The FireFly Tech Manual [Cont.] by citizen

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

The FireFly Tech Manual [Cont.]

POSTED BY: CITIZEN
UPDATED: Saturday, October 22, 2005 15:07
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Saturday, September 10, 2005 9:42 AM

Introduction
Myself and KayleeRulesAll have been working on the FireFly tech manual, thats meant to work like a FireFly owners manual, similar to a Star Trek Tech manual or the Aliens Tech Manual.
It will be about the FireFly class transport technologies. No other aspects of the FireFly 'verse will be discussed.

Where we're at
We've currently got basic explinations for the drive propulsion and powerplant technologies of the FireFly class, a basic explination of the gravitation tech, and some explinations of the computer systems.
Theres also a basic site up to give an indication of how we see it looking when uploaded. Take a look at (requires Macromedia FlashPlayer7) http://www.fireflytech.twisted-imaginings.com/
This site will likely change abit, but is a basic idea.

Want to help?
Some people have shown some interest in helping, and we've been asking for contact times so we can set up an AIM chat room to workout the technical details, and get explinations everyones happy with.
We'll then start working on the graphics and content that will eventually go into the tech manual.

So if you have any ametuer knowledge/interest in physics/space or computers and want to lend a hand with the technical details, post here with some contact details/times.
If you'd like to help in any other way, such as technical drawing and the like, post here with some contact details and how you'd like to be involved.

Anyone who makes a contribution, no matter how big or small, will be included in the credits. (Including the person who created the Serenity badge graphic on the test site).

----------------------------------
Zen Buddhist to the Hotdog Vendor:
"Make me one with everything."

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Saturday, September 10, 2005 10:26 AM

CEDRIC

It's worth noting that some of that stuff gets explained in the Serenity RPG book. I don't know how 'official' the game is, but it's probably worth a look.

I'm not much for explaining technical stuff, but I am a professional writer/editor. If you want someone to help out with that kind of thing when you have a draft together, let me know.

"You can't take my show from me,
Because I've got the DVD."
www.BedlamBards.com
Ballad of Joss: http://mp3-postcards.com/listen/?888

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Saturday, September 10, 2005 10:50 AM

KAYLEERULESALL

yeah, were making our own explination. so basically, were syaing, to hell with the RPG book. most of the stuff in there likely has not been through such deep thought as the things weve already thought out so far anyway.

------------------------------------------------
When the stars shine bright through the engine's trail and the dust of another world drops behind; When my ship is free of the open sky, its a damn good day to my way of mind; Theres a barren planet you never can leave, theres a rocky valley where we lost a war; Theres a cross worn 'round a soldier's neck, theres a man's faith died on Serenity's floor, but i stood my ground and ill fight once more; Its the last oath that i ever swore

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Friday, October 14, 2005 11:41 AM

CITIZEN

Quick bump.

There's a lot of new people on the site now, so thought I'd draw attention to the thread.

All are welcome to contribute.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Friday, October 14, 2005 11:59 AM

UNCHARTEDOUTLAW

Good, I was wondering what the status on the book was! :D

http://norcalriviera.blogspot.com - blog
http://firefly.firehead.org/norcalriviera - videos
http://www.cafepress.com/norcalriviera - store
http://www.fireflytalk.com - the new damn podcast

River: "So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem."

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Friday, October 14, 2005 1:11 PM

DIEGO

Yeah, I'm interested. I don't have an AIM account, but am willing to go to a little effort and use a chat service if I can be of help. Alternatively, have you considered an e-mall list serve? It has the advantage of not requiring everyone to schedule the same time to communicate and folks can read, think about, and have time to formulate responses to posts. Either way, I've got a strong science background (I'm a professional biologist) and I'm willing to help on the writing and editing.

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Friday, October 14, 2005 1:56 PM

FLETCH2

The problem that the RPG has and that any Tech manual will have is that science in the "verse" doesnt really work and that stuff quoted in one episode doesn't get carried through in others.

Example: The verse is supposed to be one big solar system right? Look behind the teacher in the openning of the Serenity movie and you have one big solar system. Fine and dandy!

Problem is that if you look at the graphic map of Miranda that River pulls up from the Cortex it shows 7 stars each with their own solar system..... so right there in one movie we have a contradiction.

If it IS one solar system then it cant support 50 planets because the habitable area for a star is narrow. Look at our own sun, move in towards Venus and it's too hot, move out to Mars and it's too cold. There would be no way to fit the orbits of 50 worlds into that one habitable zone.

So lets say we go with multiple stars. Problem here is speed and distance. In a cut line River gives the speed of Serenity at full burn as being 100,000 miles an hour, sounds pretty fast until you realise it would take you 9 months to get just from Earth to Jupiter (assuming they were at alignment.) Since things can not be closer together without problems ships MUST be able to travel faster. This is backed up by the visual companion that says that the original colony ships from earth took a generation to get to the new system. At Serenity max speed (according to River) you could make Proxima Centauri in 28,000 years!

If there is FTL we havent seen it and how could you explain episodes like "Out of Gas?" If there is no FTL then distances and times to make a cluster of stars supporting 50 worlds work just dont add up.

In short Joss is not a scifi writer. When you write magic like in Buffy and Angel it doesnt have to add up --- it's Magic and it works *somehow.* In Firefly he went on his merry way doing the same thing because he is writing *people* stories not Star Trek. It doesn't have to work IRL.

If you know physics you'll know that when the engine blew in "Out of Gas" Serenity should still have been moving forwards at the same speed that she was before, it's called conservation of momentum. However when the engine blew she came to a dead stop because otherwise there would have been no danger and no story. However in "War Stories" the ship fires the engines powers down and drifts towards Niska's -- so in that story conservation of momentum worked because otherwise there is no story.

Ignore the man behind the curtain!

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Friday, October 14, 2005 6:46 PM

MAJOST

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
....If you know physics you'll know that when the engine blew in "Out of Gas" Serenity should still have been moving forwards at the same speed that she was before, it's called conservation of momentum. However when the engine blew she came to a dead stop because otherwise there would have been no danger and no story. However in "War Stories" the ship fires the engines powers down and drifts towards Niska's -- so in that story conservation of momentum worked because otherwise there is no story.

Really? I assumed that Serenity kept moving in Out of Gas. It's just that they're so far out in the boon docks that there's nothing in the immediate area to compare it to. Remember how Wash claimed it'd take a week to get to their destination? They were still moving... it's just that the camera was moving, too. The same thing occurs in Objects in space - it looks like the ship is at a dead halt, but they're definitely going somewhere.

If you really wanna get picky, claim that they should have been spinning end over end due to the ejection of the fire out the front bay doors. They certainly aren't centered on the ship, and the force of the fire pushing out of Serenity would cause it to thrust backwards at a haphazard angle. Or, you could claim that there's almost no likelyhood of the debris actually hanging around Serenity for any decent amount of time... they would all have some difference in trajectory or velocity.

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Friday, October 14, 2005 7:10 PM

FLETCH2

What I'm saying is that fans like to rationalise things and force consistancy on series that don't nescessarily have them. The original Battlestar Galactica used the terms "solar system" and "galaxy" interchangably and yet didn't have FTL ships. In 25 years fans "rationalised" this 1000 different ways from wormholes to an FTL drive we were simply not shown. In general folks that like Science Fiction know more about science than the folks that write SciFi on TV. When a writer uses the wrong term, or simply doesn't understand or care to understand the technical problems in a script it drives fans nuts.

If you write a tech manual you will do it for that percentage of fans that can tell you the milli-cochran output of a shuttlecrafts warp core. No one but them would really be interested. Trek tried fairly hard to keep consistancy, even having people vet scripts to try to keep them consistant, Joss didnt do that because he didnt care, he's telling the story of 10 BDHs not inventing psudo science for a bunch of frustrated fanboys. The verse as shown is not consistant enough to be rendered as a tech manual.

As to the "Out of Gas" example, I mention it because *apparently* on screen Serenity stops. The writers of the RPG being the kinds of fan boys that rate warp cores in milicochrans came up with an elaborate reason why a ship would just stop when the main engine shut off, and then another reason why the Niska manouver would work in that universe.

All of this is a rationalisation that Joss simply didnt care about because he isnt writing scifi, he's writing people stories set in a scifi like environment.

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Friday, October 14, 2005 11:11 PM

MAJOST

Ah, heh, I gotcha. I misread the intentions behind your previous post. As far as FTL goes, I'm with you. I'm glad Joss didn't come up with extra abstractions and technobabble for travel; the show isn't about the Science Fiction - that's just the vehicle. I need it in Captain Dummy-Talk.

And I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for those travel times.

But, (and this is my pride talking) I'm fairly certain that Serenity never screeches to a halt in Out of Gas. That's pedantic though... that Tech Manual will have many more issues surrounding other things. All the best to those of you trying to sort it out. I'll keep on cheering for my BDHs.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:06 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
The problem that the RPG has and that any Tech manual will have is that science in the "verse" doesnt really work and that stuff quoted in one episode doesn't get carried through in others.
...
Trek tried fairly hard to keep consistancy, even having people vet scripts to try to keep them consistant, Joss didnt do that because he didnt care, he's telling the story of 10 BDHs not inventing psudo science for a bunch of frustrated fanboys. The verse as shown is not consistant enough to be rendered as a tech manual.

Actually since the FireFly series and the Serenity film don't use science as a plot device (unlike Star Trek) they are actually much more coherent. Star Trek is full of gaping holes.

Quote:
If it IS one solar system then it cant support 50 planets because the habitable area for a star is narrow. Look at our own sun, move in towards Venus and it's too hot, move out to Mars and it's too cold. There would be no way to fit the orbits of 50 worlds into that one habitable zone.

So lets say we go with multiple stars. Problem here is speed and distance. In a cut line River gives the speed of Serenity at full burn as being 100,000 miles an hour, sounds pretty fast until you realise it would take you 9 months to get just from Earth to Jupiter (assuming they were at alignment.) Since things can not be closer together without problems ships MUST be able to travel faster. This is backed up by the visual companion that says that the original colony ships from earth took a generation to get to the new system. At Serenity max speed (according to River) you could make Proxima Centauri in 28,000 years!

Firstly theres one system. Thats canon. If you think that you can't have that many habitable planets around one star (ignoring binary and trinary systems and such) you need to talk to KayleeRulesAll. She's done the math and it turns out that the FireFly system is entirely possible, if improbable.
As for your question regarding Serenitys top speed and the speed of the colony ships you have to remember that Serenity is an interplanetary vessel, and the colony ships are intersteller. Even Star Trek doesn't use the same drive systems for interplanetary and interstellar travel.
It is also perfectly possible for the planets to be closer together.

Quote:
If you know physics you'll know that when the engine blew in "Out of Gas" Serenity should still have been moving forwards at the same speed that she was before, it's called conservation of momentum. However when the engine blew she came to a dead stop because otherwise there would have been no danger and no story. However in "War Stories" the ship fires the engines powers down and drifts towards Niska's -- so in that story conservation of momentum worked because otherwise there is no story.

Theres no evidence for Serenity coming to a dead stop. In fact out in space you would not be able to tell if something is moving or not. You can tell if something is moving relative to something else, but if there both moving in the same direction and at the same speed they will appear stopped.
In fact Serenitys entire drive system is based around coasting. They burn the main drive and then coast the rest of the way (most of the time).

Quote:
The verse as shown is not consistant enough to be rendered as a tech manual.

It's a lot more consistent than Star Trek. Star Trek contradicts itself countless times, and when it's not doing that it's throwing around meaningless psudo science to explain everything.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:50 AM

FLETCH2

Watch the "River in the cockpit" sequence from the movie again. The nav computer shows seven stars each with a small solar system, look in the visual companion if you want to see a closeup of the graphics. That appeared on screen so it is "canon" but then so is one big solar system with a SINGLE star.

I'm not nit picking here, it's there look at it.

If we determine that the verse is a cluster system (ie chose one of the two "canons" to rest the series on) then distances become important. For a stable environment to exist to support life (a much more complex thing that just if things will fit orbitally) then stars in a binary, tertiary or cluster system would have to be far enough away to not adversely effect the core planets in another star's solar systems. That is a big distance.

The point about Rivers cut "100,000 mph top speed" line is that it shows that it doesnt matter to Joss if any of this works. To a scientist 100,000 MPH is insignificant speed even for interplanetary travel, science is about the small stuff. In contrast an artist doesn't worry about the intracies of canvas making, all he cares about is that a canvas is there when he wants to paint a picture.

And you are right Trek had YATI's galore, BUT it ran for what, 18 years through 8 movies and four modern series? Firefly has problems with 15 episodes and 1 BDM.

It isn't intended to be pinned down, and there is no point whining about "canon" either because if episode 21 of the series had needed an exploding sun for some reason we'd have had it. The verse is mutable to allow for the telling of tall stories. The stories are not straitjacketed by canon or the needs of the verse. Personally, though it drives the fan boy in me nuts I like it that way.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 7:27 AM

FLETCH2

As a final note, you said that someone had worked out how to fit all those planets into the orbit of one star. Do you think Joss did that? Do you think that before the series started he sat down and crunched the numbers or do you think he just needed a 'Verse big enough to support 4 or 5 seasons of a TV show?

He says he doesnt write science fiction. He's a story teller, the verse is a backdrop to tell a story. HE isn't worried about it HE doesnt have to prove that you can fit 50 worlds around one sun it's just there. Fanboys like you and me worry about it, we're the kinds of folks that talk N class stars and multiple orbital planes to justify what was after all just a TV writer's decision as to what worked best for his show. It doesnt matter to Joss, he has the verse he needs to tell the stories he wants about the people he likes. WE'RE the ones that want a tech manual, we're the ones that has to have it make sense.

Don't suppose you know the power output of a shuttle craft warp core in milicochrans do you?

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 8:03 AM

RABBIT2

An explanation as to why there are fifty odd habitable planets in one system. One word Terraforming.
When the original explorers from the solar system got here they probably found at least one habitable planet if they were lucky and no more. The other worlds would be created later as settelment increased with the older colonies forming the Alliance and the more recent the indipendants.
This rather explains Miranda, it was originaly an outer uninhabitable planet (think Pluto) that the Alliance decided to turn in to a model colony.
A bit improbable perhaps but by the time Serenity is set they would have had several centuries to refine the technology and, as we know it all went horribly wrong.

Rabbit 2

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 8:35 AM

FLETCH2

Rabbit, no terraforming doesnt explain it. All Terrafoming does is make a world capable of supporting an earth like environment... Earthlike.

Stars like our sun put out energy as light and heat. Closer in you have more light and heat, further out you have less. That is why Mercury is a furnace with liquid metal pools and Pluto is a fridge pretty close to absolute zero.

It's like the three bears, some places are too hot, some too cold and just a few... just right. In our own solar system the habitable band is very narrow, as close in as Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold. Now it might be possible with hypertech to terraform those two worlds, though I suspect neither would be habitable to the point where you could venture out in the kinds of clothes our BDHs wear. You will never be able to Terraform Mercury or Pluto, they are too small and too far from the habitable zone of our star.

Terraforming doesnt cut it. If we tried to fit the Verse's 50 habitable worlds into out solar system MOST of them (or at least all our BDH visited in coats and T-Shirts) would have to somehow co-exist between the orbits of Venus and Mars. Perhaps you might get a world or two orbiting BIG gas giants but they are unlikely to be hot enough for shirt slieve explorers.

Terraforming is a possible method we might someday use to convert planets within the habitable band of a star into worlds fit to colonise. "Terraforming" as used in the show is a plot device to explain why you can have 50 worlds that all look like southern California. :)

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 9:27 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
Watch the "River in the cockpit" sequence from the movie again. The nav computer shows seven stars each with a small solar system, look in the visual companion if you want to see a closeup of the graphics. That appeared on screen so it is "canon" but then so is one big solar system with a SINGLE star.

I'm not nit picking here, it's there look at it.

Are you sure there stars, I remember that the screen is only up breifly... Unfortunatly I haven't seen the movie for awhile and my visual companion still hasn't materiallised so I can't really look for myself.
If it really shows multiple stars, with FireFly planets around them, then it was a mistake. Not really a flatout contradiction as it appears on screen very breifly, and is more likely a mistake by the FX team. On the otherhand the single system is constantly reffered to, and I believe even Joss has outright said that FireFly is based in a single system.
So I'd say it isn't a contradiction within canon FireFly, but that it is a contradiction with canon FireFly...

As for the speed of Serenity I've never seen it listed, or mentioned, anywhere.

Quote:
It isn't intended to be pinned down, and there is no point whining about "canon" either because if episode 21 of the series had needed an exploding sun for some reason we'd have had it. The verse is mutable to allow for the telling of tall stories. The stories are not straitjacketed by canon or the needs of the verse. Personally, though it drives the fan boy in me nuts I like it that way.

This is a situation that happened continually in ST, yet is highly unlikely to happen in FF because ST is (more or less) about the technology, where as FF is people driven. It doesn't explain advanced tech, nor does it use bizzare science (blackholes/wormholes for instance) as a plot device.

Quote:
As a final note, you said that someone had worked out how to fit all those planets into the orbit of one star. Do you think Joss did that? Do you think that before the series started he sat down and crunched the numbers or do you think he just needed a 'Verse big enough to support 4 or 5 seasons of a TV show?

No, I'm pretty sure he didn't. But you said that the FF 'verse is impossible, where as the numbers say otherwise. It's a happy coincidence, but there it is.

Quote:
Don't suppose you know the power output of a shuttle craft warp core in milicochrans do you?

No, but the points mute cause all ST units are different from episode to episode

.
I can tell you that the 'Hard' science behind the ST warp drive proves it doesn't work. The accepted theory is of the Aculbiere Warp. I won't go into the theory, but I'll tell ya this:
The mathematics suggest it would require more energy than the rest energy of the entire universe to form one...

Quote:
WE'RE the ones that want a tech manual, we're the ones that has to have it make sense.

Your dead right there. But to be honest I think some of the explinations we've come up with are *WAY* better than the stuff you'll find in ST tech manuals. Check out the B5 tech manual ( http://www.b5tech.com/ ), the science section is probably the closest thing to what we're trying to achieve.

What we're actually aiming for is not a FireFly tech manual, it's more a FireFly (the ship) owners manual. A technical document on the workings of the ship.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 9:40 AM

RABBIT2

I agree with most of what you say fletch2. In Firefly/Serenity the term Terraforming is used as a plot device and nothing more. The thing is, Earth apparently is located slightly outside the Sun`s current habitable zone, suggesting that once a world has become habitable it tends to remain so unless something catastrophic happens. (Like developing intelligent life maybe?) So there are clearly other factors to consider.
In any case, the term Terraforming is a bit vague.
Its a catch all term thats been used in Science Fiction for decades and its only recently that its come to be asociated with specific processes that may just be usable on Mars.
As with most Science Fiction, if we knew in detail how all this stuff actually worked we`d be doing it rather than just writing fiction about it.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 11:16 AM

FLETCH2

Rabbit, two words

Large moon.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 11:30 AM

FLETCH2

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:

If it really shows multiple stars, with FireFly planets around them, then it was a mistake. Not really a flatout contradiction as it appears on screen very breifly, and is more likely a mistake by the FX team. On the otherhand the single system is constantly reffered to, and I believe even Joss has outright said that FireFly is based in a single system.
So I'd say it isn't a contradiction within canon FireFly, but that it is a contradiction with canon FireFly...

As for the speed of Serenity I've never seen it listed, or mentioned, anywhere.

Yes they are stars (they have a glow effect to the graphic. ) They appear both on screen and in the Visual guide. The speed is from a line of Rivers that is in the script but cut from the film, probably because someone pointed out to Joss that 400,000 miles is not a big distance in interplanetary terms.

Quote:

This is a situation that happened continually in ST, yet is highly unlikely to happen in FF because ST is (more or less) about the technology, where as FF is people driven. It doesn't explain advanced tech, nor does it use bizzare science (blackholes/wormholes for instance) as a plot device.
Quote:

Firefly only had 15 episodes. If you looked at the first 15 episodes of original Star Trek you wont see anything there either. Star Trek TNG decided they needed to explain things, that went against Rodenberry's principle never to explain anything.

Quote:

I can tell you that the 'Hard' science behind the ST warp drive proves it doesn't work. The accepted theory is of the Aculbiere Warp. I won't go into the theory, but I'll tell ya this:
The mathematics suggest it would require more energy than the rest energy of the entire universe to form one...

Back in 1964 it sounded really practical and they DID have a science advisor and it was considered a reasonable idea. Is Tau Zero a bad book because Buzzard Ramscoops dont work? No, at least they made the effort. As originally described Niven's Ringworld doesn't work either, they have had to tinker with the explanation for it every time they come up with a new book.

I look forward to reading the math to fit 50 worlds in the inhabitable area of a star, we did it a few months back but only by choosing a very exotic solar type as the central star and assuming that it "inherited" planets from other older stars that had since died. The chances of discovering stable quantum wormholes in our back yard were more likely than this solar system existing.

Personally I'm happy to say that Firefly was just a show, sit back, relax and enjoy the action.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005 11:48 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Back in 1964 it sounded really practical and they DID have a science advisor and it was considered a reasonable idea.

I believe Miguel Alcubierre actually proposed the Alcubierre warp in 1994.

Quote:
Is Tau Zero a bad book because Buzzard Ramscoops dont work? No, at least they made the effort.

I wasn't aware that the Bussard Ramscoop had been proved to be unfeasable. Michael Zubrin and Dana Andrews have proved one type of Ramscoop as unfeasable, but not all ramscoops.
Plus, wow, someone else who's read Tau Zero, it's a great book!

Quote:
I look forward to reading the math to fit 50 worlds in the inhabitable area of a star, we did it a few months back but only by choosing a very exotic solar type as the central star and assuming that it "inherited" planets from other older stars that had since died. The chances of discovering stable quantum wormholes in our back yard were more likely than this solar system existing.

Personally I'm happy to say that Firefly was just a show, sit back, relax and enjoy the action.

Fair enough. But as I said, the Tech manual won't go into that. It's purely about the 03 variant of the FireFly class

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:19 PM

CITIZEN

Fletch2:
A thought occurs. You seem to have at least a passing knowledge of physics etc, would you consider contributing to the theories of the technology of the FireFly class transport?

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you Beeeer Milkshakes!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 1:42 PM

RABBIT2

Large moon? good point.

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Sunday, October 16, 2005 5:35 AM

DUOSHEILDS

I'm not entirely sure how much I could help with the project, but I am very interested. I am a student in college who wants to get an English degree, so maybe I could help there, and I am also a writer.

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Monday, October 17, 2005 5:43 PM

DUOSHEILDS

I guess I forgot to include the details, sorry. I have a yahoo email, duosheilds@yahoo.com, and an AIM name, reisengoku, which I use generally around 10 pm during the week and maybe a little earlier on weekends. I'll be glad to help out in anyway that I can. Are there any more details that have been decided lately?

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Saturday, October 22, 2005 6:56 AM

SUBNUBILUS

I don't mean to pull support from this project, but I will say that I tend to agree with Fletch on this one, but perhaps from a different angle. I don't think if you take apart what was given to us that you will find much to make sense of (unless you bend the implied truths), and I don't think it matters. BECAUSE it doesn't explain things, I can safely assume that, even if Joss didn't convey it quite right himself, the fiction, the Universe it takes place in, makes sense and works to support this story. It's like in Star Wars, they never tell you why gravity is the same on all planets we see in the movies, even the smaller and bigger ones, but BECAUSE it doesn't tell us, it's ok... there must be a reason. By stating a reason you can easily ruin it unless you really, really know what you're talking about, and since Joss doesn't, I'm glad he didn't get into those things. I don't know how Firefly class ships work, I don't know the exactly how the galaxy is setup, and I'm not sure why characters wearing body armor get flung backwards when shot like in Westerns... but because it never makes it a point to explain it to me, and I never make it a point to figure it out (how could I? It's the future), I just assume that it makes sense. Remember how Jayne shoots Vera through the suit because he says it needs oxygen? Well, it doesn't as most of you know, but it's ok... Jayne's an idiot, he heard wrong! I'm not the type to call foul on that... Jayne could be wrong, the gun could use yet-to-be-developed or fictional mechanisms that needs oxygen... there's lots of things. Likewise, Joss doesn't know what all he's talking about, and I don't mind because he's smart and is vague on the point we don't need to know about... it's like he's asking us to just trust him, "it could happen somehow, I just don't know exactly how".

So, I'm not interested in the tech manual, but I just wanted to offer my opinion on this.

___

subnubilus

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Saturday, October 22, 2005 8:08 AM

PURPLEYIN

how do we know that vera doesnt need oxygen? where was the propulsion method fully explained?

personally i think the tech manual would be a good idea, at least it'll be fun to do. And who knows, if firefly comes back the writers might cherish an on-hand proof-read fan-approved vessel manual.

not got an aim, but for now im at fg_number1@hotmail.com

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Saturday, October 22, 2005 9:22 AM

STEVE580

Alright, I didn't actually see the image of multiple solar systems - but is it possible that only *one* of the ones shown is colonized? The other solar systems could be devoid of human activity.

Alternatively, perhaps there are two or three systems colonized, but travel between them is less common, or more time-consuming. Now of couse, this raises the issue of what is meant by 'inner planets'...

Citizen - I'd iike to help, if I can; I don't have a particularly exceptional mathmatical educatiion (I have a few friends that do), but I am damndably creative...
AIM: doyoucano580
Email: Steve5805 at gmail dot com
-Steve

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Saturday, October 22, 2005 10:40 AM

FLETCH2

I'm not against the idea of a technical manual all I am saying is that it panders to a fan need for consistancy that the production people don't share. At best all it will reflect will be fan interpretations and rationalizations of odd pieces of dialogue or events in 15 or so episodes, none of which seem to be writen with reference to any of the others. Should God willing we ever get to see more of our BDH's anything writen (or indeed anything already shown in the series) is liable to be over ruled by whatever the nescessity of the new episodes is.

I'm sorry to say this folks but even Space:1999 has a more consistant technical background. Firefly isn't that kind of show, it's about how these people live and survive in that environment not a story of that environment. This is not B5 where everything was writen to make sense, this is not even Stargate where they maintain a consistant memory of previous events. This is a people show.

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Saturday, October 22, 2005 3:07 PM

PURPLEYIN

ok, i know this thread is about the firefly class ship, and not thw whole firefly 'verse, but whilst we're on the subject of multiple systems...
What if there is only one inhabited system, but there are six others still being terraformed?
The terraforming ships would have had to leave the Earth-that-was long before the humans arrived for it all to be done in time, so maybe the terraforming ships only just got 'round to the other systems (in this planetoid rich stellar cluster).
just a thought.

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