The answer in Real Life vs. Reel Life is substantially correct. There
are always dramatic decisions to be made that can a) appeal to current
tech eyes, and b) satisfy our fixed budget.

This is a hard line to walk, and we keep stepping over it in both
directions. We keep asking questions, and following advice (thanks,
John!), but there are astill things that we do that simply look good,
and fit the story. We are constantly improving even our stock shots,
though. Notice the shuttle sequence in 410 now has retro fire in the
bay before main engine burn, and the main engines don't burn forever,
like they did before. We had a reverse-burn (decelerating) transport
coming into Mars in 410 that was cut for time, leaving the "manouvering
to orbit shot" only (which, I'm sure, will get some people up in the
air, but hey- we can't buy the commercials!) We will continue to improve
the science we use as we go.

One of things we discussed substantially before we did it was the
rotating sections on the EA destroyers. If we had locked them down, as
some say we should have, we would be having this discussion about magnet
shoes or something to explain why there were no floating folks in the
interior shots during engagement.

As to explosive decompression, we have always postulated that anything
hit hard enough to have serious ED would probably be hard pressed to
sustain viable survivors. I suspect that there will pressure suits used
in the short term and some Webb suit variant that will be used in the
mid term of outer travel. We are not doing any "Nightflyers"- style
decompression gags in the near future, so we will not deal with that
issue yet.

George Johnsen
CoProducer, B5