Could Galactica land via FTL?

[Hairy_Little_Muffin]

So I'm drivin in my car this morning and it came to me. Is it possible for Galactica, or any other battlestar for that matter, to land on a planetary surface via FTL.

One second you're in space, the next, the ship is resting comfortably on the surface.

I mean we know they can jump through an atmosphere, so who's to say they couldn't find a nice little, or enormous, patch of flat land and set down for a while to do whatever.

I mean wouldn't this be an ideal way to just take the time to redistribute personal or conduct repairs?

[Astrofighter]

I doubt it, the ship would have to come to an absolute complete stop in space first. Then they would have to pick just perfect coordinates at the site. If you notice jumping in with FTL is very similar to the stargate. What ever motion you have going into it you keep when you exit it. In space if you were to speed up to 50 mph then stopped firing your rockets. Your ship would remain at 50mph as long as another gravitational body wasnt pulling on it strongly. Also we noticed that when the ships took off from New Caprica they fired their FTL's after they got about 2000-3000 feet off the ground. If they could do it on the ground I would imagine they would, so there must be something about needing more room when you do an FTL jump. Remember how Galactica has to close her flight pods? Perhaps when the FTL drive folds space the drive takes in a certain set amount of matter from its center. In case of the Galactica it would appear when she deploys her flight pods thats too far out. We can assume though there is prolly a little bit of a grace zone. As shown then the Galactica jumped back out of the atmosphere and there was the air vacumm it left, pulling the air into the area that it jumped from. We can assume that when a ship jumps into an area it does the same thing. It either destroys or moves aside all the matter in the area that it jumps to, so if a ship were to jump on to a surface then the ground below them would be either pushed away or outside of the zone in which the FTL pushes matter away. Meaning the ship would still be how ever far from the ground. Using the ships taking off from New Caprica as a rule we could assume that is 2000-3000 feet. Jumping a ship in at this low of a height would not be advisable for a landing with its size.

[IcyNeko]

Nope.

It's incredibly hard to do the calculations necessary to get a raptor close to a planet's surface (this has been said in the show). The calculation required to jump a battlestar onto a planetary surface without burying half the ship in the surface would be even harder.

Also, the sudden appearance of gravitational forces present on teh planet at once, all of a sudden, would severely damage the joints and such. They probably had this happen in the Adama maneuver, but still.

[Azselendor]

I suspect galactica making an FTL jump from space to the planet's surface would be like a blimp trying to operate as a submarine.

[Star Fox]

well im going to disagree with everyone


your saying its not possiable, and your wrong it IT IS!

however its not very practical, but it is possiable

also im not sure if the folding pods have anything to do with the Hyperjump Drive (from my view it is not a FLT drive, but a space folding drive, a slightly different thing) I think they only fold in to pods to protect the fighters, imagine what would happen if a enemy fighter enterd the pods before the jump

i guess if they were doing a museum, they could take several months to calcuate the coridnates required to get the ship safely on the ground, but as far as doing it to resupply, no way you would be able to do it and be 100% sure nothing would go wrong, its possiable they might get lucky now and then, but im sure tons of Battlestars would get lost trying to get it right

[Lightbane]

In the mini-series they were decommisioning Galactica to be displayed in a mueseum, it was floating above Caprica at this time, and they were preparing to jump the ship to the surface,

if you remeber in LYDYB1 two of the raptors jumped inside of a mountain, it would be far eaiser to jump a battlestar into the ground

[RepliHawk]

I doubt it, the ship would have to come to an absolute complete stop in space first. Then they would have to pick just perfect coordinates at the site. If you notice jumping in with FTL is very similar to the stargate. What ever motion you have going into it you keep when you exit it. In space if you were to speed up to 50 mph then stopped firing your rockets. Your ship would remain at 50mph as long as another gravitational body wasnt pulling on it strongly. Also we noticed that when the ships took off from New Caprica they fired their FTL's after they got about 2000-3000 feet off the ground. If they could do it on the ground I would imagine they would, so there must be something about needing more room when you do an FTL jump. Remember how Galactica has to close her flight pods? Perhaps when the FTL drive folds space the drive takes in a certain set amount of matter from its center. In case of the Galactica it would appear when she deploys her flight pods thats too far out. We can assume though there is prolly a little bit of a grace zone. As shown then the Galactica jumped back out of the atmosphere and there was the air vacumm it left, pulling the air into the area that it jumped from. We can assume that when a ship jumps into an area it does the same thing. It either destroys or moves aside all the matter in the area that it jumps to, so if a ship were to jump on to a surface then the ground below them would be either pushed away or outside of the zone in which the FTL pushes matter away. Meaning the ship would still be how ever far from the ground. Using the ships taking off from New Caprica as a rule we could assume that is 2000-3000 feet. Jumping a ship in at this low of a height would not be advisable for a landing with its size.

I agree

[Astrofighter]

Well of course thats what the FTL drive is doing, folding space that is, thats what I was explaining in my post.

[Astrofighter]

In the mini-series they were decommisioning Galactica to be displayed in a mueseum, it was floating above Caprica at this time, and they were preparing to jump the ship to the surface,

if you remeber in LYDYB1 two of the raptors jumped inside of a mountain, it would be far eaiser to jump a battlestar into the ground

...no they weren't, there was never any mention of the ship being put down on Caprica. Also they said that no one had made any FTL jump in years. They also were not above caprica. Boomer and helo had to put down on caprica after they took some damage from the cylons on the first engagement. This took them a few hours to get to caprica from galactica.

[USMCgrunt]

In the mini-series they were decommisioning Galactica to be displayed in a mueseum, it was floating above Caprica at this time, and they were preparing to jump the ship to the surface,

if you remeber in LYDYB1 two of the raptors jumped inside of a mountain, it would be far eaiser to jump a battlestar into the ground

No the Galactica was in Caprica's system but was not orbiting the planet. Colonial one had to make a several hour journey to get to it. It was stated that Galactica itself was to become orbiting museum above Caprica. They were not going to land it. I would think if you were ever to attempt this (which I doubt would ever be done) it would take extreme calculations and even then they would probably not try it. If it was attempted I would bet they would try and land the ship in the ocean somewhere as water would be the most forgiving surface to land on.

[Hairy_Little_Muffin]

I doubt it, the ship would have to come to an absolute complete stop in space first. Then they would have to pick just perfect coordinates at the site. If you notice jumping in with FTL is very similar to the stargate. What ever motion you have going into it you keep when you exit it. In space if you were to speed up to 50 mph then stopped firing your rockets. Your ship would remain at 50mph as long as another gravitational body wasnt pulling on it strongly. Also we noticed that when the ships took off from New Caprica they fired their FTL's after they got about 2000-3000 feet off the ground. If they could do it on the ground I would imagine they would, so there must be something about needing more room when you do an FTL jump. Remember how Galactica has to close her flight pods? Perhaps when the FTL drive folds space the drive takes in a certain set amount of matter from its center. In case of the Galactica it would appear when she deploys her flight pods thats too far out. We can assume though there is prolly a little bit of a grace zone. As shown then the Galactica jumped back out of the atmosphere and there was the air vacumm it left, pulling the air into the area that it jumped from. We can assume that when a ship jumps into an area it does the same thing. It either destroys or moves aside all the matter in the area that it jumps to, so if a ship were to jump on to a surface then the ground below them would be either pushed away or outside of the zone in which the FTL pushes matter away. Meaning the ship would still be how ever far from the ground. Using the ships taking off from New Caprica as a rule we could assume that is 2000-3000 feet. Jumping a ship in at this low of a height would not be advisable for a landing with its size.

Boy, you took way more into consideration then I did. I see your point, and agree.

[Neorapsta]

Its probable that at the speeds involved with FTL that the gravitational distortion by a planet would make readings difficult. Something similar that is mentioned in other Sci-fi shows with FTL travel.

You can jump out, just trying to jump into warped space would be more hit and miss the closer you got to their centre of gravity.