Kay Shapero  wrote:
>
> Well, in this particular case Gharlane of Eddore (I do miss that guy)
> did the math in juicy detail to prove that if you kicked the body out
> the airlock on the rotating section it would depart at faster than
> escape velocity for the station.  Followed by several other folks who
> did similar.

That part was trivial.  Glancing at the number of digits shows
that you won't end up in orbit around the station.  But that
never bothered me, because ...

> Along with various suggestions on what could have happened
> (like for some reason he smuggled the body into the spine of the station
> so as to dump it out into zero gee).  It's not EVERY usenet discussion
> that winds up with people doing physics in their posts.  :)

Babylon 5 is in orbit around a sizable planet.  It's in a nice wide
parking orbit maybe like geosync maybe even as far out as the
Earth's moon.  But it's still in orbit around a planet.

Babylon 5 is about interstellar distances.  They go
interplanetary distances to send out for pizza!  As long as the
body stayed in orbit around the planet that B5 orbits, the body
stays extremely close compared to any interstellar distance.
The body didn't even travel interplanetary distances after being
tossed out of the airlock.  It might or might not ever have returned
to B5 but it very likely didn't reach escape velocity of the planet
from the spin and it absolutely didn't even slightly approach
escape velocity of the star.

For a civilization that spans most of the galaxy, staying within
a single star system and staying in orbit of one of its planets
equals close.  WAY under a thousand light years.
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