Firefly-help me out

[Staffan]

Spoiler

So why couldn't they just terraform Earth? Or Mars, for that matter (it would be a bit chilly, and have some trouble retaining the atmosphere, but is not that bad a bet)

Keeping spoiler tags despite not talking about the movie, for some reason.

Spoiler

I haven't seen the movie, but the one of the prologues in the TV series started with "Here's how it is: The Earth got used up, so we moved out and terraformed a whole new galaxy of Earths, some rich and flush with the new technologies, some not so much." The other prologue started with "After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new Earths were terra formed and colonized."

In other words, it seems it wasn't just that the Earth couldn't "sustain life", there probably weren't very many natural resources left to exploit.

 

[WayneLigon]

Oh? Let us consider that...

Imagine out own solar system - with Venus, Earth, Luna and Mars all terraformed...

If there were a planet in the asteroid belt, we'd have another rock to terraform there...

Now, aroudn the gas giants, For things 1000km and larger, there's 4 Galilean moons (Io, Ganymeade, Callisto and Europa) that might be worth working on, and Saturn has Titan, Iapetus, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys.

So, right here, we're talking about 13 bodies. Given that, I don't see how the number of planets should be any more stretching of credibility than the FTL everyone says they'd need to have that many bodies...

Yeah, we don't know much about the terraforming tech used to make the Wedonverse moons shirt-sleeve habitable. Normally bodies like Titan would be too far from the Sun to terraform, but with giant mirrors to angle more sunlight to them it might be possible. A gas giant with a hotter internal termperature than Jupiter ofr Saturn has might be doable as well since it would radiate more heat out to the moons, though we don't have any indication that any of the worlds in this place orbit a gas giant - it would be kinda hard to miss the giant planet dominating the sky.

Having the 'inner worlds' orbit a close gas giant would be doable, and you could have at least a couple in the fairly narrow band of habitability for humans (a hotter star will also have a slightly larger habitation band, I think - in general, though, it's easier to handle cold than heat). That could give you 20 or more worlds, some of which might be Earth-sized garden worlds while the rest are the barely-habitable scrub-covered wastelands we normally see on the show: planets made that can support life, if grudgingly.

There are weirder possibilities, some of which would probably have required construction by a vastly advanced race: five planets that orbit each other without a central star, weird stuff like that.

Now, most of this assumes that the Titus-Bode law is really a law, which as far as I know (it's been a long time since I've read most modern astronomy) it still seems to hold true. That's the thing that states that the orbital placement of planets we see is the way it probably is elsewhere - the last two or three planets we found in our system followed that law after it was proposed. Though I think Pluto doesn't? Anyway, Titus Bode might NOT old true, which means you could have planets bunched closer together in a star's habitable zone. That would be a very, very, very good thing for us.

 

[Greylock]

*bumpity*

Recent Firefly convert. Currently watching the series through for the second time. More discussion re: How things Work is fine by me. Spoil away, as long as the movie 'verse is kept clean.

 

[ecliptic]

The Alliance is a coalition of Anglo-Chinese forces who control the interior/advanced planets. The Separatists ("Independents", "Browncoats") were the ones that Mal fought for. They represented the periphery/frontier planets that resented Alliance control and tried (and failed) to break off from the central authority represented by the Alliance.

Anglo-Sino, not Anglo-Chinese. While technically the meanings are the same, it seems to be different. As there is no China anymore. Also note there has never been an asian in any of the Firefly shows.

I understand that (hasn't been THAT long since I took physics!); the debate is between multiple star systems (with FTL) or one large system with lots of habitable planets/moons (without FTL). That's why I made the point about it being unlikely that there was 20+ planets/moons that could be terraformed in one system.

Well you also need to discuss how quickly you can travel from point A to point B once you leave the gravitational pull of the solar system. There is alot of quantum physics theories stating that light speed is not a constant.

 

[Pielorinho]

Also note there has never been an asian in any of the Firefly shows.

Are you sure? I thought that in the pilot episode, the planet they landed on had some Asians folks wandering around.

Daniel

 

[Fast Learner]

Definitely Asian-looking folks in the (real) pilot, on Persephone, at the Eavesdown Docks, including what is apparently an Asian gang of toughs in black gis with red belts.

In fact, that whole montage is pretty much a Benetton ad, with racial features and ethnic clothing from all over Earth, from a Sub-Saharan African-looking boy to an Inuit-looking girl. Lots of turbans (multiple styles) and about a dozen different styles of hats, too.

Definitely some Asian-looking folks in the pilot. But I'd be the first to agree that for the influence the Chinese language clearly has, it's weird how few Chinese-looking folks you see throughout the run.