To Whom It May Concern: Future Quotes Finale

POSTED BY: zoid
UPDATED: Sunday, June 20, 2004 06:50
VIEWED: 13201
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LUPINADDAMS

Thursday, June 17, 2004 7:52 PM

Zoid,

thoroughly enjoyed the quotes and the deep structure of them. Two thoughts crossed my transom:

I like the idea of the destruction of Shadow etc - is there anything in canon that refers to it or is it another of your extrapolations (and if the latter, it works so very well with the theme song)?

One thing I couldn't suspend disbelief for - Kaylee has six daughters and only one of them is as sexually frisky as her mom? Especially with the no-doubt strong influence of their Auntie Inara... (Also I reckon the odds are at least one of them will be gay and at least two will experiment with bisexuality... another likely consequence of Auntie Inara's moral influence!)

OK maybe getting a *little* carried away here... blame my inner Goatboy!

Unlike many of the other folk here, I'm not sure a fanfic would quite work - some things deserve a shorter form. It'd be like expanding a set of haiku up to an epic...

Thanks again for giving us something to think about.

"You are what you do."
Andrew Vacchs

KOHAN

Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:20 PM

yes, I did catch the turning off gravity generator part...

I just thought the star war bit would be funny

@.@ guess not

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"You know, they say mercy is the mark of a great man.

Guess I'm just a good man.

Well, I'm all right. "

GORAMSHINY

Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:52 PM

Speaking of this outgassing thing... amd his may be a tad spoiler for those who haven't had a gander at the "Draft Serenity poster" ( can't remember where that link was ) so just in case, and i hope i do this right...

Select to view spoiler:

In the poster there's a shot of serenity in the uper left corner and a planet in the lower right... with what's either a massive explosion ( a la outgassing ) or the Flare of Serenity's drive... cant tell which. Would be interesting if it's the former now wouldn't it?

ZOID

Friday, June 18, 2004 7:03 AM

LupinAddams wrote:

Quote:
I like the idea of the destruction of Shadow etc - is there anything in canon that refers to it or is it another of your extrapolations (and if the latter, it works so very well with the theme song)?

Nope. It is strictly a product of my imagination. I base the assumption on the lyric content of “The Ballad of Serenity”, words and music by Joss Whedon. If the song had been written by anyone else, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Written by another, “Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand,” might just be ‘purty words’. Written by Joss, I believe each word has significance to the Firefly (back?)story.

As far as the atmospheric outgassing is concerned, it just occurred to me that if the Alliance/BlueSun had the technology to give a moon or asteroid Earth-normal gravity, and an atmosphere of similar composition and density, then they also had the power to take them away. Here’s a little more research and another analogy to help visualize the effects of turning off a planetary gravity generator.

An atmosphere is (according to Encarta) a “mixture of gases surrounding any celestial object that has a gravitational field strong enough to prevent the gases from escaping; especially the gaseous envelope of Earth. The principal constituents of the atmosphere of Earth are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent)… Normal atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1,013 millibars, that is, 760 mm (29.92 in) of mercury (related to the height of a column of mercury that the air pressure will support).”

According to NASA’s website (searched on ‘atmospheric pressure’), Earth’s atmosphere is so ‘heavy’ that it actually deforms the Earth’s surface. “Earth's atmosphere is pressing against each square inch of you with a force of 1 kilogram per square centimeter (14.7 pounds per square inch). The force on 1,000 square centimeters (a little larger than a square foot) is about a ton!” And there's quite a bit of square footage on a planetary surface, no?

Finally, from NASA, here’s their (more lucid) version of my analogy for y’all to think on:
“When a balloon is blown up, the air pressure inside the balloon slowly becomes greater than the air pressure outside the balloon. Since the balloon is made of rubber and is expandable, it grows larger and larger. When the balloon is popped (i.e., the gravity holding the column of atmospheric gases at sea-level pressures to the lunar surface is returned to 1/16th Earth normal with the flick of a switch), the air escapes instantly.” Obviously, this analogy is imprecise (or else it wouldn't be an analogy, it would be a description), but the sudden removal of gravity would be very much like a balloon's skin bursting. The atmosphere, released from its own weight trapping it to the 'celestial body' (weight is an effect of gravity) would violently rebound away from the surface.

As I’ve said before, the whole outgassing thing has never been discussed by anybody in relationship to the show. It just occurred to me that Alliance/BlueSun could shut down the generator (without getting caught doing it), and the effect would be utterly catastrophic.

And I’ll say it one more time: That’s a special effect I’d like to see in the movie, please. ZOIC, are you listening?

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 307 days, 22 hours, 1 minutes, and 41 seconds left until The BDM!

RELFEXIVE

Friday, June 18, 2004 11:01 PM

I knew about the gravity generators thing too, was just commenting on the comments about the... let's just stop there.

In any case: gorram fine work

Mal: "We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so... very... pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."

PERIDIDDLE

Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:08 AM

That is brilliant. All of it. BRILLIANT. I love the speculation, the way everything connects and works, and, and *writersgush.*

I have the slight urge to write an fanfic based around this, I'm somewhat confused to admit. I rarely write fanfic, but this is almost too brilliant not to ponder on. Maybe several short stories spanning time would be better...but just to make sure, if I ever happen to use this, you're fine with it? Full credit all around, OF COURSE...

You're rutting brilliant. Bwahaha.

"Bwaa...it's kind of a warrior...strikes fear into the hearts of..."

THEREALME

Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:20 AM

Great stuff, here. A very plausible future of Our Heroes. I really enjoyed it.

However, I'd like to comment on the moon-wide gravity generator idea. When you call a body a moon, that only means that it orbits a larger body that is not a star.

I get the distinct impression that when people are talking about moons here, they have in mind bodies of the size of Earth's moon or less. But if the Earth were in orbit around Jupiter, it would be a moon, too.

Now, I am not entirely discounting that Earth-like gravity could be generated on small asteroids, but I must be a bit skeptical. After all, we can air-condition our homes today, but working on a large enough scale to be effective for lowering the temperature of a PLANET is a bit more.

Just my opinion.

The Real Me

Got Mudder's Milk?

ZOID

Saturday, June 19, 2004 7:20 AM

THEREALME wrote:

Quote:
...However, I'd like to comment on the moon-wide gravity generator idea. When you call a body a moon, that only means that it orbits a larger body that is not a star.

I get the distinct impression that when people are talking about moons here, they have in mind bodies of the size of Earth's moon or less. But if the Earth were in orbit around Jupiter, it would be a moon, too.

Now, I am not entirely discounting that Earth-like gravity could be generated on small asteroids, but I must be a bit skeptical. After all, we can air-condition our homes today, but working on a large enough scale to be effective for lowering the temperature of a PLANET is a bit more...

As I said above (or elsewhere on this board, can't remember which), the manipulation of gravity is a godlike power. Right or wrong, plausible or not, I believe JW's Firefly has such manipulation as part of its root assumptions.

I base my assertion that the celestial bodies inhabited in the 'verse are both planetary and sub-planetary massive bodies on the following snippet from "Serenity, Part I" (emphases added to highlight canonical clues):

Quote:
DOBSON
I hear a lot of the border moons are
in bad shape. Plagues, and famine...

ZOE
Well, some of that's exaggerated, and
some of it ain't. All those moons --
just like the central planets,
they're as close to Earth-That-Was as
we could make 'em: gravity, atmosphere,
and such, but...

MAL
Once they're terraformed, they'll
dump settlers on there with nothing
but blankets, hatchets, maybe a herd.
Some of them make it, some of them...

In our solar system, the largest satellite is Ganymede, a Jovian moon.

Quote:
With a diameter of 5268 kilometers, Ganymede is the largest satellite in the solar system and larger than the planet Mercury. Ganymede and Callisto are similar in size and density. (From http://www.lpi.usra.edu/research/outerp/gany.html ) Ganymede is the largest satellite in the solar system. It is larger in diameter than Mercury but only about half its mass. Ganymede is much larger than Pluto. (From http://www.nineplanets.org/ganymede.html )

Earth's equatorial surface gravity (m/sec^2) is 9.78 as opposed to Mercury's 2.78 m/sec^2. This means that Mercury's gravity is roughly 1/3 Earth normal. Ganymede's surface gravity is only 1.42 m/sec^2, 1/7th that of Earth's.

Even the largest moon -- though it is larger in diameter than two planets in the system -- still has only 1/7th Earth's gravity. In order to give them Earth-like gravity, Alliance/BlueSun must have the technological capability to manipulate the gravitational fabric of the Universe.

I'm open to other suggestions, but I don't see how any other conclusions can be drawn. A gravity drive for a ship, sure. But we're talking about applying an Earth-normal gravity to a celestial body. It really doesn't much matter what size that body is, that's a heck of a trick and -- as with fission and (future) fusion powerplants -- entails a heck of a downside in case of catastrophic failure, too. Especially if the 'catastrophic failure' is a WMD application...

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 306 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes, and 33 seconds left until The BDM!

ZOID

Saturday, June 19, 2004 7:38 AM

perididdle wrote:

Quote:
I have the slight urge to write an fanfic based around this, I'm somewhat confused to admit. I rarely write fanfic, but this is almost too brilliant not to ponder on. Maybe several short stories spanning time would be better...but just to make sure, if I ever happen to use this, you're fine with it? Full credit all around, OF COURSE...

Knock yourself out. As I stated above, I don't do fanfic (although, one might consider the 'future quotes' series a sort of fanfic, in their own right). You may have some competition, though; see my reply to Astriana above, dated Monday, June 07, 2004 - 10:11...

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 306 days, 21 hours, 29 minutes, and 5 seconds left until The BDM!

THEREALME

Saturday, June 19, 2004 3:04 PM

Zoid,

Yes and no.

I stand by my point about moons. A moon is a body that orbits a planet. It suggests nothing about size or mass, except that the moon is smaller in mass than its primary, or else the primary would be orbiting the moon.

While Ganymede is the largest sized moon in the solar system (talking about diameter), I am not sure if it is the most massive. I think it is mostly ice. So a smaller sized but denser moon could have more surface gravity.

If an earth-sized body orbited a gas giant, then it would be called a moon. It is true that our solar system has no such examples, but that doesn't mean that such a thing is impossible.

Certainly the people of the 'verse have the ability to manipulate gravity, but making the jump that they can influence planets is a mighty big leap in my opinon. As an analogy (if you don't like the air conditioning one) we have rockets now that can send space probes past Pluto. But we can't strap a rocket onto the Earth and take it for a spin.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I have to agree with you that Zoe's statement implies engineered gravity changes. That was something that I missed before.

Maybe I am dead wrong.

All I can say about that (respectfully and in the words of Mal) is "Huh!"

The Real Me

Got Mudder's Milk?

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