints for cargo handling, the show writers don’t seem to treat it as something that “just works”. We get a look into their cargo handling and how the work is long and intense. We see multiple instances where cargo traffic was backed up or otherwise jammed by these constrictions. The design itself may be questionable, but the writers damn well knew that and played into that for the show. If you look back at the B-rolls of the null-g docking bay, you’ll frequently see multiple ships entering and leaving at the same time, and in ways that look INCREDIBLY close together.
There are a few blips here and there - notably the dockworker strikes - but this would be a constant, endless blessed nightmare that would almost necessitate some sort of null-g transshipment point for people trying to actually get into the station.
I'm still amazed that "blowing the one airlock that lets into the landing bays" wasn't somehow a plot point in the stories.
@@SacredCowShipyards John Ringo has a 3 book series about a spacestation/battlestation where that becomes a issue. He goes into alot of station Ops. Live Free or Die, Citadel and Hell's Gate. John's Posleen War series is excellent too.
@@readhistory2023 You get a thumbs up and "Hell yeah!" for the Troy Rising series reference. David Weber's Honorverse books get a nod for practical design notes and combat tactics.
@@SacredCowShipyards >>> _"Blips"?_ You mean _rogue telepaths..._ 😉
@@SacredCowShipyards I... yeah. I can properly agree with you there. Maybe the new show will give us a better look into that particular topic.
As for the attack thing, hooo boy you're even more right. That'd be like sabotaging the spinal bay doors on a Venator. Just a totally crippling move to one of its primary functions.
I'd like to point out that there are (technically) frictionless bearings around that work especially well in space. Magnetic levitation bearings, which also work nicely as motors. With that kind of bearing, its comparatively easy to keep the stationary part of the station stationary.
Eh, sorta frictionless. They don't cause conventional abrasion, but you do still get the reduction in relative speed, as well as heat generation, and a very slow (usually completely irrelevant) mechanical creepage of the magnetically interacting materials.
I love your commentary so much, the style and humor are so good.
The way to transition? A third rotary component.
Installed on the core, you park it, load it, then spin it up to rotation seperately, then unload, load it with exports, and spin it down again to restore a zero relative rotation.
When you talked about docking to the spinny side of B5, it reminded me of Tycho Station from the Expanse, where ships do actually dock on the outer edges of the centrifuge hub. However, in case of Tycho, the docking is assisted by automated tug drones and the ships are neatly clamped down by docking armes to prevent getting yeeted off from the station. ^^
Also, the part about the spinny bits, Im pretty sure that they dont have actual ball bearings to keep things rolling, rather the entire system works like on the basis of electromagnetism, like those fancy monorails. Basically, the spinny bits and the fixed bits never really touch. ^^
While likely, magnetic bearings still have drag.
@@SacredCowShipyards To follow up on your other point, it being very hard to dock on the outside of a spinning cylinder, it's not at all. You don't need to approach, match rotation, then slowly pull inwards -- which would be extremely hard for the reasons you mention.
What you need to do instead is set up a course that is a precise tangent to the outer surface of the cylinder, and then approach on that course at the exact tangential velocity of th surface, which would only be somewhere around 60-100 mph or so. The moment you reach the tangent's contact point, the relative velocity between you and the surface will be exactly zero. That's when a docking clamp will reach up and make secure contact with your ship, which will then be undergoing the same constant acceleration (1g or so) as the inside of the cylindrical surface, and be following the station's rotation. There won't be a sudden yank when the clamp connects; there will only be a sudden onset of acceleration, something that a ship designed for space travel in a Newtonian universe should be able to handle with no issue.
Edit: I would argue that is would be *easier and less dangerous* to dock on the outside than to maneuver into a tiny rotating hole.
You can't expect a military outpost disguised as a diplomacy/trade station to sit at the bottom of a gravity well. That's just asking for an enemy to yeet kinetic weaponry or natural bodies at the station that is essentially a fish in a barrel.
Magnetic levitation in a vacuum, with the occasional thruster firing, that's the only way I can figure that "outer cargo dock" can keep in place while the station spins. Bearings would have worn out long, long ago.
I thought the rotation was caused by a complicated powered gyroscope system in the same way as EA ships. Two gyroscopes going in opposite directions with one going slower than the other would cause one part to be "static" and one part to "rotate". The "static" side includes the non-rotating cargo section and the non rotating fusion core and is the only part of the cargo section that you can get into the main station. Both the gravity and the rotational speed at this point is much lower and allows easier transfer to the rest of the station.
As an bizarre point to the contrary , there were numerous times when various enemies used boarding pods that connected to the outer skin of the station. Either there was a way to counter the "spin off into space effect while not get splatted by sticky out bits of station moving very fast" or someone did a booboo. This leads to the centre dock.
If Earth doesn't have artificial gravity then EVERYBODY who arrives at the station undergoes a period of zero-g including those who get seriously sick in cars let alone flying and also those who are very inappropriately dressed for zero-g. Don't wear robes while going commando or you'll flash the galaxy.
Edit: If I'm reading the B5 plan correctly, the "bearings" are "mag-lev" which suggests there is no physical contact in the massive "rotation bearing" and the only bearings that are in physical contact are the "passage" bearing (for people and cargo) which can be far smaller and easier to repair.
I've always thought that the Babylon rotation system would be bearingless more like giant superconducting Rings held in a magnetic field and that's where you'd get your zero friction.
I would imagine handoff between the cargo section and cylinder could be done with some kind of elevator that is on the edge of the cylinder that can move opposite the rotation, making it stationary at the cargo section, open a door to load up people and supplies, and then accelerate to match the cylinder again, making the cargo door into the floor and using a different door to get back into the cylinder. A bunch of these would act like an air lock with extra steps to make transfer relatively easy, if the system can be automated to ensure that the elevator things always end up in the right place
7:41
I know I've brought the game up like four times now. But in Elite dangerous we call that the "mail slot/toaster rack"
The game itself has a "auto correct" system that helps pilots land and keeps your ship some what in line with the rotational axis but you can shut the system off and fly in flight assist off or even use a module with a auto dock and just sit back and let the computer do everything wile listening to "An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314"
You should look up videos from sci-fi RUclipsr Isaac Arthur about O'Neil cylinders and how they work and the kind of designs you can get. Also his orbital ring and orbital infrastructure videos.
Just a few design ideas for stations like this:
Regarding the issue of bearings, they could use maglev bearings, where permanent magnets can hold the axis in place while electromagnetic coils can be added to adjust the rotation and maintain the fields of the permanent magnets so they don't lose their strength too quickly.
The outside of the centrifuge can also be lined with electromagnetic rails for support pylons or for cargo staging to transfer items between small ports on the spine and on the centrifuge. These carts would match the speed and position of their target, transfer items, then slide along to transfer items with the other section. This way you don't need to toss boxes around with precision. I'm not sure if this could be safe for passengers.
You asked why they didn't relocate the station's operations to the nearby planet when they discovered what was down there - the main reason was that what was down there said no. For quite a while the people who were in the know on B5 about the Great Machine were sworn to secrecy about what was down there.
Then there's also the complications of dealing with a gravity well. Sure, all the races have the tech to climb out of said gravity well, but it's an extra unnecessary time/energy burden.
the gravity in the control center would be almost zero cargo is probably transferred at the center of the back where the rotational section meets the stationary section
I believe that there were thrusters placed around both the turning section and the stationary section. In one of the episodes the station had to do some station keeping and whatnot for ......reasons.
the videos are cool. No doubt this channel will get a lot more subscribers (spacdock has 294k at the moment).
I appreciate the thought, but Spacedock also has a production team, and not some rando throwing these together out of his shipyard office.
No mention of the Cobra Bays? It's a pretty brilliant means of launching the Starfuries.
Those came up earlier: ruclips.net/video/wXRwBXZn2yE/видео.html
@@SacredCowShipyards Ohhhh, you did a whole piece on Starfuries! Awesome!
7:50 they have a whole episode about an incident where an outgoing ship collides with a docking ship rendering the docking not functional
Especially after seeing this, I’m interested in seeing your take on the various ships from The Expanse.
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a space station in the space swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It exploded. So I built a second one. And that one exploded. So I built a third. That burned down, exploded, and then sank into the space swamp. The fourth one got built. Then it disappeared. But the fifth one stayed up. And that’s what you’re going to get, Son, the strongest station in all of space.
"Are there little tiny engines on the outside of the spinning sections that keep it spinning or are there little tiny engines on the stationary section that keep it stationary?" Well, friction is cancelled with motors (the magnetic bearings), which do both at the same time.
But if you are asking about where the RCS thrusters sit: The most sensible spot would be as far outwards as possible, i.e. on the tips of the solar panels.
It doesn't matter that much, though. The station usually doesn't need to change its angular momentum at all. The only time when a huge change was necessary was during construction. They may even have initially spun the cylinder up by placing a few warships on temporary outriggers.
But to adjust the gravity during normal operations, I personally would keep the total angular momentum mostly constant and (instead of using thrusters) keep some huge flywheel ready for the cases when they want to temporarily change the gravity.
Magnetic bearings /have/ drag, they don't cancel it.
You can create a zero contact gear using magnets. With a ring of magnets you could easily make a holding collar that has zero actual contact with the drum of B5. You would need to provide constant electrical power to run the motor at the rings to ensure everything is kept spinning in alignment. BUT, with solar cells and a neuclear reactor, that's not an issue. And even if it failed, it could easily be engineered to be fail safe by installing rollers in the baring. And worst case scenario, b5 would end up spinning as a single block at a slower speed with all loose objects thrown sideways in the direction of spin as the drum slows down.
Fair points about the logistics! Didn't think about it.
Regarding bearings and friction, there are actually patents out there for magnetic bearings used to suspend the crankshafts for pumps used in natural gas pipelines. (It's very exotic stuff, but it does exist - and it has actually been used in production environments)
It seems to me that a larger version of that same concept could be used between the spine and rotating sections of B5.
Perhaps not Frictionless, but damnably close to it. (and hey - this is science fiction, right?)
And then we build "Babylon 6, Our last best hope for war!" :D
...and it burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp!
In the future there can only be war
No it was scaled down into a small nature conservatory...Jurasik Park!
You can use magnetic bearings to make the station spin without having anything touch anything else, the schematics even say "maglev bearing points", no friction in magnets.
You could also have a internal ring at the brown sector, where the largest anchor to the cargo facilities seem to be, that can not spin to be loaded/unloaded from/to the cargo facilities and spin to be loaded/unloaded to the brow sector.
No friction, but there's still induced drag.
@@SacredCowShipyards For air you can keep as much of the structure as possible in vacuum. For efficiency you can make your magnets superconducting, through cold or some invented material. The station also has a massive fusion reactor, you could just brute force it.
If the box catchers were to hang around near openings for boxes from the zero G spine, then they'd need not worry as said boxes would be popping up through holes in the floor. They'd just need to stand clear, and ensure their zero G buddy was tossing the boxes with enough force that they'd clear the hole and then drop down on the deck.
The real sucky job would be those box catchers working towards the central axis of the O'neal cylinder, as then the boxes would be falling from holes in the ceiling.
Or they could make the box catcher job easier by just designing a station that was entirely one piece and create a spin gravity via thrusters. Although then all boxes would rain down from the ceiling 🤔.
I always presumed the cylinder was contained within a maglev style ring, and that it is not physically attached to the stationery spine section.
I love that my gross oversimplification terminology for moving materials around has become a conversational hub :).
@@SacredCowShipyards >>> Rabble rouser...😊
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman Well, yes.
@@SacredCowShipyards >>> 😊
Transferring between Rotating and Non-Rotating sections.
The Omega Destroyers seems problematic in this way too.
I'm assuming the majority of crew resides in the rotating habitat, yet the important functional parts of the ship are on the spine.
and it absolutely has to be some kind of clunky 'window catch' method, because we've seen the Nova the thing is based on, the main framework of the ship must occupy the center, so there's no space for a Hub transfer method.
Seems like a likely logistical problem to get people to and from their duty stations.
so @11:25 i think it shows you the top vs entry.. it goes across the entire top, a warehouse & maintenance systems all together i bet, along with Zero G manufacturing. things going in have a probabbly bigger hole ( or same size as front ) thats just circular and they push it through there.
My only idea for the bearings is magnetic. It accounts for the spin as well set both to positive and only feed as much power as is required to keep the spin to 1G. And yes don't piss of the Great Machine.
Did you hear that they will be making a B5 remake? So this playlist might get much longer in the future!
The Swamp Castle of space stations... "So I built a space station, it blew up. So I built another one. It lost orbit and blew up. Then I built another one. It lost orbit, spun itself apart AND blew up... But the fourth one stayed up! Wait, what's those weird distortions?!"
The CIC was protected by blast shields and some of the defense grid, so not totally a vulnerability, however it is show at least once that a ship did attack the CIC and crash into it, causing significant damage, but not enough to take it out. And really, if a fighter going a fairly appreciable speed didn't cause it to be combat ineffective, I'd say that's well defended enough.
However, the same rule as the Star Trek bridge applies here; there's no reason why a future ship/station shouldn't have the CIC buried as far into the armor as possible, same as any Navy ship built today. You have cameras, sensors and other options to remove the humans running the tech, from the outside world where the threats come from. A backup option is great in case that tech gets taken out, but it shouldn't be your #1 choice for running things during GQ, much like how there are multiple steering positions on a ship today in case one gets taken out, but they aren't all equally armored or functional.
And there is shown a few times during the series' run defense grid stations on the stationary "spine" of the station, rather than the rotating sections. There may be some on the rotating sections, but it's implied via the CGI and on screen displays inside the station that they are on the spine, at least primarily. (Sinclair at one point orders the defense grid realigned for long range fire rather than point defense, and the graphic points out the PD stations, which are all on the spine above the rotating section. This could have changed during the upgrade during the episode GROPOS, not sure.)
Gotta love a well crafted O'Neil cylinder station.
This was absolutely the inspiration for groundbreaker in the outer worlds. It all makes sense now
The how on getting cargo between may have been thought about but knew it would be hard...and that's why the dock workers were such a problem so often.
For zero-g to simulated gravity transfers you can have one or several sort-of train tracks running on a ring around the outer skin of the cylinder, and a matching track section on the stationery part. A train would sit between the two tracks, one side of wheels on the "top side" engaging with the zero-g track, another set on the "bottom" that roll freely against the track on the spinning section.
(top and bottom there relative to the orientation B5 has on screen. For a passenger, once the train start to gather speed it would hang below the station, since the simulated gravity on a spin station is radially inward.)
The train is docked to the zero-g section and loaded. Then it releases, and spins up to the same speed as the outer skin of the drum, adjusts its position to dock with a station in the drum. Transferring the other way is the same process in reverse.
The same method could also be used to go between the nested contra-rotating sections of b4.
I assume that B5 has engines they do mention station keeping from time to time so it should have engines since the spin might wounder a bit and it is near that planet so must be in a wired part in space
I seem to remember some episode where B5 loses the rotation of the rotating section and restores it afterwards. I seem to remember that it used thrusters to do that.
Near the end of the pilot episode, _"THE GATHERING,"_ a large explosion throws B5 off axis, numerous emergency thrusters have to be activated to correct it.
Babylon 4: _[Disappears]_
Random Exec: Sure, let's build a 5th one. Nothing bad can happen, right?
Just found this channel somehow. Liking it. Babylon 5 is one of the sci fi series I largely missed on the first run. Trying to get it from my local used book store.
Spinning can of peaceful death in space
Neat enough the bearings question can be answered with 20th and 21st century hume technology: magnetodynamic bearings (contactless assembly) and plasma windows (to keep the air from escaping at the gaps.)
Let’s also not forget, the fifth station also blew up. Just in a very delayed fashion….
Its possible to dock on the outside of a rotating station like this using a trapeze system, such as were used for launching and docking aircraft from zeppelins and the B-52.
I wonder how much JMS got his ideas for the station from the old Tom Swift book “The City in the Stars” from 1983? It is a huge spinning tube that has transport cycles in the zero G center of the station. The similarities are interesting.
For the Record, You Don't Need Bearings in Space. You can achieve the same effect using Magnetically Coupled Super conductive material, which are easily achieved in space thanks to the cold environment. You basically coat one piece with a Super conductor material and you apply a Magnetic field to the other piece and the two pieces will be locked together as if they are connected without them needing to ever touch. Then you can set one of the pieces spinning while the other stays stationary and they will never decouple. And as to how to move from the 0G spine to the spinning parts, you said it yourself, you move down the spine along the length of the station then inwards at the connecting point until you reach the central axis of the station where there is 0G too.
In theory, the connection points could use mag lev tech thus making it frictionless.
Perhaps the rotational bearings use electromagnetic levitation, with no such thing as solid bearings.
Thanks for this, I think I have to go and watch this again now.