There's a new map of the BSG star system...

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, fuck it. I guess God did it.

[Ethros]

Seems odd that Canceron is the most populated planet, when it's barely ever even mentioned in BSG

[SD70ACe]

Skywalker wrote:

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Yeah, but this is BSG, so...God did it.

Agreed. This map is missing the hands of God behind the star systems.

[Frontman]

Seeing this planets makes me think again how is it possible that those people came from Kobol and don't remember it although they have distant past seen on artifacts in Adama's office? They spoke of Kobol as "myth" and "old wives tale". Maybe angels deleted their memory? I mean they did make allusion of it in "Malestrom" after Starbuck (an angel) died Adama destroyed that old sailing ship.

[Robert Maxwell]

Frontman wrote:

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Seeing this planets makes me think again how is it possible that those people came from Kobol and don't remember it although they have distant past seen on artifacts in Adama's office? They spoke of Kobol as "myth" and "old wives tale". Maybe angels deleted their memory? I mean they did make allusion of it in "Malestrom" after Starbuck (an angel) died Adama destroyed that old sailing ship.

Kobol itself wasn't a myth--it turned out to be very real. But the exodus from Kobol was a few thousand years ago. Think about where we were 3000 years ago. Most of history from around that time is pretty mythical to us. Not that we have no evidence of it, but that it's so distant and we have relatively little information so it's not "real" to us.

Kobol could hold much the same status for the Colonials: a real place where they used to live and things happened, but the stories have been distorted and attained mythical proportions over time.

[Dark Gilligan]

vampgrrl wrote:

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There is no way to place so many habitable worlds so close together and it not look odd.

But many of these planets might not been habitable in their original conditions. Any number of them could have been terraformed (or kobolformed as the case may be).

[Robert Maxwell]

Dark Gilligan wrote:

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But many of these planets might not been habitable in their original conditions. Any number of them could have been terraformed (or kobolformed as the case may be).

Then why was the very notion of terraforming never even mentioned in the show? One would think that would be a major factor in finding a new planet to settle on. For instance, if they had terraforming technology, they could've set about making New Caprica less harsh. Even if it was a decades-long process, they intended to stay there forever so why wouldn't they have at least attempted it?

[Admiral2]

SD70ACe wrote:

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Agreed. This map is missing the hands of God behind the star systems.

Works for me.

[HarryM]

If you look at the Map it says they tried to "Kobolform" Pallas but were unsuccessful.

[vampgrrl]

While there may have been some experiments in terraforming...I doubt that the Colonies were advanced to carry out such an endevour due to time, money and lack of technology.

The Colonies were no doubt more advanced than we are but they aren't THAT more advanced.

I also don't believe they have continually had FTL drives since leaving Kobol (2,000 years ago?) because if they had they have been sitting at a cultural and technological dead end for a long long time.

[Dark Gilligan]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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Then why was the very notion of terraforming never even mentioned in the show? One would think that would be a major factor in finding a new planet to settle on.

Because the only directive Galactica and the fleet had following the Cylon attack was GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. There was no time to prepare for settling--let alone terraforming--another planet. Imagine the materials, resources, capital, and time that would be required for such an endeavor, none of which the Colonials had post-Exodus. They barely had enough food and water to take along, and were running out of both rather quickly.

[Robert Maxwell]

Dark Gilligan wrote:

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Because the only directive Galactica and the fleet had following the Cylon attack was GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. There was no time to prepare for settling--let alone terraforming--another planet. Imagine the materials, resources, capital, and time that would be required for such an endeavor, none of which the Colonials had post-Exodus. They barely had enough food and water to take along, and were running out of both rather quickly.

If the Colonials had terraforming technology at any point, odds are at least 1 or 2 out of the 50,000 survivors would have some knowledge of it. It was never even mentioned which tells me it's a capability they do not and did not possess.

The only "out" might be if they had it during the exodus from Kobol, used it to set up the 12 Colonies, then dismantled it and destroyed all records of how to build it. But at the time of the Cylon attack it appears they possessed no such technology.

[Wereghost]

pst wrote:

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but uh, i have to imagine there were more than 12 battles anyway. so that hybrid was full of it.

Good point. It also means that many of the minor colonies would have to be ignored.
The population of the major colonies seems to be about 30 billion in total. Can anyone remember if Tigh put the total number of casualties at 20 billion or 30 billion in the Resistance webisodes? If the latter, it seems that he may have been kind of right despite Gaeta's later figure of 50 billion.

fett51 wrote:

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That map is full of oddities. Caprica and Gemenon orbit each other, and Aerilon and Canceron share an orbit in the Lagrange points of a star and a large gas giant, for instance. Speaking as an astrophysics geek, this is certainly one weird set of systems, but it's not impossible. The only one that bugs me is Scorpia and Libran, their orbits/planetary conditions look too close.

Troy looks like it could be as hot as Mercury, too.

6079SmithW wrote:

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I am only half joking because the speculation that the system is stable and viable for humans, even in its somewhat weird configuration, is due to God willing it to be so is a completely valid argument in context of the BSG-verse.

True. God/Q/whatever does work. There are probably half-a-dozen workable explanations where there's some klind of relevant precedent in BSG lore.

Frontman wrote:

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Seeing this planets makes me think again how is it possible that those people came from Kobol and don't remember it although they have distant past seen on artifacts in Adama's office? They spoke of Kobol as "myth" and "old wives tale". Maybe angels deleted their memory? I mean they did make allusion of it in "Malestrom" after Starbuck (an angel) died Adama destroyed that old sailing ship.

I think that maybe angels deleted their common sense. The first cylon war seems to have left them with an anti-progress, anti-technology mindset as alluded to in the miniseries. The idea of them just forgetting things because they happened a few thousand years ago isn't really a strong argument; given the technology that they seemingly had back then, the retention of records for prosperity ought to have been no problem. But then again, we have no real idea of the number of refugees. It may only have been akin to the population of the colonial fleet, or fewer.

HarryM wrote:

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If you look at the Map it says they tried to "Kobolform" Pallas but were unsuccessful.

Good catch. Maybe Kobol looked like Earth-1 and Earth-2.

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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If the Colonials had terraforming technology at any point, odds are at least 1 or 2 out of the 50,000 survivors would have some knowledge of it. It was never even mentioned which tells me it's a capability they do not and did not possess.

I wouldn't be so sure. Never mind The Wrath Of Khan; terraforming would most likely be a huge undertaking, taking decades or even thousands of years. I don't think that it was really the first thing on the minds of many ofthe 50,000 semi-random survivors.

[Candlelight]

Robert Maxwell wrote:

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Kobol itself wasn't a myth--it turned out to be very real. But the exodus from Kobol was a few thousand years ago. Think about where we were 3000 years ago. Most of history from around that time is pretty mythical to us. Not that we have no evidence of it, but that it's so distant and we have relatively little information so it's not "real" to us.

Or that Magician 2000 years ago that the Pope is always going on about.

I prefer to think of the Colonial system as a single star system, with planets and moons. Sort of the like the New Earth system from Firefly. Whish Kevin states in his interview:

Kevin: Indeed, the instant Ron hired me on BSG, I was so excited, I went home, read the series bible and the first two scripts for "33" and "Water", then proceeded to hack out a document on the astronomy of the Twelve Colonies – how might we get twelve habitable planets in one star system (which is stated in Ron's series bible).

This also contradicts largely what BSG Wiki has gleamed from the series...

All complaining aside, I love this stuff. Don't see how Aquaria can be considered a colony when it's really only a research outpost with a population that 'swells' to half a million occasionally.

[Robert Maxwell]

Scrawny71 wrote:

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I wouldn't be so sure. Never mind The Wrath Of Khan; terraforming would most likely be a huge undertaking, taking decades or even thousands of years. I don't think that it was really the first thing on the minds of many ofthe 50,000 semi-random survivors.

I never once said it was the first thing on their minds. Obviously, escape and immediate survival were more important.

But once they started seriously considering settling down (Kobol, New Caprica, etc.) they never once mentioned terraforming or anything resembling it. New Caprica would've been the ideal time to drop at least a reference to it. From everything presented on screen there was no evidence that the Colonials had any capabilities that could modify a planet's climate or atmospheric composition.