Pretty frakking cool, I say.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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October 26th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
I looooove the new Battlestar Galactica.
But- why do they have to have sound in their space-battles? They try to be realistic in so many other ways.
Another thing which annoys me- all of the spaceships fly oriented along the same axes when they fight the Cylons- as though there’s a natural ‘up’ direction in space.
I forgive them most other things. It would be too hard to simulate anti-gravity using special effects- and you’ve got to have a FTL drive to go anywhere interesting.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:40 am
What a cool idea. The circuit idea isn’t new of course, but it’s a simple thing like this that can inspire many kids to choose Science or Engineering as a career.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:42 am
That was good!
Definately the jack-o-lantern for the 21rst century!
October 27th, 2006 at 6:01 am
While watching space battles without sound would be just plain boring, I’d love to see a movie/tv show whose space battles discarded the “same axes orientation” that Christian mentioned. I was going to build a Ceylon-type helmet for my boys’ robot costumes this year, but they decided to go as SuperMan. SuperMen? (Well, the three-yr-old is going as “FoopyMan”, but you get the idea…)
October 27th, 2006 at 7:13 am
“I’d love to see a movie/tv show whose space battles discarded the “same axes orientation†that Christian mentioned.”
Babylon 5 does it.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Cool…makes putting a candle inside the pumpkin seem quaint.
October 27th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Weren’t the good guys of the starship Enterprise able to defeat Kahn (sp?) because of his “two dimensional thinking” in a space battle?
October 27th, 2006 at 8:01 am
I hope somebody makes a “Reaver” Jack-o-lantern. It would be gorramn shiny.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:04 am
PaleoProf, yes, but Star Trek is still stuck on random ships meeting in space and they both have their dorsal sides oriented correctly. Unless the ship is a cube, in which case you can’t tell.
Christian – plausible explanation: when engaged in fleet activities, it is nice to have common orientation so you have common points of reference. “See that cylon on the port?” “Port, is that left or right? Your left or my left? Wait, your left is behind me and my left is Flyboy’s feet and … ACK!” I imagine it’s standard practice to orient in common alignment for tactical purposes. Plus when the Vipers launch they all launch out of the tubes oriented the same anyway. And once they engage, everybody goes everywhere.
But it would be neat if the Cylons came in from, say, under Galactica.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:18 am
@DennyMo:
Are you calling Firefly boring??
If that Honor Harrington movie ever happens, I’ll love to see how they handle a laser/graser engagement on the scale of, say, the Earth-Moon system.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:57 am
When Firefly transited the Reaver fleet, all the ships were every which way.
On a scale of one to ten, Firefly and the new Battlestar Galactica are both a ten. Any other votes?
Gary 7
October 27th, 2006 at 9:06 am
I think its overrated.
October 27th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Ah, but Simon is one of the known Cylons in the show. Can we really trust his opinion? Huh? Huh?
Not that I’m turning into a BSG nerd or anything.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:26 am
When you use the word “port” it’s a nautical term which always refers to the left of the object in question. When you’re on a boat and someone says look port, it’s always to the ship’s left. So it is a much more specific term than saying “left.”
October 27th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Honestly, I’ve never watched Firefly. But now you’ve given me reason to, so maybe.
As for the “Honorverse”, I almost hope they don’t make any movies. I’d hate to find out that my imagination’s visualization of the books is “wrong”… But you’re right, the scale of some of those battles is something we’ve never seen on screen yet.
October 30th, 2006 at 10:45 am
247200 Blog Verification…
247200…
October 30th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
BG doesn’t always have ships lined up in a 2D plane. For instance, when destroying the Resurrection Ship the Vypers were all around it and all kinds of angles, shooting directly at it as they “fell” past it, not strafing it.
October 31st, 2006 at 8:36 am
Also can’t forget the decidedly three-dimensional feel of the nebula run, no? Or how /Galactica/ and /Pegasus/ orbited that one basestar, only banking because it brought more guns to bear… Meanwhile, /Firefly/ had no sound in space but also had no battles in space. There were definitely sounds in space in /Serenity/. Don’t give me any “upper atmosphere” or “nebula” crap either; makes one sound like a rabid Warsie when it comes to defending one’s favorite bit of camp as if it were art.
I agree that there should be no Honorverse movies, but for a different reason than Denny. There is nothing worse to the credibility of hard s-f than Weber and a graphing calculator. As it stands, I don’t have much of a problem with short on-screen engagement ranges and things being oriented. In the old days, 2D was simply how model-making worked and now it’s simply an artistic conceit. Why do characters on BSG wear business suits? Short engagement ranges are fine because silent ships shooting at random directions towards invisible targets a million kilometers away would be BORING and it rarely pays to have what would be an action sequence be BORING.
October 31st, 2006 at 8:41 am
My vote would have to be for Babylon-5 as best ever SF TV.
Firefly and tehNewGalactica were pretty cool too – &then there’s Dr Who – and someone on that Evil Mad scientist site, the same one as theCyclon Jack-o-Lantern actually, has also made a pumpkin Dalek!! Now that takes first prize if I were judging!
Babylon 5 starfuries and the battle scenes there actually used a NASA science advisor (wasn’t you was it Phil?) and were accurate or at least as accurate as TV can be.
Oh and er ..Simon .. *what* do you think was over-rated?
October 31st, 2006 at 8:41 am
My vote would have to be for Babylon-5 as best ever SF TV.
Firefly and the New Galactica were pretty cool too – & then there’s Dr Who – and someone on that Evil Mad scientist site, the same one as theCyclon Jack-o-Lantern actually, has also made a pumpkin Dalek!! Now that takes first prize if I were judging!
Babylon 5 starfuries and the battle scenes there actually used a NASA science advisor (wasn’t you was it Phil?) and were accurate or at least as accurate as TV can be.
Oh and er ..Simon .. *what* do you think was over-rated?