Rodger Young Scaling

 

Using stills of the movie, we're going to attempt to estimate the size of the Rodger Young-class destroyers/troop transports seen in the movie Starship Troopers. Bear with me: it's my first try at scaling.

 

First we determine a usable scale. There are two logical ways: determine the size of the troop dropships seen when they launch their disasterous invasion of Klendathu and thus the size of the Rodger Young, or use the shots of the bridge windows.

First, we have a very clear idea of how many decks the ship has.

This picture suggests around 15 decks.

Now, let's try to use the Dropships used for landing troops to determine the size of the ship.

After a preliminary uploading of this page, Brian Young e-mailed me this alteration of the image to also account for a dropship farther away, which would compensate for the angle of the closest one. This assumes an average of 6' in height for the troopers. According to the closer dropship, the dropship is 7.5 meters in height, while the dropship near the rear is 5.6 meters. Thus, we can establish upper and lower limits for the Rodger Young.

The Dropship is 54 pixels, while the height of the launch bay strip is 198 pixels. If we use the 7.5 meter number for the dropship, then the strip is 27.5 meters in height.

Now let's use the smaller number. Using the 5.6 meter height for the dropship, we get 20.5 meters.

The landing bay strip is 14 pixels high in this still. The Rodger Young's height is 113 pixels. Using the 27.5 meter height for the strip, we get 221.9 meters for the height of the Rodger Young. Using the smaller number, we get 165.4 meters.

Now, to account for angle, let's use the ship in the background. I actually have some misgivings about using this ship, as it appears to be a different class (there is no visible comm tower like on the Rodger Young, and no fighter pad is visible), but to make sure the numbers are good, we'll try it. The strip is 6 pixels, and the height is 56 pixels. Using the 27.5 meter height for the strip, it is 256.6 meters in height. Using the smaller 20.6 meter number, it is 191.3 meters. The margin of error is around 30 meters.

However, as I have indicated, it does not appear to be the same class, so we'll stay with the above numbers.

The Rodger Young is 54 pixels high and 397 pixels long. Notice that I put the line a little farther out. That is to account for the slightly turned angle of the Rodger Young. Now first, we will use the 221.9 meter height. This would put the length of the Rodger Young at 1631.3 meters. That's nearly the length of an Imperial Star Destroyer from Star Wars!

Using the smaller height of 165.4 meters, the length is shortened to 1216 meters. I find this more realistic considering the angle of the closest dropship in the original scaling shot. Still, that's about twice my earlier estimate, and nearly three times larger than my smallest estimate!

Now considering the distant ship in the strip-to-height shot, we can establish about a margin of error of over 200 meters. So we will use that to establish a range. Using the far shot's relative height results, the high-end answer is 1886.5 meters and the low-end is 1406.4 meters.

It all comes down to this:

Rodger Young Size	Lower Limit	Upper Limit
Height	164-191 meters	222-257 meters
Length	1216-1406.4 meters	1631-1886.5 meters

 

 

 

 

Note: I have recently become aware that Sony's official SST site states that the Rodger Young's ship class is Aries and that it is only 550 meters long. I find this preposterous, unless the soldiers in the loading sequence were all little children. And I will add that this very same site states that the ship comes equipped with "sonic disruptors". More stupidity: sound does not travel through space, and thus a sonic weapon would be useless.

 

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Acknowledgements:

Mike Wong, for letting me have these stills.

Nathan Johnson, aka "Fenris Ulfric", for initial advice on re-scaling the dropship, which led to a stable number and a basis for the further updates.

Brian Young, for recommending the scaling of one of the other dropships to account for angle, providing a new image to provide a basis for refined scaling of the dropship, and telling this poor fool the secret of how to count pixels. Now I feel like an idiot. :-)

The poster at Spacebattles known as Meade, who posted the link to Sony's official SST site and the text on it for various ships on our vs. debate forum.