Interstellar or Interplanetary?
POSTED BY: Galfridus
UPDATED: Saturday, February 22, 2003 11:02
VIEWED: 19917
PAGE 5 of 6
This is all well and good, but let's not forget it is science FICTION and episodic television.
Serenity, and all the the other space ships we've seen, including crippled derelicts, all appear to have artificial gravity, a huge advance over our current state of physics. This is as good a representation of the fiction part as it is of the limited budgets of episodic television.
Sometimes TV (and movie) writers have to do stuff that is scientifically implausible or suspect because other things would just take too long or be too boring or, most importantly, be too expensive, so you throw in a little magic and call it dramatic license...
Fetishizing Serenity would be a mistake; Firefly is not about the ship.
The reason we watch Firefly is not because of the tech any more than we watch Buffy or Angel for commentary on the true nature of good and evil. It is, more than anything else, because of those terrific characters and the way they interact on the ship and with others they meet along the way.
[Blue]Was it monkeys?[/blue]
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Geez, I wish I'd seen this thread before I started posting all manner of off-topic tech stuff on the "What makes Firefly so different" thread! So, here's one of my posts from there, which, I think, speaks to (but by no means settles!) some of the points raised by y'all:
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[Jeffns wrote] I lean towards a single, large solar system for the background of the 'Verse. Who's to say that whatever techniques of terraforming were used on all the worlds, moons, large asteroids, planetesimals, etc, it wouldn't have the effect of increasing the gravity to something approaching Earth normal?
Trouble with that, Jeffns, is that I don't see evidence in the rest of the 'verse of that kind of God-like tech. Try to boost the gravity of even a small planet-like body, and you'd have to stabilize megatons of rock 'n such against the immense geological (*don't* give me a hard time about that word!) forces involved in changing the grav at the surface (like, say, by burrowing a small singularity into its core...remember, it has to be zero-maintenance [think it over], so giga-machines are pretty much out). The body would have a tendency to buckle. Not to mention that without enough mass to sustain some kind of tectonic process, atmo gasses would tend toward chemical equilibrium, and not get recycled through vulcanism and such (I think this would be so even with enough plant and animal biomes to recycle oxy and carbon diox. The CO2 would tend to get bound up in carbonates, methinks).
And remember again that the orbital dynamics of a system with THAT many bodies (*especially* one in which their gravitational characteristics had been mucked about with willy-nilly) would be outlandishly complex and, ultimately, catastrophically chaotic.
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Also, if the number of worlds seems too large to be in orbit around just one sun, just think about how many bodies exist here in our own Solar System. There are more planets, moons, etc in our system than have ever been visited, listed or mentioned in the episodes thus shown.
Well, in our own system, 4 out of 8 planets (I'm counting Pluto/Charon as a Kuiper Belt Object...and, yes,that's a WHOLE other thread!) are gas giants, so they're right out. Yup, they've got plenty of moons...but then there's the problem of the sun being too far away. Yah, maybe you could orbit artificial suns, or implode the gas giants to make mini suns (if they're massive enough...which most ain't [not even Old Jove]). But you're still talking about a whopping load of radiation on close-orbiting "planets." Again, these measures have to be zero maintenance, or your investment's for naught. Rocky planets closer in aren't as much of a problem ('less you count such as Mercury, where you'd have to orbit huge sun shades...and keep 'em there, or your colony's like ants under a magnifying glass [actually, with Mercury, you'd also have to spin it up, since it's tidally locked; always shows the same face to the sun...killer winds, and the small problem of your atmo constantly snowing onto the dark side!]). Your best course would be to stick to the relatively habitable zone (Venus-Earth-Mars), which eliminates all but three (four, if you count Luna) of the many bodies in this particular system. Again, looks like our FF 'verse is a collection of star systems.
edited to add Many thanks BTW, for the info on Alpha Centauri. Will prove MOST useful for a noveloid I'm writing! As for binaries, you are up against formidable problems in orbital mechanics, as has been said. My money is really on a globular, or more likely open cluster (say like the Magellanic Clouds or somesuch). Would still (just) qualify as a "galaxy" as per the new and improved Mal-narrated intro, and, given FTL travel, not OUTLANDISHLY far (like, say, Andromeda)
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And only in a small (compared to the rest of the Universe) volume like a solar system would the Alliance have a hope of exercising any kind of control over the peoples. So, I think Serenity has incredibly efficient and powerful engines, but they are sublight.
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Supposing you had gravity control, able to affect a small body, giving it sufficient gravity to hold onto an atmosphere. There is a problem in this in that you now this more massive body starts disturbing the orbital characteristics of other bodies out there.
UNLESS: The trick used in Alcubierra's original warp drive paper was to collapse space-time in front of the ship and expand it behind the vessel. Leaving the inside of the warp bubble "flat" as well as the outside. But the edge or "wall" of the bubble would be higly curved. (Very highly curved in the case of FTL travel) with a band around the middle of the bubble that reverses the curvature in the zone closest to the bubble walls.
To avoid potentially dangerous perturbations of other planetary/satellite orbits, wrap a warp bubble (for lack of a better term) around the body, such that space time inside the bubble is differently curved from outside. Instead of a smooth gradual curve like you find naturally, make a sharp (or rather less smooth) curve around the body.
Which means, if you have warp drive, you might also be able to affect the gravity, and hence atmospheric holding ability of any sized object. Warp drive makes terriforming easier.
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"This is all well and good, but let's not forget it is science FICTION and episodic television."
I know, I know... I just can't help myself. I am the kind of person that wants to actually live the fantasy. I love hearing the stories of Serenity, (and Enterprise, and the C57D etc.) But more than that, I would love to actually live them, go out into the black, see what is out there.
I can't now. I am not so lost in my imagination that I can't see how it differs from reality. And yet, I want to see it made reality, as much as possible. Made fact instead of fiction.
But having said that, I do have to salute Joss et.al. for not making the story SCIENCE fiction, but good fiction with a small science angle. If you have not got a good story in the first place, good characters, and plots, all the fancy special effects in the world won't save you.
"Couldn't let us make a profit. That wouldn't be civilized."
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"writing! As for binaries, you are up against formidable problems in orbital mechanics, as has been said. My money is really on a globular, or more likely open cluster (say like the Magellanic Clouds or somesuch). Would still (just) qualify as a "galaxy" as per the new and improved Mal-narrated intro, and, given FTL travel, not OUTLANDISHLY far (like, say, Andromeda)"
Global clusters have sever gravitational problems of their own. Which tend to strip planets from their suns. For long term solutions, they are not nearly as feasible as one would thing.
The orbital dynamics of binaries is a lot less of a problem, mostly because they are so predictable. It all depends on the separation of the two stars, as has been pointed out elsewhere.
Again, I think that Mal and Book were being more poetical than practical, and also that Serenity is FTL. You are right, in that boundless optimism runs up against a hard limit very quickly if limited to a single star system. But the "galaxy" of new earths does not have to be in either of the Magellenic clouds or a cluster. It is estimated the Milky Way itself is approximately 100,000 light years across at its widest. (30kiloparsec) And approximately 200 Billion stars. Thats a lot of real estate, right here in our own back yard.
"Couldn't let us make a profit. That wouldn't be civilized."
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Stupid history major question alert:
Don't globules eventually give birth to new stars?
End stupid history major question alert.
Sarah
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Doing this from memory, so if I got this wrong, well, sorry.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Global clusters are largely older, smaller stars found bunched up in the galactic halo. There was some concern a while back when the age of the oldest stars, as found in global clusters did not match the age of the galaxy as determined by other means using the Hubble. Hipparcos was launched by the ESA (European Space Agency) which then found that our baselines were too short by about 10%. (Using very accurate parallax measurements of cephid variables) Working through all the math, things turned out to agree within the known margins of error.
Stars are formed in nebulas of different kinds. The Big nebula in Orion is a major star forming region. Basically standard theory is that clumps of these gasious nebulas collapse gravitationally to form stars, planets, and other fun stuff. This mostly happens in the spiral arms of our galaxy. (At least at this stage of life in our galaxy.)
I think that there is a tendency to take every utterance of a science fiction character as gospel, especially in the area of science. People don't do that now, why expect them to do it in the future? People use metaphors, analogies, poetry and hyperbole. They may abbreviate for various reasons. And they may lie, or simply get it wrong. With FTL travel, whether all the worlds are in a single solar system (which 80 worlds seems a bit high, even with gas giant moons) or spread throughout several solars systems, it really does not matter from the story's point of view.
"Could let us make a profit. Wouldn't be civilized"
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Drakon;
Gotta say, it's a joy to read your posts. If I didn't have to dash out the door (pesky career!), I'd have more specific things to say (and may do so later this eve). But wanted to say that I echo your sentiments about why we devote so much good brain glucose to these fictional conundrums (conundra?). Only game in town till NASA stops going round in circles (or someone finally up and wins the X-prize and gives those bureaucrats a good kick in the arse!). Till then, the only "black" I'll be taken out to is the void between my ears!
Keep flyin'!
Department of Redundancy Department
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Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
But having said that, I do have to salute Joss et.al. for not making the story SCIENCE fiction, but good fiction with a small science angle. If you have not got a good story in the first place, good characters, and plots, all the fancy special effects in the world won't save you.
Listen, I'm just glad that Serenity didn't make that rumbling/whooshing sound all the Star Wars/Trek ships make. Just the fact that Joss tried to give us an accurate picture of a soundless void made me happy --- everyone knows spaceships really sound like fiddles...
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http://ebay3.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_a237149f6bd37aa0a3a49ab728c82
6c1/i-2.JPG
This is the front cover of a trifold map included in the press kit for the show. You'll notice that it says "NGC 3242" on it. Googling "NGC 3242" quickly shows that it's the "Ghost of Jupiter" planetary nebula, approximately 1,400 light-years from Earth.
Early: You ever been raped, Kaylee?
Kaylee: You know, it's funny you should mention that... ever heard of the Fox network?
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