Where does Firefly take place?

POSTED BY: Hans
UPDATED: Sunday, July 2, 2006 05:23
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HANS

Friday, October 31, 2003 5:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by zeke023:

Seems to me that the quickest way to get somewhere in space is to constanty accelerate 1/2 way and then deccelerate the other 1/2. Maybe "running hot" is accelerating and therefore using fuel - where as otherwise you just continue at your current speed (due to the frictionlessness of space).

Yes, that's what I assumed. To get somewhere faster you need both a faster "outgoing" burn to accelerate, and and equal amount at the other end to deaccelerate. Or, if your destination has an atmosphere, you can try atmosphereic braking. Either way, more fuel = more thrust = faster speed.

Or, as Newton said, "Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it."

MANIACNUMBERONE

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 4:46 PM

The new dvd sheds a little light on this question with a deleted scene which says

Select to view spoiler:

that there are 70 earths in THE solar system

HANS

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 6:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ManiacNumberOne:
The new dvd sheds a little light on this question with a deleted scene which says
Select to view spoiler:
that there are 70 earths in THE solar system

Cool! There's some deleted scenes that support the one system theory, others that don't. I'm not sure if we can put much weight on deleted scenes when it comes to making an argument one way or another, but as a supporter of "one system" I'm very happy to hear this. 70 worlds is a much more resonable figure than 150, or any of the others.

HANS

Monday, December 22, 2003 2:54 PM

Having been through the DVD I noticed an interesting commentary on Serenity's drive system by one of the ship's designers. The main drive appears to be some sort of fusion propulsion system, using a fusion explosion to move the ship through space. Since such a drive system would be strictly conventional, its further evidence of the absence of any faster than-light drive...which supports the "one system" theory. Of course, this does not rule out there being yet another drive system for FTL travel.

(I think this was mentioned on the featurette on Serenity, though I may be wrong).

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Monday, December 22, 2003 8:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
This is true. It is also something that has kinda bothered me since I started studying General Relativity (on my own, not a college student). There is no such thing as "artifical gravity"

In GR, gravity is not a force. It is a "pseudo-force" An object will move in a geodesic. If the geodesic is curved compared to "flat space" then the object will change path as if it were being accelerated by a force. When there is no force being applied, just the oddness of the geometry.

On the Earth, you are trying to follow a geodesic path. But the ground (and specifically the repuslive force of the various molecules in your feet and the ground) prevents you from doing that. So you feel gravity, and stay attached to the ground.

On a spinning space station, your natural geodesic is at a tangent to the arc you are traveling in. But the space station floor is blocking your path in exactly the same way that it occurs on the planet. So in a sense, you are not creating "artifical gravity" but the real thing.

The 'gravity' created by the rotating space station model is artificial gravity. It is artificial because gravity is a property of matter, but the centripetal gravity is a property of motion. They are two different things. The mass making up the rotating spacestation has gravity associated with it, albeit very small in comparison to a planet. You can calculate this gravity from simple physics. You can also calculate this centripetal force generated by a rotating space station using similar physics. Now General Relativity does not really say they are the same thing, but rather says that an observer will not be able to tell them apart under certain circumstances. That doesn't mean they are the same, but rather implies they are different, and the difference has to do with the frame of reference. In the planet case, the gravity exist in an inertial frame of reference, but in the rotating spacestation case, the gravity exist only in a non-inertial frame of reference.

DRAKON

Tuesday, December 23, 2003 12:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
The 'gravity' created by the rotating space station model is artificial gravity. It is artificial because gravity is a property of matter, but the centripetal gravity is a property of motion. They are two different things. The mass making up the rotating spacestation has gravity associated with it, albeit very small in comparison to a planet. You can calculate this gravity from simple physics. You can also calculate this centripetal force generated by a rotating space station using similar physics. Now General Relativity does not really say they are the same thing, but rather says that an observer will not be able to tell them apart under certain circumstances. That doesn't mean they are the same, but rather implies they are different, and the difference has to do with the frame of reference. In the planet case, the gravity exist in an inertial frame of reference, but in the rotating spacestation case, the gravity exist only in a non-inertial frame of reference.

Au contrarie. The frame of reference on a planet's surface is NOT inertial, since the planet's surface is preventing objects from following geodesics. Just like the walls of your spinning space station. There really is no difference between the two. In both cases you are blocked from traveling inertially, i.e. following a geodesic. In both cases the reason is the repulsion (on the atomic level) between your feet and the floor. And in both cases, the prevention from traveling geodesically means the frames you are in are not inertial.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, December 23, 2003 4:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
Au contrarie. The frame of reference on a planet's surface is NOT inertial, since the planet's surface is preventing objects from following geodesics. Just like the walls of your spinning space station. There really is no difference between the two. In both cases you are blocked from traveling inertially, i.e. following a geodesic. In both cases the reason is the repulsion (on the atomic level) between your feet and the floor. And in both cases, the prevention from traveling geodesically means the frames you are in are not inertial.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

You're missing the point, I think. It doesn't matter what the frame of reference of the surface is. What matters is that the gravity on the space station only exists in a non-inertial frame of reference. If you were an observer and you were out at space not moving and far enough away from any gravitation source that you could be said to be in a purely inertial frame of reference. AND both the earth and the space station were also far away from any gravitation source and not moving, so that they could be said to be in a inertial frame of reference. THEN would there be gravity on the space station? No (not appreciably.) BUT there would be gravity on earth. Because gravity is a property of matter, and it exists on earth regardless of the earth's inertial state. When the space station is in an inertial frame of reference an observer inside the space station will NOT experience any gravity. The same is not true for the Earth and that is the difference. General Relativity does NOT say they are the same, only that an observer WITHIN those respective frames of reference would not be able to tell them apart, given certain conditions. THAT is what relativity means. Gravity is relative to your frame of reference. If it wasn't it would be called General Samness, or otherwise known as Newtonian physics.

Not an easy topic to grasp, I know. I've been there. It's real easy to think that General Relativity is telling you that the two cases are the same, but that's not really what it says.

ZACHSMIND

Wednesday, December 24, 2003 6:21 AM

Over at http://www.gloomyjoe.com/firefly GloomyJoe's there's this list of all the locations mentioned in the series, from Ariel to Whitefall. When one sees all this listed together, it becomes clear we're dealing with a multiple star environment. I don't know if it would be classified as a single system with multiple stars, or if this part of space happens to contain many star systems which are relatively close together, but this is not just one star with all these planets and moons revolving around them, ALL of which happen to be revolving within that stars ecosystem. In our own solar system, only Earth and moon are comfortably inside the ecosphere. Venus and Mars fall outside the range of distance from the sun that allows sustainable human life.

Further, there is the Georgia System, which includes Paradiso. At one point in the episode The Train Job, Georgia is specified not as THE star system from which all the planets and moons exist, but ONE of the star systems that the Serenity frequents. Therefore, there is at least one other star system one might refer to. Otherwise it would be unnecessary to refer to the Georgia system by a name. They'd just call it THE system, or not refer to it at all.

One could argue that the Georgia system is named, as opposed to the star system that used to be home, which includes the Earth That Was. However, that still wouldn't sufficiently explain how in the course of half a season, over twenty locations were mentioned, about half of which were planets, with no forseeable end in sight. There is a reference to "core planets" as opposed to the outer rim. This also lends credence to a single star system, but it's physically not possible to have this many planets revolving inside the ecosphere of the same solar system. They'd run into each other.

Unless terraforming also included physically moving the celestial bodies around inside the solar system and keeping them from running into one another, but if they had that kinda knowledge, why didn't they just fix The Earth That Was?

------------------------------
"Always thought you needed a bit more evidence to convict a man than the color of his coat."

KYOBONITSUKI

Tuesday, December 30, 2003 7:15 PM

okay - first thanks to zaphodb for bumping me over to this line.

one of the things i've noticed is that people seem to be arguing the smae points over and over - not adding much to the mix... let me try to change that.

to sum up:
as aired, book says "sectors" in the message.
the georgia system could be a planetary system and is not by itself proof of a multisystem setting.

no as for new stuff... in serenity the ship passes the reaver vessel at slow relative speeds - which seems to indicate that serenity was NOT in FTL drive on the way to the rim from persephone. also despite vowing to steer clear of niska in train job, mal and wash get nabbed on the planet/moon niska's station orbits in war stories. and i just checked my dvds it looks to be the exact same world in both episodes. now half a planet seems to be not much in the way of avoidance - seems much more like asking for it. zoe seemed to deduce that niska was who got them - book and jayne seemed to take a bit to come to that conclusion. that seems odd if the scale of the series is beyond a single star system.

bio-zones - that little band of lifegiving warmth around a sun. we'd need a big mother star for this. even if it's not 70 worlds it is still a whole bunch. a bigger star gives you a bigger biozone perhaps large enough to contain more than ours which contains three. its a point of argument but mars and venus can be said to be at the limits of our biozone. given a good greenhouse atmo mars would be rather comfortable. thin venus's atmo and it may be habitable.

now in a big old biosphere we could have say 6 planets. maybe more. and a bunch of moons, especially if we have a super jovian. but the point here is that the moons have to be big ass moons. even with the magic of terraformation you need enough mass to hold on to the atmosphere - which means worlds about the size and mass of mars. granted there is gravity manipulation in firefly but manipulating a worlds gravity to enable it to hold on to an atmo is beyond belief. terraforming would be a one time thing... artificially making a planet more dense would be a continual use of energy.

if the firefly drive is an ftl drive than i would say that the verse is a small cluster of stars - maybe 100 light years across... assuming 3-5 planets a system and a little over 20 systems.

if the firefly drive is not an ftl drive but an efficient space drive (the engine pods being a less efficient scramjet) then we'd be looking at one big ass system. i personally like the romance of this.

it seems that no matter which path you chose you have to sacrifice some disbelief. i choose to dismiss the proplems around extending a biozone and holding on to atmos. i just like it better and to me it fits the dramatic circumstances better - we've not seen nor heard anything about hyperspace or ftl - and the fact that mal and wash dove into niskas backyard without a catious word to that effect. i believe they were giveing niska a wide berth by staying away from his half of the world - and to me that indicates a smaller verse.

just thoughts and bad spelling

cheers

matt

p.s. let it be known that i for one, greatly enjoy the character of kaylee - even tho polls show that most of you don't!

LUNATIKAT

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 2:15 AM

"p.s. let it be known that i for one, greatly enjoy the character of kaylee - even tho polls show that most of you don't!" writes matt

I love Kaylee, too. I wanna see her grow some courage over time. In fact, I just want to watch everyone grow and evolve, and see their backstories as well.

lunatikat - not long for this world (if I can hitch a ride to another)

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