Technology in the 'verse
POSTED BY: zeke023
UPDATED: Friday, October 31, 2003 03:24
VIEWED: 21912
PAGE 2 of 14
Quote:I'll ask you nicely. how do you have access to deleted scenes from OMR. HOW!!!!!! sorry
In a deleted scene of OMR, Mal says "There's more'n seventy little earths spinnin' and the meek have inherited not a one.
someone was asking about all the locations being one city/village per planet. While it does give a limited view of the globe I don't think it's neccesarily due to lack of scope. It's reasonable to think that colonies on previously uninhabited planets may or may not give birth to more cities depending on the flow of immigration. some planets may only be useful for resources (e.g. Canton)but otherwise aren't much of a destination for settlers.
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Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023: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
Planetary systems, the earth and moon are a planetary system. Most of the time you wouldn't use that terminology, but if you had places where there were multiple planets with as many moons as Jupiter you might.
The gravity is my only complaint, I don't see any teraforming operation that could change the gravity of a planet.
Temperature might be affected by adding things to the upper atmosphere (upper so you don't kill the people down on the ground.) Global warming might not be a very big deal here (i.e. it wont get so hot that we all die) but if we were working to increase it, and had technology like is shown on firefly it might be possible to trap enough heat to create a livable planet distant from it's sun.
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Quote:
christhecynic wrote:
Friday, May 30, 2003 08:37
The gravity is my only complaint, I don't see any teraforming operation that could change the gravity of a planet.
Okay, but bear in mind that in "Out of Gas" when serenity has lost all power and life support, Mal is still miraculously walking around (or limping, as the case may be). I think they have got some kind of artificial gravity business we simply haven't got in the here and now. I realize this is a bit of a stretch, but it's one of those times I say to myself "Space... Western... Space.. Western" and I should really just relax.
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Quote:
Originally posted by switchy:
I'll ask you nicely. how do you have access to deleted scenes from OMR. HOW!!!!!! sorry
It used to be on www.buffyscripts.net but I see that they're no longer there. A google search will take you to a link to that page but there's a 404 error.
Sorry. But don't worry. You'll get to see it soon.
Sarah
I'm a dying breed who still believes, haunted by American dreams. ---Neko Case
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Quote:Solar system, planetary system, lunar system, sublunar system, subcelestial system. A Solar system is simply a collection of smaller systems.
Originally posted by zeke023:
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.
Quote:It's not reasonable to think that a planet with a city as large as those depicted on Persephone, for instance, would not themselves have smaller satellite cities/community which would be necessary to supply the larger cities. Cities that size do not exist in a vacuum. Furthermore, it does not make sense that a society advanced enough to build spaceships as large as those depicted by the Alliance Cruisers would have so limited an infrastructure. While your argument might be valid for the less inhabited planets, it is not valid for the "core" planets. I can only logically envision Core planets with dozens or perhaps hundreds of different provinces/countries and thousands of different major cities, and millions of communities. The border planets might have a little more flexibility, but the infrastructure must come from somewhere.
Originally posted by switchy:
someone was asking about all the locations being one city/village per planet. While it does give a limited view of the globe I don't think it's neccesarily due to lack of scope. It's reasonable to think that colonies on previously uninhabited planets may or may not give birth to more cities depending on the flow of immigration. some planets may only be useful for resources (e.g. Canton)but otherwise aren't much of a destination for settlers.
Most importantly, my point was that it is not necessary to have hundreds of planets when a single planet offers so much diversity. Even a small planet would provide enough room for thousands of small villages that would remain almost completely isolated form each other. The point is, based on what we have seen of Firefly so far, it could be set in a universe with only a dozen or so inhabited bodies, and this solves the problem of stuffing solar systems with planets.
It's just a tv show, and there's no reason it must be "reasonable," but I think it would add a lot of depth to the setting to depict these planets as more then just the planet of the episode, like they were in Star Trek. Although, the point may be moot.
Quote:Other then adding mass on colossal scale, there is no way of terraforming a planet to have a higher gravity.
Originally posted by christhecynic:
The gravity is my only complaint, I don't see any teraforming operation that could change the gravity of a planet.
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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.
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Multiple star systems would just be so much simpler than trying to contrive an explanation for over seventy habitable bodies in a single system. Seventy-plus inhabitable planets, with all the ones we've seen possessing Earth-type gravity (okay, we understand that as lavish as they went on the sets, constructing a few on the moon and Mars was out of the question, unfortunately.) and other blatantly terrestrial features.
I guess it's partly my own prejuidice at work here. It just seems so unlikely that the human race would leap out and settle just one bloody system, if given the chance.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Thegn:
Other then adding mass on colossal scale, there is no way of terraforming a planet to have a higher gravity.
While I generally agree, they clearly had artificial gravity on Serenity. It might be possible, if impractical, to arificially generate artificial gravity for an entire city or planet.
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Quote:This sounds like the 'star-trek-syndrome' to me. Because the popular sci-fi shows generally have crews gallivanting around the galaxy, people have decided this must be the most likely scenario.
Originally posted by Archer:
I guess it's partly my own prejuidice at work here. It just seems so unlikely that the human race would leap out and settle just one bloody system, if given the chance.
Current science suggests a future that is somewhat less enthusiastic, however. Current theories of physics suggest that the speed of light is a boundary condition to the universe and that it cannot be broken. Contrary to science fiction pseudo science there is no realistically sound theories of physics that suggest that we will ever move across the universe at faster then light speeds. Any suggestion that it will happen is simply wishful thinking at best.
Given this, we can begin to construct what a 'Firefly-like' space-fairing society might look like. With stars averaging 5-20 light years apart, and mankind limited to a maximum speed of 0.999c, there are two interesting points that come to mind.
First is that man WILL be limited to a small number of solar systems and in fact, the vast majority of all mankind will be isolated to only one solar system, which will invariably lead to a distant future of very differently evolving human societies and possibly different species of man.
Second, any travel between solar systems will require huge vessels and colossally powerful propulsion system, and a crew that is capable and willing to endure the affects of time dilation, which at speeds of 0.999c and distances of 50 light years or more will be very extreme.
Although typically science fiction has avoided certain concepts. In general, you can almost always rely on two axioms of pseudo-science, non-centripetal artificial gravity and faster-then-light travel. So it just amounts to which assumptions you want to make in defining the theme of a show. In the end, we really don't know what the future holds.
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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.
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Still, over seventy inhabited orbs in a single system? Other than proposals for terraforming Mars (there's a school of thought that that is untenable with the difficulty of getting Mars to retain an Earth-type atmosphere.) you end up in every case in our system being one of enclosed domes and/or subterranean construction rather than strolling around on the surface herding cattle.
One concept I hope FF picks up in the future is the concept of Belters, the folks who live off in asteroid colonies.
However, the single-system construct does mean that there are likely other systems totally independent of what we know of as the Firefly 'verse.
Smile when you say Star Trek Syndrome. NCC 1701 no bloody A, B, C, D, or E. ;)
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I partially agree, I think both Mars and Venus are terraformable, but unlike scifi, it will require hundreds of years and the affect will not necessarily generate fields of dewy meadows.
But you're right, it is a little unrealistic to suggest that a solar system will have that many habitable celestial bodies. From what I've seen in the show, nothing leads me to believe that there is any need for that many habitable bodies. I think a solar system with 6 to 12 terraformed bodies would be more then sufficient for the story, and it would eliminate the logical difficulties with both faster-then-light travel and super-packed solar systems.
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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.
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