Here's the comments, from Darian and Steve:
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Darian: I have created a 3D model based on the storyboards of what I think the “Movie” Battle School looks like. I have a more in depth discussion about how I interpreted the design from the pictures at my blog
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Steve Sywak: From the “shorthand” used in the story-board, it would appear that only the small cylindrical section to the far left of the Battle Room is rotating for centripetally-created artificial gravity.
It’s not clear to me, yet, what that “pick-up” gag (that looks almost like some complicated CD-player pick-up head) is between the rotating habitation rings and the (apparently) non-rotating tripod of hallways leading to the heavy, stationary, equatorial (and also non-rotating) band surrounding the Battle Room. You would think that if the large equatorial band were rotating, there would be arrows on it indicating such, as with the cylindrical group to the far left.
As I mentioned previously, with only a single battle room (as indicated), it’s hard for me, right now, to determine the overall scale of things. My gut sense, though, is that the radius to the habitation areas is too small to be comfortable. Decades of research on the human vestibular (inner ear) response to both gravity gradients and heightened Coriolis effects of small-radius centripetal habitation rings can lead to discomfort and nausea (and NOT the type that you “eventually get used to,” such as zero-G, itself).
But, let me see how big things would have to be if I scaled things up to what I think would be appropriate:
My initial analysis of the centripetal rotation of the rings of the Battle School (and I do not have a copy of my book with me right now) was roughly 75m radius at the “Battle gate” (also where the subway cars ran to bring people from the rotating rings to the stationary central core). That dimension was (roughly) optimized to avoid the aforementioned problems. That would make the outside diameter of the rotating rings in Gavin Hood’s design about 150m, minimum.
That would make the habitation rings about 75m wide, total (about 30m-35m wide each, since there appear to be two, in a close, tandem arrangement, with a slight spacing between them).
It would also make the sphere about 175m (575 ft) in diameter.
There’s a video of a guy on YouTube who can jump straight up, without a running start, and achieve a 44″ height . According to my calculations, his peak velocity would be about 4.69 m/s (also: 15.37 ft/sec ) - To jump across a 175m diameter would take you over half a minute (37.4 seconds)
Darian Robbins: Ok, that is quicker than I expected. But what about teenagers and or smaller kids?What do you estimate a good time would be for them? That guy in the video is a trained, grown athlete. Do we halve the speed, make it 3/4?
Steve Sywak: I read somewhere “on the Internet” that some people can jump as high as 50″, but there was not much else in the way of supporting facts or evidence.
Basically, in the absence of anything better, and assuming that our Battle School students ARE going to be “trained athletes” (after all, even the actors were getting into pretty good shape after only a couple of weeks!), I’m going to stick with those values.
Besides, 30 seconds of screen time will be INTERMINABLE!!! Part of the reason I had selected 75m across for a battle room (back when they were CUBES) was that traversing one face to the opposite face was only on the order of 15 or 16 seconds!
The other problem with ONE battle room is logistics: 21 Armies, taken 2 ways = 210 different combinations for each army to battle every other army. Assuming 1 hour per match (allowing for clean-up and prep), 10 hours a day, 7 days a week = 3 weeks (21 days), straight, to make up all those battles. 1.5 weeks if you’re running half-hour time slots (etc.).
With NINE battle rooms, and 1-hour time slots, that time gets reduced to 2-1/3 days.
I am so hoping that the story-board is NOT calling for the shuttle to dock to the rotating perimeter of the habitation rings….
Darian Robbins: Steve as I am looking at the story boards again. I am wondering if those arrows are not showing the “habitation section” rotating but showing the the motion of a shuttle circling around that section.
Look at the top left corner of the first frame there is an object in the foreground that I was thinking was the underside of a shuttle. The arrow begins from that object and tapers toward the habitation section. If I was drawing the storyboard I would draw an arrow in the same way to show the movement of an object from the foreground to a point in the distance.
Also, look at the last frame it shows that “shuttle’s” nose peeking around the edge it just flew a circle around. Docking? Maybe. But it might mean that what we think is rotating, might not be.
Steve Sywak: Well, having drawn up a few storyboards in my day (NYU Film School–not that it makes me an expert), I would say that we’re looking at two separate “directives”. The rotating arrows are definitely indicating that a particular part of the space station is revolving (the left part), and that the other sections are not. The more “linear” arrows indicate the direction that the camera (the shuttle) is moving in to the space station. The central image (Slide 2) is very clear on this.
Darian Robbins: I agree the linear arrows at the bottom of the frame are for camera movement toward the Battle School. I just don’t think it’s from the shuttle POV. It looks removed, in my opinion, *shrugs* well have to wait and see.
Steve: More like a generic “free floating camera in space” POV? Now THAT would be neat–track in on the Battle School, re-align with the rotating habitation ring, and then track in to a window on the rotating ring! Though you couldn’t track in on the outer face of the ring, since that is the FLOOR, and wouldn’t have any windows (one would think…)
Of course, that pretty much mimics the whole "Subway Car" approach I outlined (in great and glorious detail) in "The Authorized Ender Companion," except with MY approach, the whole change in perspective is something that the characters experience, instead of JUST the audience, leading to a stronger incorporation of one of the principal themes of the story....