Outer space names/things in Firefly & the real world

POSTED BY: JaynezTown
UPDATED: Sunday, August 15, 2004 09:11
VIEWED: 6499
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JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, August 7, 2004 6:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
Quote:
Originally posted by JaynezTown:
It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.
This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

I'm not saying that 500 years would make anything *better*. (I expect the Roman Empire wasn't too happy with the last 200 years of their reign and collapse, for example).

What I was getting at was that "only" 500 years could see a lot of tech change that could *easily* put us outside of our solar system. I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

As to the similarity in names and such on planets and moons, humankind traditionally holds on to names from our past ... look at how many "New This" or "New That" communities there are in North America, named after wherever the first foreigners who arrived there had originated from.

I mean, we still have Caeserean-sections, supposedly named after the manner of birth of a long-dead Roman emperor. We are nothing if not very creative when it comes to naming things and places. We seem to prefer to take ancient names and hold on to them like precious gems.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

Bellerophon is a cool name for a world in the episode Trash, it was also the name of the ship that lands on the Forbidden Planet. This is the Planet/Moon that adds huge weight to your theory, that is in the Episode known as TRASH. Mrs Renolds, Bridget, Saffron or whatever name she goes by seduces Mal into going for the Bellerophon job, getting the original hand-held
laser pistol.

Back to some real world news...As some of you may of heard, giant telescopes supported by the ESA or NASA have been colecting evidence for new planets in the universe, that is planets outside our own solar system. Back in 95' astronomers found a planet orbiting another star 51 Pegasi, since then many more of these Alien worlds have been found around other Sun's, some have horrible names like 55 Cancri b, or a name such as PSR 125751,
but one of these alien worlds was called 'Bellerophon' by scientists.

If indeed the Bellerophon in the firelfy's Trash episode is based on our real Bellerphon, then it would support the theory that the Alliance of 500 years in the future does indeed go beyond our own Solar System. However I still feel that the Majority of the Core is based around Earth and our own Solar System.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Earth

LTNOWIS

Saturday, August 7, 2004 10:50 PM

Quote:
I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

I agree. However, I think the main argument about Firefly's setting is whether it's in one far away solar system or the entire galaxy.

Anyways, on the topic of human advancement, I'd say that in 500 years we haven't invented any major religions. We still have towns in my area called Alexandria and Vienna, and there are many other towns with biblical names. On the other hand, languages have evolved greatly. I've read Shakespeare, and he's got some pretty incomprehensible slang. Likewise, technology has advanced astronomically even in the past 100 years. I don't think we'll keep up this rate of innovation for 500 years, as we may have some dark ages, but in 500 years I can easily see us in a Firefly-level of advancement. Oh yeah, and Firefly actually takes place 513 years from now, not 500 years.

SAMURAIX47

Sunday, August 8, 2004 3:37 AM

One of the things I've stated in previous posts regarding the One Solar System or Multiple Systems debate is that the term "Galaxy" is often bandied about by hollywood tv and movie makers as if it were the size of a solar system. The galaxy is a huge place... and if Firefly verse were to encompass several solar systems with multiple planets and many colonizable moons then it would be in a small cluster of stars close to each other... humans would not be spread out across the galaxy.

There seems to about 123 extrasolar planets that have been discovered, most are the size of gas giants like Jupiter... and it's possible they will have their own system of satellites. And if these systems lie in the Habitable Zone, the distance from a star where water would be above freezing and below boiling temperatures at 1 atmosphere, then those could harbor human life with the right terraforming.

http://exoplanets.org
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

So that's why I take the multiple system side of this debate... one solar system to me seems too small... and it definitely is not our solar system.

Jaymes

ANNIK

Sunday, August 8, 2004 5:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SamuraiX47:
So that's why I take the multiple system side of this debate... one solar system to me seems too small... and it definitely is not our solar system.

No kidding ... can you imagine our sun managing to make our outer planets and their moons such a bright, sunshiny-yellow sun? I certainly can't. I don't believe it for a minute.

The light gets dimmer the further out you go. I noticed it immediately the first time I was abducted. Ooops!

supposed to talk about that.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

TENTHCREWMEMBER

Sunday, August 8, 2004 7:47 AM

Alright, I will give you the that the last 500 years, pretty big in human advancement. But what is to say the next 500 go that way? Look at 1000 to 1500 A.D.

Lesee...guns aside...sailpower to ummm sailpower, flat earth to flat earth (okay 1492 et al but 492 years is closer to 500 than not), death by age 20 to amputation of afflicted limbs (ooh, you might make 35! if the plague didn't get you...), etc etc. They didn't call the Dark ages the Dark ages because of a lengthy solar eclipse. :)

Now to counterpoint shiny planetoids too far from the sun...lesee...

First of all, light doesn't dim dramatically within a solar system. If that were the case, you wouldn't see stars at night that are MUCH farther away. Secondly, if you were able to terraform say, a moon of Jupiter, such as Ganymede, realistically, you would have some bizzare days and nights during a "year". Many sun rises/sun sets while the moon was closer to the sun than the planet, and loooong periods of darkness that make an Alaskan year look like a strobe light as the planet blocks all the light to the moon.

The sun is plenty bright to, say, give you quite am illuinated day on Neptune, should you manage to get a livable oxygen rich atmo on it. It would just be a "smaller" sunrise.

Also keep in mind, that if you are travelling at sub-light speeds, and say you are going from Pluto to a moon of Saturn, and Pluto is on the "left" of the sun, and Saturn is on the "right" of the sun, that is still a long trip, whereas the trip is much shorter if they are in-line with eachother on the same side. This would justify how sometimes it could take weeks and or months to still make the trip. If the show makes its 'evidence' of this possibility anywhere, it is in the fact that, despite high-end technology existing, such as laser guns, they are still very rare. Even the Alliance uses slugthrowers in the war, and used missiles in space to destroy a derelict (Bushwacked), and fire at Serenity (The Message).

BTW - It doesn't matter to me, if it is supposed to be Sol or not, but I do like the notion it could be. ;)

I also wonder if maybe the Sun had expanded (though science would currently indicate not) in this universe of Joss' and maybe Earth-that-was simply became uninhabitable and man HAD to move further out.

Yes? No? I am a crackedpot? ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

SAMURAIX47

Sunday, August 8, 2004 8:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
First of all, light doesn't dim dramatically within a solar system. If that were the case, you wouldn't see stars at night that are MUCH farther away. Secondly, if you were able to terraform say, a moon of Jupiter, such as Ganymede, realistically, you would have some bizzare days and nights during a "year". Many sun rises/sun sets while the moon was closer to the sun than the planet, and loooong periods of darkness that make an Alaskan year look like a strobe light as the planet blocks all the light to the moon.

Check the orbital period of Ganymede. It orbits Jupiter in 7.2 days... so only a portion of that time, less than half, would it be in the shadow of Jupiter. Also the amount of heat a planetary body recieves is based on the distance from the sun, the cross-section of the planet, and the thickness of the atmosphere... that's why all those moons are icy bodies... there ain't enough heat from the sun to melt ice water, no atmosphere to speak of... With IO we know that tidal stresses cause the vulcanic activity and the hope for EUROPA is that the same tidal forces are heating it's interior. We could build up an atmosphere on Ganymede but you'll be standing on miles thick ice, that air is going to be cold for a long time.

Read Robert Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky, and Arthur C. Clarke's 2010, and Kim Robinson's Red Mars.

Another thing... Some of those bright stars in the sky at night are some big ass stars compared to our g-type Sol. For example... Castor is made of 3 binary systems (6 stars) orbiting close to each other... there are some stars you can't see with the naked-eye yet they are within 100 light-years because they don't have high enough absolute magnitudes.

Jaymes

GROUNDED

Sunday, August 8, 2004 11:19 AM

The spoken intros that were attached to the first episodes during original broadcast strongly imply that Firefly is not set in our solar system.

LTNOWIS

Sunday, August 8, 2004 3:42 PM

Posted by SAMURAIX47:

Quote:
One of the things I've stated in previous posts regarding the One Solar System or Multiple Systems debate is that the term "Galaxy" is often bandied about by hollywood tv and movie makers as if it were the size of a solar system. The galaxy is a huge place... and if Firefly verse were to encompass several solar systems with multiple planets and many colonizable moons then it would be in a small cluster of stars close to each other... humans would not be spread out across the galaxy.

Good point. The Star Wars galaxy is vast, and much of it is unexplored. Also, if we could get back to this solar system, than there would be crazy expeditions searching for Earth-that-was, or looking for space probes on Mars or whatever. I support the Star Cluster idea, even though it doesn't make a ton of sense.

Posted by TenthCrewmember:

Quote:
Alright, I will give you the that the last 500 years, pretty big in human advancement. But what is to say the next 500 go that way? Look at 1000 to 1500 A.D.

While Europe was busy inventing jousting and crusading, China invented Ming porcelin, and Arabs may have been doing stuff. Of course, you still make a good point. There also might be some devolving, as lot's of cutting-edge experiments, theories, and prototypes may have been left behind. Look at the decline of the Roman Empire. Without monks and Arabs, lots of Greek knowledge would have been lost.

TENTHCREWMEMBER

Sunday, August 8, 2004 4:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
The spoken intros that were attached to the first episodes during original broadcast strongly imply that Firefly is not set in our solar system.

Yes, but given the fact that knowledge aabout the original Earth, and given the rarity of artifacts from such, might indicate a huge tragedy, such as a global war that eventually extended off the planet and possibly onto Mars, and alot of knowledge may have been lost and destroyed, and 500 years later, sure technology progressed, but burnt books and slagged CPUs can't be recovered, so from the perspective of characters less than 60 years old, the true history of Earth may have been forgotten, or even suppressed/politically spun by the "winners" for fear people may blame them for destruction of their planet of origin.
History is written by the winners, and the Alliance has apparently been the winners for some time...and interesting that a high-level Alliance officer (Durran Haymer in Trash) has such a big collection of Earth-that-was stuff...including a phone booth. :)

So many possibilities. Damn I love this show. Never gives you everything, but always seems to give you more than you expected!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

ANNIK

Sunday, August 8, 2004 4:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
So many possibilities. Damn I love this show. Never gives you everything, but always seems to give you more than you expected!

Well put!

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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