Hi again, Ric 8 here. It’s been long requested that I make videos detailing the FTL devices
of other franchises, so I thought I’d start with the faster than light travel used in
Battlestar Galactica. I will be talking about the entirety of the plot for BSG, so here’s
a spoilers ahead warning for your DRADIS. So, contact made, let’s jump right in. I’m
not sorry. The Faster than light drive of Battlestar
Galactica is colloquially called the Jump Drive and is the primary method of interstellar
travel used by both the colonies of Kobol and the Cylons. What we know of this propulsion
is relatively little but the device does have its limitations and effects rather well documented,
giving us some idea of how it all works. First up, the origin of the FTL dive is rather
muddied. It’s probable that it was created millennia ago on the original world of Kobol,
but this can’t really be confirmed. One of the big premises of the show is the cycle
of time, how events concerning Cylons, humans and colonisation are constantly in a state
of repetition. With the eventual settling of Earth 2 in the show’s finale, the human
and pretty much humans-at-this-point Cylons decide to settle the planet choose to abandon
their technology and as such, a similar event may have occurred with the founding of the
12 colonies in the first place. In opposition to this speculation however
is the sheer distance that Kobol was from the colonies as well as the fact that the
colony worlds themselves, although nearby on a galactic scale, were still lightyears
apart. So, an exodus on the scale recorded in the near-mythological scrolls and histories
would probably have needed some FTL technology. If the jump drive was invented by the 12 colonies,
then it likely was simply reinvented. The drive itself runs on a fuel source called
Tylium (Till-ee-um). Like every-other FTL fuel sources in sci-fi, Tylium was a super
rare metallic ore that had to be mined. Its appearance was a sand-like substance that
when processed became unstable before becoming a condensed translucent liquid. The potent
energy source is 10 million times more efficient than gasoline for example (half a billion
megajoules per kilo) but its amazing properties can be wasted in its refined state if exposed
to intense radiation, which renders it inert. A standard FTL drive looked akin to generator;
in that it was a cylindrical structure that would have to be “spun up” to optimal
speeds to initiate a successful jump. This required some time depending on the make of
the drive so if it was expected to be needed the FTL systems were kept primed, ready to
jump. The process of jumping creates a folded space
effect where two points, the ships current location and its destination are brought into
contact for a moment so the vessel can hop across the distance. This process creates
a violent distortion in space which is observable by people within the vessel as well as damaging
effects to anything nearby to a jumping ship. Such distortions can cause massive damage
to structures and if performed in atmosphere, leave behind an instant vacuum which fills
with air at sonic speeds, creating a boom. There is also an accompanying effect of a
beam of light that runs from the aft to the fore of the ship as it disappears.
A jump’s distortions to a lesser extent do place a strain on a vessel, as we see the
structural damage to the Galactica eventually renders her unable to jump when her “back”
breaks. Now structurally unsound, an attempted FTL jump would destroy the ship completely.
Limitations to the jump drive too did exist. For a start, the larger the mass jumping,
the more power was needed to shift it, often done by installing multiple FTL drives. This
would therefore increase demand for refined Tylium, so there was a definite material cost
to jumping. On top of this, performing a jump could be done at a moment’s notice, but
not recommended as a blind jump could drop you anywhere, into a gravity well, into a
planet, asteroid field whatever. As such, the limiting factor to an FTL jump was less
a matter of fuel, and more of computing time. A jump had to be planned out extensively ahead
of the instance by a computer (or by hand if your good enough) based on the observations
of distant stellar phenomena and mathematically rendered predictions of celestial drift. The
complexity and accuracy of this information was of vital importance to a ship, which gave
every spacefaring vessel a maximum red line range. Jumping beyond it was possible, but
the chances of inaccuracy increased exponentially beyond the red line, placing such a blind
jump in the hands of the Lords of Kobol. However, when making a jump with a set of
calculated coordinates, a substantial degree of accuracy was achievable. This was most
commonly seen when the colonial fleet made numerous jumps and remained in formation throughout,
with barely metres of drift to account for. It was also possible to jump into the stable
orbit of a planet, or even into its atmosphere at speed. The time and complexity as a limiting
factor is what gave Cylon ships, such as their Basestars and Raiders an edge over the drives
of the colonial fleet. The Cylons, themselves being artificial bio-organic machines had
a much more efficient method of calculating jump coordinates, which in turn gave them
a further red line and therefore, distant range when plotting their jumps. A journey
that took the colonial fleet over 200 jumps was made in less than 10 by a single raptor
due to their advanced navigation. It is theoretically impossible to track a
vessel through a jump based on observing the act itself as momentum, current course and
heading have no bearing on the FTL system, except as internal components to the calculations
for the jump. So, a ship doesn’t need to be facing its destination for example, to
get there. There were ways around this however. The only way to directly follow a ship was
to gain access to a ship’s navigation computer via a network breach or a spy and for the
final calculations to be transmitted to a pursuer. The other method was simple prediction
and intuition, to guess at the most likely destination and attempt to head off your quarry,
which is basically guesswork. Because of the untraceable nature of a jump,
this also made any form of early warning for detecting incoming vessels impossible. The
first sign you would have of a vessel entering your proximity would be when it showed up
as a contact on your DRADIS scanners. The FTL actions itself was also briefly detectable,
but seemingly of little consequence to stealth missions so presumably, for smaller vessel
jumping was less a distortion in spacetime and more a ripple. A plop.
This form of FTL is very different from other big series that I’ve covered on this channel.
Star Trek’s Warp drive, Star Wars’ Hyperspace and Mass Effects’… mass effect rive, are
all actually moving a ship physically through a medium, either literal space or a near-but-separate
realm like hyperspace or slipspace. The BSG method is more akin to an instant teleport
by folding space, like the Coaxial Warp Drive in Trek or… well, the infinite improbability
drive of the Heart of Gold in Hitchhikers. Although that’s based on quantum probabilities.
Thanks for watching this video on the jump drive of BSG, let me know which one to tackle
next, I’m thinking one of the other-dimension travelling ones, those seem fun. Maybe I’ll
take a peek into Warhammer warp, Oh my god what the ever-loving hell is-? Oh no… not
that’s a horrible place. Well, um…thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time, m-maybe…