B5: Severed Dreams

[MadAmosMalone]

So it's a rogue Military Junta propped up by outside powers.

A concise and accurate description.

I am mostly ignorant about B5 so I'm wondering, does B5 have any self-sustaining functions? Does it have any greenhouses to produce food? Does it have any light industry? I imagine the merchants pay rent or are taxed (electricity isn't free), do they have docking fees or other taxes? Do they have ship repair facilities that they can charge services for? Do they run commercials on the news broadcasts? What fuels the generators? Do they require constant refueling? Can they produce solar power?

maybe it's time to get those homeless "lurkers" to work, clean up those lower decks, and set up some fabricators.

The technical details are sketchy without resorting to "expanded universe" type material but, yes, the station does have a fusion reactor and a greenhouse/hydroponics area. It also seems to have repair facilities for the Fury squadrons it operates. Possibly these will do for other ships too. The station does also seem to supplement its fusion reactor with an array of solar panels toward the back.

Financially they do charge docking fees for ships berthed there. Obviously, prior to their breakaway from Earth-Gov they were subsidized by Earth and their supply chain originated there. After breakaway they did address these issues (including an amusing bit involving Postal Service to the station) but it wasn't often a primary focus of the story.

[Rocketboy1313]

I would call it an Oligarchy where most of the stakeholders are military. They take a vote for how to confront the shadows at one point and Sheridan is out voted. If he had absolute authority that wouldn't happen.

Beyond that one member of the council is a noncom semi-civilian law enforcement, one is a staff officer doctor, and another is a ranger which is a black ops paramilitary group, to say nothing of the alien members which have different flavors and intensity in their home governments.

[J!!]

The Minbari are referred to as "cosponsors" of the Babylon Project, so presumably they're footing at least part of the bill, possibly along with the Narn, Centauri, & Vorlons. That is, unless they decided to withdraw support in order to avoid taking a side in someone else's internal conflict.

It's not made completely how self-sufficient the station is, but resource shortages seem to be a persistant minor problem.

B5 does continue to operate as a neutral port, so they make at least some money from docking fees and jumpgate access. They definitely do have repair and maintenance facilities, so that's another possible revenue source. I don't know if they collect any taxes from residents or businesses, but they definitely charge rent, because Sheridan at one point ends up bunking with Ivonova in protest, rather than pay to live in the commander's quarters.

[SuccubusYuri]

Lyta's also observed moving into smaller quarters as hers were originally subsidized by the Vorlons. And yeah there's a small subplot about how she feels underappreciated but I think it's a pretty strong indicator how bad the station is squeezed by independence that they can't look the other way for basically a war hero who was ALSO chummy with command staff.

[animalia]

This reminds me of the Snowden case and how I just can't get over how many service members view him as a traitor, white still admitting that the actions he exposed were in fact illegal and that there should be something done about it. They insist he should have somehow been done through the proper chain of command, but since those immediately above his head were in on it, at best he would have been fired and constrained by a NDA that would see him thrown in jail. I mean, witness the actions of the British government against their media when it came to the information that was released - they literally threatened to come tromping in there to take all of the paper's computers to prevent any further information being released. So I can even agree with him running, as I doubt he'd have gotten a fair trail that way. Indeed he still might not. But the parallel still remains there that a large number of service members still view him as a traitor in spite of the wrong he saw exposed, and some of them even want to see him executed over it, which must be the same kind of mentality driving the EA service members who are attacking their own for taking a moral stand against what they see as illegal actions by their government. And this from a country that has its armed forces swear to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic - apparently it never occurred to them that their own government might be one of those enemies.

What gets me is that people were surprised that in an age where any information you put out on the internet is available to sufficiently knowable 15 year old with a laptop they the government has access to the same thing. Am I surprised by the Anger? No. That is reasonable AND justifiable. It is the SHOCK I don't get.

[Trinary]

Lyta's also observed moving into smaller quarters as hers were originally subsidized by the Vorlons. And yeah there's a small subplot about how she feels underappreciated but I think it's a pretty strong indicator how bad the station is squeezed by independence that they can't look the other way for basically a war hero who was ALSO chummy with command staff.

Good point. That was a big "for want of a nail moment." It was getting thrown out of her quarters that finally made her agree to rejoin the PsyCorps and that helped spiral into the crapfest that became Byron and his antics, followed her getting massively PO'd and eventually having to leave the station with G'Kar.

All because of a lousy rent-hike.

[J!!]

Wasn't that somehow arranged by Bester, as a means of nudging her to join The Corps?

What gets me is that people were surprised that in an age where any information you put out on the internet is available to sufficiently knowable 15 year old with a laptop they the government has access to the same thing. Am I surprised by the Anger? No. That is reasonable AND justifiable. It is the SHOCK I don't get.

My general opinion is that nobody who maintains a Facebook page or use a Gmail account should ever pretend they care about privacy. They've already traded theirs away in exchange for some minor conveniences. You can't be mad at a government for buying information that you gave away to be sold.

[animalia]

Wasn't that somehow arranged by Bester, as a means of nudging her to join The Corps?

What gets me is that people were surprised that in an age where any information you put out on the internet is available to sufficiently knowable 15 year old with a laptop they the government has access to the same thing. Am I surprised by the Anger? No. That is reasonable AND justifiable. It is the SHOCK I don't get.

My general opinion is that nobody who maintains a Facebook page or use a Gmail account should ever pretend they care about privacy. They've already traded theirs away in exchange for some minor conveniences. You can't be mad at a government for buying information that you gave away to be sold.

I don't give a crap about what most people know about me. Or at least I try not to.

[G-Man]

Lyta's also observed moving into smaller quarters as hers were originally subsidized by the Vorlons. And yeah there's a small subplot about how she feels underappreciated but I think it's a pretty strong indicator how bad the station is squeezed by independence that they can't look the other way for basically a war hero who was ALSO chummy with command staff.

I always sort of assumed that she had a bit of a falling out with the command staff over the "blowing up Z'Ha'Dum" thing from "Epiphanies."

[ScreamingDoom]

So it's a rogue Military Junta propped up by outside powers.

I am mostly ignorant about B5 so I'm wondering, does B5 have any self-sustaining functions? Does it have any greenhouses to produce food? Does it have any light industry? I imagine the merchants pay rent or are taxed (electricity isn't free), do they have docking fees or other taxes? Do they have ship repair facilities that they can charge services for? Do they run commercials on the news broadcasts? What fuels the generators? Do they require constant refueling? Can they produce solar power?

maybe it's time to get those homeless "lurkers" to work, clean up those lower decks, and set up some fabricators.

B5 was designed to be mostly self-sustaining, but a lot of those features got cut with the budget. B4 was probably capable of functioning indefinitely from outside resources. There are vast tracks of farmland in the main section of the station, and some limited aquaculture, but most of it is used to grow fruits and vegetables (both Earth plants and other species); Garibaldi sorta-kinda blackmails Ivanova at one point because she's illegally growing a coffee plant. Such luxuries are not considered acceptable use of the limited farming space.

Interesting that you should mention light industry and Downbelow -- originally, Brown Sector was supposed to be the living quarters and light manufacturing area for civilian station personnel. It was also the victim of budget cuts. As it is, B5 still has some light industrial, but it's almost entirely for servicing the ship traffic and military fighters on the station. Their ability to make new parts is very limited (thus why Sheridan needed to hire smugglers to bring in spare parts).

Merchants and residents do pay rent to the station (not even the diplomatic staff was above this; Lyta was forced out of her room because the Vorlons weren't footing the bill for it any more), and it's probable that the Earth Alliance levied a sales tax of some sort. Presumably, Sheridan began shuffling any sales tax revenue back into the station once they broke from Earth Gov. And every ship that comes in pays both docking and customs fees.

B5 has six fusion generators for main power -- one main generator and five smaller ones -- (you can actually see the cooling radiators for the fusion plants sticking out the end of the station) and has several incredibly large solar collectors for reserve and emergency power. The generators themselves take up something like 3 km of the lower half of the station. I don't know anything about the fuel for the fusion generators, though; presumably it'd be deuterium. The fuel is likely pretty easy to get though, even in-system; there's a big gas giant nearby, I think.