SIZE:
VORLON DREADNOUGHT
The Vorlon Star Dreadnought, like so many ships of the Babylon
5 universe, is well renowned but there is very little canon
information about it; theory, speculation, and hyperbole abound.
We do not know the full extent of the Star Dreadnought’s
weapons or defensive capability, fighter compliment or even
the ship’s size. In this essay we will attempt to, if
nothing else ascertain the size of the Vorlon Star Dreadnought
and shed light upon this critical aspect of Babylon 5 mythos.
Officially, the Vorlon Star Dreadnought is 1,330 meters in
length, this figure taken from the short-lived Sierra video
game “Babylon
5: Into the Fire.” No information from
canon sources such as JMS, have offered any further illumination
on this matter and evidence is quite scarce.
 The
only real evidence to provide any hint of scale is the image
featured left. This image, from the show’s 1993 pilot
“The Gathering”, shows the Star Dreadnought surrounded
by escort fighters and cruisers. Unfortunately, we do not have
much in the way of canon evidence to suggest the size of either
the fighters or the light cruiser, like that which brought Kosh
to Babylon 5. One might choose to use the fighter to make our
comparison, but official sources are in conflict – the
Sierra game stating the Vorlon fighter is 25.5 meters, while
Tim Earls size chart puts the Vorlon fighter at 21.92 meters.
For this reason I chose the Vorlon Transport, to base my comparison.
 I
chose the Vorlon Transport as my primary basis for size comparison,
due to the fact we saw this ship next to Babylon 5, as shown
in image #2, and because we see it’s shadow laying across
the hull of the Star Dreadnought in image #1. This is critical
because, despite the fact that the Transport is slightly above
the Dreadnought, the shadow is the same size as the Transport
it’s self and, as such, suggests that the Transport was
very close to the hull of the Dreadnought in this image.
While Sierra may state that the Vorlon Transport is 131 meters
in length, I feel that a canon size comparison is necessary
in order to ascertain the truth and, as such, we must find the
canon size of the Vorlon Transport before we can tackle the
size issue of the Dreadnought.
 First,
let’s look at what we know. Give the official and canon
size figures for Babylon 5, we know that the front docking plate
of the Babylon 5 station is approximately 378 meters in diameter,
as shown in the image feature right – an image produced
from the ORIGINAL Babylon 5 CGI model built my Foundation Imaging
and used in all five seasons of the Babylon 5 series. Using
this same image we can measure the size of the forward docking
port, which comes out to be approximately 76 meters across and
38 meters in maximum height.
 Now,
in image #2 the bay equals 255 pixels. Given the dimensions
of the docking bay, specifically the height, which we can measure
in this scene, each pixel is about 0.15 meters per pixel. The
constant for the Vorlon Transport, that is the most easy to
measure, is the arms that link the drive season with the forward
weapons array. The center arms of the Transport equal 58 pixels
in height and, as such, would be 8.6 meters tall.
As with the Babylon 5 docking plate, images rendered from the
canon models were made available at www.starshipmodeler.com
which allow us to actually measure the true size of these features
and ascertain the ship’s approximate length.
In the canon render of the Transport (above),
the arms are equal to 62 pixels in height, or 0.14 pixels per
meter, or 15% of it’s current visual size. This would
make the Vorlon Transport between 104 and 97 meters in length.
Rounding up, we can safely say that Kosh’s Vorlon
Transport is 100 meters in length… very close
to the official figure of 131 meters.
 Armed
with this knowledge, we will apply the 100-meter size figure
for the Vorlon Transport, to the Transport and it’s shadow,
featured in image #1. In this image, both the Transport and
its shadow measure 114 pixels, and each pixel equal to 0.88
meters. Another benefit of using this image, is that it is a
strait on look down across the Y-axis and the gray stripe across
the Star Dreadnought’s center is clearly visible and measurable.
This is very important because we have one more
canon rendering from www.starshipmodeler.com
to help come at the truth, this one being of the Star Dreadnought
herself.
Comparing the size of the gray stripe on both the TV movie
publicity photo, and the canon rendering, combined with our
established size of the Vorlon Transport relative to the stripe,
the Vorlon Star Dreadnought comes out to be 1,408.8
meters in length… very, very close to
official size stated in the video game of 1,330 meters.
This provides fairly solid evidence that the Vorlon Star Dreadnought
is about 4/5 of a mile in length.
Last Updated 12-20-02
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