Thread: BSG Planetary System; research and prelims

So, I'm getting ready to run a demo of the BSG rpg and I got looking at the map that's floating around.

First off I decided to fix it as there's inconsistencies between it and the book text.

Then I was looking at the BSG wiki and saw all the stuff that's come out since the book was published and thought "Hmmm, maybe I should try my own map."

notesFrom Serge's Twitter)

"Only the twelve colonies are peopled. The star cluster has a few other planets, not many."

"Picon is sometimes thought of as "Caprica, Jr." Slightly colder overall, clean, polite, originally colonized by Virgon" (Implies it should be near Virgon)

"All 12 colonies are on planets within a cluster of 4 stars. The arrangement is complex, but astronomers within the colonies have a thorough understanding of the forces. The key is Ragnar, an uninhabitable gas giant with two planets orbiting it at its orbit's LaGrange points. This, plus Caprica sharing an orbit with its twin planet Gemenon (hence the name), allow this tight cluster of three stars and one outlier to support 12 planets. Of course, some, like Aquarion, are only marginally habitable"

(I find this interesting as it implies the stars are in a very tight group, which I think is highly unusual, and less conducive to life than spread out stars each with planets orbiting them. I also don't understand how Ragnar makes it workable)

"Be careful not to confuse Aerilon with Aquarion. They are different, although located relatively close to one other."

"Libran is largely a wildlife reserve that also serves as home to the intercolonial court system."

"it rarely snows in Caprica City."

"The colonies most centrally located relative to the group: Caprica, Gemenon, Tauron and Picon, were the first to be settled."

"The colonial planets are within a star cluster, Diogo, thus days to weeks. RT @melodaf How long is a commercial trip between colonies?"

~~~~~~~

I've been doing some math (That may well be wrong) based on given numbers (numbers have been rounded).

BSG was 300 million miles from Capria in the Miniseries, which was an estimated .5 days away (Knowing that Roslin got her diagnosis the same day the Cylons attacked)

BSG was 3 days from Ragnar at Subspace speed. That's equal to around 19.3 AUs

Caprica to Ragnar is thus about 3.5 days at subspace or 2,100,000,000 mi. or 22.58 AUs

One AU is 93 million miles

That makes 6.4 AUs/Day or 595 Million Miles. That's 25 million miles/hr or 413,000 miles/min or 6,800 miles/sec. which is around 1/31 the Speed of light.

Now, this doesn't take into account orbital positions.

Basically, what this means is that Ragnar, the furthest planet out, is between 21 or 23 AUs from The Primary. That's a good distance.

What does all this mean?

That the three main stars are probably within 11 or so AUs away from each other (Equivalent to Alpha Centauri A & B). Which is far enough away to have Stable Planetary orbits of at least 250 million years. Which means compared to Earth (4.5 billion years) they are very young planets... At least in their current orbits.

It also means that and I had too damn much time on my hands before the BSG demo game I ran.

Next post down has the map as I have it right now.