Where does Firefly take place?
POSTED BY: Hans
UPDATED: Sunday, July 2, 2006 05:23
VIEWED: 62435
PAGE 10 of 18
We once believed that all-powerful beings were responsible for throwing lightning bolts, changing the seasons, driving the sun across the sky, and earthquakes. We once believed that the earth revolved around the sun. We once believed that the earth was flat, and that sailing too far, you'd go right over the edge. We once believed that Man was not meant to fly. We once believed that the speed of sound was an insurmountable barrier.
Knowing all this, is FTL travel really that unlikely? Human beings are amazingly inventive creatures. Just give us some time....
No offense to any purists, but does it have to be completely explained? If I'm going somewhere, I don't pop off with "I'm going to go get in my vehicle, which is powered by an internal combustion engine running on a petroleum based ignitible liquid fuel moving pistons in a chamber to rotate a crank, capable of speeds up to 90 miles an hour in it's current configuration and go to the mall." Nope, I just say "I'm going to the mall."
And remember, when something really off the wall, or unexplainable by any law of common sense happens, it can all be explained away with "Because it's in the script!"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
Not sure how the constructs in the show
lead to the conclusions that the concepts
of inertia and gravity are ignored.
But STR is just part of the landscape
of scientific truth. Only 3rd rate shoddy
fantasy show would choose to ignore it
- likewise with inertia and gravity
(if it was actually ignored). Pick one,
it's either SciFi or fantasy. It stops
being a SciFi when science is ignored
without a credible explanation.
Remember Serenity when they did that "Crazy Ivan"? What exactly do you think that would do to all that stuff that's not nailed down in the ship? And there's a lot that's not nailed down.
It's kind of funny that later on they mention artificial gravity in The Message, but in Out of Gas, it just works even though the ship is unpowered. But they also say that planet gravity does odd things with artificial gravity, but when the firefly transport does the ivan in Serenity, then the full burn straight up, we see none of that. So, they just kind of ignore the science because it gets in the way of the stories.
I don't really have a problem with it. After all, it's either that or doing something goofy like Star Trek did by coming up with "inertia dampners". There's also the thing where the vast majority of sci-fi shows and movies have sound in space and ships also bank to turn, so it's not like all of them adhere specifically to science.
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There is a huge difference between completely
ignoring science in a fantasy and coming up
with possible scientific solutions to a
physics constraint - SciFi.
There are many many real honest to earth inventions based on/inspired by these "goofy" SciFi inventions - Satellites, GPS, cellphones, automated doors and light sensors. That's partly what SciFi is - Science that isn't real (yet) but within the realm of possibility.
And I don't quite exactly understand why you would think inertial dampeners and gravity plating are "odd" and "goofy" when FF, as you say, completely ignores all these wacko real science as gravity...
I think it just completely up ends the advancement of our society as a whole when we have writers for a SciFi show who doesn't even think about some of the basis for their stories. One of the base tenants of writing fiction is to suspend disbelief in such a way as to ground it in some established set of principles: whether it's fantasy (completely invent your own set of rules) or SciFi. SciFi should be grounded in some sort of Science. Without a somewhat solid scientific base, you might as well be writing a fantasy - or worst, a space opera - or maybe even worst, a space soap.
Yuck.
Quote:
Originally posted by SaintProverbius:Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
Not sure how the constructs in the show
lead to the conclusions that the concepts
of inertia and gravity are ignored.
But STR is just part of the landscape
of scientific truth. Only 3rd rate shoddy
fantasy show would choose to ignore it
- likewise with inertia and gravity
(if it was actually ignored). Pick one,
it's either SciFi or fantasy. It stops
being a SciFi when science is ignored
without a credible explanation.
Remember Serenity when they did that "Crazy Ivan"? What exactly do you think that would do to all that stuff that's not nailed down in the ship? And there's a lot that's not nailed down.
It's kind of funny that later on they mention artificial gravity in The Message, but in Out of Gas, it just works even though the ship is unpowered. But they also say that planet gravity does odd things with artificial gravity, but when the firefly transport does the ivan in Serenity, then the full burn straight up, we see none of that. So, they just kind of ignore the science because it gets in the way of the stories.
I don't really have a problem with it. After all, it's either that or doing something goofy like Star Trek did by coming up with "inertia dampners". There's also the thing where the vast majority of sci-fi shows and movies have sound in space and ships also bank to turn, so it's not like all of them adhere specifically to science.
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I haven't ruled out the possibility that we've discovered FTL travel by 2517, but just because we have a technology doesn't mean it's going to be in common use. Raise your hand if you have a particle accelerator in your backyard. Way I figure it, we came up with maybe 10-20 FTL ships when we realized Earth wouldn't last too much longer. These ships were sent to scout out likely star systems, then report back. Once we had selected our likeliest prospect, we reused the FTL drives on some transport ships, built some new ones, and started heading out. Once the exodus was complete, the transports were scrapped for parts. Since FTL drives were not necessary for traversing the system, most ships don't have 'em.
Also, it's entirely possible to have over 70 habitable worlds inside a large star system, provided you have some nice bright stars. Sol, our sun, has a habitable zone extending from 0.95 AU to 1.37 AU. A blue giant or supergiant star could have a much larger habitable zone, extending several AUs. If you have several gas giants in the HZ, each with several rocky moons, you could potentially have over 100 terraformable worlds.
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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Quote:
Originally posted by Haplo721:
I haven't ruled out the possibility that we've discovered FTL travel by 2517, but just because we have a technology doesn't mean it's going to be in common use. Raise your hand if you have a particle accelerator in your backyard. Way I figure it, we came up with maybe 10-20 FTL ships when we realized Earth wouldn't last too much longer. These ships were sent to scout out likely star systems, then report back. Once we had selected our likeliest prospect, we reused the FTL drives on some transport ships, built some new ones, and started heading out. Once the exodus was complete, the transports were scrapped for parts. Since FTL drives were not necessary for traversing the system, most ships don't have 'em.
Even at the speed of light, we're still talking years to get anywhere. 10-20 drives wouldn't be enough to move billions of people.
Quote:
Also, it's entirely possible to have over 70 habitable worlds inside a large star system, provided you have some nice bright stars. Sol, our sun, has a habitable zone extending from 0.95 AU to 1.37 AU. A blue giant or supergiant star could have a much larger habitable zone, extending several AUs.
If you have several gas giants in the HZ, each with several rocky moons, you could potentially have over 100 terraformable worlds.
You're talking 70+ Earth sized rocks in that zone.And honestly, I doubt that a gas giant could exist in the HZ just because of the proximity to the star itself, too much energy bouncing around. It would definitely have to be a specialized case.
Then you have the problem with those gas giants and their own gravity affecting one another. The same force that holds those moons in orbit, all those Earth sized ones, would also be pulling on one another, pulling on each other's moons, and so on. To find something stable like that.. Heck, Jupiter has 300 times the mass of earth, so you know it can't really be that close to anything else of close to or equal size. Packing four to six of these in 1AU worth of radius is a recipe for problems.
Now, given all the specialized cases we're talking about - big huge star with a large HZ, 70+ planets/moons of Earth size(you can't really terraform gravity), bunchs of gas giants in close relation to one another, and so on and so forth.. Well, the odds of finding anything like that even remotely close to Sol is so far out of the realm of possibility, you might as well just go ahead and concede the fact that we're talking about humans that have spanned all over the galaxy.
Even 10-20 scout ships would have a lot of trouble finding such a thing. We're talking about a 60,000 light year radius. Given those distances, a scout would have to actually GO there using ultra-super FTL just to make sure everything is honkey-dory there because you can't rely on telescopes, radio or otherwise, because things could have changed a lot in all those years.
You're talking about covering about 11,309,733,553 square light years worth of area. With 10 to 20 ships? Even at 100 times the speed of light and ignoring relativity effects like time dialation, assuming only one star per square light year and all are equal distance from one another and they scouts are using the most efficient mapping technique ever created, you're talking about taking 57 BILLION years to map out the galaxy with 20 ships - 10 times longer than the sun has fuel left.
Neat, eh?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SaintProverbius:
Even at the speed of light, we're still talking years to get anywhere. 10-20 drives wouldn't be enough to move billions of people.
Re-read... 10-20 to do a survey, reuse the drives plus build some more to get there.
Quote:
Originally posted by SaintProverbius:
You're talking 70+ Earth sized rocks in that zone.And honestly, I doubt that a gas giant could exist in the HZ just because of the proximity to the star itself, too much energy bouncing around. It would definitely have to be a specialized case.
Can you back that up? I admit, I don't know the probability of a gas giant forming in (or moving into) an HZ.
Quote:
Originally posted by SaintProverbius:
Then you have the problem with those gas giants and their own gravity affecting one another. The same force that holds those moons in orbit, all those Earth sized ones, would also be pulling on one another, pulling on each other's moons, and so on. To find something stable like that.. Heck, Jupiter has 300 times the mass of earth, so you know it can't really be that close to anything else of close to or equal size. Packing four to six of these in 1AU worth of radius is a recipe for problems.
Again, reread my post. A blue giant or supergiant would have SEVERAL AUs worth of HZ. If you consider the existence of systems like Castor 6, which consists of 3 binaries, (2 pairs of blue giant/red dwarf and one pair of red dwarfs) you have multiple HZs, so you can split the gas giants between them.
Quote:
Originally posted by SaintProverbius:
Even 10-20 scout ships would have a lot of trouble finding such a thing. We're talking about a 60,000 light year radius. Given those distances, a scout would have to actually GO there using ultra-super FTL just to make sure everything is honkey-dory there because you can't rely on telescopes, radio or otherwise, because things could have changed a lot in all those years.
Nah. You identify the star systems that are in reach of us getting there with our FTL drives, then prioritize by likelihood of supporting human life.
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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Regarding the presence of gravity in "Out of Gas":
I think I already said I would have a bigger problem with "artificial gravity" than I do with FTL. But, since I'm willing to accept the convenience of gravity on spaceships in Firefly, I'm also willing -- just bloody barely -- to note that when the ship was "out of gas," there were still lights, albeit low-level emergency lights.
So I posit this: Stupidly, or for an unnamed technical reason, the emergency batteries, or whatever, power lights and gravity before they power atmosphere. That's bloody insane, unless you posit that somehow recycling atmo costs a LOT more power than the artificial grav. So Serenity has emergency batteries that are strong enough to run lights and grav, and radios, and other minor things, but not enough to filter air.
Presumably, sometime after Mal died, the batteries would've run down, and lights, grav and radio would've gone too, together or one by one.
I dunno, though. I was building a spaceship, I'd make air a pretty high priority. Rather breathe in the dark than see myself asphyxiating. Maybe that's just me.
"Bang."
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Well... Strictly Scifi-SciFi goes, we can reach out further and try and rationalize it in some insane manner like how STfans used to on the oooolder Analog pieces - or you can chalk it up to bad writing, bad SciFi writing anyways. Hey, it's the first season, things tend to be rough for writers in the first season as they get taugh how to write real SciFi and backup the stories. Sometimes the story suffer, sometimes it's ok inspite of those huge gaps... Check out some of the more rabid fans sites out there declaring war on bad physics in SciFi shows.
Quote:
Originally posted by SpikeSpiegel:
Regarding the presence of gravity in "Out of Gas":
I think I already said I would have a bigger problem with "artificial gravity" than I do with FTL. But, since I'm willing to accept the convenience of gravity on spaceships in Firefly, I'm also willing -- just bloody barely -- to note that when the ship was "out of gas," there were still lights, albeit low-level emergency lights.
So I posit this: Stupidly, or for an unnamed technical reason, the emergency batteries, or whatever, power lights and gravity before they power atmosphere. That's bloody insane, unless you posit that somehow recycling atmo costs a LOT more power than the artificial grav. So Serenity has emergency batteries that are strong enough to run lights and grav, and radios, and other minor things, but not enough to filter air.
Presumably, sometime after Mal died, the batteries would've run down, and lights, grav and radio would've gone too, together or one by one.
I dunno, though. I was building a spaceship, I'd make air a pretty high priority. Rather breathe in the dark than see myself asphyxiating. Maybe that's just me.
"Bang."
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It wasn't a matter of the ship being out of power. The engine wasn't running, which caused the main life support to go offline, and the explosion disabled the backup life support. Consider a car: If your engine goes kaput, but your electrical system still works and your battery has juice, then you can still run the headlights, radio, emergency flashers, running lights, and cigarette lighter. However, you can't move, and your A/C and heat won't work. Same thing with Serenity. The backup life support is supposed to kick in if the engine shuts down, but it was physically disabled by the explosion. I imagine the gravity drive is also independent of the engine.
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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1. The sherriff in Train Job specifically mentions gravity as one of the things which is terraformed. Given that, moons much smaller than Earth can be given one gravity and an atmosphere.
2. In Out of Gas they still have artificial gravity when the engine breaks down. I don't think this is a blunder. Here are a couple possibilities:
a. Artifical gravity is generated by some exotic material. Power isn't necessary
b. AG can be generated with almost no electricity. Maybe Serenity's is powered by a coppertop.
A few times in the series we see small vehicles flying through cities with no obvious means of support. That could be another indicator of energy-cheap AG.
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