Faster Than Light

POSTED BY: AnthonyT
UPDATED: Monday, August 2, 2004 20:22
VIEWED: 19488
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ANTHONYT

Saturday, July 26, 2003 4:13 AM

Hi all,

I never got to see all of the episodes, and I'm sorta shakey on certain details. I got the feeling that the nature of FTL travel changed at some point during the series. Like maybe they didn't have the FTL concept at first, and then rethought it and added it in. I remember the voiceover got changed.

Can anyone tell me whether there is or is not FTL? Is Firefly just in some giant solar system with a whole lotta moons, planets, and giant asteroids? Or is it in multiple solar systems?

And if there IS FTL... what method is used? I haven't noticed shields on the show. I know they were boarded by a Mercenary once while travelling.

Help, guys. Inquiring minds want to know.

--Anthony

DRAKON

Saturday, July 26, 2003 9:38 AM

'Can anyone tell me whether there is or is not FTL?"

For the show, this is debatable, because nothing makes it clear. And to be honest, it really doesn't matter, as what is important is the journey, and the length of time, rather than the means used to get there.

In real life, it used to be thought that FTL travel was impossible. Approaching the speed of light required an infinite amount of energy.

Then some wise guy (literally) thought about it and figured that instead of pushing an object faster and faster, which would require more energy, what if you bent space in front of the ship in order to make the distance shorter. If at the same time, you expanded the space behind you, you, in theory anyway, would effectively be travelling faster than light even though you don't move at all.

Its a bit weird and the math will fry your brain. (Believe me! I had to teach myself calculus just to read the paper.) But it is consistent with what we (think we) know about gravity and the nature of space time.

There are a couple research projects, and several papers written on the subject over the last few years. And there is another related subject that might be interesting in this area. You might want to look here:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/0307225
for something else that is interesting. The LANL archives have a lot of papers on the subject.

"my kind of stupid"

ANTHONYT

Saturday, July 26, 2003 1:32 PM

Thanks for the insight, Drakon.

Does anybody know if Serenity or any other ship in the Firefly 'verse has a Faster Than Light drive capability?

--Anthony

DRAKON

Saturday, July 26, 2003 1:43 PM

Again, it is not stated, nor easy to infer from what is stated. Book's line in the Message I think got cut, which leaves the issue debatable either way. Joss hasn't said definitively either way.

I will argue that for it to be believable, any space faring setting will have to include FTL drive. Solar systems are too small to have enough planets. The distance between stars is vaste. (You may think its a long way to the chemist...etc.) And the distance has to be vaste between stars or else they start screwing up the orbits of the planets. The habitablity zones around stars are not going to accomidate more than a handful of planets. Therefore for "dozens" of worlds, you need multiple star systems.

Multiple star systems far enough apart that the planets don't get perturbed into the big black. And that necessitates FTL drive.

"my kind of stupid."

TRAGICSTORY

Saturday, July 26, 2003 4:29 PM

Has anyone seen Cowboy Bebop? If I had to guess I would say FTL would be beaten that way.

If you haven't seen Cowboy Bebop, then they have a sort of FTL highway that has on/off ramps through portals

-----------
"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

SLOWSMURF

Saturday, July 26, 2003 7:42 PM

Most evidence would tend to point to no on firefly. Because its (more or less) supposed to be one system, I think the "a whole new galaxy of earths" was just an exageration. As everyone else has said however, the means is NOT the important part, the journey and time is.

I don't think we'll ever get a 100% answer on most tech questions in the 'verse, so best not to try to hard about other issues(this one itself isn't so unlikely to get answered for certain, but others won't ever be, such as artificial gravity, no technobable to explain that(yay))

NIGHTTRAIN

Saturday, July 26, 2003 11:18 PM

My guess would be that they are definitely capable of faster than light travel. Otherwise it would not be really impractical for them to move the entire population of earth to a new solar system unless there was some type of wormhole like so people mentioned before. I think that faster than light travel is in the same boat as the laser gun technology. Its probably very expensive to make a ship that can go light speed. Therefore, ship manufactures dont bother making them. My guess is that all the planets settled are reasonably close to eachother so it would not be neccesary to travel light speed to get from, planet to planet.

FLYINFREE

Sunday, July 27, 2003 12:54 AM

The Firefly 'verse simply can't exist without violating so many laws of time and physics that you might as well throw in moons made of green cheese. Don't get me wrong I think Firefly is the best show ever made, but Joss' goal here is storytelling, not science. The ships travel so slowly they would take months or years to get around the inner planets of our solar system, much less one with dozens of planets, or an entire galaxy. The detection capabilities are so limited they can't tell what's coming at them until it's right on top of them, so really fast speeds would be suicide. Terraforming moons is a problem because moon's spend half their time behind the planets they are orbiting which means they'd all be arctic wastelands. Serenity uses basic thrust technology, no different than the space shuttle. Since Serenity travels from the core planets (ie. Ariel) to the rim worlds (ie. Whitefall), they would have to be close enough to each other to make this possible. The planets would be colliding with each other, screwing up each other's orbits, etc.

Still flyin'...

ANTHONYT

Sunday, July 27, 2003 8:39 AM

Thanks, guys.

I reckon that there has to be gravity and antigravity tech on the show. Doesn't much matter how. I also reckon they don't have shields like most sci-fi shows. I've never seen anything to indicate it.

Since I've never seen Serenity do any kind of hyperspace or warp drive thing, I'm gonna further reckon that she has no integral FTL capability.

On the other hand, someone pointed out in-game dialogue from Book that suggests Serenity and other ships can and do make interstellar trips.

So, I'm figuring that there's gotta be some flavor of gate technology. Though, the exact nature of it isn't like most shows. Probably.

I'm thinking maybe the ship uses a mass-lightening field for normal maneuvers. You know, make the ship have the same mass as a softball so that it can get the most out of its action/reaction thrust drive thingy.

Then maybe the gates handoff a much more powerful field that the ship can hold onto but not generate on its own. Something that can make the ship have the mass of a sub-atomic particle. And hope like hell it doesn't run into anything between this system and that system.

Not so farfetched, really. Space is mostly empty. Empty enough to bet on not crashing into anything except on purpose.

--Anthony

CB

Sunday, July 27, 2003 3:41 PM

Ever since I saw the original "Serenity" pilot, I've assumed that there was some kind of inertial-drive system, because there's no way that they can travel from a 2-km altitude to space in 10 seconds without it. (for anyone who isn't a scifi geek... an inertial drive cancels out an object's inertia, making it much easier to move, especially in the case of a ship like Serenity... it also has the addedd bonus of shielding the passengers from the double-digit G-force that such acceleration would create) Without an inertial drive, the crew would have become splatters on the walls during the Crazy Ivan Maneuver.

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