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Originally posted by 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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Originally posted by FraserBW:

Well I think we have to assume that faster than light communications do not exsist in the Joss-verse, so yes the beacon that Wash sent out would travel at the speed of light, but that could be hours to reach another ship. And that ship would take much longer to reach them than the radio waves took and Mal would be out of oxygen long before then. Radio signals from Pluto would take 8 hours to reach the Earth in the closer arc of its orbit. If Serenity were going the long way around the solar system based on the planets positions, it could be hours out of the way of any space traffic. If most of the planets were on one side of the solar system, that's where most of the space traffic would be. The ship routes basically have to follow the planet orbits.

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Originally posted by citizen:
Now it's true that we can communicate with probes out as far as Jupiter, but they're signals are VERY weak. They also have those HUGE antenna arrays to pick up these signals, which neither Serenity nor most other ships we see, have.

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Originally posted by christhecynic:
Damn you and you logic, you aren't allowed to use logic, logic sucks.

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Originally posted by christhecynic:

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Originally posted by citizen:
Now it's true that we can communicate with probes out as far as Jupiter, but they're signals are VERY weak. They also have those HUGE antenna arrays to pick up these signals, which neither Serenity nor most other ships we see, have.

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Damn you and you logic, you aren't allowed to use logic, logic sucks.

Everyone on the board knows that signals decay and you need an obnoxious dish to receive a signal from somewhere as close as an orbiting TV satellite, but no one wants to admit that in the future it might be possible that a signal could decay.

I mean this is the future man.

Every signal sent in Firefly comes in 5x5 no matter how far away the sender is or how cheap their transmitter. The only possible way for someone to be out of range is if their signal couldn't get to someone in time, signal decay is impossible.

At least that's what I've heard. I call it bullshit but since Out of Gas first came out people have been convinced that there is no such thing as signal decay and the only possible explanation was that they used FTL travel to get so far away a radio signal could not get anywhere in time.

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Originally posted by FraserBW:

Well I think we have to assume that faster than light communications do not exsist in the Joss-verse...

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:

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.

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Originally posted by citizen:
StarPilotGrainger:
That's kind of the point, signals decay very quickly. I can't pick up radio one from my car if I drive too far away from London.

We need huge banks of transmitters/receivers larger than Serenity herself to pick up signals coming from probes, and the receivers/transmitters on those probes are far larger than anything we see on Serenity. And the size of the dish does matter, it's not just a question of more powerful futur-terrific communications tech.

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Originally posted by StarPilotGrainger:
Okay, perhaps I was wrong about that - as I said, I'm no expert. I thought Earthbound radio ranges tended to have more to do with the curvature of the Earth and atmospheric conditions you obviously wouldn't find in space, I had no idea that, in space, they dropped off so quickly, but I'll take your word for it.

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Originally posted by RocketJock:
Sorry, but demonstratably FTL comm does exist in the 'Verse. Following the slaughter on Haven, the Operative talks to Mal in real time, without a noticable time lag and without knowing his location. If they were communicating along the EM band, the Operative would have to be damn close to Mal. The exact time lag would give him distance, and simple triangulation would nail down position. QED.

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Actually Niven covered all this in Protector in some detail.

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Occam's Razor- one simple answer for all the observetd phenomena...

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Originally posted by Fletch2:
The single solar system model doesn't work, because no matter how much you mess with the atmosphere of a moon you can't do anything if it doesnt receive enough solar energy. All exotic gas atmspheres can do is tinker with things like the greenhouse effect they can't manufacture energy that isn't there. A planet in Pluto's orbit will be dark and cold no matter what you do short of importing your own mini star.

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Originally posted by citizen:
The universe is infinite, so anything that is possible is probable

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Chris- don't quite get your point here...

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Originally posted by Fletch2:

if he had a great plot that only worked if Serenity can run on chopped liver he would use it
(snip... that shouldn't stop us from enjoying it.

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Originally posted by citizen:
There's twenty planets, which means 50 or more moons of Gas giants and possibly the Earth-like planets.

In the DVD extras it's mentioned that Serenity uses a variation of a fusion rocket engine, so it seems reasonable that you can use data for those types of engines. They produce speeds of roughly 5 Million to 10 Million m/s (500,000 to 100,000 Km/s).

50,000km/s is about 0.16c (1/6th of the speed of light).

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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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Originally posted by christhecynic:

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Occam's Razor- one simple answer for all the observetd phenomena...

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It was all a dream.

-

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the incorrect one.

For example I was once on a Robotics team, and there we made a robot (go figure) like any good robot it could go forward and back, turn, stack boxes, operate without an operator for short periods provided a preprogrammed function was selected, push several times its weight, and attach itself to a surface with industrial strength suction cups so nothing could move it. Such is the life of a robot.

Anyone observing this robot who believed in Occam’s Razor would immediately be forced to assume that it was a thinking being. All of the things it did could be perfectly explained by the Robot thinking, and (by the same argument that rules out an immaterial soul) one would reject (via the Razor) the absurd idea that somewhere, unknown and unseen, was a human operator.

It does not change the fact that there was a human operator. It is just that a human operator need not be introduced into the picture to explain the phenomenon, but one does need to be introduced to create the phenomenon.

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Originally posted by citizen:
I find Firefly is far more consitent with real science on the whole than Star Trek.

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Originally posted by citizen:

We can discount an inertialess drive for the Alliance Cruiser too, since we plainly see thoes huge Newtonian engines sticking out the backend.

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Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:

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Originally posted by christhecynic:

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
Occam's Razor- one simple answer for all the observetd phenomena...

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It was all a dream.

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the incorrect one.

For example I was once on a Robotics team, and there we made a robot (go figure) like any good robot it could go forward and back, turn, stack boxes, operate without an operator for short periods provided a preprogrammed function was selected, push several times its weight, and attach itself to a surface with industrial strength suction cups so nothing could move it. Such is the life of a robot.

Anyone observing this robot who believed in Occam’s Razor would immediately be forced to assume that it was a thinking being. All of the things it did could be perfectly explained by the Robot thinking, and (by the same argument that rules out an immaterial soul) one would reject (via the Razor) the absurd idea that somewhere, unknown and unseen, was a human operator.

It does not change the fact that there was a human operator. It is just that a human operator need not be introduced into the picture to explain the phenomenon, but one does need to be introduced to create the phenomenon.

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Best. Explaination. Ever.

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:

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Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:

Best. Explaination. Ever.

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So... both you guys are in the Intelligent Design camp? This is exactly their argument.

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Originally posted by aahhaaa:
So... both you guys are in the Intelligent Design camp? This is exactly their argument.

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Originally posted by CrevanReaver:
Scientifically it makes more sense, and gives more detail to the terraforming process.

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Originally posted by guntermarx:
In the case of Jupiters inner moons, especially Io and Europa, their heat is largely a product of the proximity to a massive gas giant. Jupiter exerts enormous tidal currents on the surface and core of these moons. In Europas case it causes the seas to surge and ice to break and reform. On Io it bends and buckles the surface and stimulates geothermal activity.

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