Solar System Vs. Galaxy

POSTED BY: MadJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 17:41
VIEWED: 40136
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LODRIL

Thursday, February 19, 2004 6:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Freakysins:
The bottom line is, it's Joss' 'verse, and if he wants to make it 70+ moons orbiting a gigantic galactic cheese wheel, I'm going to watch it anyway and love every second of it.

Hmm. Well, while I do like Firefly, I have to admit the galactic cheese wheel would probably throw me.

FREAKYSINS

Thursday, February 19, 2004 8:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Lodril:
Quote:
Originally posted by Freakysins:
The bottom line is, it's Joss' 'verse, and if he wants to make it 70+ moons orbiting a gigantic galactic cheese wheel, I'm going to watch it anyway and love every second of it.

Hmm. Well, while I do like Firefly, I have to admit the galactic cheese wheel would probably throw me.

It would throw you, sure... but you'd watch.

"Son of a... " *THUD!*

ROCKETJOCK

Friday, February 20, 2004 7:03 AM

Down to brass tacks, I consider Firefly Science Fiction, not fantasy. Placing scores of habitable worlds in a single solar system is fantasy. Therefore, we must assume multiple systems, which implies some kind of FTL, though not necessarily something flashy and obvious.*

This doesn't contradict the "slow and easy" transit times the dramatic situation calls for; speed is relative to the distances being crossed, after all. A leisurely car ride from Reno, Nevada to the California coast might take a single day. Ask the Donner party how long the trip took.

70 - 100 worlds being terraformed in less than 500 years stretches my willing suspension of disbelief badly enough, but putting them all in a single solar system just snaps the rubber band.

*Footquote: "Faster Than Light" always made about as much sense to me as "Slower Than Dark."
--John Byrne

RocketJock

NOOCYTE

Friday, February 20, 2004 7:46 AM

Quick thought: I'd always rather liked the little FTL sidestep they pulled on "Space: Above and Beyond." There was some vague mention that space had been found to be riddled with useable wormholes, which had been charted, and which allowed access to other star systems. It was a snippet which was dropped, right at the beginning, then never mentioned again, so they could get on with the business of story-telling, no muss, no fuss.

Something like this could settle the issue handily, as it relies on some putative future "discovery," some bit of info we couldn't possibly have yet (like Hyperspace being undiscoverable within any deep gravity well in Niven's Known Space stories).

Personally, I'd be willing to forgive --even embrace-- such a bit of literary short-cut-ism if it allowed the stage of our 'verse to stretch virtually without limit ("No matter how long the arm of the Alliance gets, we just push out a little further...").

It would also quiet the Newtonian nightmares of imagining some poor, straining star system forever poised on the edge of calamity with scores of planetary bodies hurtling around, just managing not to go plowing into each other!

Keep flyin'!

Department of Redundancy Department

SINGULARITY

Friday, February 20, 2004 7:51 AM

Ok...lets throw some stuff out there. The way things seem every planet or moon that we have seen has at least 1 G, an earth-like atmosphere with the right mix of gases to sustain human life, and a sun or suns that give off about the right frequency of light to give a typical blue sky.

I would like to point out that as it stands there are roughly 30 to 40 moons in our solar system right now. There is a large belt of rocks between earth and mars as well as an even larger area of comet stuff out around or past Pluto.
The "stuff" to create a small planetoid is out there. If the technology could bring together some of that "stuff", maybe we could make the assumption that the show could take place in one solar system. I do not know because we did not get to see enough of this great show to find out.

Here are some things that I would need to know.
How big are the moons that were terraformed. Most of the border ones seem to have just one name. Maybe that would indicate that they are really not very big. If that's the case then maybe you could have multiple moons in a single particular area.

What's anyone else think?

Space: region beyond Earth’s atmosphere, region between all celestial bodies, freedom to assert identity

GROUNDED

Friday, February 20, 2004 2:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
Down to brass tacks, I consider Firefly Science Fiction, not fantasy. Placing scores of habitable worlds in a single solar system is fantasy. Therefore, we must assume multiple systems, which implies some kind of FTL, though not necessarily something flashy and obvious.

This hinges on assuming that the writer's of the show are writing 'hard' sci-fi. I have never seen a sci-fi show that was based on a rigorous and plausible scientific background. The line between sci-fi and fantasy is not a clear one. Consider X-Men as an example. It's science fiction but it's also clearly fantastical. Everything has degrees and SF is no exception. As far as TV is concerned, sci-fi tends to show future worlds that, on the surface, appear to be reasonable extrapolations from our own time but are actually riddled with holes under the microscope. There are already a fair few errors in the few FF episodes we have, and that's excluding all this FTL/systems stuff.

The question is: into how much scientific detail did Joss go when he created the FF universe? I don't think he went very far, otherwise more explanations would appear in the show......but I could be wrong

As for moons - there are a lot more than 40 in our solar system.

http://www.planetary.org/learn/solarsystem/moons.html

FOURSKYS

Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:04 AM

Point of Note:

I was just watching "The Train Job" last night, and noticed that at the very end, when the guys with blue hands are interrogating the "door man", they say something to the effect:

"We didn't fly 83 million miles for a box of band-aids, colonel"

83 million miles is less than the distance between the earth and the sun, but they make it sound like it's quite a large distance.

thoughts?

NOOCYTE

Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:58 AM

Quote:
I was just watching "The Train Job" last night, and noticed that at the very end, when the guys with blue hands are interrogating the "door man", they say something to the effect:

"We didn't fly 83 million miles for a box of band-aids, colonel"

83 million miles is less than the distance between the earth and the sun, but they make it sound like it's quite a large distance.

thoughts?

Yah, this has been brought up before. My thought was always that it could simply have meant the cruiser was within the system where they were doing...other Blue Hand stuff, and they traveled to rendez-vous with it. Well, okay, that's the fan-wank version of the story (like it?).

It could simply mean that the writers needed a Big Sounding Number, and 83 exp6 sounded Impressive. Face it, as lovingly crafted as our verse may be in many respects, this ain't Arthur Clarke (thank goodness; much as I adore his writing, his characters always seemed almost an afterthought, IMHO)

Department of Redundancy Department

GROUNDED

Sunday, February 22, 2004 11:13 AM

Nice name Noocyte

Anyway, to the point. I was looking at the FireflyWiki site yesterday and apparently at some point in the show they mention the 'Georgia system'. That would undoubtedly point towards multiple systems and therefore (sadly, IMO) FTL.

MENZOA

Sunday, February 22, 2004 10:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
Lol, am I the only one campaigning for single system, no FTL?

No, I'm not only saying no FTL, I'm saying it's set in THE solar system. My basis for this: in a small comment by Mal on the sorry state of colonists he specifically states that they modify the local gravity and atmosphere before dumping the colonists down there with a hatchets, maybe a herd.

I'd sooner suspend disbelief on the issue of super-advanced terraforming technology that lets you make Mimas (a moon of Saturn) seem like a Southern California desert with a big, bright sun than have to bother with all the issues connected with FTL.

And that's before touching on the idea of clumping together new "moons" from large asteriods in the belt.

Also, a few of the moon-names are taken from our own star system. (Ariel orbits Unranus, with a diameter about 1/10th of Earth's.) With 79 known planets and moons to work with, there's really no need to shovel in the idea of other star systems.

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