Special Effects Update on the Official Site

POSTED BY: Novagrass
UPDATED: Saturday, June 15, 2002 17:14
VIEWED: 7453
PAGE 3 of 3

PREV PAGE 1 2 3

ZICSOFT

Friday, June 14, 2002 8:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TinyTimm:

The ancient (1950's) technology proposed atomic ram jet did just that. You have to transfer energy to the air. Burning large quantities of fossil fuel is what we do now. In the future we may be able to cause low level fusion to occur in the combustion chambers, using the air itself as fuel. Just a thought.

OK, that's a good point. Still, I would expect a jet like that to rather different from what we see on the Serenity.

Here's another theory. Assume there's a compact power source somewhere on the ship that's capable of producing big huge gobs of energy. (Which there actually has to be -- space travel takes a lot of energy!) Using that source, you could power high-speed fans for in-atmosphere travel. This is actually similar to the fanjets on modern airliners, except you don't need that kerosene-powered turbine to turn the fan.

Except that now I'm getting skeptical. Can't imagine Joss Whedon thinking about this kind of technodweeb detail. He probably just decided that the Serenity had to look a certain way, and let it go at that.

PANDORA

Saturday, June 15, 2002 5:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:

And I say again where's the bleeding fuel tanks? Don't spin fancy theories about 24th century tech and new kinds of fuel. Those engines work by combining something with huge masses of air. Either that or the fans at the front of the engines are just decorations. So we have something that's like a jet engine in that it swallows a lot of air, but unlike a jet engine in that it doesn't combine the air with anything. Hard to imagine what kind of technology works that way.

Well, I don't claim to be much of a techhead- I actually am the farthest thing from it. However, I noticed that in Pitch Black (granted, also a sci fi movie, but it seemed to satisfy most of the techheads I know) that they powered their ships with energy cells that were compact, and internal to the ship. This also seems to be true of other ships in other mythos'. That being the case, mightn't the Firefly do more of the same?

As far as Joss neglecting such a detail... perhaps, perhaps not. I mean, the guy *is* all about story, but he seems to do ok on research.

Pandora

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies
and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

PREV PAGE 1 2 3