Mechanics of Firefly
POSTED BY: Hardware
UPDATED: Thursday, December 19, 2002 02:41
VIEWED: 7277
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I just had a random thought while watching the old computer boot up. A beauty shot of Serenity is my wallpaper and I was looking at the midsection, where there is a ring circling the ship. I'm thinking that could be a collider ring. Opinions?
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I think it's the alternator.
GatorMarc
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I think the ring is the means of creating artificial gravity, similar to the station on Babylon 5. We have seen other ships that have gravity, and yet no ring, but we've been told several times that firefly is a well constructed, but older model, ship.
But this is all wild speculation. I like the collider ring theory mentioned above though.
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Artificial gravity through centrifugal force would indicate that the section where they have gravity is highly curved (and it's not a big ship) and that there are sections of the ship that don't have gravity. What we see is gravity throughout a flat decked ship. So IMO the rotating section has nothing to do with artificial gravity. Something to do with propulsion. Probably rotates at the same angular velocity as the engine does inside the ship.
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Well as there is no technical mumbo jumbo (which i really do appreciate) like it usually is in shows like star trek we probably have to think it out ourselves. well this ring has definetly something to do with the engines as it starts to rotate when they engage in this hyperspace kinda speed. I dont know exactly if some of you know the pc game "i-war" which is a very very nice space sim, but i'd like to "steal" the function of the propulsion and say: this ring creates some sort of disortion around the ship it kinda "wrap" the space around the ship, so the ship makes a short "jump", as the ship doesnt move actually there is no inertia which also would explain why the crew does not splat all over the back of the ship when it accelerates, repeating this process couple tousand times in the second and youll get a smooth glide trough the space.
It also could explain the relatively fast travel, tho we have no idea how fast the serenity really goes: as we all know you cant go faster than light, well this propulsion would be a way of to work around the problem. Due to the ship not moving the ship dont go faster than light theoretically it doenst go anywhere, but the space around the ship does.
The greenish thing coming out from the rear of the ship may be some sort of overheated coolant or plasma, or just like the smoke coming out of the exhaust of a car.
Well hope my english skill did suffice to explain it in an understadable way.
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So, a propulsion system similar to the mechanics Vernor Vinge described in "A Fire Upon the Deep"?
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Hey all.. I had two options as to the ring. Either it's a giant superconducting loop that stores energy to power the ship's sudden acceleration from 0 to lightspeed plus in five seconds - Much like the Rings Dave Weber uses in his Honorverse ships, or it's a magnetic field coil that generates some kind of barrier to prevent the crew being fried by the radiation emitted from the Drive-core.
Just my opinion.
Twelve spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of space.
The silence on Lester Tourville's flag bridge was absolute
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The artificial gravity pretty much has to be a part of the ship itself - like a material that normalizes gravity to 1G (or whatever) based on orientation and thickness, or something like that.
This type of thing is required for dealing with any real amount of acceleration anyway.
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I doubt the Firefly travels anywhere near lightspeed. Doesn't the whole show take place in the same star system with lots of planets?
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They haven't been too specific about that, kind of weird that way. It started out as 'a new Solar System' but ended up with 'A whole new galaxy of Earths.'
Regardless, completing any sort of interplanetary journey within 18 hours requires an immense amount of accelleration.
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