Outer space names/things in Firefly & the real world by JaynezTown

Quote:
Originally posted by PurpleBelly:
Firefly tells the story of members of a defeated and disbanded army making a life in worlds rolled over by war, avoiding rabid criminals and a ruthless military machine, trying to be true the virtue of their upbringing. Just everyday in Iraq.

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_05.20.04/film/boxpopuli.html

Yes PURPLEBELLY, I know Joss might have certain political stances but I'm not sure if firefly was supposed to be about our current state of affairs, but more a general feel about politics or bad leadership regardless of them being conservative Republican or Liberal Democrat doing the business.

Yes we have had much global change over the last 200 years, the Spanish Empire falling way, the Briish navy and enforcement of their version of rulership and of course the growth of the Soviets with their rockets in space and the USA landing on the moon and becoming the world's number 1 superpower. But like all things nothing lasts forever, Empires sometimes fall due to bad leadership or from within and Bush is doing a dog's dinner of a job on the economy and making a mess of Iraq. It was interesing to see Joss and his opinion that sometimes the Alliance is America in Vietnam, there also seem to be the Chinese influence. Could this be like Globalisation or more like how China has been growing as a country and the unsteady dollar since the expansion of europe and the euro and the movement of many jobs in electronics, manufacturing and so on going off to China ? It could be very possible that one day in the future Americans or Germans or Chinese are no longer in control of their own country but their could be a larger globalisation and larger alliance like NATO, mega-corporations or institutions like interpol controlling various areas of our life.

The moons and worlds in firefly without doubt have a kind of familiar tone to them like we know them before, they have kind of a Greek/Roman or latin fell to them much like they way our own celestial objects have been named. BLUEHOOT's great examples being Persephone and Athens

I wonder what else in firefly can be connected to our real world or real things in space

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Monday, August 2, 2004 8:25 AM

PURPLEBELLY

Quote:
Originally posted by BlueHoot:
... Greek/Roman, Egyptian ...

but then, we have a Wykehamist to lead us

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 1:04 AM

There are more clear connecting stuff like NATO, an Allaince between the USA and China, or interpol having rule over other areas and systems

The Dortmunder must come from the German city, I reckon Jiangyin is a real Chinese place while Canton ( Jayne the hero ) has come from the true Cantonese place name.
The Core must mean the Area around our solar system, I've been reading up on Space from those NASA and ESA websites. In the past few years more powerful scopes like Hubble have been able to find large planetoid bodies beyond pluto, some big ones like Quaoar and Sedna have been found but none big enough to be called planet number 10 , a traditional name for the Sun's tenth planet is Persephone so this might be our future 10th planet.
Simon had said he did some doctor work on Osiris, I feel that Osiris is not a Moon or planet but a region on one of Jupiters Moons. The real Jupiter moon Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar system, it is bigger than the planet pluto and Mercury. Some moons could almost be classed as planets, for example some are larger than planets and have their very own atmospheres.
http://www.nineplanets.org/ganymede.html
I have found that the name Osiris is a region on the Jupiter Moon Ganymede, much like South America or Europe is an area on the planet Earth. Ganymede has some water so if it were settled in the future there could be large towns and colonized areas on Osiris.

In the nine planets link I posted should show some of the real area of Osiris on Ganymede. This adds weight to the theory that 'the Core' is in fact areas of our own solar system close to Earth in firefly.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 6:43 AM

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

I love the concept that the Firefly universe is in fact our very own solar system. Alot of evidence supports that, as some of you have stated. The biggest question I have is what about "Earth-that-was"...what happened to the original Earth? Did mankind ruin it? Did we destroy it alltogether? When we developed terraforming capability, did we just abandon it?

Joss does set the stage for all of this very well with the Earth-that-was collectibles, such as the Lassiter, and the fact that Mal makes reference to "over 70 Earths spinnin', and the meek not inheriting a one", as well as the fact that it seem ships travel at fast sub-light speeds, thus taking weeks and months sometimes to get between worlds (it only took Voyager I & II a quater century to "leave" the solar system, though that was without propulsion, but they were moving **fast**).

Given that there are currently over 70 known bodies orbiting the Sun, the names in Firefly are very familiar, and that a few more could be discovered even further out yet, it is a very logical that Firefly is set in our own solar system. After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Though, like the War for Unification, being modeled after the Civil War (and the World Wars to a degree; just look at the uniforms in the flashback sequences), it is possible they are just using names from our own solar system as a reference to keep the "real feel" of it all.

Also, I could see the globalization of nations in the future...hmm...perhaps that is how the Earth-that-was became such. A couple of superpowers (US and China) dominated space exploration and terraforming, and the rest of the world did not share the vision (or were envious) and picked fights, so they formed an alliance (possibly a few european nations joined in), moved into space, and layed waste to the Earth from the "worlds above".

In any fashion, I am happy thus far, and look forward to 04/22/05 on the Standard calendar. :)

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 7:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Yeah, nothin' much happens in 500 years.

Let's see: years 1500 to 2000 saw the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation, the concept of being 'sterile' when performing medical interventions, the ability to perform in-utero surgery, the ability to fly in the sky, the ability to cross oceans without use of sailpower, significant increases in literacy by common people, communication technology of everything from telephones to wireless radio and satellite signals, horseless carriages, international finance, deliberate biological warfare, official confirmation of whole new continents on the other side of the planet (which turned out to be round after all).

Yeah, nothin' much happens in only 500 years.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 7:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
After, all it is ONLY 500 years in the future.

Yeah, nothin' much happens in 500 years.

Let's see: years 1500 to 2000 saw the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation, the concept of being 'sterile' when performing medical interventions, the ability to perform in-utero surgery, the ability to fly in the sky, the ability to cross oceans without use of sailpower, significant increases in literacy by common people, communication technology of everything from telephones to wireless radio and satellite signals, horseless carriages, international finance, deliberate biological warfare, official confirmation of whole new continents on the other side of the planet (which turned out to be round after all).

Yeah, nothin' much happens in only 500 years.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

Yes you make a very good point on the development of modern physics, the creation of antibiotics and vaccines, the typing of blood and organ transplantation.... Five hundred years can see many advances, you are right to say 500 years into the future things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more.

However even with all our modern understanding of mathematics, medical treatments and science in our world today we still have scores of problems to deal with, corruption with greed, the tales of America's mistakes in vietnam, famine in our blue Planet, religious Islamic madmen and terror camps in Afghanistan , poverty and crime, toxic waste and pollution.

It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.

This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 7:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JaynezTown:
It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.
This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

I'm not saying that 500 years would make anything *better*. (I expect the Roman Empire wasn't too happy with the last 200 years of their reign and collapse, for example).

What I was getting at was that "only" 500 years could see a lot of tech change that could *easily* put us outside of our solar system. I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

As to the similarity in names and such on planets and moons, humankind traditionally holds on to names from our past ... look at how many "New This" or "New That" communities there are in North America, named after wherever the first foreigners who arrived there had originated from.

I mean, we still have Caeserean-sections, supposedly named after the manner of birth of a long-dead Roman emperor. We are nothing if not very creative when it comes to naming things and places. We seem to prefer to take ancient names and hold on to them like precious gems.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 8:55 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by annik:
Quote:
Originally posted by JaynezTown:
It is wise to say in years to come things will be a lot different and we will have learned much more, but will things be much better ?

I think that's where firefly is fantastic, the Allaince isn't like StarTrek's nice outlook , the Alliance between USA and China is an organisation of power and greed. There are still probelms in firefly's future,
problems with wars and people are still exploited because of greed, and then we see crazy stuff like a witch hunt to burn outsiders on some planet and another horror known as Reavers.
This is why firefly is such a great show, it has a more detailed outlook on what might happen and the problems in the future.

I'm not saying that 500 years would make anything *better*. (I expect the Roman Empire wasn't too happy with the last 200 years of their reign and collapse, for example).

What I was getting at was that "only" 500 years could see a lot of tech change that could *easily* put us outside of our solar system. I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

As to the similarity in names and such on planets and moons, humankind traditionally holds on to names from our past ... look at how many "New This" or "New That" communities there are in North America, named after wherever the first foreigners who arrived there had originated from.

I mean, we still have Caeserean-sections, supposedly named after the manner of birth of a long-dead Roman emperor. We are nothing if not very creative when it comes to naming things and places. We seem to prefer to take ancient names and hold on to them like precious gems.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

Bellerophon is a cool name for a world in the episode Trash, it was also the name of the ship that lands on the Forbidden Planet. This is the Planet/Moon that adds huge weight to your theory, that is in the Episode known as TRASH. Mrs Renolds, Bridget, Saffron or whatever name she goes by seduces Mal into going for the Bellerophon job, getting the original hand-held
laser pistol.

Back to some real world news...As some of you may of heard, giant telescopes supported by the ESA or NASA have been colecting evidence for new planets in the universe, that is planets outside our own solar system. Back in 95' astronomers found a planet orbiting another star 51 Pegasi, since then many more of these Alien worlds have been found around other Sun's, some have horrible names like 55 Cancri b, or a name such as PSR 125751,
but one of these alien worlds was called 'Bellerophon' by scientists.

If indeed the Bellerophon in the firelfy's Trash episode is based on our real Bellerphon, then it would support the theory that the Alliance of 500 years in the future does indeed go beyond our own Solar System. However I still feel that the Majority of the Core is based around Earth and our own Solar System.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Earth

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 12:50 PM

LTNOWIS

Quote:
I vehemently disagree that Firefly is set within our existing solar system and I think that 500 years is plenty of time to find ways to get to other parts of the 'Verse.

I agree. However, I think the main argument about Firefly's setting is whether it's in one far away solar system or the entire galaxy.

Anyways, on the topic of human advancement, I'd say that in 500 years we haven't invented any major religions. We still have towns in my area called Alexandria and Vienna, and there are many other towns with biblical names. On the other hand, languages have evolved greatly. I've read Shakespeare, and he's got some pretty incomprehensible slang. Likewise, technology has advanced astronomically even in the past 100 years. I don't think we'll keep up this rate of innovation for 500 years, as we may have some dark ages, but in 500 years I can easily see us in a Firefly-level of advancement. Oh yeah, and Firefly actually takes place 513 years from now, not 500 years.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 5:37 PM

One of the things I've stated in previous posts regarding the One Solar System or Multiple Systems debate is that the term "Galaxy" is often bandied about by hollywood tv and movie makers as if it were the size of a solar system. The galaxy is a huge place... and if Firefly verse were to encompass several solar systems with multiple planets and many colonizable moons then it would be in a small cluster of stars close to each other... humans would not be spread out across the galaxy.

There seems to about 123 extrasolar planets that have been discovered, most are the size of gas giants like Jupiter... and it's possible they will have their own system of satellites. And if these systems lie in the Habitable Zone, the distance from a star where water would be above freezing and below boiling temperatures at 1 atmosphere, then those could harbor human life with the right terraforming.

http://exoplanets.org
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

So that's why I take the multiple system side of this debate... one solar system to me seems too small... and it definitely is not our solar system.

Jaymes

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 7:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SamuraiX47:
So that's why I take the multiple system side of this debate... one solar system to me seems too small... and it definitely is not our solar system.

No kidding ... can you imagine our sun managing to make our outer planets and their moons such a bright, sunshiny-yellow sun? I certainly can't. I don't believe it for a minute.

The light gets dimmer the further out you go. I noticed it immediately the first time I was abducted. Ooops!

supposed to talk about that.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 9:47 PM

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

Alright, I will give you the that the last 500 years, pretty big in human advancement. But what is to say the next 500 go that way? Look at 1000 to 1500 A.D.

Lesee...guns aside...sailpower to ummm sailpower, flat earth to flat earth (okay 1492 et al but 492 years is closer to 500 than not), death by age 20 to amputation of afflicted limbs (ooh, you might make 35! if the plague didn't get you...), etc etc. They didn't call the Dark ages the Dark ages because of a lengthy solar eclipse. :)

Now to counterpoint shiny planetoids too far from the sun...lesee...

First of all, light doesn't dim dramatically within a solar system. If that were the case, you wouldn't see stars at night that are MUCH farther away. Secondly, if you were able to terraform say, a moon of Jupiter, such as Ganymede, realistically, you would have some bizzare days and nights during a "year". Many sun rises/sun sets while the moon was closer to the sun than the planet, and loooong periods of darkness that make an Alaskan year look like a strobe light as the planet blocks all the light to the moon.

The sun is plenty bright to, say, give you quite am illuinated day on Neptune, should you manage to get a livable oxygen rich atmo on it. It would just be a "smaller" sunrise.

Also keep in mind, that if you are travelling at sub-light speeds, and say you are going from Pluto to a moon of Saturn, and Pluto is on the "left" of the sun, and Saturn is on the "right" of the sun, that is still a long trip, whereas the trip is much shorter if they are in-line with eachother on the same side. This would justify how sometimes it could take weeks and or months to still make the trip. If the show makes its 'evidence' of this possibility anywhere, it is in the fact that, despite high-end technology existing, such as laser guns, they are still very rare. Even the Alliance uses slugthrowers in the war, and used missiles in space to destroy a derelict (Bushwacked), and fire at Serenity (The Message).

BTW - It doesn't matter to me, if it is supposed to be Sol or not, but I do like the notion it could be. ;)

I also wonder if maybe the Sun had expanded (though science would currently indicate not) in this universe of Joss' and maybe Earth-that-was simply became uninhabitable and man HAD to move further out.

Yes? No? I am a crackedpot? ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

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Saturday, August 7, 2004 10:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
First of all, light doesn't dim dramatically within a solar system. If that were the case, you wouldn't see stars at night that are MUCH farther away. Secondly, if you were able to terraform say, a moon of Jupiter, such as Ganymede, realistically, you would have some bizzare days and nights during a "year". Many sun rises/sun sets while the moon was closer to the sun than the planet, and loooong periods of darkness that make an Alaskan year look like a strobe light as the planet blocks all the light to the moon.

Check the orbital period of Ganymede. It orbits Jupiter in 7.2 days... so only a portion of that time, less than half, would it be in the shadow of Jupiter. Also the amount of heat a planetary body recieves is based on the distance from the sun, the cross-section of the planet, and the thickness of the atmosphere... that's why all those moons are icy bodies... there ain't enough heat from the sun to melt ice water, no atmosphere to speak of... With IO we know that tidal stresses cause the vulcanic activity and the hope for EUROPA is that the same tidal forces are heating it's interior. We could build up an atmosphere on Ganymede but you'll be standing on miles thick ice, that air is going to be cold for a long time.

Read Robert Heinlein's Farmer in the Sky, and Arthur C. Clarke's 2010, and Kim Robinson's Red Mars.

Another thing... Some of those bright stars in the sky at night are some big ass stars compared to our g-type Sol. For example... Castor is made of 3 binary systems (6 stars) orbiting close to each other... there are some stars you can't see with the naked-eye yet they are within 100 light-years because they don't have high enough absolute magnitudes.

Jaymes

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 1:19 AM

GROUNDED

The spoken intros that were attached to the first episodes during original broadcast strongly imply that Firefly is not set in our solar system.

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 5:42 AM

LTNOWIS

Posted by SAMURAIX47:

Quote:
One of the things I've stated in previous posts regarding the One Solar System or Multiple Systems debate is that the term "Galaxy" is often bandied about by hollywood tv and movie makers as if it were the size of a solar system. The galaxy is a huge place... and if Firefly verse were to encompass several solar systems with multiple planets and many colonizable moons then it would be in a small cluster of stars close to each other... humans would not be spread out across the galaxy.

Good point. The Star Wars galaxy is vast, and much of it is unexplored. Also, if we could get back to this solar system, than there would be crazy expeditions searching for Earth-that-was, or looking for space probes on Mars or whatever. I support the Star Cluster idea, even though it doesn't make a ton of sense.

Posted by TenthCrewmember:

Quote:
Alright, I will give you the that the last 500 years, pretty big in human advancement. But what is to say the next 500 go that way? Look at 1000 to 1500 A.D.

While Europe was busy inventing jousting and crusading, China invented Ming porcelin, and Arabs may have been doing stuff. Of course, you still make a good point. There also might be some devolving, as lot's of cutting-edge experiments, theories, and prototypes may have been left behind. Look at the decline of the Roman Empire. Without monks and Arabs, lots of Greek knowledge would have been lost.

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 6:27 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by Grounded:
The spoken intros that were attached to the first episodes during original broadcast strongly imply that Firefly is not set in our solar system.

Yes, but given the fact that knowledge aabout the original Earth, and given the rarity of artifacts from such, might indicate a huge tragedy, such as a global war that eventually extended off the planet and possibly onto Mars, and alot of knowledge may have been lost and destroyed, and 500 years later, sure technology progressed, but burnt books and slagged CPUs can't be recovered, so from the perspective of characters less than 60 years old, the true history of Earth may have been forgotten, or even suppressed/politically spun by the "winners" for fear people may blame them for destruction of their planet of origin.
History is written by the winners, and the Alliance has apparently been the winners for some time...and interesting that a high-level Alliance officer (Durran Haymer in Trash) has such a big collection of Earth-that-was stuff...including a phone booth. :)

So many possibilities. Damn I love this show. Never gives you everything, but always seems to give you more than you expected!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 6:51 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
So many possibilities. Damn I love this show. Never gives you everything, but always seems to give you more than you expected!

Well put!

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 7:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
Alright, I will give you the that the last 500 years, pretty big in human advancement. But what is to say the next 500 go that way? Look at 1000 to 1500 A.D.

Lesee...guns aside...sailpower to ummm sailpower, flat earth to flat earth (okay 1492 et al but 492 years is closer to 500 than not), death by age 20 to amputation of afflicted limbs (ooh, you might make 35! if the plague didn't get you...), etc etc. They didn't call the Dark ages the Dark ages because of a lengthy solar eclipse. :)

It's only called the "Dark Ages" by people who don't actually study history. There was a great deal going on in the period you mention, too.

A few off the top of my head: we had major cross-continental treks related to property disputes in the then-called Holy Land. Marco Polo headed off to the far East, bringing back smoking, noodles, and paper money to the West. The plague didn't really get going until this period (1300s or so), and it continued until well into the 1800s.

China developed rocketry and even multi-stage rockets, and moveable type during this period. (They had already discovered things like the circulation of blood and the first seismographs *hundreds* of years before this period.

Vikings make it to Nova Scotia (Canada) and Polynesians to New Zealand around year 1000. Around 500 years later Columbus fails to find India but does find part of what later becomes the Americas.

In England, the Magna Carta is signed. In the later part of this period, moveable type is invented in Germany by Gutenberg.

In Mexico, the Aztecs build their great civilisation. In India, Guru Nanak founded the Sikh faith.

I'm of the opinion that rather a lot of very important activities went on during these periods, background work for the boom that went on in the later period of 1500 to 2000. And just because one civilisation is in decline, it doesn't mean that all civilisations are in decline.

Cheers,
Annik
... my sister's a ship. We had a complicated childhood.

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 7:37 AM

I wonder if the Alliance right now, is a civilisation on the way up or on the brink of falling down ?

For those of you who had a glance at the production Artwork I think there could be a few revelations on firefly

We know what our own planets are called both in English and Chinese, my Chinese ain't perfect but Venus I think is know as the silver star 金星 While Jupiter would be the big-planet 木星

Select to view spoiler:

...If you've had a look at the pic production art work which was on this site a few days back but got pulled because of 'Alliance'
You would have seen a Planet which looked very much like Mars appear not once but twice, and it seems to be part of the Core

I also recall reading the name 'Miranda' which happens to be a moon within our own solar system

I think it is still very much open to debate the puropose of Allaince are, what the Blue-Sun is amd where Firelfy is located, but there are little hints to say it is close to our own solar system

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 9:08 AM

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

Jayneztown, you reminded me of something...everyone look at the DVD covers (if you have them) especially the nice red planet beneath the DVD disc itself. Some of those objects in space look pretty conspicuous. But perhaps they decided to use already existing images instead of orginal art...

Yeah, I still jones on the idea that, even in the next 500 years, we'll still be stuck orbiting this ball of flaming gas we call the Sun...who knows, maybe science is not totally accurate and it will be blue in 2517.

Also, remember we now live in an age where big governments determine how quickly technology advances, and they only cater to special interest groups(whether that be the Communist party or M.A.D.D.) and lobbyists. Meaning, for example, the reliance of the world on petroleum for fuel, though there is proven science that provides for alternative fuel and power sources. Could we all drive solar powered cars right now? Certainly. But then all the fragile alliances with 3rd world oil producing nations goes kaput, and keeping people dependent on a product/service the gov't can control, keeps people dependent upon the gov't.

I see the Alliance as wanting to control everything it can, even though it doesn't *need* to, and policing ONE solar system w/o FTL travel is difficult enough, let alone two or more. Remember, U-day is a celebration of unification of planets (or worlds if you prefer), not systems or a galaxy, as the drunken local color so loudly professed.

I can't argue the logistics of terraforming as I haven't but the most rudimentary understanding of how one would do that, so I have to suspend my disbelief and say that in Firefly, they found a quick, though not perfect (Train Job) way of doing it, which could possibly include heating a core or creating a synthetic layer of atmosphere that creates a strong enough greenhouse effect to warm the planet and then breaks up leaving home sweet world (which might also explain why the border planets all look like something out of 'Rawhide' or 'Ponderosa'). So why travel 10 light years to "maybe" find planets worth doing it, when you have plenty here, that's all I am saying. It is the "feel" I get from watching the show.

I just think it makes for a better story in the end, but that's my opinion. Joss, by his own words doesn't like to do what everyone else is doing...everyone else does the galaxy far far away. :) Maybe I am right, maybe I am wrong, but it is what the show "says" to me, and I will never claim we are all meant to get the same thing from watching the show, nor should we be, other than it is gorramn fine original entertainment! :)

S-"That's not much."
M-"It's enough."

oh, and what is to say Jupiter (a gas giant) doesn't turn star (a flaming ball of gas) naturally (or aided by science) in a hypotheitical future...and our system suddenly has two suns...maybe one of then blue...

Food for thought and discussion. Dig in! :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 3:41 PM

Using a pic of Mars for artwork is a lot cheaper than paying someone for an original piece of artwork to adorn a DVD box set. The Mars pic is probably provided free of charge from Nasa or JPL. Royalties for art can cut into profits. Also some of the special effects companies will use actual space images like Hubble pics and planet pics for. The guys that did the FX for Babylon 5 and Voyager, Foundation Imaging, would often use images of stellar nebulas in the background for space scenes.

So don't take the fact that Mars is on the DVD set to mean that the setting for Firefly is in our solar system. Most ordinary people wouldn't even recognize that it's Mars.

Arthur C Clarke in 2010 did turn Jupiter into a star...

Jaymes

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Sunday, August 8, 2004 7:49 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SamuraiX47:
Using a pic of Mars for artwork is a lot cheaper than paying someone for an original piece of artwork to adorn a DVD box set.

Very true.

Quote:
So don't take the fact that Mars is on the DVD set to mean that the setting for Firefly is in our solar system. Most ordinary people wouldn't even recognize that it's Mars.

Just saying it raises the question, is all. :) And yeah, some people wouldn't even know the moon if it fell on them. LOL

Quote:
Arthur C Clarke in 2010 did turn Jupiter into a star...

I was wondering if anyone else would remember that...imagine how a star, suddenly on the other side of Earth would really wreak havoc. The gravity well, the heat, the almost constant light...did I mention gravity well? Two suns pulling on one Earth...not so hunkydori as in the movie. End up more like Alderaan most likely. ;)

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BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
visit: http://the11thhour.home.att.net

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 4:41 AM

I suppose one of the more clear and obvious things is how the Alliance commanders sometimes seem like Nazi or Imperial fascists

http://www.culturecourt.com/F/Nazi/Train.htm

http://www.japan-page.net/photo/tokyo5.asp

http://www.armymuseum.ru/rusc2_e.html

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 4:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TenthCrewMember:
I was wondering if anyone else would remember that...imagine how a star, suddenly on the other side of Earth would really wreak havoc. The gravity well, the heat, the almost constant light...did I mention gravity well? Two suns pulling on one Earth...not so hunkydori as in the movie. End up more like Alderaan most likely. ;)

The Jupiter star wasn't any more massive than Jupiter's original mass... the black monoliths compressed Jupiter till the hydrogen core started fusion burning... since the planet/star was about the same mass the gravity from it was about the same... otherwise the moons would have gone out of their orbits.

Jaymes

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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 7:22 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SamuraiX47:
The Jupiter star wasn't any more massive than Jupiter's original mass... the black monoliths compressed Jupiter till the hydrogen core started fusion burning... since the planet/star was about the same mass the gravity from it was about the same... otherwise the moons would have gone out of their orbits.

Okay, well my Physics years are way behind me, but I think it is more complicated than that, becoming a star I mean. Sure mass has a lot to do with it, but so do magnetic fields created by energy and some other stuff, which is why the planets as far out as Pluto (and maybe farther) stay in orbit...otherwise if it were strictly Jupiter's mass, it wouldn't be all bright like in the movie, it'd be a cold blue star, at best, which...hey, I think I just agreed with you because you made my point, thanks! LOL

Again, not saying Firefly IS set in our Solar System, just saying certain things indicate it COULD BE... :)

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BROWNCOATS! Rise again and promote Firefly/Serenity!
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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 8:05 PM

LADYDISDAIN

The middle east contributed an awful lot to the end of the 'Dark Ages' (including the transport of paper from China toward the west, as already mentioned), such as algebra, geometry, and many of the astronomical concepts in this very discussion. Sorry, just seized with the irony.

But, I have a more trite question in mind. What was the name of Mal's homeworld? I remember he mentioned it in "Our Mrs. Reynolds". Was it "Shadow", or did I hear it incorrectly?

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Saturday, August 14, 2004 11:11 PM