Battlestar Jump Drives (BSG:FTL) 

"Well … this is a new form of FTL, that doesn't need exotic matter. No Tylium, no Dilithium, no Hypermass". "Whats it run on?" "A rather strong cup of tea".

The Holtzman Drive - from Dune, the ORIGINAL Fold space technology.

Minor note- when Galactica "broke her back", it was due not only to the years of structural fatigue (and lack of shipyard repairs) but her Hangar Bays being extended- this left the ship both larger and structurally weaker along her center frame. (It is likely if she jumped like that from Ragnar, the Galactica would not have been able to make any further jumps either.) It was not simply a matter of "she jumped too many times".

It took several thousand years for the Final Five to travel from Earth 1 to the Colonies. They traveled at relativistic speeds because the Thirteenth Tribe didn't possess FTL capability.

B5 hyperspace has always been interesting to me. The concept of drifting off beacon and being lost forever is pretty freaky.

BSG's Jump Drive sounds a lot like how The Spacing Guild ships in Frank Herbert's Dune achieve FTL travel minus one Butlerian Jihad.

The BSG Jump Drive is actually how I imagine the Guild Heighliners from Dune to look and behave. They "fold space" and the Guild Navigators simply are the computing power to calculate arriving safely.

Out of all the ftls on different series, bsg ftl is the coolest. The sound and the way it lights up before it disappears. Very cool

the living ships ability to jump in the show "Farscape" would be a curious one to maybe learn about as it one of the few where a living breath organism is doing so. The only other example I have seen in Star Wars a species than can also do warp jumps.

BSG's Jump Drive is the best plot device ever. It meant there was always a tension that the enemy could simple jump into range at any point and a battle ensue.

Babylon 5's Hyperspace

B5's jumpgates have a lot of lore. Like: - How the younger races don't know who first invented the gates. - How the gates are navigation beacons and must not be targeted in wartime. - How small ships (even fighter groups) are confident to traverse the gates without their own jump engines. You could even look into Thirdspace...

In the very first episode, Adama called it the 'Hyperlight Stardrive' and thats the last time anyone has called it that. The FTL is actually similar to Macross Fold Drives, albeit more crude due to the damage its use inflicts on a vessel's superstructure. It could even be that they do go through a medium like Fold Space but they enter and exit it so fast since they aren't travel such great distance by comparisons to other examples. One thing I always wondered is the MAX range each type of FTL can cover. The Red Line tells how far they can jump without worry of hitting a celestial object or, worst, jumping within said object but we never learn just how far their drives can jump when pushed to the limit. Fanon likes to think there is no limit but thats unrealistic as all technology has limitations based around the level of civilization and general understanding of the physics behind the science.

"Space Fold" from Macross/Robotech would be interesting to see a video of!

I believe there was one more type of instantaneous FTL drive in stargate atlantis's last episode where they casually discuss the wormhole drive a form of stargate wormhole that you open in space to your destination but it was never shown on TV but was used once.

When he said warhammer warp i was like good luck with thr horrors that come with it

FTL-Drive suggestion: Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda's Slipstream drive.

Be sure to bring a reliable gellar field when traversing the warp.

I noticed when you brought up coaxial warp in another article and described it, it screamed "BSG". Thank you for confirming that.

Oh, you HAVE to look at Warhammer's Warp now. Seriously.

Tylium in the OG BSG... was gold. GOOOOOLD.

I think before going with the more famous FTLs. There are some more obscure ones that provide interest. Stargate, Wing Commander, Farscape, Supreme Commander, Babylon 5, Xcom, and Starcraft are some ideas.

I've honestly never understood Starburst from Farscape. Would love to see it get broken down.

I've been curious about the BSG jump drive for a while. Thanks for doing this

Really good vid. BSG is something I've always been interested in. Your channel is a good starting point for sci-fi as a whole.

Love all the trek content and definitely love all BSG old and new.

RE: Warhammer 40,000's warp travel: "Can you hear the voices too?" As for what I want you to do next for this series, BattleTech's Kearny-Fuchida Drive.

"Andromeda" is one that comes to mind. I mean yeah, it's more or less a hyperspace medium along the lines of how Babylon 5 did it, but they talk about having to actually navigate it rather than just setting a course. And it has to be navigated by a life form. Computers an AI's can't. Based on one episode, it almost seems like a ship's computer can't operate much at all while in slipspace, and some pilots can navigate it better than others. They also use to to time travel at least once, and systems can be "cut off" from the slip stream, making it impossible to reach them. I also like their quote from one episode. "You know what they say. Slipsteam. It's not the best way to travel faster than light, it's just the only way.

While I know there is some scientific basis for this, it sounds like they Hyper Space fold from Robotech. It to would or could be basically instantaneous. However the longer the distance the more time it took, and in latter episodes it started looking like warp drive from Trek.

The "set" for the Tilium refinery in the show is actually a sugar refinery.

The Battletech Kearny-Fuchida FTL drive - probably pretty light on ideas, but might be interesting to cover a group of lesser known franchises for FTL in one video

When you were talking about the red line, I was waiting for the ship to appear on the opposite side of the circle from the dot as a joke. Also, I'm very thankful they dropped the proposed CGI effect of the ship literally folding in on itself and instead going for the simple flash of light. Nice, simple, classy.

Perfect timing. I just finished BSG and just starting to exlopre the details of that show.

Yes, Warhammer 40,000's Warp travel and the alternates like the Eldar Webway and Tau's superior slipstream drive.

Thanks for doing this, I love BSG.

Thanks for the post, loved it.👍🏼

I know you are unlikely to look at books but I think you would love endymions (hyperion series) rather macabre method. Other suggestions tv/film: moya (farscape), Event horizon, yamato (star blazers) & Dai-Gunzan (tengen toppa gurren lagann)

nice! thank you! i am always curious about deeper looks into the BSG tech and lore.

Babylon 5 Hyperspace.. really cool, and you can get lost in it!

Stargate's ship FTL is probably a little boring but gate travel could be an interesting discussion if it is in scope of the series. But honestly throw a dart at a board for a topic and I will enjoy it. Your videos are great.

Thanks Rick. Loved it.

Babylon 5’s hyperspace and 3rd space would be wonderful to hear you talk about!

Let’s hope battlestar new reboot is good Great vid dude and very informative

I'm so happy that you covered Battlestar Galactica...I'd love to see bios on the crew and deep dives into the ships, the Viper is still my favorite space fighter

Looking forward to more in this series....especially an explanation of Infinity Improbablity drives and Bistromathic drives from HHGTTG!

Very fun video. Thank you.

Dont you dare be sorry for that pun. That was beautiful! :')

Theoretically this is a good description. We won’t be moving through space we will be moving the fabric of space. The issue with moving through space is the causality effete. Causality is the true speed limit. You must exchange spaces. This would require an unthinkable amount of power to contract and expand space. You would need the power of a star or a black hole to achieve it. The movement would be instant.

If you do 40k FTL, look into the Eldar Webway: its a variation of the Stargates and Supergates from Stargate, but you don't need an immediate exit gate... and there are cities built within it. The Necrons and Tyranids also have non-warp based FTL, being the 40k analogues to the Borg's Transwarp and Yuuzahn Vong Dovin Basals from Star Wars Legends [another good topic]. The Tau use the Warp, but its more like Star Trek warp drive, which pulls a subspace bubble around the ship, as opposed to Imperial Warp drive, which functions like Hyperdrives in Babylon-5 or Stargate, by opening a portal, flying through the alternate dimension, and portaling back in.

It seems to work like the wormhole drive use in Stargate Atlantis. In the documentary about BSG they purposely kept the FTL vague so they could focus on storytelling. Well done I look forward to the next.

When it comes to the ship 'Heart of Gold' from Hitchhiker's Guide, thank you for using a picture of the ship from the BBC television show from the very early 1980s.

certifiably ingame can you do a video on the hyperdrive system from the stargate series.

Another folded space one is from the movie Event Horizon.

The Bistromatic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with Improbability Factors. :D

One of the things I liked about the Battlestar Galactica reboot is the little nods to the classic material. While we never see FTL drives used in the original TV series what we see in the reboot matches the description of how FTL drives work in the novelization of the pilot of the original series

Rick, This was a great video. I'm a big BSG fan and still learned a lot about how FTL works on the show. As for FTL suggestions, I'd like a video on the Universal Neural Teleportation Network (UNTN) of the MCU. I know you touched on this gate network in your video on the Kree. But there are some fascinating aspects worth deeper exploration. * Ships have to travel through every gate between their starting point and destination. * Crews on ships can travel through 50 gates maximum to avoid bodily stress. How long do crews have to rest before going for another 50 gates? * Even ships with FTL drives like the Milano (Guardians of the Galaxy's ship) still use the UNTN. Why? I look forward to this and future videos. Thanks.

I think you missed the fact that the Cylons were able to figure out how to track the Colonials by the specific radiation signature of their refinery ship. Some how the cylons were able to track it through jumps.

“What do I take on next?” How about the classic BSG of the 1970’s? How they traverse is even more elusive! 😉

In A fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge they also use a form of instantaneous teleport. The jumps were short distances by galactic scales and the "speed" of the ship was determent by its navigational computer, which were powerful enough to make many jumps per second. Space combat was preformed by leaving hundreds of smart bombs in the predicted jump path of your enemy, since even lasers traveled too slow to hit a ship before it jumped again.

In the Dune novels guild ships were instant telaportation to each destination and only real reason it took a long time was ship to planet travel was the only lag

Another sci-fi universe that uses a similar method to BSG "jump" is Battletech, so that could be another one to delve into. The KF drive from th Battletech universe warps space to link the two points by what is essentially a wormhole for a instant to transport a jumpship or warship to the new point location. However it take the better part of two weeks to charge up for jump and can only be safely done at either the Zenith or Nadir points of a solar plain.

There was an old webcomic called "Starslip: Crisis" that had a fun take on the jumpdrive, basically FT was impossible but what they could do was travel to another universe where their ship was already at the destination they wanted to arrive at. If I recall their calculations were to determine if the universe was basically identical to their own or not before making the jump, and the drama comes from accidentally jumping to a universe where some of the crew doesn't exist.

Kearny-Fuchida Drive from Battletech is an interesting one

Make sure to cover hyperdrive and wormholes from Stargate. Hyperdrive in Stargate is clearly distinct from other settings, having the potential to be much, much faster than even Star Wars hyperdrives. It is also unaffected by gravity fields and can jump through solid objects, and requires the generation of a "hyperspace window" to enter. Wormholes in stargate are also quite interesting.

Excellent video. Please consider reviewing the FTL travel from STARGATE-SG1 and BABYLON 5 next.

Great video, I love your BSG videos as few as love are. Though I don't believe the FTL was around during the time at Kobol as for if all humanity was on Kobol they wouldn't have had the need for FTL, second it took the Cylons from earth about 2,000 years to reach Kobal and the 12 Colonies, also it makes more sense for the 12 Colonies to invent it as they need a more practical way to maintain travel between the 12 Colonies.

The Alderson Drive used by Jerry Pournelle is an interesting variant. It lets you travel instantly from one star to another, but only works between specific points in space. Most time is spent travelling from one Alderson Point to another using conventional fusion drive (with no inertial dampers). This makes it possible to blockade a system by controlling its Alderson Points. A key plot point is the birth of a new star creating a new set of Alderson Points to a previously blockaded system.

Wing Commander FTL/Jump drive is interesting too as it seems to work on interconnecting gravitational or quantum nodes and the worm holes between them!

Star Trek: Matter Antimatter reactions allow us to warp spacetime. Star Wars: we have droids make the calculations to make a lightspeed jump through hyperspace. Warhammer 40,000: We say a prayer right before we go through hell!

This reminded me of an FTL type analysis on Atomic Rockets about how a point to point jump drive allows nuclear sucker punches with no reaction time or way to defend. Coincidentally, exactly what happened to the colonies. Cylons didn’t need the back door program, they just needed more nukes.

FTL Video Idea- Honorverse's Hyperdrive/space. The differing bands, various entry points, hyperspace vs wormhole travel... All good stuff.

just a fun note. In the Battletech universe, their ships jump much like BSG, only they have to wait for days or weeks before they can jump again and the jump can cause disorientation and/or nausea.

If you're going to look at 40k Warp drive, can you please do a tangent into how the Tau ftl system works? It's kind of like warp drive... but without the warp

Honorverse hyperspace goes pretty in-depth with how it works and where it can be entered and exited. A Systems "hyper limit" depends on a stars mass and spectral type for example.

Frame Shift Drive from Elite: Dangerous coming in 3 variants: 1. Small Ship FSD without Supercruise Overcharge allows travel at FTL speeds without time dilation effects for the crew even at subliminal relativistic speed, anything from 30 km/s up to 2600 c is possible 2. Small Ship FSD with Supercruise Overcharge - same as above but Drive can be "Overcharged" leading to short drastic bursts of Speed causing heat which damages the ship if used too long/often Small Ship FSD uses Hydrogen Fuel in a nuclear fusion reactor which can be scooped from Main Sequence Stars. The FSD also has another mode which requires locking on an object of the highest mass in a given star system - which then can be jumped to after charging the drive. Usual range can be just a few Light Years up to around 70 to 100 depending on the ship model, equipment, FSD quality and optimized mass. Initiating a frame shift looks visually like in Star Trek, the engine fires up and the ship experiences sudden acceleration, leaving behind a low wake energy field if using Supercruise Mode and a High Energy FSD wake if jumping to another system/star. High Energy FSD Wakes can be scanned to calculate the target vector and destination of the ship in question. 3. Capital Ship Frame Shift Drives with a gigantic requirement of energy in the form of rare Tritium Fuel - range is 500 Lightyears. While smaller types of ships basically zip away into hyperspace/witchspace Capital Ships jump and reappear with a thunderstorm effect literally ripping Hyperspace open with black fog and violent lightning effects.

One of my favorite sci-fi universes is BattleTech. Most probably know it by the first person shooter games called Mechwarrior. They also use a jump drive with no time spent in any sort of FTL state. You just turn it on and flash of light, then arrive at your destination. It has a lot more restrictions than the BSG jump drive, though.

It's been a while since I've heard BSG technobabble. It was nice ^_^

Dude, Wing Commander jumps would be a cool Sci Fi video I’d love to see. It’s always intrigued me, but because it’s more of a backwater sci-fi video game/movie, I don’t know much about, or many who do know Wing Commander, much less it’s lore and technology.

The Event Horizon Black Hole Drive tries to do the nBSG jump drive using a Romulan system.... there's a reason it's a horror movie.

Hyperdrive in Homeworld works a lot like jump drives in Battlestar Galactica. The ship disappears and then reappears a few moments later at the target location. The method used is with a portal instead of spontaneously blinking out of existence, but the ship does not move into the portal, instead the portal moves towards the ship. The faster than light travel in Faster Than Light works exactly like in Battlestar Galactica.

One of the more grounded methods of sci-fi FTL travel. Love the effect they used for the jumps. Hmm, Borg transwarp drive? Although it's probably just artificial wormholes. Underspace, from Voyager, seems to be something similar, just naturally occurring mini-wormholes?

BSG - probably ma favorite reboot.

one fo my favourite sci fi shows

Good video. I think as a note the “Final Five” mention that travel to the colonies took what would have been multiple generations so I think that invention of the FTL is more correct.

Good job surviving your peek into the immaterium!

The Gravity Drive from Event Horizon. So much head cannon on what went wrong & where they actually ended up.

Interesting video... How about looking at Babylon 5's Hyperspace. Technically no ship in B5 is FTL capable whatsoever. Its all done with sublight drives and traveling through Hyperspace.

BSG's jump drive sounds vaugely similar to EVE Online's jump drives. Key differences: 1. In EVE, the jump drive (not the standard warp drive all ships have, but rather, the jump drives specific to capital ships and jump freighters) requires the destination to be 'lit' by another ship or structure creating a cynosural field. This field becomes the far end of a wormhole created by the capital ship's jump drive. 2. Optionally, very large ships (titans) can create a temporarily stable wormhole (bridge) between two points in spacetime. This would allow an entire fleet of ships to pass through the wormhole and end up on the far side. the ship creating the wormhole cannot pass through its own wormhole though, and would need to jump there separately, creating its own, personsal, wormhole, after the fleet had passed through the temporary wormhole created by the jump bridge. ...So...not really that similar, but still cool A.F.

Moor who made the recent BSG said he purposely kept it cryptic, he cited in a interview that star trek series’s each episode’s contradict each other depending on the series and episode, which gets brought up by fans at conventions and gene roddenbary and the actors would get lots of technical questions about a fictional technology that is not always consistent. The actors would get hit with lots of questions nonstop. Star trek went into detail on how there technology worked, which backfired on the actors. This was one of the reasons the BSG tech is only partly explained on how it fully works.

Actually and this is SOME speculation, I believe the Cylon's Jump Drive took advantage of their living guidance systems to "link" in some unexplained way with more distant ships that were spread around. We know they had some of this capability when they died, their consciousness was sent back to a resurrection ship and downloaded to another body. So with that transmission ability, it would make sense that their ships linked the nervous system of their guide to the computers that jump the vessel. So link with distant vessels and use them as a reference point would equal much greater jump accuracy as the Cylons had more fix points and faster computer to plot a jump. As for the Jump Drive's creator, in the original BSG the journey from Kobol was in generational ships. They could travel at a good fraction of the speed of light , but took many years to reach their destination. When the 12 Colonies were formed, most of them lost their advanced technology and basically were stuck on their worlds. Except for Caprica, they maintained a good deal of Kobolian technology and continued to use it. Reinventing space flight rather quickly with a moon shot, then interplanetary tech to travel in the Cyrannus System, and somewhere I read it was the 6th Millenium, they made the breakthrough in FTL on a research outpost located on Aquaria. The technology spread through the colonies erupting in all out war between some of them. Leading to Virgon and Scorpia developing fighters to counter battles between them and Tauron and Saggitaron. Picon and Aerilon were of critical importance especially Aerilon as it was the food production planet for the 12 Colonies. Gemenon was more a monastic planet full of monks, priests, and priestesses of the Lords of Kobol. But Caprica was always considered for it's innovations in technology. And the FTL drive was one of their finest achievements. That and the Unification of the 12 Colonies under the Stryker Doctrine.

If you like jump drives, check out KF drives in the Battletech universe.

I loved your video on FTL drives. I was wondering if you can do a video on the Tealons ID Drives from Earth Final Conflict. Maybe touch on the interface, speed, distance. Thank you.

The jump drive in BSG is most reminiscent of folding space in Dune. Considering also that they were fighting AI intelligences, and the Cylons used a biological Navigator, you can see a big influence. The technology was well-thought out here, and the limitations on space involved the time necessary to plot a new destination based on navigational data and the time required to recharge their engines. It was much more consistent than the warp-driven Federation starships, in which warp factors tended to be whatever speed was convenient for their destination.

Kind of interesting how Event Horizon, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek all have FTL drives based on a similar concept (folding space), but wildly different outcomes! BSG is just straightforward "fold space, and push across the fold", Trek has a kind of continuous fold that the ship "rides" like a wave. And Event Horizon happens to just have to take a little hop through HELL to reach the other side of the fold...

What about Babylon 5 'Jump-Gate' technology?

David Weber's Honor Harrington series Hyperspace travel. Is a very well thought out FTL system. With terrain and even battles taking place in Hyperspace.

So many options, the Enoch (can't find a reference so probably spelt that wrong) drive from Empire form the Ashes. The Wave Motion Jump from Space Battleship Yamato. The Skip Drive from Captain Harlock. Jump Gates From Freelancer and Eve online. Warp gates form Cowboy Bebop. Frame Shift Drives from Elite Dangerous. Maybe when you get done exploring you can go over the similarities and differences that many 'hyperspace' systems have. As for The Warp (40k) just avoid the things living there it will be fine.

I was going to suggest the Warp from 40K right before you said it :D

I’d like to see you tackle Space Bridges from Transformers!

The FTL and sublight engines in the Alien series could make for a good video. I recently bought The Alien Blueprints by Graham J. Langridge and for anyone who likes that kind of book, it is thorough and detailed.