From: "Sally M" smanton@hotmail.com Subject: [B7L] Speed freaks?
I have a feeling there isn't an answer, so am inviting speculation and ideas and pure guesses ...
how fast *is* 'standard' speed? Not as set-in-concrete terms, but, say, as a believable general idea one could use to build a story around, were one building it around a journey between planets. I mean, the time it takes them to go from one place to the other (including trips supposedly half-way across the galaxy!) varies all over the place on-screen. Are there any particular episodes you'd give more weight to as evidence than others?
Any takers?
I worked something out for the Blakes 7 roleplaying game (which I have yet to use successfully).
TD1 = 1000 spacials per round - 1 round = 5 seconds Standard by 2 = TD4 = 4000 spacials per round.
The Spacial Asteroid PK118 has a diameter of 0.102 spacials. Assume diameter of 150km (seemed reasonable at the time)
1 Spacial x 0.102 = 150km 1 Spacial = 150 / 0.102 1 Spacial = 1470.588 km
for simplification, 1 spacial = 1500 km.
TD1 = 1000 spacials per round. 1 round = 5 seconds. 1 spacial = 1500 km.
TD1 = 1500 x 1000 = 1,500,000 km per round
1 round = 5 seconds therefore 12 rounds per minute, 720 rounds per hour
TD1 = 1500000 x 720 = 1,080,000,000 km per hour
At Time Distort 1, one Space Hour = 1,080,000,000 km
Earth to sun = 150 million km Light speed = 1,125,000,000 km per hour Time Distort One = 0.96 x speed of light.
Simplified for gaming matters, TD1 = 1c (speed of light), TD9 = 9c, TD10 = 10c. But TD11 = 20c - I'm using a logarithmic scale here.
Time Distort Standard by x light speed 1 0.5 1 2 1 2 3 1.5 3 4 2 4 5 2.5 5 6 3 6 7 3.5 7 8 4 8 9 4.5 9 10 5 10 11 5.5 20 12 6 30 13 6.5 40 14 7 50 15 7.5 60 16 8 80 17 8.5 90 18 9 100 19 9.5 110 20 10 120 21 10.5 130 22 11 140 23 11.5 150 24 12 160
So to get to Earth’s nearest star (4.3 light years away) at Time Distort One would take 4.3 years.
Far better to go at Standard by Ten (TD20) which would, as Zen would say take "approximately thirteen days one hour and 54 minutes"
At Standard by twelve, the journey would take nine days, nineteen hours, twenty five minutes and thirty five seconds.
This still seems slow to me.
However, in "Project Avalon, once in the same planetary system, Liberator was estimated to take fifty hours to get to the rendezvous point.
Also "Breakdown" had an absolutely urgent (get there in time or Gan dies) journey taking a minimum of 150 hours - and I expect they'd have been travelling at standard by twelve!
In "Hostage", (during the second, BIG attack on Liberator, Blake increases the ship's speed to Standard by Ten - which was later quoted as Time Distort Twenty.
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Anyway, this was the "system" I worked out for the game. Does it make sense to anyone else?
Also, please let me know if the formatting makes it unreadable. If so, I'll have another go.
Wildean