Question

POSTED BY: zill222
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 9, 2002 14:45
VIEWED: 3715
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ZILL222

Monday, October 7, 2002 5:45 PM

In the beginning of the show when book is talking he says that humanity found another solar system. Does this mean that there is only one solar system? with hundreds of planets? so there isn't faster than light travel like all the other space sci-fi shows?

Remember, dropping 500 ft is not a big problem unless you are 499 or less ft above the ground

HOBBES

Monday, October 7, 2002 6:48 PM

One Solar System is most likly correct...
However both the hick in the bar - The Train Job - and Mal - Bushwhacked, when he is talking about how the Reavers went wacko - both said galaxy, rather then system. Also the Blue Hand people - The Train Job - mentioned 86 million miles (as a big number) which is intra-system distances

Of course that could be simple writers mistakes.

-------------------------------------------------
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May you be in heaven an hour before
The Devil knows you’re dead.

ZICSOFT

Monday, October 7, 2002 6:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by zill222:
In the beginning of the show when book is talking he says that humanity found another solar system. Does this mean that there is only one solar system? with hundreds of planets? so there isn't faster than light travel like all the other space sci-fi shows?

They've been frustratingly sparse with that kind of detail, but basically, yeah, that's the case. I wrote a little speculation about how you can have 100s of worlds in one solar system:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=624#4564

But I'm beginning to think that they're just not worrying about technical details at that level.

JOSS, WHERE'S MY CHECK???!!!

ZICSOFT

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 2:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hobbes:
Also the Blue Hand people - The Train Job - mentioned 86 million miles (as a big number) which is intra-system distances

Thanks for finding that, I plain missed it. Anyway, 86 million miles across is certainly bigger than our solar system (about 10 million), but it's nothing like the distance between stars.

How to describe the difference. Well, interstellar distances are often measured in light years. A light year is about 5,800,000,000,000 miles. Stars in our neighborhood are about 5 light years apart. So that 86 million miles is only one 30,000th of the way to the next system!

(Since this is an American show, I'm assuming that one million = 1,000,000. I could do start over with European millions, but I'm getting a headache.)

The big mystery here is that Anglo-American units are still around. Can't believe people are still resisting metricization five centuries from now!

Anyway, this is consistent with my pet theory that the Firefly solar system is much more massive than ours. And astronmers have actually observed such systems. Here's my previous speculation on that subject: http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=624#4564

JOSS, WHERE'S MY CHECK???!!!

DELVO

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 2:48 AM

86 million miles is less than the distance from the Earth to the sun, which is 93 million. But what about 86 billion? Are we sure he really said million? And how exactly would that mean that all of these planets are in the same solar system? It could be that he's just talking about travelling within one of a hundred solar systems.

There's no way these hundred inhabitable/terraformable planets are all in one solar system. It's scientificly ludicrous in more ways than I could list. But even in the show they've already told us plainly that that's not the case, not only with references to travelling of the whole galaxy and people going nuts in the emptiness of deep space, but also with the thing about the Alliance being comprised of the central planets. (The center of a solar system is a star, and any inhabitable/terraformable planets must be a certain distance away from it, forming a sphereoidal region in which no planet is central.)

No, he's GOT to be referring to the beginning of the process when he says "a new solar system", and later developments in chronological order with "a hundred worlds".

About the units, I just figure they're translated for our convenience. Centons and Cycles and such would be really cheesey.

THEGN

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 4:12 AM

There's really no reason they all have to be in the same solar system. Let's say that all the planets in question are spread accross three or four systems within a spherical region of space 10 lightyears in diameter. That's not inconceivable, as long as the distances between each system are not too great and you assume that close-to-light-speed technology has been refined by this time. The Alliance could maintain control over several systems by maintaining a sufficient system of "waypoints" in between the systems. The British, the Greeks, the Persians and the Romans, all maintained very large empires by placing garrisoned fortresses at key locations so that a single king or emperor could command the entire continent from a central location. The Alliance could, in theory, do the same thing. The only difference would the number of people needed to control such a large region. Considering the exponential way in which we are multiplying today, that's not inconceivable either.

As for the Serenity and their crew, they may be located at the far reaches of this 10 ly orb, and within a single cubic region of space, a quarter ly cube, there would be enough room for the Serenity to fly around for centuries without retracing it's steps.

HOBBES

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 1:01 PM

I can consider multiple systems because that makes much more sense, I was just using the one system bit because that's all the show has told us.

My pet theory is that they have (say) 15-odd systems. The inner 4 or 5 are the Central Worlds. The others count as the frontier. All the systems have a planet or 2 and 3 or 4 moons each.
Systems are connected through wormholes (so the 86 million miles - not including wormhole distance - makes sense).
Offical wormholes are garrisoned by the Alliance and unoffical wormholes are used by our crew, pirates/smugglers/whatever...

-------------------------------------------------
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May you be in heaven an hour before
The Devil knows you’re dead.

THEGN

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 2:24 PM

I'm not a fan of the wormhole idea. It's been done into the ground. I think there are a lot of good stories to be told in a future where people do not have that kind of access to anywhere in the universe they want to go. The reality of the future, as technology currently stands, is that wormholes will always be science fiction. Most people will be isolated to specific systems. Very few people will possess the kind of technology or the kind of time needed to transport between systems, and inter-system cargo will be sent by unmanned, or sparcely manned cargo vessels, not faster then light space ships.

HOBBES

Tuesday, October 8, 2002 8:02 PM

It would be hard (if not impossible) to launch an invasion between solar systems with Slower then Light (STL) ships. So... The Central Worlds own one system, the brown-coats own another. No way is one going to fight the other with STL ships. Back to one system.

They've mentioned at least one planet (Persephone), and a couple of moons. If they keep having more planets and moons (new ones) without ever going FTL then we know they're stuck in one system.

Quote:
and inter-system cargo will be sent by unmanned, or sparcely manned cargo vessels, not faster then light space ships.

The Serenity is a cargo ship and it's always sublight. I never mentioned FTL cargo haulers insystem, I was thinking fixed wormholes.

P.S. Check out Revelation Space, Chasm City, and Redemption Ark (all by Alister Reynolds) for Slower-Than-Light Science Fiction.

-------------------------------------------------
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May you be in heaven an hour before
The Devil knows you’re dead.

SHUGGIE

Wednesday, October 9, 2002 6:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:
(Since this is an American show, I'm assuming that one million = 1,000,000. I could do start over with European millions, but I'm getting a headache.)

You're thinking about billions. A European million is identical to an American one. Also I don't know about the rest of Europe but the American standard for a billion (1,000,000,000) is almost the standard in the UK - the older European/British billion (1,000,000,000,000) is not really used much any more.

Shug

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