'Earth That Was...'
POSTED BY: Kurgan
UPDATED: Monday, August 11, 2003 02:04
VIEWED: 7464
PAGE 3 of 3
1) "How long does it take to terrafom a planet"
Even a world like Mars would probably take many, many Terran (Earth) years, something like Venus centuries? Probably started before the humans left EarthThatWas for good.
"a lot of effort doing it, just for a few scabby settlers to potter about in?"
Maybe it's automated, and once the inner worlds were terraformed these automatic systems had nothing to do so they moved on to the outer candidates — if they could use local materials, redirected comets, asteroids, gas from gas giants, etc..
2) "How long ago was what must have been a pretty vast interstellar migration, and how was that achieved?"
If they have FTL (faster than light) travel
Select to view spoiler:
(insinuated in Mal's intro speech)
it's not an issue. If they follow the laws of nature it must've taken many Terran years, even for Terra's closest stars.
3) [only 500 years] "why is 'Earth That Was' spoken of in Firefly as something almost as mythical as Arthurian legend?"
Maybe they're ashamed of their ancestors not living sustainably.
"a lot of these habitable worlds are not very large" - Corpruga
Select to view spoiler:
They have very similar gravity to Terra, so they should have similar sizes, or wacky compositions.
"the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a galaxy about 400 light days from earth [...] another closer galaxy was found" - ManiacNumberOne
"[LMC] 400,000 light Years!" - Drakon
LMC = 179 000 light years away < http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/lmc.html>, Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (SagDEG) 80 000 light years < http://www.seds.org/messier/more/sagdeg.html> (I read that page this week finding it via an APOD link :)) — Luna (Terra's moon) is about a light *second* away I think, and Sol (Terra's star, the sun) is about 8 light *minutes* away. If Firefly has FTL capabilities
Select to view spoiler:
(let's hope Mal didn't really mean galaxy)
, then they're probably still in the Milky way.
If they can terraform, what about Mars, and after 500 years, Terra?
--
I am Jack's username
"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?" - Mal
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Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
"Or California for that matter!"
California does exist. I live here. As hard as it is to believe, it is a real place.
So is Japan. Been there, nice people.
France, I can't tell you about.
California does exist... North Dakota however is a government conspiracy... No such place
"my kind of stupid"
She understands, she doesn't comprehend
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Drakon posted this above:-
Quote:
And then there is this:
From the script for "The Message"
BOOK
There's nine armed and dangerous
desperados on this ship. You count in
at three. Why is it you didn't call
in for back-up?
(Womack skips a beat)
There's a Fed station eighty miles
from where you're standing.
(walks closer)
You got your command stripes at the
Silverhold colonies. Puts you about
eight solar systems away from your
jurisdiction
I read this thread earlier today, and THEN watched 'The Message' for the first time (recorded while I was away on hols)
So I was very interested to hear that, in the version shown on Sci-Fi UK, this dialogue has been slightly altered. Instead of saying eight solar systems he says eight sectors
This is heard quite clearly, but the picture at the time shows the cop's face and Book's back, so an alteration in the dialogue could have been easily dubbed over.
If this is a deliberate change made by ME, it must mean something. To me, it says that they are moving away from the idea of seperate solar systems, and replacing it with the notion of 'sectors', which could mean anything - whatever they decide it means.
Personally, I like the idea that there is only one solar system, perhaps reached by generational ships several hundered years earlier, and then travelled around without FTL travel.
This would be a good reason for the mythical status of Earth - remembered in stories by the uneducated, and in history by the educated, but unreachable in a single lifetime by anyone. It wouldn't really matter if Earth was actually 'used up', or just uncomfortably full, because the colonists who left would be totally out of touch, possibly even living in a different time-frame due to time dilation effects on a multi-year journey at near light speed.
They may have been encouraged to forget about Earth, and to think of it as 'used up', to prevent homesickness.
To the other Heinlein fans, I say Farmer in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Methusala's Children, Orphans of the Sky, and back to Farmer in the Sky and Space Family Stone, plus quite a few short stories. Fans will know what I mean (I hope!)
(Sorry if I'm replying to several threads at once here - I've been reading them all today, trying to catch up on a month's worth of discussion!)
*******************
Ruthie
*******************
By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man - man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him. (R.A.Heinlein)
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>> From the script for "The Message"
>> Puts you about eight solar systems
>> away from your jurisdiction
>> -- Drakon
>
> in the version shown on Sci-Fi UK, this dialogue
> has been slightly altered. Instead of saying
> eight solar systems he says eight
> sectors
> -- Ruthie
The SABC3 version, which was the TV world premiere on 2003-07-15, also has "sectors".
--
I am Jack's username
"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?" - Mal
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Quote:
"Habitable planets are extremely few and far between, so travel between them is likely to be slow, and come on we're not going to develop light speed transportation (unless something really daft happens to relativity)"
True but since Firefly is fiction it's likely that there is some manner of FTL travel in their 'verse.
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