Population of the Firefly universe?

POSTED BY: BrucePluto
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 14:56
VIEWED: 10651
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TWO

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 1:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by djd:
Well, its fiction and I'm not going to get too hung up on it but it would require a fairly massive seed population for the population to be that high in a mere 500 or so years from now. Maybe they transported genetic material rather than actual people and just grew a few million in tanks when they got there?? Several million people traveling at sub light speeds for hundreds of years.... Hey, it's like science fiction!

How did there get to be 55 billion people in the Universe? Not necessarily by natural birth. Here is a real story from last week's newspaper about the cost of going to the stars followed by speculation based on The Message episode:

"People like Dr Tziolas say the technology already exists or will soon exist to send instruments and perhaps even people to nearby stars, although a human flight could cost hundred of trillions of dollars." - US dreams of sending humans to stars, Dennis Overbye, The New York Times www.deccanherald.com/content/184669/us-dreams-sending-humans-stars.htm
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Trillions? No joke? People will expect something in exchange for their $100,000,000,000,000. A ride to the stars would be a good repayment. But if people won't live long enough to see starships lift-off from Earth, not to mention arrive at the 'Verse, people might accept a promise that their children will be born on another planet. How many of these promised children would there be?

I will guess a billion women will each send a hundred eggs to the stars, with the promise that half their eggs will grow to be outstanding people such as Inara in Joss Whedon's Universe. The other half will be Jaynes. For fan-fiction, Jayne and Inara can actually be embryos from Earth, not simply descended from Earthlings.

In The Message episode, do you recall Kaylee and Simon looking at the glass container with a space alien/cow fetus with 6 legs? If these promised children are treated as cattle and grown in a glass containers, there would be a population explosion. Could even get to 55 billion.

Unfortunately for the mental health of the promised children, they will be orphans. That would go a long way in explaining why the 'Verse is such a screwed up place.

The Joss Whedon script for "Serenity," where Wash lives, is
Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/two

BRUCEPLUTO

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 2:56 PM

Howdy everyone. Thanks TWO for your input!

I didn’t know this thread would generate as much interest as it has. But I always enjoy hearing what other browncoats are thinking.

Anyway, the reason I asked the question was because it seems that in a system that has dozens of livable worlds (maybe hundreds) the number of folk populating the verse could be very high. I mean 7 billion people here on planet “Earth that Is” is an amount better than I can comprehend. Much less if we had several livable worlds in our solar system. Yepper I do realize it’s science fiction, but as for one who loves the unrestricting boundaries of writing sci/fi……science fiction could, after a while become science fact.

If one was to count all the people that have lived and died since the beginning of time…..well, I just can’t imagine that number.

Also, the verse created by Joss doesn’t explain too much of what happened on those ships that made it to the verse, or maybe those that maybe went to another system far, far away……The stories of what happened aboard those vessels could be interesting all by themselves.

Anyhoo, thanks to all that have responded to my question. It gives me a better understanding of what could be in the future.

BPZ

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