The Firefly/Serenity Solar System by FraserBW

Regarding how they got to the system I think they used sleeper ships, utilising a drive system similar to the Bussard Ramscoop, which could get close to the speed of light (very low Tau). This would allowthem to make the journey in a short (relative) time.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 3:13 AM

Could you please just make it stranger? Stranger. Odder. Could be weirder. More bizarre. How about uncanny?

The Visual Companion
by Joss Whedon

There is a brief history of the 'Verse in here, that Joss wrote. Effectively it took a LOOOONG time for the people of Earth to get to this new and habitable system. So long in fact, that an entire generation was born, lived, and died in space. The people who were the beneficiaries of mankind's brave attempt to resettle were their grandchildren. The brave ones never set foot on a new world.

Also, the system is HUGE, according to Joss...dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Big enough that a planet like Miranda could easily be "lost" to everyday folk.

The show gives us a bit of additional info as to how far along they've come with terraforming by nature of Mal saying "...over 70 earths spinnin', and the meek ain't inherited a one..."

Hope that helps!

Oh, and I just want to take a moment and gloat to all the nay-sayers who thought I was a loon back in the days before the BDM when I said all the evidence points to ONE SYSTEM. Ahh, now I feel better. :) Nice to know I understand WWJD (What Would Joss Do)...even if my favorite character bought it in the film

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 3:52 AM

CAUSAL

Nothing like being proven right to make you feel better about having been laughed at, eh?

________________________________________________________________________
I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 4:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Regarding how they got to the system I think they used sleeper ships, utilising a drive system similar to the Bussard Ramscoop, which could get close to the speed of light (very low Tau). This would allowthem to make the journey in a short (relative) time.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years from Earth. So if they had built a vessel that could travel at half the speed of light (4.75 trillion km/yr) it would take 8.6 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri. But that is a tri-star system, so it can't be the Firefly system as it has a single sun at the center. So we need to find another star is that is fairly close to allow this slow travel plus the "several" decades needed to terraform that we'll say is 60 years (somewhat of a variable as it must be at least 30 years but probably less than 90 years as they would have said "almost a century") and then followed by time for settlers to arrive on sleeper ships (which may have started when terraforming was almost complete). Now one wild card we do not know is how long the system has been "settled". It could be that it is only a few generations that have built it up and lived there, so maybe only a century of occupation. With a 500 year time span from present day, it gives us about 300 years (assuming a system relatively close to ours) or less to arrive at the technology of speeds of space vehicles exceeding 520 million km/yr (speed of Voyager 1), the ability to terraform planets, and the ability to freeze human beings and revive them safely.

Assuming that Joss hasn't already picked a system that is the location of Firefly (pretty likely, he's not a very "sciencey" kind of guy), to locate a suitable system for it to take place in we need to look outward to from our system to the closest single star systems that are over 1.5 billion years old (enough time for worlds to form). Someone needs to run solar system formation models to estimate the size of a star needed to form a 20 or 21 "planet" (not including kaiper-belt-type objects like Pluto/Charon). This is a tough one since we only have one completely documented solar system on record (ours) and a few systems where we can currently measure the exsistence of gas giants around them. This part is a little beyond my capabilities, but there are probably some professional astronmers out there who might be interested in doing that simulation.

But if faster than light travel or wormholes are used (both are not beyond the realm of posibilities), but very expensive and energy/resource intensive that they could only be used for leapfrogging from one system to another but not practical to mount inside a ship, then that travel timeframe can be shortened.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 4:26 AM

STARPILOTGRAINGER

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.

I mean, I accept it - it's outlined that this is the case and there's really no disputing it without ignoring canon, but I don't _buy_ it. I count it as a 'stupid thing Joss didn't get right but we have to live with'. The kind of thing that makes me cringe a bit every time I hear a reference to it, but I'll otherwise just repress.

Firefly, IMHO should be a 'verse with very SLOW FTL, around a few stars clustered relatively close together. If you don't do that, you have to do a hell of a lot of other stuff to make the 'verse consistent and realistic, and Joss doesn't have the skills or knowledge of science (he's admitted to it himself) to get that right.

But then he gets a pass on it because he got no-sound-in-space right and I give passes to other shows that get that wrong.

Star Pilot Grainger
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/newnumber6 (real)
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This week: My spoiler-free Serenity review

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 5:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
The Visual Companion
by Joss Whedon

There is a brief history of the 'Verse in here, that Joss wrote. Effectively it took a LOOOONG time for the people of Earth to get to this new and habitable system. So long in fact, that an entire generation was born, lived, and died in space. The people who were the beneficiaries of mankind's brave attempt to resettle were their grandchildren. The brave ones never set foot on a new world.

Also, the system is HUGE, according to Joss...dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Big enough that a planet like Miranda could easily be "lost" to everyday folk.

The show gives us a bit of additional info as to how far along they've come with terraforming by nature of Mal saying "...over 70 earths spinnin', and the meek ain't inherited a one..."

Hope that helps!

Oh, and I just want to take a moment and gloat to all the nay-sayers who thought I was a loon back in the days before the BDM when I said all the evidence points to ONE SYSTEM. Ahh, now I feel better. :) Nice to know I understand WWJD (What Would Joss Do)...even if my favorite character bought it in the film

I'm not sure what the very closest grouped star systems are, but they would have to be far enough away not to form a binary system (two star) and therefore not be close enough to travel at sub-light speeds within a month (they've only spent 8 months since they picked up River and Simon according to the movie). And I know I have seen the propulsion system described as a sublight fusion drive (the light in the abdomen of the firefly class). And the diagram in the classroom clearly shows a single sun orbited by 20 "planets." So I concur, it is one solar system.

But, which one. If it took a over a generation in space, this suggests that they were not frozen (or stasis). They were awake the whole time (although by the time of Firefly they had technology to freeze River for at least a short period of time) and needed lots of resources (oxygen, clean water, food, carbon dioxide scrubbing) and therefore a pretty massive ship for colinization (which means a pretty massive propulsion system, which makes it less realistic than traveling frozen). The other problem for them being awake during the trip is how fast they travel. As they approach the speed of light, they age more slowly. So if they age like we do today, than the trip probably took 100 years in time on the spaceship. The faster they traveled, the longer this trip therefore took, so it is likely that if they were awake they traveled at much slower than light speed. And the movie also seems to suggest that the people of the Firefly solar system came straight from Earth (not leapfrogging from other systems after their development). So it needs to be a single star system with at least 20 planets (of unknown terrestrial/gas giant mix) that is within 100 years of Earth at very slow sub-light speed (need to do math here).

The interesting thing I just learned from a published discovery in November is that a red dwarf star has been discovered with a Uranus sized world very close to it. I was thinking that a star that would hold 20 or 21 planets around it would have to be larger than Sol (which can only hold 8 planets). So maybe smaller stars hold more planets and larger ones hold less. If this is the case, the Firefly system (does this system have a name?) would have a smaller sun at its center. This is problematic since all the planets/moons they visit seem to equally bright, including Miranda. If Miranda is the 21st planet, or a moon orbiting the 20th planet so that it is very remote than it should be a fairly dark world. This suggests that these planets are fairly close together to get an Earth dose of sunlight from the same dimmer star (than Sol) so far out. It's possible that Miranda is much closer to the sun, but it is unlikely to go undetected by the ships crisscrossing the system going from one world to the next. And the Reavers have always been referred to as being on the edge of the system suggesting that Miranda is indeed on the outskirts of the orbits.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 5:53 AM

Could you please just make it stranger? Stranger. Odder. Could be weirder. More bizarre. How about uncanny?

A thought...though I have no evidence to support this idea, but it seems *possible* to me:

What if there were more than 1 planet in an orbit?

Similar to how asteroids could be in a belt, but far enough apart (possibly opposite sides of the star) to have minimal (or no) effects on the other(s)?

Scientifically speaking, it *could* happen, but again, we haven't seen this anywhere in the real 'Verse save for lunar orbits around Jupiter and Saturn, and even those are still slightly different orbits.

Perhaps this is how our own asteroid belt formed? Two planets in the same orbit, but one travelling slightly faster until they came close enough to eachother that their gravitational pulls slammed them together and *kablooey* space junk.

Just my random thought of the day.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
A thought...though I have no evidence to support this idea, but it seems *possible* to me:

What if there were more than 1 planet in an orbit?

Interesting idea. There are examples of stable horseshoe orbits in our own solar system. Feasibly there could be many planets in 1 to 1 orbital resonance, but I don’t know how likely that is.

And I don’t really think that the sun is necessarily limited to 8 planets. In fact, there is widely considered to be 9 planets in our solar system. And then there are moons and asteroids, all of which are in solar orbit. And if you consider the many objects orbiting the sun in deep space, it is clear that the sun’s gravitational pull extends well beyond these 9 planets.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:37 AM

Could you please just make it stranger? Stranger. Odder. Could be weirder. More bizarre. How about uncanny?

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

And I don’t really think that the sun is necessarily limited to 8 planets. In fact, there is widely considered to be 9 planets in our solar system. And then there are moons and asteroids, all of which are in solar orbit. And if you consider the many objects orbiting the sun in deep space, it is clear that the sun’s gravitational pull extends well beyond these 9 planets.

As a matter of fact, Neptune and Pluto, on occasion, cross orbits (someday they might collide!).

And yes, the pull extends well beyond pluto, all the comets for example that orbit the sun...to what degree the strength of this is? I dunno, but it does exist, I agree.

Even without binary (or trinary) orbits, you could plop down several more planets in orbit of our own sun, though this might have some effect on things, there is plenty of "space" to go 'round.

A great tool for understanding planetary systems is Steve Jackson Games' GURPS: Space ( http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/space/ ), a tool I've used several times in running my own space campaigns (Star Wars, Firefly, and games of my own design). I've even done a conversion for "habital zones" around gas giants (my copy is 3rd ed.)

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:40 AM

The important words in my sentence were Tau and Relative. The relative i.e. subjective time could be quite low when traveling at near lightspeeds because of the low Tau.

If I can get mathematical:
t = t0/(1-v²/c²)½

where: t = time of external observer
t0 = time on board ship
v = the speed of the moving object
c = the speed of light in a vacuum

So given a trip to Alpha Centauri at 0.5c:
t0 = t * (1 - v²/c²)½
t0 = 8.6 * (1 - 0.5²)½
t0 = 8.6 * 0.866
t0 = 7.4

Given that I think they'd use bussard ram scoops capable of constant acceleration they'd have no maximum speed below lightspeed.
Given higher velocities subjective time onboard ship is significantly less than the 'real' time.

Edit:
Assuming a constant acceleration of 1g with a Bussard Ram scoop (and assuming the maths right) a trip of 200,000,000 lightyears would take ~36yrs of subjective ship time.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:44 AM

There is no faster than light travel in firefly, we can debate that later if you like. Right now I just want to point somehting out:

There is such a thing as relative time and the only indications of time we are given are by the ones who made the journey not some stationary observer. That means that saying, "Such and such is X light years away so it must take more than X years to get there," is bullshit. I mean we can make measurable differences in the passage of time on this planet with the use of things as slow as planes.

Someone here once did the calculations for us on how long it would take to get to some star or other if one accelerated half way and decelerated the other half, it’s not all that long considering.

-

If you want to know how right or wrong Joss could be take into account that the average lifespan was somewhere between what it is now and 120 years, remember that one generation never saw the outside of a space ship. Figure out a reasonable amount of acceleration and calculate how far someone could get with more than one but less than three generations worth of time passing on ship.

Then take that distance, use it to draw a sphere around our planet, tell us how many stars are within that sphere, how many could conceivably house multiple planets, and how many of those could have a large habitability zone after atmospheric meddling.

Then and only then will you in a position to criticize the travel time. Relative time gives me a headache so I have no plans to do it.

I'm not saying what we are told is reasonable, I'm not saying that at all. I am saying that I have yet to see someone who is claiming it is unreasonable back up their claim, and until they at least try to back it up I think they shouldn’t be so adamant about what they clearly do not know.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:47 AM

FEATHERONTHEWIND

I don't want to seem like a complete idiot, but would it be possible for planets to orbit in different directions? For example, could one planet orbit around the sun's "equator" and another along a "meridian"? Also could planets orbit at different levels or do they all orbit around the widest part of the sun?

"Pain is scary." -Jayne

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 6:50 AM

JAYTEE

recently another planetary body was discovered beyond Pluto in our solar system. It has yet to be named and only made it on the news briefly.
It could be some planets share the same orbital distance but at opposite sides of the "sun" in the new system. If memory serves me that's called a Trojan point. The problem I have with all the planets in the same system (which I know they are based on the Visual Companion) is that our solar system only has a narrow habitable zone from Venus to Mars. Mars atmosphere is too thin to hold in enough heat to keep it warm and habitable, Venus is too much of a runaway greenhouse environment to shed enough heat to be habitable. Earth is the baby bear bed and porridge for us humans. Pity we crap where we eat and act like there's another Earth ready to go when this one's used up but hey, most humans are just a tiny bit more evolved from apes not alot more. I think to be close to accurate the star that the Firefly verse is centered on has to be just a tad bigger and just a bit hotter than our sun to create a larger habitable zone. A blue giant star would be too hot and the lighting wouldn't look right in any of the scenes on any of the planets in the system.

Jaytee

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
And yes, the pull extends well beyond pluto, all the comets for example that orbit the sun...to what degree the strength of this is? I dunno, but it does exist, I agree.

Well, it’s not difficult to figure with a first order Newtonian approximation. The gravitation field around the sun is an inverse square law, so it goes as the inverse of the square of the distance.

Given the value for the gravitation constant, the mass of the sun and a distance from the sun, in this case maybe twice distance of Pluto. (Thee field F = GM/r^2) I get ~9.5E-7 N/kg.

Not a very precise calculation, because the gravitational constant isn’t known to enough significant figures. Astrophysics would normally use a measured body specific value which takes the place of GM in the equation.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:08 AM

Planets that form in a solar system tend to stay on the plane because they are formed in an Accretian disc. If some of the planets are captured bodies they could be in any orbit.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FeatherontheWind:
I don't want to seem like a complete idiot, but would it be possible for planets to orbit in different directions? For example, could one planet orbit around the sun's "equator" and another along a "meridian"? Also could planets orbit at different levels or do they all orbit around the widest part of the sun?

"Pain is scary." -Jayne

Yes, they have to orbit around the widest part of the sun. To orbit above and parallel to the ecliptic would require an expenditure of energy by planet, since it would basically be orbiting at a high potential. It’s sort of the same idea as floating above the earth’s surface.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:12 AM

GREENFAERIE

The stylized map of the solar system in the movie only shows the planetary orbits around one of the stars of the 'verse. It has been shown in the movie as well as the official visual companion that the entire "system" includes other stars and their planets as well as the "core" system shown in the opening of Serenity.

Later, River looks at this map, showing other stars and orbits. A similar map was printed in the visual companion.

The visual companion also has Joss's shooting script, which includes a scene where River is looking at a map of the "solar system of stars, planets and moons" connected by colored lines. This is evidence enough to me that Joss has it in his head that the 'verse has several star systems that comprise of the "solar system". Very unscientific, but very Joss.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
The important words in my sentence were Tau and Relative. The relative i.e. subjective time could be quite low when traveling at near lightspeeds because of the low Tau.

If I can get mathematical:
t = t0/(1-v²/c²)½

where: t = time of external observer
t0 = time on board ship
v = the speed of the moving object
c = the speed of light in a vacuum

So given a trip to Alpha Centauri at 0.5c:
t0 = t * (1 - v²/c²)½
t0 = 8.6 * (1 - 0.5²)½
t0 = 8.6 * 0.866
t0 = 7.4

Given that I think they'd use bussard ram scoops capable of constant acceleration they'd have no maximum speed below lightspeed.
Given higher velocities subjective time onboard ship is significantly less than the 'real' time.

Edit:
Assuming a constant acceleration of 1g with a Bussard Ram scoop (and assuming the maths right) a trip of 200,000,000 lightyears would take ~36yrs of subjective ship time.

Oh my god! (Or something that effect in Chinese.) My post has generated a ton of responses in a short period of time, I can't keep up with them.
OK, this is the response I was looking for. The MATH. It is said somewhere on this site (I'm taking this on faith from a previous poster, I haven't read it yet) that Joss said that the colonizers of the Firefly system left Earth and their grandchildren benefited from their heroic journey. So I concluded Grandpa and Grandma left Earth and died on the way. Mom and Dad may have children upon leaving Earth or born on the way, and probably got to the system but were much older on arrival. The Grandkids were born on board and basically the new generation for this new terraformed system that "benefited." So given a 70 to 120 year lifespan for people (I think Joss is conservative on lifespan extension in his canon, but this is something we should probably ask him) the trip should be at least 100 years shiptime to maybe 200 years. So 200,000,000 light years of travel in 36 years of shiptime is too short for that speed. Now the wiggle room could be that it is stated in the canon that Firefly is 500 years in the future. Now is that Earth years or relative years of the shiptime plus 400 or less planet (Earth) time? I assume non-sciencey Joss mean 500 years of Earth time, but it could be reasonable to wiggle out of that if necessary by counting ship time, and therefore allowing more Earth time to go by for trip purposes. Again, what does Joss say on this already?

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FraserBW:
I assume non-sciencey Joss mean 500 years of Earth time

I have to disagree with you on that, Joss may be non-sciencey but he isn't an idiot.

(almost) No one is going to hop on a ship, have five years pass, and then hop back off of the ship and say, "No, five years didn't really pass, more years passed because from the point of view of some observer we'll never meet in some place we'll never go more than five years passed."

The same holds true for ten years, and for twenty, and for one hundred and for any other number you choose.

People simply don't operate that way and Joss is smart enough to know that.

If the people in the Firefly verse say it is 2507 that means that it is 502 years of relative time from now.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:30 AM

Only now do I notice that four minutes before I posted a thing telling people to do the math someone had done (some of) it.

Makes me look silly or stupid, perhaps both.

That's what I get for taking so long to write a fairly short post.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by GreenFaerie:
The stylized map of the solar system in the movie only shows the planetary orbits around one of the stars of the 'verse. It has been shown in the movie as well as the official visual companion that the entire "system" includes other stars and their planets as well as the "core" system shown in the opening of Serenity.

Later, River looks at this map, showing other stars and orbits. A similar map was printed in the visual companion.

The visual companion also has Joss's shooting script, which includes a scene where River is looking at a map of the "solar system of stars, planets and moons" connected by colored lines. This is evidence enough to me that Joss has it in his head that the 'verse has several star systems that comprise of the "solar system". Very unscientific, but very Joss.

I can just hear Kaylee saying "awwwwh...poor Joss." Wow, there are some real problems with that graphic. I'm not sure how to take it, because their are some clear planet-like objects in couple of sectors on it (see the grids) with no orbit paths marked, and then a few "glowy-thingees" that seem to have orbits mapped out around them. If you take it as a 2 demensional map of several sectors, the scales on the objects are all wrong. The planet-objects are as big or bigger than the star-objects. But those star-like objects could be gas giants with moon orbits on them. But still the scale is all wrong, they're either really huge for their orbits or really close together in their orbits (both impossible). If this is perhaps just a perspective of these worlds/stars from the viewpoint of Serenity (perhaps magnifying it a bit) the scale is still way off. Even close planets like Venus and Earth appear as very bright stars each other. These bodies are just way to close to each other to be a considered as anything but a highly stylized representation and something the audience could see, because the characters could see smaller and better scaled worlds on the graphic, but it wouldn't look like anything even on the big screen.

I'm pretty sure those "stars" on the graphic are really gas giants and not seperate star systems. If the alliance were made up of multiple star systems that are relatively close, you would still need faster than light travel for Firefly to visit any of these worlds in the 8 month period between the pilot and Serenity the movie. Otherwise they would have been limited to just one of those systems for those 8 months.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:36 AM

STARPILOTGRAINGER

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Quote:
Originally posted by FraserBW:
I assume non-sciencey Joss mean 500 years of Earth time

I have to disagree with you on that, Joss may be non-sciencey but he isn't an idiot.

(almost) No one is going to hop on a ship, have five years pass, and then hop back off of the ship and say, "No, five years didn't really pass, more years passed because from the point of view of some observer we'll never meet in some place we'll never go more than five years passed."

The same holds true for ten years, and for twenty, and for one hundred and for any other number you choose.

People simply don't operate that way and Joss is smart enough to know that.

If the people in the Firefly verse say it is 2507 that means that it is 502 years of relative time from now.

It depends a bit on how the travel is going down - if it was a mass exodus to one particular solar system, all moving at the same rate, then yeah, that seems a reasonable approach to take (with a few people like science geeks keeping track of the 'real' year).

If there was intent to keep in contact with Earth, or if different colonies went off in different directions, they may well have kept track of Earth Time and just all made the adjustment. Even if all the ships were
travelling to the same place, simply going at slightly different speeds would have different ships winding up with a different 'date' - they may simply decide to keep Earth time because that's fairest, or they may agree to some average or take the time of the first ship to arrive, or something like that.

However, all we've seen suggests a single mass exodus, so it's reasonable to say they just kept track of relative time, more or less.

Star Pilot Grainger
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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:42 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:

Then take that distance, use it to draw a sphere around our planet, tell us how many stars are within that sphere, how many could conceivably house multiple planets, and how many of those could have a large habitability zone after atmospheric meddling.

.

I have software that my department bought called Deep Space Explorer. I allows me to back out so far from Earth and look at stars. I'm not finding any other bi or tri star systems around Sol, so there seem to be a few single star system possibilities in the neighborhood. But I still need to know how far out the settlers traveled by knowing how fast they traveled in their 2/3 generation trip (and that is kinda based on whether 500 years in the future is Earth time or relative time for the settlers).

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:49 AM

I always thought the map was stylized just like many maps on earth are. If the point is not to show scale, which it shouldn't be if you want to include moons, there is not a need to even consider scale.

I wish I had a tourist map to scan and post to show you what I'm talking about if you don't know. Another example might be a trail map of a ski resort, the intent is to show all of the trails and, if possible, how they connect to each other. What results is a highly useful map that has almost no correlation to reality.

-

On a side note, when they discovered the most recent tenth planet candidate, which they say is larger than Pluto, it apparently caused a stir about what a planet actually is. One of the things I learned from this is that by many definitions the Moon is not a moon, it is a planet. If the great enlightened Alliance used the enlightened definition any planet with a "moon" such as ours* would count as two planets, but there would obviously be only one orbit.

*Someone else can do the math on the odds of a favorable impact creating such a moon in Serenity's more crowded solar system, I'm sure the odds are still quite low.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 9:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FeatherontheWind:
I don't want to seem like a complete idiot, but would it be possible for planets to orbit in different directions? For example, could one planet orbit around the sun's "equator" and another along a "meridian"? Also could planets orbit at different levels or do they all orbit around the widest part of the sun?

"Pain is scary." -Jayne

OK, I will actually take a few posts and meld them together here for sake of "planets." The term "planet" is just not a relevant term anymore. If you count Pluto as a planet than you probably should count its moon Charon as a planet, because they both orbit around each other and their are two moons recently discovered in orbit around Pluto/Charon. Xena and Gabrielle are also similar to Pluto/Charon and even orbit closer to the sun during part of their larger eliptic orbit. And Sedna is an even larger than Pluto and orbits way outside Pluto's orbit (we only saw it because it was at the closest point in its orbit). So for those of you counting that is 13 planets now, if you are part of the Pluto is a planet crowd. All of these objects are located in the Kaiper Belt, the inner belt of comet material. These objects are best described as Kaiper Belt planetoids. They are different from Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in several ways. First they are smaller than any of these. They have highly eliptic orbits that look more oval than circular. Pluto/Charon and Xena/Gabrielle cross the orbit of Neptune, Sedna and Xena/Gabrielle cross each other's orbits. Their orbits are offset from the ecretian disk of the sun, so they orbit at a diagonal to the other the orbits of the 8. And most importantly for the Firefly universe, they are too small and far away to be terraformed. The diagram of the Firefly system in Serenity shows planets with near circular, non-overlaping orbits which suggests that none these are Kaiper Belt-type planetoids. It is likely that the Firefly system has these planetoids, but they are not important because they are not terraformed or have no moons that were terraformed (but probably have mining industry on them).

Now the remaining 8 planets are really 2 types of objects, best referred to as terrestrial planets and gas giant planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are all terrestrial. Earth you know about, skip it. Mars is smaller but probably the best prospect in our system to terraform as it once had an oxygen atmosphere, oceans, and probably life (the terraforming would not last as long as Earth's biosphere, but perhaps millions to hundreds of millions of years with maintenance). Venus could be terraformed, but it would take a lot of work. Mercury is just too small and too close to the sun to be terraformed. Now this area has been referred to as the zone of life in the past, but this idea has fallen by the wayside as we have discovered that many moons outside of this zone have potential for current life. Which brings us to the gaseous giants. We can't terraform these, there's no rocky surface to them. But many of their moons are good prospects for Terraforming. Around Jupiter; Europa, Ganymede, and Calisto are likely candidates for terraforming but Io is likely too close to Jupiter. Around Saturn, Titan is also a possible candidate for terraforming. I'm not familiar enough with any of these moons to narrow it down to the best possible candidate moons, but There might be more I haven't mentioned. Uranus and Neptune's moons are too small and none have atmospheres, so there are not likely candidates.

Now Neptune's moon Triton has a thin atmosphere but most notably orbits backwards. When the solar system is viewed from above, all terrestrial planets, the asteroid belt, gaseous giants, and Kaiper Belt planetoids orbit the sun in a counterclockwise fashion. The rotation of the terrestrial and gas giant planets are counterclockwise as well. Only Triton orbits in a clockwise direction. Because of this, it is slowing down and will eventually will degrade in orbit to the point that it colides with Neptune. It is likely a Kaiper Belt planetoid that was captured by Neptune's gravity (which may also happen to Pluto/Charon for the person who mentioned it). So when counter-rotating planets and moons are present in a solar system the results are eventually catastrophic.

Now it is interesting that we have such a division of planets as 4 terrestrial and then 4 gas giants in order. Now there were more planets in the past in our solar system, but after time they collided to create the current planets (our moon is the result of one such collision). The sun had a large disc of material around it like the rings of Saturn and other gas giants, but the objects began to collect together forming early planets which followed their orbit around the sun cleaning up debris like dustbusters. After awhile the smaller early planets eventually collided with each other to form new larger planets. For this reason, it is unlikely that a mature solar system ready for terraforming would have planets sharing the same orbit. And if people did settle on them, it not be a good place to live eventually as one would catch up to the other one and form a new planet (very bad for the inhabitants). Evidence of the formation of planets from disks of debrise are the asteroid belt which lacks enough mass to form even a Mercury sized planet, and the rings and moons of the gas giants which are essentially mini-solar systems within our own solar system. So for our own 8 planets, as well as the moons of the gas giants, the strict rule of forming a parallel and non-overlapping orbit and rotation with that rotation of the sun is the rule. Only the Kaiper belt objects show a rebelious nature, but they are far away and small.

Now it looks like our observations of extrasolar gas giants (that's planets outside our solar system for Jayne) that smaller stars might be better candidates for large solar systems. I would have thought a big star would be necessary to have the gravity to hold 20 terrestrial and gas giant planets together in the Firefly system, but it does make sense that the weaker gravity of a smaller star than our sun may allow more of the early planets to avoid collisions and create a larger number of planets. It might be that larger stars form systems with few but big planets. I would like to seem some simulations of formation of solar systems with different size stars and amounts of disk matter. One of those combinations will likely produce a Firefly-type system. Unfortunately you need professional astrophysics software to do this type of simulation (well beyond the scope of a high school science department).

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 10:18 AM

Uh-oh, I noticed an error in the calculations. Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away. You must have doubled that to 8.6 light years.

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:

If I can get mathematical:
t = t0/(1-v²/c²)½

where: t = time of external observer
t0 = time on board ship
v = the speed of the moving object
c = the speed of light in a vacuum

So given a trip to Alpha Centauri at 0.5c:
t0 = t * (1 - v²/c²)½
t0 = 8.6 * (1 - 0.5²)½
t0 = 8.6 * 0.866
t0 = 7.4

Mor

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 10:40 AM

That equation is to work out the total time that has passed on a journey based on the time for an outside observer and the speed of the craft.

The speed of the craft (v) is 0.5c. The time of the journey for the outside observer (t) is 8.6yrs.

That is a simplification as it doesn't take into account acceleration and deceleration. A Bussard Ram Scoop would be operated at 1g acceleration (which would also give earth norm gravity to the ships occupants) for half the journey, and then 1g deceleration for the last half.

At half the speed of light time dialation isn't particularly noticable. At higher velocities it becomes far more apparent.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 11:05 AM

AAHHAAA

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
What if there were more than 1 planet in an orbit?

This's actually been done several times. SOLAR CRISIS, I think, might be wrong, was the title of one film... they can't see it from Earth, as it is exactly opposite Earth- (which I think is bad science, should be at the laGrange points). It got sorta mystical with an alternate Earth there, everybody left-handed... anybody remember that flic?

Also, check out the Hubbble results- Joss is on target, its our solar system that now seems unusual. Gas giants in close to suns... poor Kepler!:]

Don't think we'd want to put all our eggs in a system that had two or more suns. Agriculture needs stable, predictable seasons. We are gonna find out more about that, I'm afraid.

Does raise a possibly useful point- did they send colony ships to only one place? Might be a way to get Serenity out of Fox's grasp once & for all!:]

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 12:12 PM

Could you please just make it stranger? Stranger. Odder. Could be weirder. More bizarre. How about uncanny?

Quote:
Originally posted by aahhaaa:

Does raise a possibly useful point- did they send colony ships to only one place? Might be a way to get Serenity out of Fox's grasp once & for all!:]

Y'know, what *IF* after the settlers of the current system, others managed to leave but head elsewhere...I think you have a great idea there...

Now to pitch it to Joss and Co.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 12:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
Quote:
Originally posted by aahhaaa:

Does raise a possibly useful point- did they send colony ships to only one place? Might be a way to get Serenity out of Fox's grasp once & for all!:]

Y'know, what *IF* after the settlers of the current system, others managed to leave but head elsewhere...I think you have a great idea there...

Now to pitch it to Joss and Co.

Yeah, and then after settling thirteen or so new colonies, they created a race of robots, called Cylons, which later rebelled and destroyed their colonies forcing them to flee the Cylon tyranny in the last battlestar, Galactica which leads a rag-tag fugative fleet on a lonely quest towards a shining planet known as earth!

I think it could work!

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 12:27 PM

DC4BS

Random thoughts on the verse.

Question? Do we believe that smaller suns have more planets because of some particular gravitational theory or have we come up with some new gravitational theory based on finding more planets around small suns?

I'm curious now. I know most planets discovered are due to watching the various stars movements (wobble) caused by their planets orbits.

A larger sun would make it harder for a planet to cause observable movement. Maybe larger suns DO have more planets but we can't detect them because they don't cause enough "wobble" for our current technology to observer it.

------------------

As to the "glowy" bits in the verse map, Go all the way back to Arthur C Clarks 2001 to get to the idea of compressing Jupiter and igniting it to form a mini-sun for it's moons to make a mini-solar system...

Since the verse has the technology to affect gravity, it seems like a possibility that they took the largest gas giants in the system and compressed them into lightbulbs.

------------------------------------------
dc4bs

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 2:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dc4bs:
As to the "glowy" bits in the verse map, Go all the way back to Arthur C Clarks 2001 to get to the idea of compressing Jupiter and igniting it to form a mini-sun for it's moons to make a mini-solar system...

I remember in high school a teacher told me the estimated amount of mass needed to turn Jupiter into a sun, no idea what it was though. Of course if you can alter gravity you don't need to add any mass.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 2:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
I remember in high school a teacher told me the estimated amount of mass needed to turn Jupiter into a sun, no idea what it was though. Of course if you can alter gravity you don't need to add any mass.

I think it’s about 70-80 times the mass of Jupiter, which puts Jupiter safely within the realm of planet, as it is unlikely that it could ever gain enough mass anytime soon to develop into a star.

-------------
Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 7:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
That equation is to work out the total time that has passed on a journey based on the time for an outside observer and the speed of the craft.

The speed of the craft (v) is 0.5c. The time of the journey for the outside observer (t) is 8.6yrs.

That is a simplification as it doesn't take into account acceleration and deceleration. A Bussard Ram Scoop would be operated at 1g acceleration (which would also give earth norm gravity to the ships occupants) for half the journey, and then 1g deceleration for the last half.

At half the speed of light time dialation isn't particularly noticable. At higher velocities it becomes far more apparent.

Yes, thanks for that info. I noticed the relative time difference wasn't very far off on the math. So what we need to know is how far the colony ship could travel accelerating at 1g and then decelerating at 1g in the time it took them (probably between 100 and 200 years).

I didn't think about using the momentum of acceleration to create artificial gravity. This would be essential for people born on the trip to develop normally as they grow. (No explanation of how Serenity is able to generate artificial gravity perpendicular to its direction of travel or while stationary, but with a low budget TV show you can't be floating your staff around the set every day.) Would the colony ship basically stop its engines halfway, or would it need to turn around and reverse its propulsion to maintain the 1g environment and need to flip the furniture on all the decks?

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:32 PM

ROCKETJOCK

For the record, I was a supporter of the multi-system hypothesis. Given the contradictory information presented in the series, it wasn't unreasonable, but now that Joss has clarified the shape of his playground, we have to discard old ideas.

We can assume that the exodus fleet didn't pick their target solar system at random. The stellar system that we now think of as "The 'Verse" was undoubtedly chosen precisely because it had an abnormally large number of potentially terraformable planetary bodies. There's no way of knowing whether such a formation is "normal" or "common" at this time, because we just don't know enough about stellar systems other than our own. (Our current technology can barely detect extrasolar planets at all, and only if they are jovian or superjovian in size, with smaller terrestrial planets implied only by orbital wobbles in the larger bodies.)

Given that the technology of the 'Verse includes things far beyond current knowledge (such as gravity control and reduced-inertia drives--see the RPG for detail on the latter), the ability to terraform a broad variety of worlds quickly is no greater stretch of the suspension of disbelief than a magical FTL drive, certainly less than a "Genesis Device". From a dramatic point of view, Joss has simply chosen a different set of theoretical impossibilities to build his world with than Lucas or Roddenberry did, but that doesn't make them less valid.

And the dramatic forces inherent in a single large-but-bounded star system are much different that those in a wide-open universe like those in Star Trek/Star Wars; for one thing, it explains why the Independents didn't just find new worlds to settle on. There ain't any, at least none you can reach in a lifetime. No Mexican border for former Confederates to escape to...

"You can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dc4bs:
Random thoughts on the verse.

Question? Do we believe that smaller suns have more planets because of some particular gravitational theory or have we come up with some new gravitational theory based on finding more planets around small suns?

I'm curious now. I know most planets discovered are due to watching the various stars movements (wobble) caused by their planets orbits.

A larger sun would make it harder for a planet to cause observable movement. Maybe larger suns DO have more planets but we can't detect them because they don't cause enough "wobble" for our current technology to observer it.

------------------

As to the "glowy" bits in the verse map, Go all the way back to Arthur C Clarks 2001 to get to the idea of compressing Jupiter and igniting it to form a mini-sun for it's moons to make a mini-solar system...

Since the verse has the technology to affect gravity, it seems like a possibility that they took the largest gas giants in the system and compressed them into lightbulbs.

------------------------------------------
dc4bs

The latest extra-solar planet to be discovered is a Neptune sized body orbiting a red dwarf star 1/3rd as massive as the sun. The planet's orbit is only 1/10th the distance of the orbit of Mercury from the sun. The French coauthor of the article, Xavier Delfosse, suggests "Our finding possibly means that planets are rather frequent around the smallest stars." These smaller stars are actually very common.

This suggests that a system made up of 20 planets closely spaced together may be most likely around a small star. As I think about how planets form, the weak gravity of a smaller star might be key in forming a system with a large number of planets and moons. At 8 planets, our system is pretty spartan compared to the Firefly system. Perhaps a higher gravity of a larger sun tends to pull the early planets together more and create fewer final planets. But it also could be a factor of the size of the Accretian disk that forms around the protostar. Perhaps a thicker disk would form more planets over a smaller orbit interval. I don't know what the size relationship between star size and its accretian disk mass is. We really need to have some solar system models run on software to see what combinations produce a Firefly-like system.
Then we'll know what size star to look for in the exsisting galaxy to be the potential home to Serenity and its crew.

Oh, and oh yeah, collapse gas giants into stars, thanks a lot captain sarcasm.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 8:48 PM

True about choosing the right planet. The technology to investigate these extrasolar systems is in the process of being built and launched now. Satelite arrays that can scan star systems from orbit are only a decade away. Certainly within our lifetime we would be able to find many systems with Earth-like planets in it. And have a good idea of what the system is made up of. We'll know more about the frequency of planet arrangements then.

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:
For the record, I was a supporter of the multi-system hypothesis. Given the contradictory information presented in the series, it wasn't unreasonable, but now that Joss has clarified the shape of his playground, we have to discard old ideas.

We can assume that the exodus fleet didn't pick their target solar system at random. The stellar system that we now think of as "The 'Verse" was undoubtedly chosen precisely because it had an abnormally large number of potentially terraformable planetary bodies. There's no way of knowing whether such a formation is "normal" or "common" at this time, because we just don't know enough about stellar systems other than our own. (Our current technology can barely detect extrasolar planets at all, and only if they are jovian or superjovian in size, with smaller terrestrial planets implied only by orbital wobbles in the larger bodies.)

Given that the technology of the 'Verse includes things far beyond current knowledge (such as gravity control and reduced-inertia drives--see the RPG for detail on the latter), the ability to terraform a broad variety of worlds quickly is no greater stretch of the suspension of disbelief than a magical FTL drive, certainly less than a "Genesis Device". From a dramatic point of view, Joss has simply chosen a different set of theoretical impossibilities to build his world with than Lucas or Roddenberry did, but that doesn't make them less valid.

And the dramatic forces inherent in a single large-but-bounded star system are much different that those in a wide-open universe like those in Star Trek/Star Wars; for one thing, it explains why the Independents didn't just find new worlds to settle on. There ain't any, at least none you can reach in a lifetime. No Mexican border for former Confederates to escape to...

"You can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 9:14 PM

FLETCH2

Quote:
Originally posted by RocketJock:

Given that the technology of the 'Verse includes things far beyond current knowledge (such as gravity control and reduced-inertia drives--see the RPG for detail on the latter),
"You can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him." -- Robert A. Heinlein

The info in the RPG is not nescessarily canon, in the main its just some guys who watched the 15 episodes and had a copy of the movie script. They made things up to try and explain what they saw on screen, so if Serenity didn't loose gravity in "Out of Gas" they decide that means that gravity generation is so efficient it takes almost no power rather than the more obvious one that TV doesnt film zero Gee scenes when spacecraft break down.

It bugs me, because the tech they "explain" is actually as difficult to do as FTL and breaks several big laws of physics that even FTL doesn't.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005 11:49 PM

Fletch, I'm not a big gamer, but one of the things I did want to see in the RPG is the gravity explination, you couldn't give me an outline of it could you?

I have my own ideas about the gravity myself, but I'd like to hear the rpg explination first.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
Remember, the ice caps aren't melting, the water is being liberated.

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 4:19 AM

AAHHAAA

couple speculations...

It should be 'relatively' easy to find the Verse... as we live on Earth That Was. Pick a maximum number of light years they could have travelled- that's the center of a sphere centered on us. Even assuming 200 light years, there just aren't that many stars nearby.

I assumed that the city-like Alliance ships were the original colonizing transports.

One other important planetary factor we haven't covered... supernovas. All the elements heavier than iron came here from neighborhood novas; our Sun is not massive enough to create them. You might want a bigger star for that reason, but mostly you'd want a very stable star.
You'd even want to be sure the nearby stars are completely stable too!:]

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 6:45 AM

FLETCH2

It's a matter of energy. To support life there has to be a source of energy. In our case that source is the sun. Get too close to the sun and you get hot and crispy -- look at Venus. Go too far away and it gets too cold --- look at Mars. The range of orbits that could actually support our kind of life is called a star's "habitable zone" and it's actually pretty narrow. To support the environment we see the BDH in -- ie the kinds of environments where "western" style clothes are appropriate is likely to be even narrower.

That is a problem with the single star theory IMHO, you simply can't fit enough of them in one habitable zone. The Miranda graphic shows a far more interesting system. One with about 5 stars in a close cluster, each with a collection of planets. It makes the most sense for the "verse, explaining why some trips take days and some trips a month (maybe more.) It makes the verse big enough to get lost in. Multiple stars mean multiple habitable zones supporting multiple worlds.

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 7:23 AM

GUNTERMARX

I feel your pain brother. I was under the 'mistaken' impression when wathcing the series that the 'verse' was exactly as you described - a cluster of stars with slow FTL drives. That fit with the idea of dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. I didn't ever see it as just one star system, though they kept referring to the verse as 'the system'.

However in Joss' defense, I can sum up what we know about other solar systems in one word; Nothing. No offense to our astronomers that have observed 'stellar wobles' and dubbed them planets, that's a pretty impressive leap of logic. I hope it bears fruit but don't feel we'll really know whats orbitting other suns until we send probes there or have a scope that can actually observe planetary bodies in said systems.

So if Joss wants to make a 20 planet solar system and terraform all of the available moons and planets then God bless him. His writing is otherwise too damn good to fault him on a piece of planetary data that is conjecture and theory with only one example (SOL) to go by.

I aggree with you about the other visual/sci things he did get right. Beautiful to behold.

Final note, I was watching Cowboy Bebop with my daughters the other day and was struck by the similarity of the stories. Bounty Hunters/Pirates/take any job they can get in a fast loose single solar system 'verse' with terraformed planets (Mars, Venus, Earth and some of the moons). Their method of travel is a bit different between planets but 'the feel' of the verse was similar. Wonder if there was a conncection there for Joss?

guntermarx

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 7:24 AM

Habitable zones is an old and outdated idea. The atmosphere composition, magnetic field, size of body, orientation of planet surface, and stabilitity of axis have more influence on environmental conditions than distance to sun. My students are always shocked to find the when the Earth's eliptical orbit is closest to the sun is in January, our coldest month of the year.

The fate of Mars is due to several factors that have nothing to do with its distance from the sun. Mars has two very small moons and wobbles on its axis unlike Earth which has one big moon to stabilize our 15 degree tilt. This gave Mars widely varying seasons. Mars does not have a strong magnetic field and is subject to more radiation coming in from the sun that helped strip away much of its atmosphere. Its small size and weaker gravity didn't help to maintain its atmosphere as well. Now given all these strikes against Mars, it still maintained an atmosphere with oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor for a good portion of its history. It had oceans and a water cycle. And more likely than not, it had (and may still have) life.

So for terraforming, even a wobbly and small planet far from the sun, can be habitable with right mix of gases added to the atmosphere and a decent magnetic field (natural or may be something that could be artificially induced). A terraformed planet doesn't need a habitibal environment like the Earth's that lasts billions of years. If it can last millions of years before needing repairs, that's good enough for human use. Think of it like beach renourishment, the beaches erode away up to the houses and businesses on barrier islands, so local governments come in and dredge sand from offshore and pile it to create a new beach extending back out to its original width. Now this beach erodes away again, but the dredgers come back and add more sand again. A terraformed planet would probably work the same way, a lot of maintenance but not beyond the means of local population. This might be why the outer poorer worlds are dryer and desert like conditions, they just can't afford the upkeep on their world. It could also be that the core worlds were much stingier with the water resources in comets and used the lions share of them. The magnetic barriers on the outer wolds might be far weaker too, allowing the radiation on the solar winds to bombard the surface at a higher level than the core worlds and limit plant growth. Perhaps these outer worlds have axis that are fairly stable and perpendicular to the suns rotation, so they do not experience much seasonal change and are dryer because of the stable conditions (this might be artificially induced). The outer worlds probably had a lot of CO2 and other greenhouse gases pumped into their atmosphere to trap more light energy as heat given their farther distance from the sun.

Whoops, also forgot to mention geothermal energy. If the worlds farther away from the sun are geologicly active, they have a lot of internal heat that can be tapped to help warm the world besides the light from the sun.

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
It's a matter of energy. To support life there has to be a source of energy. In our case that source is the sun. Get too close to the sun and you get hot and crispy -- look at Venus. Go too far away and it gets too cold --- look at Mars. The range of orbits that could actually support our kind of life is called a star's "habitable zone" and it's actually pretty narrow. To support the environment we see the BDH in -- ie the kinds of environments where "western" style clothes are appropriate is likely to be even narrower.

That is a problem with the single star theory IMHO, you simply can't fit enough of them in one habitable zone. The Miranda graphic shows a far more interesting system. One with about 5 stars in a close cluster, each with a collection of planets. It makes the most sense for the "verse, explaining why some trips take days and some trips a month (maybe more.) It makes the verse big enough to get lost in. Multiple stars mean multiple habitable zones supporting multiple worlds.

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 7:46 AM

GUNTERMARX

In your last paragraph you mentioned a very salient point about the suns apparent luminosity on planets on the edge of the solar system. Seems like no matter what world they go to, the star is the same size and candle power. Hmmm. What method of terraforming could possibly warm outer worlds that are too distant from the sun for its natural heat to do it? Probably a parabolic mirror at a lagrange point between the subject planet and the sun. It would always be in the same position between the two bodies so the sun would be magnified both in its intensity and luminosity.

Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) did an excellent job of describing said mirror in his terraforming masterpiece, the Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars Blue Mars in that order). He also describes how the reverse of the mirror, the parabolic solar umbrella could be used to dampen the effects of the sun for planets like Venus that are too hot. The materials garnered for such a massive project would require moving an asteroid into the required position and mining the materials/manufacturing the sail right there on the spot - largely robotic with some human supervision. It would probably take something on the order of 30 years or so with advanced robotics and materials to build each mirror and there would have to be dozens of them as each moon and planet describes a different orbit and would require its own mirror/umbrella. Incidently, Dr. Robert Zubrin, a rocket scientist, author of many books on space exploration and terraforming/resource utilization in space from Martin Marietta and one of the founders/President of the Mars Society aggrees with the mirror idea for terraforming.

Terraforming would also go beyond simply brightening or dimming the sun's power. Each planet would have different needs based on its atmosphere, gravity, geological make up, etc. KSR also desribes use of black algae seeding polar caps to melt ice and release O2, CO2 and water vapor (the later two excellent green house gases). He also discussed drilling fulmaroles (massive strip mining project that drills mile wide holes down to near the mantle, to release gasses to thicken the atmosphere.

I could go on but don't want to bore you. The point is it is extremely likely that such a multi-planet/moon system if it exists could be terraformed.

And if all else fails, just enjoy the show, the excellent characters and writing and don't get too hung up on the gory details. Cuz in the end its Science Fiction.

guntermarx

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:56 AM

AAHHAAA

If you have cheap artificial gravity, none of this is a problem. AG could create a gravitational lens to concentrate or diffuse sunlight, provide standard gravity on moonlets & stations, and last but not least- an inertialess stardrive!:] (if there are fuel tanks on Serenity, they are kinda small).

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 10:25 AM

DEMENTEDYAM

Quote:
Originally posted by FraserBW:
Now the newly rediscovered Miranda world might not be on that map and could be a 21st "planet" in orbit since it is unknown to the characters and gone from most databanks. What it looks like from the map on the bridge is that it is beyond a belt of debris and wreckage that is Reaver teritory. But it's possible that it represents a belt around Miranda and perhaps it is a moon around a gas giant.

I'm almost certain that this is not the case:

don't forget that the scene with the planet diagram was a flashback to river's childhood, and was probably before the miranda coverup.

(river is in her late teens, and miranda has been hidden for the last decade or so? the flashback probably took place around the time of the coverup)

chances are, miranda was on that chart, because the gov. hadn't needed to cover up yet.

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 1:33 PM

Ah, good point! So it might be that very last planet, or at least a moon around it. I noticed while rewatching Serenity (now braced for Book and Wash's deaths so I could focus more) that some of the plants have bright spots around them that could be moons in the diagram, but they might also be stars in the starfield behind it. BTW, the debris field between Serenity and Miranda is dipicted on the graphics on the bridge. It appears to be a continuous belt, but it's doubtful it would be able to create a belt of debris in an orbit between Miranda and the next planet. So either it's a belt of debris around Miranda formin a ring, or it is perhaps a belt of debris around the Jovian planet Miranda orbits.

Quote:
Originally posted by dementedyam:
Quote:
Originally posted by FraserBW:
Now the newly rediscovered Miranda world might not be on that map and could be a 21st "planet" in orbit since it is unknown to the characters and gone from most databanks. What it looks like from the map on the bridge is that it is beyond a belt of debris and wreckage that is Reaver teritory. But it's possible that it represents a belt around Miranda and perhaps it is a moon around a gas giant.

I'm almost certain that this is not the case:

don't forget that the scene with the planet diagram was a flashback to river's childhood, and was probably before the miranda coverup.

(river is in her late teens, and miranda has been hidden for the last decade or so? the flashback probably took place around the time of the coverup)

chances are, miranda was on that chart, because the gov. hadn't needed to cover up yet.

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 1:49 PM

STARPILOTGRAINGER

My big problem with 'one star system' is Out of Gas. Specifically, the notion that they were out of communications range.

What exactly is communications range? Radio signals travel at the speed of light (if they're not using something faster - nobody seems to have communications lag time in Serenity or Firefly). You'd almost have to assume that all the planets were conveniently on the other side of the sun from Serenity for them to not be able to contact someone in a reasonable amount of time for rescue.

However, if you assume slow FTL travel but still STL communications (at least for the most part - core planets might have an Ansible for the Cortex, that ships access with STL radio), you can be way out in the black at a point where it might take months for a signal to reach somebody.

Star Pilot Grainger
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/newnumber6 (real)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/alternaljournal (fictional, travelling through other worlds)
Unreachable Star: http://www.unreachablestar.net - Comics & SF News/Reviews/Opinions
This week: My spoiler-free Serenity review

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Thursday, December 29, 2005 2:05 PM