Originally published at: I just noticed that early Colonial Vipers had some odd instruments | Boing Boing
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IM was an instant reverser. There’s no official (or even fan-accepted) theory for what IM stood for.
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I loved Battlestar Galactica as a kid. It is some of my earliest memories, seeing it on a B&W TV at the old farm house. The vocoder Cylon talk was my jam! Though it did give me nightmares where they were circling me and chanting something.
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the artificial horizon seems out of place in space , where there is no up, down or people hearing you scream.
@jlw, perhaps it’s the relative attitudes of the Galactica and the Viper at launch? So, “up” is “‘direction’ of the heads of the people standing on the bridge, relative to the ‘direction’ of the heads of the people sitting in the Viper.”
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Well, you know why the ships always appeared with their artificial gravity fields in the same orientation, don’t you?
Lead weights in the bottom.
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I’d say they were just as cool, but suffered from the smaller screen (black and white in our home) and what became repetitive stock footage.
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I could see it being helpful when establishing relative locations to have a plane from which coördinates are established, but perhaps it’s just an artifact of being an earth-bound euclidean.
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Because they landed on a flight deck like an aircraft carrier, they would need to know relative orientation to that to be able to land without crashing.
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An “artificial horizon” is a gyroscopic instrument that provides a consistent inertial frame of reference for determining pitch and roll. They work just as well outside of atmosphere or even the gravity well of a planet. The human inner ear (which provides our sense of balance) is easily confused by acceleration and turning. Without a fixed horizon (say in deep space or shadowed by a planet), it would be very difficult to coordinate movement and positioning relative to other spacecraft. One does not want Viper 1’s “up” to be different from Viper 2’s, particularly if they are far enough apart to make it impossible to viusally determine relative orientation.
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That’s not an artificial horizon in the video. It has a rotating compass. Looks like some kind of VOR navigation instrument.
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For some reason the Cylon saying “see that the humans remain entertained to the end” from the pleasure planet ambush episode is burned into my brain.
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I thought the launch sequence was cool as shit when I was a kid, pressed head against the couch during the segment.
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All I need to know about spaceflight I learned from BG (and Far Out Space Nuts).
That’s just a technical-looking doodad to make the scene more interesting.
My younger inner science nerd had to tell himself that the parties involved were using a standardized orientation, maybe in line with the galactic plane or the orbital planes of the planetary system they are visiting, when in reality it’s just Hollywood’s attempt to make spaceflight interesting and relatable to non-scientific, non-nerdy viewers.
My adult science nerd knows that Hollywood values money-makers first, realism be damned. Hence their fondness for J.J. Abrams.
The spaceships in most scifi movies & TV series behave as if they are flying in Earth’s atmosphere, with their engines always burning at full power, whooshing through banked turns during battles, etc.
TV Tropes has it covered:
Kirk & Co briefly used 3D tactics in The Wrath Of Khan. Once. Briefly.
Forget it Jake, It’s Hollywood.
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Possibly an HSI rather than a VOR but yes, something like that
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Maybe it’s a pushbutton automatic Immelman?
Also old school Cyclone Raiders are where it’s at! Those ships were sweet!
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Well, now that really is putting the “artificial” into "artificial horizon. 
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That’s why Starfury is best space fighter.
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One of my favorite things about the Expanse is ships being shown travelling “backwards” and reverse burning as they enter a conflict. Science!
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I think that Lost in Space film with Joey from friends, in the beginning, had a ship that was fairly realsitic as far as small jets to maneuver vs big thrusters.
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If I’ve learned anything from Kerbal Space Program, it’s that navigation and maneuvering is space is NOT trivial!
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