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Post by Lorpius Prime on Jan 14, 2005 23:26:32 GMT -5
What the hell was that thing doing with tail fins, anyway? Not a chance in hell that thing could fly in atmosphere...
Oh, and if the bullets they shot at the thing were enough to cause it to be annihilated like that, wouldn't it have been extremely dangerous for them to be sitting that close to the explosion in those Vipers? I mean, come on, the shrapnel had to be going faster than their bullets, and it was a hell of a lot bigger too...
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Post by Big Brother on Jan 15, 2005 1:30:14 GMT -5
What the hell was that thing doing with tail fins, anyway? Not a chance in hell that thing could fly in atmosphere... Well, it was a cruise ship. Real-world cruise ships these days tend to be very sleek and have silly fins on their smokestacks and so forth to make them look cool. Also note that in the miniseries we saw the "Colonial Heavy 798" that later became "Colonial One" take off from an atmosphere, and it was no better aerodynamically than the Olympic Carrier. A bit worse, actually. Perhaps the Colonies have material science to a point that their vessels can avoid burning up in an atmosphere regardless of how unaerodynamic they are. Oh, and if the bullets they shot at the thing were enough to cause it to be annihilated like that, wouldn't it have been extremely dangerous for them to be sitting that close to the explosion in those Vipers? I mean, come on, the shrapnel had to be going faster than their bullets, and it was a hell of a lot bigger too... Well, they were behind it. Any shrapnel would also have the forward vector of the Olympic Carrier. They were basically at rest compared to it, and seemed to be at least the equivalent of a thousand feet or so back from it. Consider them as tanks or APC's firing at a building. Real-world tanks and such fire at much closer ranges, as we've seen recently in Iraq, or less recently when Yeltsin's tanks took out the Russian Parliament in the 1990's. In the miniseries, we saw shrapnel bouncing off the canopy of Starbuck's viper during the end of the Battle of Ragnar (as Adama asks Starbuck what she hears, and she answers, "Nothing but the rain, sir!"). So the Vipers (more of that Colonial materials science) seem to be effectively armored against shrapnel. Note that the Cylons use explosive missiles against them, not kinetic-kill bullets like the Colonials use against the Cylons. But, yeah, if I was their science advisor (their real one is a bit busy today, since the Cassini space probe he helped design is busy dropping a probe into Titan's atmosphere), I would have suggested anti-ship missiles with nuclear warheads, not strafing runs. |
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Post by Lorpius Prime on Jan 15, 2005 1:33:23 GMT -5
No, the Cylons have some kind of gun too, they shoot little purple bullets (or lasers or something in very rapid bursts). A few Vipers got shot up in the second part of the miniseries with those.
And yeah, I know the ship was moving forward, but the way the engine exploded, that looked like an awful big piece of fin flying straight at the fighters.
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Post by Big Brother on Jan 15, 2005 2:46:49 GMT -5
No, the Cylons have some kind of gun too, they shoot little purple bullets (or lasers or something in very rapid bursts). A few Vipers got shot up in the second part of the miniseries with those. I recall seeing a few Vipers hit by bullets, but assumed it was friendly fire. I don't recall Cylon Raiders firing anything but missiles. I will have to re-watch and double-check, I'll get back to you on this one... And yeah, I know the ship was moving forward, but the way the engine exploded, that looked like an awful big piece of fin flying straight at the fighters. If it was a big piece, the Vipers could probably dodge it. It's always the smallish stuff you have to worry about in space, but as stated above, that seems to bounce right off. |
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