Out of Gas and Gravity
POSTED BY: Ixian
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 22:39
VIEWED: 10890
PAGE 4 of 4
Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
The roleplaying game attempts to explain it in terms of ubertech (kind of out of keeping with Firefly's low tech approach.)
I don't recall the RPG's explanation being particularly ubertech; all their reasoning boils down to is that while it takes a goodly amount of power to set up an artificial grav field, once set up it takes very little power to maintain one.
Another way to put it is that even after power goes down, it may take several hours for a grav field to fully "relax", unless you deliberatly expend a bit of extra power to "flatten it out".
"Cap'n, I dinna think the doubletalk can stand the straaaaaain." -- The Unknown Engineer
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Since Anonymous1 mentions Star Gate,
I gotta contribute this. In the Episode Wormhole Xtreme, where they're doing a behind the scenes satire , an actress asks the director, paraphrased, " I'm out of phase, right? So I can walk thru walls, right? How come I don't fall thru the floor?"
and the only answer is " We'll have to get back to you on that ..."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Surely it would be a mcguffin?
I think it's stated that Serenity travels at 1% of lightspeed (so 0.01c), she can also take upwards of a month to travel between worlds. In Safe we know the time between Serenity taking on cattle from Persephone in Shindig and off loading them on Jiangyin is three weeks from Mal's line:
"Cattle on the ship three weeks, she don't go near 'em. Suddenly, we're on Jiangyin and she's got a driving need to commune with the beasts?"
Given that the planets of the Verse are going to be quite packed in (most of the evidence points to a single system with one star) journey times may be quite short with nothing faster than a drive like the VASIMR.
I'm not convinced, Citizen. I'll talk to the techhead from the planetarium next time he's in. (Did I mention we have a planetarium at work?) As I see it that's still a
Select to view spoiler:
shitload
of acceleration, even allowing for your 1% and three weeks.
From my memory (I've only watched the full series once to date, but I'm working on it) some of Serenity's voyages are only a couple of days, which means she has to get up to 3000km/s pretty fast.
Also the habitable zone of a single system is a disc about 250 - 300 million km in radius and you can't cut straight through the middle cause there's a dirty great sun in the way. As I say, I'll get the maths department to run the figures for me.
www.cpfc.org - my life
www.nbhs.school.nz - my work
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I wasn't denying high acceleration that probably requires a counteract to the crews inertia, just that it's not relativistic. Hey even 0.1c isn't relatavistic, relativistic effects are really negligable until you're travelling at around 0.5c.
We can't work out Serenity's acceleration, because we don't know how long it takes her to reach these estimates of maximum speed (of course in space there's no such thing, there is just acceleration but that's a different issue for now).
If we do make some assumptions finding her maximum acceleration would actually be quite trivial. I could throw some figures together if you like.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Actually, I'm happy now. We were simply talking at crosspurposes as to what we mean by relativistic velocity. You clearly meant when issues like mass and time become significant, whereas I meant when speeds are measured as a light speed value (I accept yours is less ambiguous).
www.cpfc.org - my life
www.nbhs.school.nz - my work
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME