Why was Babylon 5 stationed and built orbiting around Epsilon III?

Question

In Star Trek Deep Space 9 Terok Nor was built and orbited over Bajor, which had a reason for doing so as the Cardassians had used it to manage the occupation.

But Babylon 5 just seems to be randomly built and stationed over a random planet.

Any reason for its position?

Izkata · Accepted Answer · 2023-06-05T14:19:23.763

Yes, it was brought up in 1x18, A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1, and hinted at in the voice-overs for Season 1 and Season 2 (bolding mine):

Season 1 voiceover:

Jeffrey Sinclair: It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Season 2 voiceover:

John Sheridan: The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A self-contained world five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age of Mankind… the year the Great War came upon us all. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

A Voice in the Wilderness:

Susan Ivanova: We were told that the planet we're orbiting is stable, safe, and uninhabited. Now it appears to be none of those things.

Being in neutral territory and unaligned with any of the major powers (besides the Earth Alliance running it) makes it the perfect place for diplomatic negotiations to take place, since any wars should not involve the station.

EDIT

Since I guess this question included, "Why not build the station in empty space?", here's a pretty good reason:

Babylon 5

See those 12 blue "wings", 6 on each side? ~~Those are solar panels. Babylon 5 gets a large chunk of its energy from the star that Epsilon III orbits, so it has to be close enough to the star to get a reasonable amount of energy.~~

EDIT 2: It looks like these were originally designed as solar panels, but prior to the show being created, JMS changed them to "heat dissipators", which I presume are similar to heat sinks. Heat sinks only work when there's something to transfer the heat to - such as a planet's atmosphere. However, this would require B5 to be partially in the atmosphere of Epsilon III, which we can be fairly sure it isn't - since most ships are not built for it, including most starfuries.

EDIT 3 (2017-10-16) - A piece of dialogue from the pilot movie, The Gathering: "(something something) for ambient heat energy from the solar collectors.", around 1:15 when they're scanning for the Changeling Net. The onscreen visual also says "Filtering Collector Heat", but does not highlight any part of the station.

Below was written on the belief that those are solar panels

_{(Which, IMO, still makes most sense as those "heat dissipators" aren't even near the fusion reactor seen at the end of 3x02)}

Orbiting the star at that close range means it has to do one of the following:

Dodge planets, wasting energy/resources with usage of engines that were never built into Babylon 5 (all it has are thrusters that help it keep orbit).
Achieve a perfect orbit that doesn't intersect with anything else orbiting the star. Since it doesn't have a planet's gravity well as protection, there's bound to be additional debris, like meteors, it has to deal with.
Orbit a planet, using it as a shield from debris, and following its orbit around the star (since we can be quite certain it won't intersect another planet).

Babylon 4, on the other hand, appears to have been of a rather different design:

Babylon 4

The solar panels all point in one direction. It was the largest and most expensive of the stations. And there doesn't appear to be a planet where it was.

It looks likely that Babylon 4 probably was meant to sit outside the orbit of any planet, and adjust its positioning as necessary. It also wasn't officially online yet, so it may not have been moved into optimal position, either.

But when it disappeared and work on Babylon 5 was started, it ended up the smallest and cheapest of all the stations, and probably had to be more efficient in its power usage - so, for reasons above, orbiting a planet was likely the best choice.

was there a reason for it to be orbiting a planet at all period? — Jared, Dec 28 '12 at 00:15
@Jared Babylon 5 is solar powered, so it has to be near a star. Either you're going to be wasting energy dodging planets, or you settle down in orbit of one. — Izkata, Dec 28 '12 at 01:28
Just a nit to pick. Those "wings" are NOT solar panels. There's a fusion reactor powering the station. Those wings are cooling panels, much like the ones you saw on the Space Shuttles. The much larger Babylon 4 was even able to move under it's own power. — David, Dec 28 '12 at 03:00
@David Fairly sure I remember them being called such at some point during the series. And only one reactor - a single point of failure - would have been a horrible design flaw. EDIT: Check the end of 3x02 again - those panels are nowhere near the fusion reactor. — Izkata, Dec 28 '12 at 03:13
@Izkata - I'll have to find some time to search for it, but it was JMS himself who said this back when he posted in the Usenet newsgroups. Keep in mind that, if they were solar panels, you never see them in anything other than their perfect alignment with the station's axis. they never move to point towards the sun - which would be a LOT more efficient than onstantly positioning a rotation station to catch the correct angle. As I recall the conversation (and we're talking 15+ years ago), it was explained that the fusion reactors generate a LOT of heat and that heat needs to go somewhere. — David, Jan 02 '13 at 12:43
Ok, I found a comment from JMS when talking about designing the station on GEnie in 1992: "and we've dropped the solar panels, incorporating the idea of edges rising out of the sides with the heat dissipators." (http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-7549&query=solar panels) — David, Jan 02 '13 at 12:47
@David Interesting - I've never seen that before. But older messages to state that they were originally designed as solar panels, and something of that design remains. I mean, they do look much more like solar panels than heat dissipators/heat sinks... And unfortunately, the distance of them from the reactor in 3x02 doesn't quite make sense for what they officially are... — Izkata, Jan 02 '13 at 13:09
@David Heh, thinking about how to change my answer with this information, it actually works slightly better, if you ignore another issue. Heat sinks only work if there's something to transfer the energy to - like a planet's atmosphere. Except, most ships in this series aren't designed for atmosphere, so Babylon 5 couldn't be in the planet's atmosphere... (However, I don't have enough time to change it right now) — Izkata, Jan 02 '13 at 13:35
@Izkata - so how did the US Space Shuttles radiate heat? The experience of NASA seems to show that heat sinks/radiators DO work in space. Mind you, the 'fins' on B-5 certainly look like solar panels and any lay-person would probably assume so without thinking about it. There are more comments from JMS from his Usenet days regarding those panels and I'll look if I get some time. — David, Jan 07 '13 at 14:27
@Izkata while it's correct that heat transfer via convection or conduction wouldn't happen outside the atmosphere, heat is still radiated even in a vacuum via the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The amount of power radiated is proportional to the surface area, so it makes some sense that the B5 design has large flat panels which appear to be adjustable. (They would work best in shadow.) — ghoppe, Jan 07 '13 at 16:06
Radiators work great in space and are absolutely required. Those enormous silver panels perpendicular to the line of site in this picture are the ISS radiators. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-127/hires/s127e011280.jpg — Organic Marble, Mar 03 '15 at 19:24

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 27 '12 at 23:59

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The Minbari actually had demands about the station(s), both in their design/functionality and the location. Remember, they have historical records such that they know one will be sent back in time to be used in the previous Shadow War. It's not implausible that Varn even had some way of communicating to the Minbari, or that Valen/Sinclair himself left instructions to that effect.

answered Dec 27 '12 at 23:59

John O

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I'm pretty sure the only say the Minbari had was in who ran it - they didn't know where Valen's station came from, and I remember Delenn mentioning having been quite surprised when they saw Babylon 5 for the first time. I don't believe they had a clue about the time travel part until Valen's instructions were finally opened, either. – Izkata Dec 28 '12 at 00:07
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They didn't know where it came from until the creation of such a station was proposed. Delenn was in contact with Vorlons, and even if she didn't perfectly understand, she would have relayed instructions. – John O Dec 28 '12 at 00:20
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"How long have you known about this?" "Not long. Until I came to Babylon 5, none of us knew where the station had come from." - Delenn about Babylon 4, War Without End, Part I – Izkata Jan 08 '13 at 13:19

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 28 '12 at 13:02

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From Wikipedia

The Epsilon Eridani (ε Eridani) system, situated 10.5 light years from Sol, is located in a fairly central position between the galactic powers. The position makes it a perfect, albeit second, choice for the Babylon 5 space station.

edited Dec 28 '12 at 13:02

DVK-on-Ahch-To

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answered Dec 27 '12 at 23:52

Dima

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 03 '15 at 18:13

If you look at a political map of space for Babylon 5, the Epsilon system is is an unclaimed region between all of the major empires. (except for the Vorlon, who travel through Mimbari space to reach B5) The different stations were each (to my knowledge) located at different places in this region. Babylon 5 just happened to be at Epsilon 3 because it had to be somewhere.

There is a case to be made for certain types of uninhabitated planets, in certain types of systems (stable systems, not binary or trinary systems which are the norm in space), with other considerations regarding hyper gate locations that would have narrowed down the list from hundreds of locations.

It's likely there were only a dozen ideal candidate locations for a station of this type, and it just happened to be located, unknowingly above an ancient super weapon that would later save the main characters multiple times. = ) TV Trophes = )

(records of Babylon 4s time traveling did not survive into the series' present, save for the letter that Delenn would receive from a time capsule of sorts, after the final Babylon 5 station was already in operation. (so it's unlikely that the Babylon 5 station locations were chosen by the Mimbari because time travel related reasons)

Can you actually show a political map of the Babylon 5 universe? — Valorum, Mar 03 '15 at 18:32

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 22 '21 at 05:48

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The original four Babylon stations had been built in this system as well, but after the sector 14 business with Babylon 4 vanishing, Babylon 5 was constructed a bit away in orbit around Epsilon 3, and did not have engines (unlike Babylon 4, and possibly unlike some of the prior versions were intended to).

As far as the system, location relative to major races.

edited Feb 22 '21 at 05:48

LogicDictates

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 05 '23 at 17:09

Babylon 5 is of course in neutral territory on a real space galactic map. But more importantly it is equidistant in hyperspace for all the players. See the below JMS posts.

Presumably that is what makes it an interesting port and useful for the hyperspace navigation beacon network.

(The series itself was not super consistent on the scope of the series - whether this was a galactic conflict or just the local 100 light years radius neighborhood. But it doesn't matter - it's about characters not technobabble.)

https://www.jmsnews.com/messages/message?id=11931

Thoughts + Positions Posted on 7/16/1996 by J. Michael Straczynski 71016.1644@compuserve.com to CIS

*Richard Wakefield 100534.504@compuserve.com asks:

How do you get around and reply too so many messages ? All I would like to know is are all the races, including Vorlons and Shadows between 2-4 days hyperspace from B5 ? We know Earth is 3 days, Centauri Prime is 4 days.Someone said the Vorlon Homeword was 4 days, and Narn 2 days...can you confirm this ? Are the shadows far away, just a couple of days ?*

The majority of races are within that range because that's as far as they've gone in putting in navigational beacons, without which traveling in hyperspace can be extremely dangerous. You sort of inch your way outwards. And thanks...it is a massive task, moreso than most folks will ever know, or should ever know...but it's worth it in the end. jms

and

https://www.jmsnews.com/messages/message?id=12027 Hyperspace vs. Distance Posted on 6/29/1996 by J. Michael Straczynski 71016.1644@compuserve.com to CIS {original post had no questions} No, what I said was that time works about the same way in hyperspace, not distance, nor that there was necessarily a proportional 1-1 corrolation between realspace and hyperspace. There's still some distance involved in hyperspace, yes, though again there isn't always a 1-1 corrolation. It takes 3 days to get to Earth. It takes 4 days to get to Centauri Prime, even though CP is almost twice the distance from B5. It's extremely confusing to navigate hyperspace, which is why you need the beacons and transfer points, or it's extremely easy to get permanently lost. jms

Why was Babylon 5 stationed and built orbiting around Epsilon III?

6 Answers6

Below was written on the belief that those are solar panels

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