Quick reference question here -- have we ever been given a hint about how massive DS9 is? I took a quick scan through the likely pages of the DS9:TM, but didn't find anything useful. I don't recall it being mentioned in any episode, either. Has anyone at least tried to do some unofficial calculations about its volume and approximate mass, maybe?
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I believe it is officially classified as "Hella Massive".
I would've thought it would be in the DS9:TM too... just go with Hella Massive.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
So massive, they'll never find all of O'Brien's victims. Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
Might they have mentioned the mass when O'Brien was putting up that field in "Emissary"? Just a thought.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I thought of that. No such luck.
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
The Making of Deep Space Nine book says Okuda and Sternbach calculated the station was approximately 1350m in diameter (about 2.1 x the Galaxy Class length) and that the station's mass was 10.12 million metric tonnes.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Ah, thank you! I've got the "Making of" book, but left it at home... Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
He knows this stuff in his head...it's scary.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
"Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night." -- Sorry, wrong series.
Wow, by Trek standards Babylon 5 must have been made out of paper mache. The sets often seemed to support the notion.
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Don't forget that B5 was hollow, though. That probably counts for some of the difference. But yeah, it is quite a difference...
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
B5 also uses wretched Imperial units, so it's actually 2 268 000 metric tons vs. DS9. And B5 is no more than half or two thirds empty space, tops. The dorsal cargo structure, radiator complex, and power generator section are many times the volume of DS9 alone.
Mark
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
IIRC, the 2.5 million figure is for the outer casing only. B5's total mass is closer to 9 billion tons (or so JMS has allegedly said, but I reeeaaally cannot be arsed to weed through ten years' worth of rec.arts posts right now to verify that B)).
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
It's up at the Lurker's Guide, I believe. But I also cannot be arsed going through all those episode listings.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote: And one of the people there, who had been with SDI and the Space Program for 12 years, currently a top-level NASA consultant, pulled me aside and said that after seeing the line about the gravity not letting the body get very far -- and THAT is what was said in the script, and in the episode, NOT your characterization of a body "bound" to the hull -- he said he sat down to do the math required to come up with the actuall MASS of B5, starting with the 2.5 million tons of actual structure, plus likely vegetation, quarters, occupants, ships docked inside...and when you add it all up, it came to about the same mass as a fairly small moon...and IT WOULD BE ENOUGH TO KEEP THE BODY FROM -- AS STATED IN THE SCRIPT -- GETTING VERY FAR.
I think its in reference to someone complaining about whether or not a body being thrown out of an airlock would be trapped by the station's gravity or not.
Hopefully, I'll soon be updating my Volumetrics page with DS9's volume, thanks to a visitor with Lightwave and spare time. That'll give us a common frame of reference.
That done, I'd imagine that DS9 would be on the light side as far as density is concerned. If we assume that nacelles are very dense (supported in part by Voyager's speedboat shuttle not toppling over, along with other points (esp. non-canon ones)), then DS9, being nacelle-less, shouldn't be too massive.
On the other hand, the whole frickin' thing is spindly parts with lots of hull material, unlike a very voluminous Galaxy hull . . . so that would drive it up a bit.
So anyway, if we for the moment assume DS9 is as voluminous as, say, 10 Galaxy Class starships (that's just a ballpark estimate off the top of my head), I'd imagine that her mass should be on the order of 70-100 million metric tons.
More on starship masses and the episodic basis from which I guesstimated that figure:
Had to do a little digging, but I found a blueprint set I picked up at a convention about ten years ago. It had prints of the E-A, E-D and DS9, and it was licensed by Paramount and produced by Zanart. It gave the following data:
Where they got this info (and what was used to compute it), I have no idea.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Well, seeing as how DS9's dimensions were never firmly established, those aren't a bad estimate, either. But since I wanted this info for a Memory Alpha article, I figured it'd be better to stick with the semi-official DS9:TM dimensions.
Still useful info, though, 'cause it helps establish a rough ballpark for corroborating other data, too.
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
Well, If you go by the figures given by Sternbach and Okuda, the DS9 TM overestimates the diameter of the station by about 7.5% (which shouldn't be much of a surprise, given how screwed up the data is in the starship section of the book)
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by Woodside Kid: Well, If you go by the figures given by Sternbach and Okuda, the DS9 TM overestimates the diameter of the station by about 7.5% (which shouldn't be much of a surprise, given how screwed up the data is in the starship section of the book)
I wish I still had the blueprint Rick Sternbach sent me when DS9 first came on the air, back when the station was considerably smaller. It was a cutaway and showed human figures in relation to the thing. As I recall in that plan its diameter was maybe 1.6 times the length of Galaxy class. If you look at the size of the Promenade windows you can see that the model was designed and built with that lower size in mind. But they blew the scale in the first episode when they parked the Enterprise there and got its size all wrong, and they never did get it consistent after that.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
The station could never be that size... unless you are talking about something before they docked the E-D to the station in Emissary and this was all pre-production.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
UG...I have many issues with this.
As a modelmaker, I consider the DS9 model by ERTL to be accurate for 250h scale (as the Defiant and Runabouts that go with it definitely are) but I'm smacked by all the onscreen evidence pointing to a station 1500 meters across. THe worst of these shots is from DS9's opening credits where a Nebula is docked at the upper pylon: the station's about 3000 meters across in that shot or the Nebula went into that shrinking anamoly...and...er.. It's just easier to say they fucked up the shot than try to explain it, really.
The station's windows point to a much smaller station than shown during most of the show run. The final scene of the series with Kira and Jake-O standing at the Promenade window confirms it.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I do wonder exactly what was wrong with object size on Deep Space 9. With the Enterprise-D, they had exact dimensions before the show had started. Same with Voyager. But DS9 and the Defiant seem to live in a crazy land of "oh, only guessed and no-one listened to us really".
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Oddly, given the smaller size of DS9, Voyager when docked there in Caretaker looked correct for it's 350(ish) meter size.
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by J: The station could never be that size... unless you are talking about something before they docked the E-D to the station in Emissary and this was all pre-production.
If you are referring to my post, I said they blew that scale in the first episode the moment the showed the E-D next to it. But I received these plans from Rick probably 8 weeks after the pilot aired.
(I was working on a licensed DS9 video game, and he was nice enough to send me the blueprints to the station, including a cutaway, and the soundstage plans. Sadly, all that stuff's long gone...last I knew it was in Budapest where the game was programmed.)
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
Much of their scaling, when they were doing model filming, was done with foamcore models. Not all the filming model were to scale with one another, but they had several foam board models that were scaled. They had Galor Class foam mock ups scaled to DS9, they had the Maquis ship and Kazon foam models scaled with Voyager.
The biggest problem was the aforementioned scaling of the Galaxy Class and Nebula Class ships to the station.
If I counted right, DS9 has 35 decks from Ops to the fusion core.
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