Some Questions

>
>>Babylon 5 has a space colony but not around the Earth!
>>
>I was glad to see that they had a sort of Bernal Sphere thing going.
>But then again, the rest of B5 seemed to have that oh-so-reliable
>artificial gravity that had nothing to do with spinning. Perhaps I'm
>wrong about that. I didn't watch it very often.
>
B5 was a cylinder, just that one part was shaped like a sphere on the
outside.
Was like an O'Neill Cylinder, but also not like it. It was powered by
Fusion reactors not Solar power.
In the pilot episode they mention that different parts of the station
spin at different rates to provide various environments for the
different aliens. Though IIRC this was never actually shown.(At least
not obviously)

The station seemed to be composed of two main parts The open cylinder
area, and a "solid" part where you had various levels.

The station had three main points of views in the station that you would
see.
1. "The Garden" shots: where you could see the internal part of the
cylinder with green fields (patchwork) and various buildings, Above and
Below to the sides etc stretching into the distance. Was also seen
through windows from other scenes.

2. Close shots of corridors : where they neglected any curvature and
were either based inside one of the buildings or in one of the "solid"
parts of the station.

3. Longer view shots of corridors / semi open internal areas: Here you
would see the curvature in the distance, although the join at the edge
of the set was usually pretty obvious ie flat to a point with people on
it, then curve with no people on it ;)

The only ones that had "artificial gravity" were the more advanced
races, which you see on their space ships. Most human ships (until the
crusader series) had rotating sections, and had scenes showing low g or
zero g areas. Some of the human ships (the destroyers, starfuries etc)
had no rotating sections and no gravity, most scenes on these showed the
people strapped into their seats, though sometimes doing the funny walk,
cannot remember if they ever showed someone floating, maybe budget
constraints prevented that. The whitestars of Sheridans fleet were made
with Alien tech so had artificial gravity.

One interesting scene was at the end of the 2nd season, where they show
a transport system (monorail type thing that hangs from the supports)
that runs along the axis of the cylinder. At the entry stations to the
system there was visual and audible warnings that it was a low g area
(the actors had a very funny slow walk they did) and to keep hold of the
railings at all times. Anyway there is a bomb on the carriage, and the
captain opens the doors on emergency override and jumps. As he "falls"
you see the cylinder rotating slowly, and one of the other characters
makes a comment that he is essentially weightless, but the ground is
moving at 60 miles an hour and when he hits it he would be killed.

Generally they seemed to stick pretty close to "real" physics, at least
a lot closer than most other sci fi shows.

IIRC there were other colonies not just on Planets.

The only thing that really bugged me was that they "retired" it after 25
years, and blew it up. Supposedly for economic reasons, but to me it
seems like a structure like that should be able to last more than 25 years.

Brett