The spaceship that looks...out of place...in the future by Steve580

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

The spaceship that looks...out of place...in the future

POSTED BY: STEVE580
UPDATED: Monday, May 3, 2004 12:30
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Monday, April 19, 2004 1:07 PM

I was watching 'Arial' today, and when Serenity landed, I commented how strange it was that the ship actually looked out-of-place in this hight-tech city of the future. Among horses and deserts...it's fine.

Just thought it was kinda strange; I never really noticed before.
-Steve

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Monday, April 19, 2004 2:27 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Serenity isn't exactly a top of the line model anymore. She's a clunker, a work horse transport, and she's been around the block a few times. Remember, Mal found Serenity in a used space ship lot. I suspect when she was new and all polished, maintained on a regular basis...she prob 'fit in' a good bit more.

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. Worked that out myself. "

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Monday, April 19, 2004 3:21 PM

THUNDAR

The Firefly class was a workhorse. Completely functional like the A-10 aircraft. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I Love the A-10 and I Love the Firefly class. All Serenity needs is the A-10's gatling gun.

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Monday, April 19, 2004 4:15 PM

GUNRUNNER

After they landed people who walked past it the spaceport were probaly sayiing, "Yuck! They let THAT land on our world! The goverment should make a law..."

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

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Monday, April 19, 2004 4:43 PM

TEELABROWN

This is true, I haven't noticed either. Our working ship. Beautiful ship. It definently more in place with lower tech worlds.

_____________
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2 plus 2 make 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Teela Brown, keeper of bad typing.
"No one reads these things any way."- Bart on Blackboard

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Monday, April 19, 2004 5:06 PM

ECMORGAN69

Quote:
Originally posted by GunRunner:
After they landed people who walked past it the spaceport were probaly sayiing, "Yuck! They let THAT land on our world! The goverment should make a law..."

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

Don't laugh. In the hospital where I work, one of our stellar nurses complained about another employee's clunker parking in our parking lot. She said, and I quote, "He shouldn't be allowed to park his piece of s**t in this lot. He could hit my car and scratch it." It's jing chang mei yong de nurses like that one that gives them all a bad name. I instructed my subordinate to tell her to piss off if she gave us any aggravation, and if she wanted confirmation on that, then I was always available

They can have my "Firefly" DVDs when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers....

Oh yeah,

you, FOX TV!!

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Monday, April 19, 2004 5:45 PM

DAVCO92

"I instructed my subordinate to tell her to piss off if she gave us any aggravation, and if she wanted confirmation on that, then I was always available

"

LOL!

Burn the land, boil the sea...

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Monday, April 19, 2004 6:06 PM

THEFOP

Always thought Serenity was kind of the space aged answer to a Herc myself. Big, not entirely pretty, functional and able to land pretty much anywhere. The used to call them the Workhorse of the North, you know.

once the snow got so deep you almost couldn't hear margaret atwood

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Monday, April 19, 2004 6:14 PM

CCT

Ok, you want out of place? In "Trash", when they're landing the shuttle at the estate, a SR71 "Blackbird" flys past! I just noticed this a couple of days ago, had to watch it a couple of times. Funny how a 1960's jet doesn't really *look* out of place. Sort of like when Serenity does a flyby in "BattleStar Galactica".

(For what it's worth I love the Blackbird, and the SkunkWorks that brought it to life. Clever guys with a serious desire to make things work.)

cct

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Monday, April 19, 2004 6:48 PM

ZOID

cct wrote:

Quote:
For what it's worth I love the Blackbird, and the SkunkWorks that brought it to life

Dude:

I could tell you some serious sh*t about the SR-71...

But then I'd have to kill ya'... ;)

As to Serenity, I've thought all along that she looked a bit like a C-130 (Hercules).

Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"River and me was best friends, back then. I named my first-born daughter after her. 'Course, you can't swing a dead cat 'round here on I-Day without hittin' a River..."

- Kaywinnit Tam, wife and mother of 6, A Child Shall Lead Them: A History of the Second War of Independence Wilkins, Richard

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Monday, April 19, 2004 7:27 PM

JASONZZZ

The A-10 is a thing of beauty, the way it sounds, the way it loiters and spits DUs opening up the enemies like little cans of sardies. It's definitely a little workhorse, it takes all the hits and keeps on ticking. I've heard that A-10s used to complete its full missions, dropping all its ammo, then limbs back to base after taking so many hits that only half the damn plane left.

Quote:
Originally posted by Thundar:
The Firefly class was a workhorse. Completely functional like the A-10 aircraft. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I Love the A-10 and I Love the Firefly class. All Serenity needs is the A-10's gatling gun.

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Monday, April 19, 2004 7:51 PM

STATIC

The Apache ain't winnin' no beauty contests any time soon either.

I've had the distinct pleasure of conducting joint operations these past many months with the A-10 drivers and I can tell ya. . .that's one ugly bitch, but she does the job better than anything else, so I still love 'em. And the Air Force guys are so darn classy, they say the exact same thing about us '64's.

I love it when conversation turns to topics of Aviation and aviation-related things.

==================================================
"Wash. . .we got some local color happening. A grand entrance would not go amiss."

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Monday, April 19, 2004 8:20 PM

GUNRUNNER

Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
it takes all the hits and keeps on ticking. I've heard that A-10s used to complete its full missions, dropping all its ammo, then limbs back to base after taking some many hits that only half the damn plane left.

I've read that the 30mm gattling guns from the 70's on (Russian ZSU-30s) could cut a A-10 up bad and thats why its being retied.

Ofcourse I wouldn't want to be in any aircraft when a Russian CADS-N-1 system pointing at me! I think that its taken to land with a armored tank like thing too!

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004 2:39 AM

BROWNCOAT1

May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

Serenity may not be sleek or fancy, but she is still beautiful. It is what she represents, what she is to her crew that makes her so. For Mal she is freedom and a means to stay beyond the reach of the Alliance. For all of the crew she is home.

Sure she is a workhorse, that is what freighters are for all intents & purposes. I don't think I have ever seen a pretty or high tech looking freighter. They don't need to be to haul cargo. So long as they are reliable and get the job done, that is all that counts.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004 2:42 AM

DAVEY

i always thought of serenity as the equivalent of the old dakota or dc3, some of those old girls(the ones with a half decent mechanic)are still flying now

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004 7:42 AM

SAMURAIX47

And did anyone slo-mo the shots from Safe of the 'police station' where Mr. Tam bails out Simon just after the commercial break. A couple Star Trek: Next Gen shuttlecraft fly by without the warp nacelle lights on.

Jaymes

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Friday, April 30, 2004 5:25 AM

KUGELBLITZ

Hmm, I thought that the A10 was built to take hits from the 23mm stuff the Russians used on their AAA platforms.

Yep, Serenity is ugly but in a classy way, like the Hercules or the DC3. There is so much function there that she cannot be just a chunk of ship (or boat).

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"

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Friday, April 30, 2004 4:04 PM

ROCKETJOCK

Quote:
Originally posted by Static:
The Apache ain't winnin' no beauty contests any time soon either.

I love it when conversation turns to topics of Aviation and aviation-related things.

==================================================

Serenity, and by extension the entire Firefly class has the beauty of pure functionality. She is, in her way, as aesthetically pleasing as the classic B-17 Flying Fortress, in that every part of her design is relvevant to her purpose.

Notice though, that she is not without deliberate artistic touches; the asymetric skylight windows in the common room/galley for example, or the way her shuttles resemple ladybugs -- I sometimes wonder if those lovely shuttles were original equipment, or if Firefly class were designed with bays able to acomodate a number of common shuttle designs, and Mal just got a good deal on a matched pair of Ladybird class short-range craft.

One of the major disgruntlements I have with the show's short broadcast life is that we never got to see other Firefly class transports, including the more primitive type Book had flown with (the type without extenders, which I infer means they lacked the variable-pitch engines that make Serenity so agile.)

Oh, and Static, for the record, my nominee for the all-time most beautiful aircraft of all time is the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Never such a perfect blending of aesthetics, adaptability, and pure functionality in a package built for heroes.

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

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Friday, April 30, 2004 5:17 PM

GUNHAND

I agree pretty much with everything said about Serenity and Firefly class ships in general.

However, since the topic has drifted towards aircraft and beautiful and deadly ones I have to give props (pun there eh?) to the F4U Corsair. Beautiful bird.

I've had the pleasure to see one doing low flyovers at an airfield and let me tell you, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, you can definately see why the Japanese nicknamed them "Whispering Death", it was downright eerie. But in a good way.

Besides it was one of the few times that the Navy being tight

ed about equipment actually worked to the Corps' advantage and that makes me all sorts of pleased.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

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Friday, April 30, 2004 7:07 PM

11THHOUR

One of the aspects I love so much about the look of Serenity is her "bio-design". The literal firefly like rear end, thorax-like body leading to a "neck", and the bird/bug like "head" shape. Serenity's design incorporates so many living creature aspects that she takes on the look of a living creature herself!

She's alive...

11thHour

__________________________________________________________

"She's my good girl." - Kaylee

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Friday, April 30, 2004 7:39 PM

GUNRUNNER

Quote:
Originally posted by Kugelblitz:
Hmm, I thought that the A10 was built to take hits from the 23mm stuff the Russians used on their AAA platforms.

Newer (70’s, 80's on) Russian guns use 30mm. One land vehicle (I forget the designation) has twin 30mm guns and a pair of SAM launchers. The ZSU-30 has a single 30mm gattaling gun. (Similar to the A10s tank-busting gun but with Radar guidance!)

When these weapons began appearing in the early 70's (when the A10 was being designed) they chewed up US military jets in Vietnam. When the A10 entered service it was realized that these modern guns would force the A10 to keep their distance from enemy armored units causing them to be relegated to scout duty despite there armor.

It should be noted that even small AAA and small arms fire in sufficient quantities would bring down even the toughest jet. That is one reason why the low altitude attack jets like the A-6 Intruder have been retired, and why the British Tornado jets took high losses in the Gulf War during missions to crater the Iraqi airstrips.

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>Help out today!

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Friday, April 30, 2004 8:18 PM

GUNHAND

From what I can remember, and most of which is probably out of date but probably not by a large margin since modern weapons systems have a much longer "shelf life" than systems from say 50 years ago. Mostly because of cost but partially from technolgy. Anyhow, from my hazy brainpan:

The 30mm/SA-19 armed version of what's basically a redesigned ZSU-23-4 Shilka is the 2S6M Tunguska. Service entry on it wasn't until 1990, and the jury is pretty much still out if it was much of an improvement over the Shilka or not. The gun was basically a high elevation model of the one on the BMP-2 and the muzzle velocity never seemed to be good enough for fast movers, helicopters yeah; jets, not so much. And the missile system is basically a MANPAD, so same story on effectiveness against jets/helicopters. I never saw one in action, never saw one outside of a recognition manual actually and from what I gather it's not heavilly deployed and almost never exported.

ZSU-30 gatling-style was something that we heard about in the early '90s but no one ever confirmed that it was actually built in series production, and I've never seen a confirmed picture of one in service. Some grainy shots of Soviet/Russian tests but after the USSR went kaput we found out a lot of what they showed off in 'training excercises' was stuff they wanted the west to see.

Strategic disinformation was a cornerstone of Soviet military planning. And we fell for it a lot of times, some weapon systems the US fielded in particuliar were designed with a bogus threat in mind. Usually we caught on, sometimes, not so much. A few things in the current inventory were built to be used against non-existant weapon systems. We still have them, but the use has been adapted.

At least up until the early '90s the A-10 was still expected to perform in a "Fulda Gap" sort of situation against Soviet/Russian massed armored formations. Whether or not that's wise is a matter of debate but it was still on the table. Much like the Germans in WWII had a proportionally (much) larger number of machineguns over Allied units of the same size the Soviets were very lavish about antiaircraft defenses, especially mobile systems in their Shock Armies, those guys had a system for everything it seemed like and in bulk.

You're right on the money though about small arms fire being dangerous to aircraft, one of the loss reports on a Cobra in Desert Storm indicated it was downed from .303 rifle fire. Which means probably some farmer got lucky with his grandpa's Enfield. Never discount the Magic BB.

Back on topic:

One of the things I loved most about the Firefly class is the lightningbug effect, and the oil slick. Now those are some nifty effects. Just wish we get an idea at some point over what a full burn really constitutes.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

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Monday, May 3, 2004 6:34 AM

KUGELBLITZ

One Gundish radar or its equivalent is the guidance you mention, which provides range data only. I think the other version with the twin weapons has laser guided missiles.

I can never be sure what is commonly known through varuous sources and what isn't.

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"

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Monday, May 3, 2004 11:25 AM

GUNRUNNER

Kugeblitz the twin weapon's missile is the SA-19 (SA-N-11 is the navalized version which is very common) is radio control guided, while the Navy one most likely has an additional IR seeker for use against Anti Ship Missiles (which are much faster than a jet so they can be used against fast movers). It may have a Laser Proximity Fuse and that was what you where thinking of.

I didn't know the Gundish radar was for range only, however you can easily link several other radar systems together for targeting of AAA.

Quote:
Originally posted by Gunhand:
Strategic disinformation was a cornerstone of Soviet military planning. And we fell for it a lot of times, some weapon systems the US fielded in particuliar were designed with a bogus threat in mind. Usually we caught on, sometimes, not so much. A few things in the current inventory were built to be used against non-existant weapon systems. We still have them, but the use has been adapted.

One Hi larious example is the Russian "Alfa" class attack sub; we believed it could go down to 3000 feet. So we built the Los Angeles class and deep diving torpedoes to counter it. So one Intel guy’s misinterptaion caused a whole class of boats to be built, luckily the ship’s designers had the foresight to include space for VLS missile tubes, or the USN would be stuck with a boat designed to fight a error on the pages of Jane’s.

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm
>Help out today!

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Monday, May 3, 2004 12:30 PM

GUNHAND

Yeah Gunhand the Alfa is a good example there. The funny thing was the Russians would have a testbed vehicle/system that could do x, then in their reports they know we'd read they'd basically write it up as x+ (with the + being whatever they though would be as technically impossible yet believable enough that it could have a 1 in a very large number of being true maybe) just to trick us into trying to make the "impossible".

Thing is, we usually did. In a way it backfired on them because we wound up with systems they thought would be impossible, but when we fielded them there was no way they could have a prayer of matching them.

In a way one of the reasons we won the Cold War by just throwing so much money at the false Russian tech that they just had no hope in the world to come close. They tried and spent themselves into a black hole they couldn't crawl out of.

Worked a bit both ways though, the MiG-25 was built to destroy a bomber that we'd already cancelled as being impractical and too expensive for the improvement it gave over what we already had. But the KGB/GRU saw the prototype test flights and couldn't believe we'd cancel it after putting all the money into R&D to make it. So they wound up with a world class interceptor that didn't have the target it was designed for.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Oh hey, I got an idea. Instead of us hanging
around playing art critic till I get pinched by
the Man, how's about we move away from this
eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our
increasingly eerie-ass day, how's that?"

My eerie-ass website:
http://gunhandsfirefly.homestead.com/Index.html

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