Map of the Verse discussion
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 30, 2024 08:33
VIEWED: 49136
PAGE 9 of 18
The Map of the Verse does not detail the orbital directions of all the worlds, protostars, moons, but only the directions of the 4 Suns orbiting the Core (White Sun). The White Paper also did not, as of the last time I checked.
I had thought there was a standardized formula for the orbital direction of primaries and satellites in celestial mechanics, derived from formation principles, but perhaps I was mistaken.
The terms involved are DIRECT Rotation aka PROGRADE Rotation - meaning rotating in the same direction as the rest of the system, or most of the system, and RETROGRADE Rotation, meaning rotating in the opposite direction as the rest of the system. Apparently Retrograde does not refer to the comparison of a satellite's Primary, but only to the overall System norm.
This is about ACTUAL Retrograde Rotation, as opposed to Apparent Retrograde. Apparent Retrograde refers to how celestial views are observed from Earth's surface (aka astrological or Zodiac retrograde).
For instance, in Earth's Solar System, all of the planets orbit the Sun in a counterclockwise direction, as viewed from a point in space above Earth's North Pole. Our Sun also rotates in this CCW direction.
All planets except Venus also rotate in the same CCW direction, making CCW the Direct Rotation direction. Venus rotates in clockwise direction, making it the only planet with Retrograde Rotation.
Jupiter's largest, inner moons are also CCW, but it's 4 outermost moons, which are smallest, orbit Jupiter CW, making them Retrograde (they ae belived to be "captured" satellites, not originally formed around Jupiter).
Saturn and it's 5 Satellites apparently orbit in a plane more than 90 degrees from the normal plane, making them technically retrograde, but they are all in the same direction of orbit and rotation (one might logically think the satellites would be considered Direct because they follow the lead of their Primary's rotational spin, but they are instead compared to the Solar whole and considered Retrograde).
Also, Pluto is mentioned in places as being Retrograde rotation, but I did not find further explanation - perhaps certain portions of references deleted mention of Pluto after it's demotion, and other parts were not edited.
All of the rest of Earth's Solar System Planets and moons are Direct Rotation both in spin and orbit. Other retrograde rotations are for asteroids and comets.
One helpful reference I found was at this linky, in the paragraph under "Non-planetary Orbit" about halfway down:
http://www.answers.com/topic/orbit
I hope I got all that right. I welcome corrections or further explanations to be posted.
Applications to the Verse:
The Map of the Verse shows that Blue Sun orbits White Sun in a CW direction, and Blue Sun Planets orbit in a plane perpendicular to the Verse's primary plane. The other 3 Suns orbit White Sun in CCW direction.
Although there may be expections, particularly with outermost satellites like moons, it would seem logical to assume that all planetary, Protostar, and moon spin rotations and orbital rotations in the White, Red, Georgia, and Kalidasa Systems are CCW; and Blue Sun could be either, it looks like it might not affect calculations of Verse travel much, so far.
Of course, if at any time Joss, Universal, or QMX make reference in Map or White Paper or other place about a different view, we must defer to the new information. This is just postulated in absence of further data.
Again, please post any corrections or comments.
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If anyone can be benefitted by it, my ARC of the Verse is online here. It's a charted synopsis of the White Paper. Brief, but far less pages.
http://cortexsystemrpg.org/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item226
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Also remember that star systems are dynamic, traveling between planet A and Planet B might take three days today, but next month it could be three weeks.
While looking for something else, I ran across this again.
Actually, from data in The White Paper we find that the Verse is fairly static in terms of planetary positions. It does not move very quickly, so distances from one world to another remain quite consistent over many years.
More on this later, when I have more time.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Based upont the revised information above, we can now review the itineraries of the Verse.
Let's start with BDM Serenity.
Lilac to Beaumonde to Haven to Training House to Haven to Miranda to Mr. Universe's place.
Beaumonde in 15th orbital ring around Kalidasa, which is 121Au from White Sun. Beaumonde is about 13.4Au from Kalidasa Sun, so Beaumonde's farthest distance from White Sun is about 134.4Au.
Lilac, second moon on New Canaan in 2nd orbital ring around Blue Sun, which is 180Au from White Sun. New Canaan is about 2.39Au from Blue Sun, so the nearest distance to White Sun that New Canaan and Lilac get is about 177.6Au.
Therefore the shortest distance that Lilac and Beaumonde can get is about 43.2Au, or about 23-30 hours at max Serenity acceleration.
Haven, 1st moon on Deadwood in 7th orbital ring around Blue Sun. Deadwood is about 14.0Au from Blue Sun, so nearest disance to White Sun would be 166Au. Shortest distance from Beaumonde to Haven would be about 31.6Au, or about 20-26 hours at max Serenity accel/decel.
Miranda orbiting Burnham around Blue Sun isn't much distance from Haven. Miranda about 3.9Au from Burnham, and Burnham about 23.4Au from Blue Sun (8th orbital ring). So nearest that Miranda gets to Haven is about 5.5Au and farthest apart is about 41.3Au (about the saem as Lilac to Beaumonde closest range).
So, does this seem reasonable? Or is the Beaumonde distance out of wack? Does it seem reasonable that it took a day to get from Lilac to Beaumonde, and another day to get back to Haven (a short ways from Lilac)?
I didn't get that impression from film and scripts, how about you?
The travels to and from Training House are not a problem, nor are trips to and from Miranda.
Lemming has admitted that not all of the Map of the Verse is vetted within the series and BDM travel itinerary, so should we decide that this placement of Beaumonde in the Kalidasa System is one of these anomolies?
It would seem that if Beaumonde was in the Blue Sun system, or at least the same system as either Lilac or Haven, then the travel tiems would seem more in line with what the BDM showed.
Anybody else?
One wrinkle to consider is the upgrades to Serenity after TLB and before BDM. Apparently the proceeds from the fencing of the Lassiter paid for all the Serenity upgrades, like more blinking lights around the cockpit, and the new mule. Did they include speed/performance upgrades? Is their travel time quicker now? If so, it's also possible to consider one of the moons of Dragon's Egg as a
training House location.
Still seems clear that Beaumonde location is out of tolerance, it should be in Blue Sun System, based upon all BDH references to it.
Also, wanted to point out a reference I keep forgetting.
In Serenity Vis Comp (written by some Joss guy), on pg 114 Jayne says "Not one day ago" Mal was ready to get rid of River. This is after Training House, referring to Maidenhead on Beaumonde. So then from Beaumonde to Haven (and hours spent there) to Training House takes less than a day, and certainly less than 2 days. This line does not end up in the screen version.
There is also River's line on Miranda, that it will take 4 hours to get to Mr Universe's place from Miranda - this line also does not end up on film.
From Beaumonde in Kalidasa System to Mr. Universe's Comm Station is about 240Au distance, and adding a flyby of Haven in Blue Sun System makes a minimum of 420Au distance. Even if Serenity were able to travel at the Speed of Light, and achieve that velocity very quicky, that's still about 55-60 hours of travel (or 2.5 days). Not even counting all the hours of screen activity. Take a "couple hours" each way from Haven to Training House, this makes 60-65 hours of travel, with Speed of Light Travel. If only half the Speed of Light, this is 115-125 hours. This does not mesh with the time period written by Joss in Jayne's line.
I do understand this is not the greatest reference, but it does show the intent of time displacme
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
While looking for something else, I ran across this again.
Actually, from data in The White Paper we find that the Verse is fairly static in terms of planetary positions. It does not move very quickly, so distances from one world to another remain quite consistent over many years.
More on this later, when I have more time.
To be honest I think the Orbital periods in the White Paper are wrong. It looks like they've been extrapolated from the orbital periods of Earth, the Moon and the Gas Giants of the Sol System.
As he notes in the show your working section:
Quote:
Orbital periods are based on Earth for planets and stars, and the Moon for moons and planets around protostars. Since
the protostars were originally super-massive gas giants, it made sense to treat the planets orbiting them as “very large
moons” instead. So, their periods are listed in days instead of years. For those planets, their gas giant or protostar
determines their orbital period.
Some quick back of the envelope calculations for Bernadette show that this isn't an accurate approach. Given the mass of White Sun and the semi-major axis of Bernadette's orbit, the period of that orbit should be about 13.26 Years, yet the White Paper puts it at 23.70 Years.
Orbital mechanics gives exacting relationships, if White Sun is X kg and Bernadette is Y distance, then the orbital velocity HAS TO BE Z m/s, and the Orbital Circumference HAS TO BE PI*(2Y) (well, that's a simplification, but close enough). So either the Mass of White Sun and/or the distance of Bernadette are wrong, or the orbital period is.
Either way how long an orbit takes to complete is largely irrelevant, all the bodies will be travelling at a fairly good speed, and each different orbit has a corresponding different velocity. To see quickly travel times would change you'd need to look at how quickly the bodies relative positions to each other change.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
While looking for something else, I ran across this again.
Actually, from data in The White Paper we find that the Verse is fairly static in terms of planetary positions. It does not move very quickly, so distances from one world to another remain quite consistent over many years.
More on this later, when I have more time.
To be honest I think the Orbital periods in the White Paper are wrong. It looks like they've been extrapolated from the orbital periods of Earth, the Moon and the Gas Giants of the Sol System.
As he notes in the show your working section:Quote:
Orbital periods are based on Earth for planets and stars, and the Moon for moons and planets around protostars. Since
the protostars were originally super-massive gas giants, it made sense to treat the planets orbiting them as “very large
moons” instead. So, their periods are listed in days instead of years. For those planets, their gas giant or protostar
determines their orbital period.
Some quick back of the envelope calculations for Bernadette show that this isn't an accurate approach. Given the mass of White Sun and the semi-major axis of Bernadette's orbit, the period of that orbit should be about 13.26 Years, yet the White Paper puts it at 23.70 Years.
Orbital mechanics gives exacting relationships, if White Sun is X kg and Bernadette is Y distance, then the orbital velocity HAS TO BE Z m/s, and the Orbital Circumference HAS TO BE PI*(2Y) (well, that's a simplification, but close enough). So either the Mass of White Sun and/or the distance of Bernadette are wrong, or the orbital period is.
Either way how long an orbit takes to complete is largely irrelevant, all the bodies will be travelling at a fairly good speed, and each different orbit has a corresponding different velocity. To see quickly travel times would change you'd need to look at how quickly the bodies relative positions to each other change.
I don't know what you consider to be a pretty good speed. Most of the bodies are moving through space at about half an Au per year up to 1.2 Au per year. Comparing the relative positions of the nearest bodies from Core (Pelorum) to Georgia System (Shadow's moons), a 22Au distance gets changed to 25Au over a period of 6 years. Not much of a drastic change in spatiaql position.
Same thing for the gap between Kalidasa (Salisbury) to Blue Sun (Burnham/Miranda or Deadwood). Distance changes from about 45Au to about 48Au over a 6 year period.
Not that big of a difference when navigating the verse.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I don't know what you consider to be a pretty good speed. Most of the bodies are moving through space at about half an Au per year up to 1.2 Au per year. Comparing the relative positions of the nearest bodies from Core (Pelorum) to Georgia System (Shadow's moons), a 22Au distance gets changed to 25Au over a period of 6 years. Not much of a drastic change in spatiaql position.
Same thing for the gap between Kalidasa (Salisbury) to Blue Sun (Burnham/Miranda or Deadwood). Distance changes from about 45Au to about 48Au over a 6 year period.
Not that big of a difference when navigating the verse.
As I said, I find those figures highly dubious, and running the numbers with well known and experimentally proved equations shows that for the example I tried it was an order of magnitude out.
And half to 1.2 AU a year really isn't that much. Think about Earth's orbit, it has to complete it in one year, and the distance it travels is roughly the circumference of a circle with a radius of 1Au. In other words:
2*PI=6.2831853
Which compares well with converting Earth's average orbital velocity from 29.77km/s to AU a year:
(29.77*31,556,926)/149,598,000=6.279827852
So 1.2AU a year max isn't that fast for an orbital velocity. Even the International space station out does that, it's orbital velocity works out to about 1.6AU a year, and that's in orbit of the relativity weak gravity field of Earth.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
I don't know what you consider to be a pretty good speed. Most of the bodies are moving through space at about half an Au per year up to 1.2 Au per year. Comparing the relative positions of the nearest bodies from Core (Pelorum) to Georgia System (Shadow's moons), a 22Au distance gets changed to 25Au over a period of 6 years. Not much of a drastic change in spatiaql position.
Same thing for the gap between Kalidasa (Salisbury) to Blue Sun (Burnham/Miranda or Deadwood). Distance changes from about 45Au to about 48Au over a 6 year period.
Not that big of a difference when navigating the verse.
As I said, I find those figures highly dubious, and running the numbers with well known and experimentally proved equations shows that for the example I tried it was an order of magnitude out.
And half to 1.2 AU a year really isn't that much. Think about Earth's orbit, it has to complete it in one year, and the distance it travels is roughly the circumference of a circle with a radius of 1Au. In other words:
2*PI=6.2831853
Which compares well with converting Earth's average orbital velocity from 29.77km/s to AU a year:
(29.77*31,556,926)/149,598,000=6.279827852
So 1.2AU a year max isn't that fast for an orbital velocity. Even the International space station out does that, it's orbital velocity works out to about 1.6AU a year, and that's in orbit of the relativity weak gravity field of Earth.
I'm not sure I see where you find a conflict in this.
Clearly, Earth is only 1Au distance, and has approx 6.28Au/year velocity.
But the fastest moving body around the White Sun, thus changing position in the Verse more than any other, is Bernadette. The orbital radius is 8.25Au, and in all of kaylee's life it has not completed an orbit, and in the portion of Kaylee's life that she's been aware of navigation and astronomical positions, Bernadette hasn't even gotten from one side of the Verse to the other (meaning the opposite side of White Sun). So travelling from most places in the Verse to Bernadette produces very little change, even in a decade, let alone a year or month.
Everything else in the Verse takes longer to move that drastically, from one side of the Verse to the other.
Even if you are correct about the orbital periods and velocities being listed a half their formulaic values, that is still not very fast, and the changes in astronomical postions and travel between in this Verse are not very substantial. They are quite minimal, when travelling from one world to another. The only big differences are within a system, where one year it might take 10 hours from one world to another, and the next year it might take only 5 hours. But from one system to another, the difference is negligible.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Even if you are correct about the orbital periods and velocities being listed a half their formulaic values, that is still not very fast, and the changes in astronomical postions and travel between in this Verse are not very substantial. They are quite minimal, when travelling from one world to another. The only big differences are within a system, where one year it might take 10 hours from one world to another, and the next year it might take only 5 hours. But from one system to another, the difference is negligible.
I don't think they'll all be half the stated value. I'd have to run the numbers to be sure, if you want I'll try to find some time to do it this weekend. Also don't forget that journeys can change drastically not just because the start and end points are in motion, but bodies in between are as well. My feeling is that the distances would change to a greater extent than that specified, but I'd have to check the math to be sure.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
To be honest I think the Orbital periods in the White Paper are wrong. It looks like they've been extrapolated from the orbital periods of Earth, the Moon and the Gas Giants of the Sol System.
I must agree with you.
I think you are correct about all of the orbital periods listed in the White Paper being wrong.
The orbital periods given in the White Paper do not conform to the laws of astrodynamics.
Quote:
As he notes in the show your working section:Quote:
Orbital periods are based on Earth for planets and stars, and the Moon for moons and planets around protostars. Since the protostars were originally super-massive gas giants, it made sense to treat the planets orbiting them as “very large moons” instead. So, their periods are listed in days instead of years. For those planets, their gas giant or protostar determines their orbital period.
Some quick back of the envelope calculations for Bernadette show that this isn't an accurate approach. Given the mass of White Sun and the semi-major axis of Bernadette's orbit, the period of that orbit should be about 13.26 Years, yet the White Paper puts it at 23.70 Years.
The show-the-work section does describe the reasons for the incorrect figures.
In effect, all orbital periods are calculated assuming all Suns are the same mass as our Sol, but then the Paper and Map lists them with different mass. The laws of astrodynamics do show that with different mass of each Sun, different orbital durations will result.
Your calculation for Bernadette seems fairly accurate, no disagreement there.
Because the White Paper very specifically lists most of these figures such as orbital periods, and there is some implied canon influence because of the people and companies involved, it may be best to consider these to be the "given" data, and adhere to the disemination of this fiction. I suggest we refer to this group of data as "fiction" versions of the peculiar astrodynamics of the Verse. Additionally, to help out others who find these discrepancies and to save them time from blazing this same trail of data collection that we've done, we can refer to actual orbital periods and orbital velocities as the "Science" version of this group of data, based upon laws of astrodynamics present in the rest of the universe.
Quote:
Orbital mechanics gives exacting relationships, if White Sun is X kg and Bernadette is Y distance, then the orbital velocity HAS TO BE Z m/s, and the Orbital Circumference HAS TO BE PI*(2Y) (well, that's a simplification, but close enough). So either the Mass of White Sun and/or the distance of Bernadette are wrong, or the orbital period is.
I had some problem with your post because this passage was confusing, and even now after checking things, it's still confusing.
No disagreement about the orbital circumference being 2 x pi x radius.
To correct the other orbital period figures isn't terribly difficult.
To start with, the orbital periods must be changed by dividing the square root of the mass factor of the central body of the orbit.
The White Sun has mass 3.2 times the mass of our Sol. To correct the orbital period of all Core bodies directly orbiting White Sun, just divide by the square root of 3.2 which is approx 1.79. So Bernadette's given orbital period of 23.7 years can be divided by 1.79 to give 13.24 years as the correct orbital period according to the laws of astrodynamics.
Bodies directly orbiting Georgia Sun should have their given orbital periods divided by the square root of 1.1 or approx 1.05
For Red Sun, the square root of .93 is .96
For Kalidasa, the square root of 1.29 is 1.136
For Blue Sun, the square root of 1.7 is 1.304
The orbital durations for the 4 secondary Suns is a little more complex, because it appears the masses of the 2 Suns must be added and the square root of the sum is the dividing factor. This would also mean that Georgia Sun and Red Sun orbit White sun at different velocities, thus they will eventually collide.
For the orb
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