The Launch Officer contacts the CIC to request permission for launch and when it is obtained, the Launch Officer then goes through a quick series of final checks:
LAUNCH OFFICER
Viper two-eight-nine/Galactica, clear
forward, nav-con green, interval check,
thrust positive and steady. Good-bye.
"Clear Forward" means there is nothing in front of the Viper in the launch tube. "Nav-con green" means the navigational system aboard the Viper is operating and is showing up green on the Launch Officer's board. "Interval check" means that he has checked the interval between this Viper and the one launched immediately before it.
"Thrust positive and steady" means that the Viper's engine thrust is steady and is sufficient to launch the craft. "Good-bye" tells the pilot that Launch Officer has just pressed the literal button that will launch the Viper through the tube and out into space.
As Starbuck's Viper clears the tube and roars out into space, she immediately contacts Galactica's CIC over her wireless (radio) and reports in. The Flight Director in CIC (in the pilot this was one of the roles filled by the character Dualla) will then direct Starbuck to her destination, in this case to fly a combat patrol around Galactica. The Flight Director will give Starbuck specific directions on where to go, what speed to go there at and what to do when she arrives. If there's a more senior pilot in space at Starbuck's destination, then Starbuck would also have to obey the orders of that pilot.
Once the patrol is over, Starbuck would contact Galactica and request permission to land her Viper. Once granted, Starbuck would then be directed into the "landing pattern" of craft trying to land aboard ship. Once her Viper is in the landing pattern, she falls under the orders of the Landing Signal Officer (LSO). The LSO has a small booth much like the launch officer and focuses on the specific task of landing each and every craft.
As Starbuck approaches the Galactica, the LSO will issue directions such as:
LSO
Viper Two-eight-nine/Galactica. Approach
port landing bay, hands-on, speed one
zero five, checkers red, call the ball.
"Approach port landing bay" as opposed to the starboard landing bay. "Hands-on" meaning use manual control all the way (some advanced Vipers had a crude autopilot). "Speed one zero five" tells Starbuck how fast to come in. "Checkers red" refers to the elevator that she should park her spacecraft on once she comes to a stop (there are presumably several elevators on the landing deck). "Call the ball" refers to an external system of lights that the pilot can see from the outside of Galactica which helps Starbuck pilot herself in. "I have the ball" is the standard response which means "I can see the lights and I can pilot my craft safely at this point."
Starbuck then guides her Viper onto the landing deck and sets it down on the red checkered elevator. The LSO looks over the controls and reports:
LSO (CONT'D)
Viper Two-eight-nine/Galactica. Skids down,
mag-lock secure. Welcome home Starbuck.
"Skids down" means the Vipers landing skids are down on the deck. "Mag-lock secure" means the magnetic lock has been activated and is physically holding the Viper to the deck.
The elevator then takes the Viper down through an airlock and into the Hangar Deck where the Deck Hands then physically take over control of the Viper, secure the armaments and begin maintenance. Starbuck leaves the cockpit, reports any problems to the Chief and heads for the Ready Room for a (mandatory) mission debriefing and critique of her landing technique.
CIC
All command functions are executed from the Combat Information Center (CIC), the nerve center of Galactica located deep inside the ship in the most well-protected area. Adama always commands the ship from the CIC and for our purposes, CIC is the functional equivalent of the Trekkian Bridge. (There is technically an actual Galactica Bridge somewhere, but it is typically used only for docking or closely maneuvering the ship in concert with another vessel or object requiring visual contact on the part of the conning officer.)
CIC is commanded at any given moment by the Officer of the Watch (filled by Lt. Gaeta in the pilot). Work shifts are called "watches" and each watch runs about four hours. The Officer of the Watch is in functional command of the ship and is responsible for anything that happens aboard during his or her watch. Until and unless the Officer of the Watch is relieved, only they can give orders to maneuver the ship, launch spacecraft, fire weapons, etc. Junior officers must all qualify to stand as a Watch Officer in order to advance in their careers and every officer aboard Galactica will be expected to stand watch at some point, with the notable exception of Adama who stands no formal watch and makes his own schedule as he sees fit.
Maneuvering Galactica
Maneuvering or conning the ship is done from CIC, while there are a few emergency conning stations located in other areas of the ship. Orders are relayed to the Engine Room for speed to the Helmsmen in CIC for maneuvering Steering the ship is complicated and most analogous to steering a submarine. There are a series of thrusters located on the bow, amidships and at the stem, and orders have to be given to specific thrusters in order to turn the ship:
ADAMA
Bow up one half, left full, stern
down one half, right full.
With the above order, Adama has told the helmsman in charge of the bow to activate the thruster beneath the bow (or under the "chin" of the ship) to half power and to activate the thruster on the left side of the bow (or the "cheek") to full power. At the same time, the stern helmsman will turn on the thruster on top of the stern (on the ship’s “butt”) and the thruster on the right side of the stern (on the right butt cheek).
The end result of Adama's order is to bring up the nose of the ship, push down the rear and begin a clockwise turn. Note that this has nothing to do with the speed of the ship or where it's going He's just turning the ship in a direction. He the stops the turn with the simple order:
ADAMA (CONT'D)
Meet her.
All the helmsmen will return their controls in such a way as to stop the turn. Galactica is now facing in a new direction and with a different orientation. If Adama orders:
ADAMA (CONT'D)
Engine Room, flank speed.
The Galactica will now head off in a new direction at her maximum safe speed.
Damage Control
Damage Control or DC is the responsibility of every man and woman aboard the ship. Every single person is trained and retrained how to fight fires, secure hull breaches, deliver first aid, repair damage, etc. Damage Control Parties are organized throughout the ship by division and in an emergency, every compartment has an organized system for dealing with an emergency in that compartment. For instance, while the primary task of the people in the Engine Room is to work on the engines during combat, they have to be prepared to deal with damage in their own compartment should the need arise. There are also roving Damage Control Parties that are available to move throughout the ship and deal with emergency situations.
Damage control officers are assigned throughout the ship, again using existing officers from other specialties (Captain Kelly is the LSO, but also functions as a DC Officer during an emergency.) Damage Control ultimately reports to the Executive Officer who is responsible for repairing any damage to the ship while the Commanding Officer concentrates on fighting the enemy. The XO keeps track of damage with a grease pencil on an erasable board in CIC because it’s simple and does not rely on any power system which may have been knocked out during an attack.
Enlisted and Officers
There is a clear distinction between enlisted personnel and their officers. Officers are expected to be leaders, capable of taking charge of any situation, and to always take care of the men and women under their command. Enlisted are the backbone of the service and perform all the hard work from wrestling armaments aboard Vipers to cleaning the compartments to filing paperwork. It is strictly against regulations for enlisted and officers to beco
me romantically involved, especially within the chain of command. This is to ensure that enlisted feel treated fairly by their officers, not being favored or passed over because of some other relationship. Therefore, the relationship between Tyrol and Sharon is way out of bounds and will be a recurrent problem for them both.
While flying is clearly the primary role of any pilot or flight officer, they are also officers and as such they are expected to shoulder additional responsibilities when not actually flying. Every junior officer aboard Galactica commands a division within the ship.
A division is a group of enlisted personnel commanded by a noncommissioned or petty officer (typically a Chief), who then reports to the division officer. As a practical matter, pilots and flight offices do not have the time or energy to oversee a division in comparison to regular officers, so for all intents and purposes the Chief runs the division -- but it is important to keep in mind that the division officer is ultimately responsible for anything and everything that happens in their division. For instance, if there's a maintenance issue in Boomer's division, if one of the Vipers is chronically short of spare parts or unable to fly, the CAG will be on Boomer's case about it, not Chief Tyrol
Faster Than Light (FTL)
The ability to travel faster than the speed of light is, of course, impossible so FTL is a bit of a misnomer even in Galactica's world. Technically speaking neither Galactica nor any other "FTL" capable ship actually goes faster than the speed of light. What happens during a "Jump" is that the fabric of space itself is folded and the ship travels from point A to point B directly.
Picture space as a piece of cloth lying on a table. Place a coin on the left hand side In order to move it to the right side of the cloth, you could slide it across the cloth or pick it up and place it there, both of which involve traveling across the physical space and will take time. However, if you pick up the right hand side of the cloth and fold it over so it touches the left hand side, the coin can be transferred from one point to another virtually instantaneously.
That is essentially what happens during a Jump. Galactica's FTL engine fold the fabric of space itself (through another dimension beyond the 3rd dimension) and the ship literally transfers itself between two distant points which are momentarily brought together.
As a result, Galactica is never "cruising" through the universe as does the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon. Galactica, and all FTL ships simply go from one point to another, and once they've arrived, they can only move at normal speeds below the speed of light.
Galactica is an older ship relatively speaking, and so her technology is significantly behind that of many of the other ships in the ragtag fleet, hence the need for long checklists to be completed by many hands before any Jump.
The process is much simpler and quicker aboard Sharon's Raptor, for instance, but even the Raptor must make precise calculations and execute specific settings before initiating a Jump. (The specific checklist used by Galactica during the FTL sequence in the miniseries was gleaned from one of many checklists from the Apollo 15 lunar mission. Go to: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap15fj/
and look under “Apollo 15 Documents” for many checklists of this kind.)
The speed of tight also governs communications and sensor information. The farther away a ship is from Galactica, the longer it will take the signal to travel. If Galactica and one of her fighters are "only" as far away as the distance between the Earth and Mars (say, 700 million kilometers), there will be an 11 minute lag in a radio conversation. The same goes for optical observations in that by the time we spot a Cylon basestar -- at that same distance, it's had 11 minutes to move closer to Galactica.
The Cylons are bound by the same rules of physics and they cannot travel faster than the speed of light - they have to Jump as well.
The Red Line
Practically speaking the further one attempts to Jump, the more difficult the calculations and the more variables are introduces into the equations. For example, consider the difficulties inherent in Jumping to a relatively nearby star system "only" five light years away: any information Galactica can gather by looking through a telescope is, by definition, five years old. The star and all the planets surrounding it have been in motion for five years since the light we can see left that system This means that Galactica must calculate the motion of all the celestial bodies in that system based on information that is five years old. The further away the Jump point, the greater the problem - try to jump 100 light years, and you have a century's worth of calculations to do.
Because of the limitations inherent in colonial technology, their ability to calculate all the variables involved in a Jump are also limited. Their margin of error increases exponentially the further out they go and as a result, there is a theoretical "Red Line" beyond which it is not considered safe to attempt to Jump. At the end of the pilot, Galactica has intentionally Jumped past the Red Line and is in uncharted and unknown space.
Table of Contents
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap15fj/
Battlestar Galactica Bible, The Page 6