Technology in the 'verse

POSTED BY: zeke023
UPDATED: Friday, October 31, 2003 03:24
VIEWED: 21912
PAGE 1 of 14

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT PAGE

ZEKE023

Friday, May 30, 2003 12:51 PM

I'll post this in a new thread so hopefully more people will answer.

I have a few questions about technology in the 'verse.

communication
Are there becons to boost signals over long distances? I thought I heard this. We know that visual communication can only be used up close. Why?

geography
Has anyone come up with an actual citation from the show for this taking place in one solar system or many?

fuel
Anbody catch what they were using for fuel? Doesn't the dead or alive script make reference to a "fission battery"?

that's good for now.

Please respond with any insight.

-Zeke

ARCHER

Friday, May 30, 2003 1:42 PM

Can't speak to the other questions, but dear GOD I hope they clear up the geography (astrography?) of the show.

This whole 'One System, Hundreds of Worlds' thing just drives me nuts.

The show otherwise takes some effort to be technically correct.

SARAHETC

Friday, May 30, 2003 2:33 PM

I don't have links or anything, but the official press packet materials located the 'verse as the Ghost of Jupiter nebula. Type that into Google and you get real astronomy.

http://rao.150m.com/NGC3242.html
http://www.phy.mtu.edu/apod/ap970331.html
http://www.blackskies.com/pnweek4.htm

It appears that the star in the center of the nebula is a white dwarf (or remnant thereof) but it appears blue. There's your blue sun.

As for "hundreds" of planets, I think the opening has a touch of the hyperbole. In a deleted scene of OMR, Mal says "There's more'n seventy little earths spinnin' and the meek have inherited not a one." Or something like that. "More than seventy" would seem to me to be less than 100.

Plus there's the whole terraforming aspect. If it wasn't inhabitable to begin with, the Alliance will make it so, come hell or high water or bowden's malady.

Sarah

I'm a dying breed who still believes, haunted by American dreams. ---Neko Case

THEGN

Friday, May 30, 2003 2:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023:
communication
Are there becons to boost signals over long distances? I thought I heard this. We know that visual communication can only be used up close. Why?

I don't know about beacons. I would imagine any advanced space-fairing society relying on currently known laws of physics would require some kind of beacon network to communicate over very long distances. As far as visual communication is concerned the only explanation I can give for that is that visual communication requires a more-or-less strong coherent single. Visual communication would very likely be impaired over long distances.

Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023:
geography
Has anyone come up with an actual citation from the show for this taking place in one solar system or many?

As of yet, there is no determining citation from the show, as far as I know. My biggest pet peeve is more with the planets they visit then with their celestial orientation. The fact is that you don’t need hundreds of planets. You only need about a dozen to make almost limitless possibilities. They visit one planet and somehow that one planet is defined almost completely be a single city/location. Which makes no sense to me at all. Only in the 'Train Job' did they make references to more then one major location on a planet, and I really think they need to exploit this more often. Although, seeing that the show is cancelled this may be a moot point.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

HAKEN

Friday, May 30, 2003 2:55 PM

Keep in mind too that "worlds" do not necessarily mean planets. We've seen in Firefly that many of these worlds could be teraformed moons or other celestial objects. At least that's my understanding.

ZEKE023

Friday, May 30, 2003 3:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Keep in mind too that "worlds" do not necessarily mean planets. We've seen in Firefly that many of these worlds could be teraformed moons or other celestial objects. At least that's my understanding.

Still though - if we go with the aforementioned '70 earths'... there's aren't seventy planets and satelites in our solar system! If we are to use ours as a model - one would think that you could populate a bunch of planets and moons in a thin margin - but anything else would be way too hot or way too cold to support life. This simply cannot take place in one solar system. *shrug* can it?

And, btw, I could have sworn that the beacon idea came from "Out of Gas". I thought they were flying so far out of the way, the were far away from any beacons, hence their delima of communication. Can anybody verify this?

-Zeke

THEGN

Friday, May 30, 2003 3:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023:
Still though - if we go with the aforementioned '70 earths'... there's aren't seventy planets and satelites in our solar system! If we are to use ours as a model - one would think that you could populate a bunch of planets and moons in a thin margin - but anything else would be way too hot or way too cold to support life. This simply cannot take place in one solar system. *shrug* can it?

What you are referring to is known as the "life-zone" of a star. Surrounding the Sun, for instance, there is a region more or less defined by the orbits of Venus and Mars in which a planet may orbit and receive an adequate amount of sunlight for life. This doesn't mean that any planet in this region will, necessarily be habitable (clearly only one is in our case), it simply means that the star your orbiting will not necessarily kill you. Before the cancellation of Firefly I was doing some calculations to determine the maximum number of habitable celestial objects a given star could support.

Although I never finished those calculations I can tell you that I don't believe it's likely that a single star would support 70 earth-like celestial objects, however I think it's possible that a binary system might be able to. It would require at least 4 gas giants however.

There are a lot of features involved in this. It's really a very precarious balancing game. Gas giants have a considerable amount of gravity, and while a Jupiter size planet might be able to support maybe ten to twenty earth-sized objects, it would not be common for such a thing to happen and even less likely that four of such systems to develop in a binary system within the life-zone of that system.

But science fiction is not necessarily about what will happen but about what might happen. So the point is that I do believe it's possible.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

ZEKE023

Friday, May 30, 2003 3:46 PM

wasn't there a post on a different thread where someone mentioned they heard reference to traveling to other systems?

THEGN

Friday, May 30, 2003 4:07 PM

I think so, but this doesn't necessarily mean they were traveling to another star system.

-----------
In the Dark Ages, Romano-Celtic Britannia was over-run by Viking-like cultures collectively called the Anglo-Saxons. They were led by warlords called Drytinns, and the greatest warriors among them were the Thegns.

ZEKE023

Friday, May 30, 2003 5:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Thegn:
I think so, but this doesn't necessarily mean they were traveling to another star system.

I'm not sure what else they would be refering to. Solar Systems are the only thing that comes to mind when I think systems - at least in terms of Sci-fi.

-Zeke

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NEXT PAGE