Mechanics of Firefly by Hardware

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Mechanics of Firefly

POSTED BY: HARDWARE
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 16:41
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Monday, December 16, 2002 9:35 AM

I just had a random thought while watching the old computer boot up. A beauty shot of Serenity is my wallpaper and I was looking at the midsection, where there is a ring circling the ship. I'm thinking that could be a collider ring. Opinions?

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 10:50 AM

GATORMARC

I think it's the alternator.

GatorMarc

Eat 'em up, chomp, chomp.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 10:56 AM

ROBERTSPARLING

I think the ring is the means of creating artificial gravity, similar to the station on Babylon 5. We have seen other ships that have gravity, and yet no ring, but we've been told several times that firefly is a well constructed, but older model, ship.

But this is all wild speculation. I like the collider ring theory mentioned above though.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 11:05 AM

UFO

Artificial gravity through centrifugal force would indicate that the section where they have gravity is highly curved (and it's not a big ship) and that there are sections of the ship that don't have gravity. What we see is gravity throughout a flat decked ship. So IMO the rotating section has nothing to do with artificial gravity. Something to do with propulsion. Probably rotates at the same angular velocity as the engine does inside the ship.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 12:41 PM

GROOVYAL

Well as there is no technical mumbo jumbo (which i really do appreciate) like it usually is in shows like star trek we probably have to think it out ourselves. well this ring has definetly something to do with the engines as it starts to rotate when they engage in this hyperspace kinda speed. I dont know exactly if some of you know the pc game "i-war" which is a very very nice space sim, but i'd like to "steal" the function of the propulsion and say: this ring creates some sort of disortion around the ship it kinda "wrap" the space around the ship, so the ship makes a short "jump", as the ship doesnt move actually there is no inertia which also would explain why the crew does not splat all over the back of the ship when it accelerates, repeating this process couple tousand times in the second and youll get a smooth glide trough the space.
It also could explain the relatively fast travel, tho we have no idea how fast the serenity really goes: as we all know you cant go faster than light, well this propulsion would be a way of to work around the problem. Due to the ship not moving the ship dont go faster than light theoretically it doenst go anywhere, but the space around the ship does.
The greenish thing coming out from the rear of the ship may be some sort of overheated coolant or plasma, or just like the smoke coming out of the exhaust of a car.

Well hope my english skill did suffice to explain it in an understadable way.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 1:14 PM

KURUKAMI

So, a propulsion system similar to the mechanics Vernor Vinge described in "A Fire Upon the Deep"?

History doesn't always repeat itself. Sometimes it merely shouts "Weren't you listening the first time?!?" and lets fly with a club.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 1:48 PM

MARK

Hey all.. I had two options as to the ring. Either it's a giant superconducting loop that stores energy to power the ship's sudden acceleration from 0 to lightspeed plus in five seconds - Much like the Rings Dave Weber uses in his Honorverse ships, or it's a magnetic field coil that generates some kind of barrier to prevent the crew being fried by the radiation emitted from the Drive-core.

Just my opinion.

Twelve spheres of unendurable brightness spalled the velvety blackness of space.
The silence on Lester Tourville's flag bridge was absolute
And then the spell was broken as Shannon Foraker looked up from her console from where she had just sent a seemingly innocent command to the main computers of State Security's finest Superdreadnoughts.
"Oops." She said.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 2:32 PM

XERIAR

The artificial gravity pretty much has to be a part of the ship itself - like a material that normalizes gravity to 1G (or whatever) based on orientation and thickness, or something like that.

This type of thing is required for dealing with any real amount of acceleration anyway.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 3:06 PM

UFO

I doubt the Firefly travels anywhere near lightspeed. Doesn't the whole show take place in the same star system with lots of planets?

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Monday, December 16, 2002 7:29 PM

XERIAR

They haven't been too specific about that, kind of weird that way. It started out as 'a new Solar System' but ended up with 'A whole new galaxy of Earths.'

Regardless, completing any sort of interplanetary journey within 18 hours requires an immense amount of accelleration.

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Monday, December 16, 2002 8:54 PM

DELVO

Multiple solar systems are at work here. That's what's most consistent with both the on-screen evidence and common sense.

Anyway, I know there's a normal-speed shot of the ship rising away from a planet surface with that part spinning, so it can't just be for faster-than-light movement. And a particle accelerator doesn't need to spin.

But the most sensible answer here is that there isn't an answer. In more ways than one, the show already requires that we assume they have invented technology that we not only don't have, but can't even really imagine, because it's based on stuff we just don't know ANYTHING AT ALL about. Our trying to figure out that technology just by looking at it would be like a medieval person trying to figure out the meaning of the chord that connects my no-fuel-no-smoke-no-flame lamp to my wall just by looking at it. Any guess we can come up with based on our understanding of things would be like that Medieval person guessing that the chord is actually a string of fuel that very slowly gets retracted into the lamp and consumed, or maybe an as-yet-uninvented hose that delivers oil to the combustion point from wherever it's stored (if he or she is spectacularly imaginative). And it gets worse if you figure that the next few centuries stand to bring on more technological development than the last few did, because then a better analogy might be someone from a time and place without even lamps or candles.

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 2:11 AM

GROOVYAL

Well i thint this is actually the point of sci-fi its just some utopian thoughts of some writers we would like to belive in. This show aint the really, even if some would like it to be. Its the fun of creating some theories around the ship constructions and the truth is that this ring serves only one purpose, and that is to look fancy, thats it!Exactly like the warp-core of the enterprise, there aint no antimatter (well there is, but you cant use it the way its shown in ST) this whole techno-mumbo-jumbo are just some theories, this time joss didnt add any explanations so we can make them up ourselves.

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 5:54 PM

YOSHI

I have to remember that this story takes place 500 years into the future... but colliders are not used for propulsion. They are used only to accelerate very tiny amounts of matter to near light speed to 'collide' with a target to be used in imaging. The amount of energy that a collider creates is directly related to its size. A collider that small would produce so little energy, that it would not be significant, even in today's physical research. If you're really feeling the need for a particle physics fix, see http://public.web.cern.ch/public .

That said, the rotating ring probably has something to do with propulsion or gravity, or both. It does, however, turn a little fast, for its size, to create usable gravity along the axis of the ring. At that speed, the experience would be a little like a carnival ride: uncomfortable.

Perhaps in 500 years physicists have developed a method of transforming the rotational energy of the ring into some sort of amplifier that translates to linear thrust to push the freighter through space (maybe that's the rotating device that Kaylee is always working on.) But if faster-than-light travel happens, well, we are in the realm of star trek and other fancies.

To muddy the waters without giving any explanation, River says in "Train Job" that the Firefly-class mid-transport has a "Standard Radeon Accelerator..." It certainly has an intriguing name.

I enjoy this show very much, tape it and re-watch episodes when not working. Great discussion: I don't want to throw water on anyone's enjoyment, but the question about colliders caught my eye and I want to shed light on it.

Yoshi

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 8:11 PM

XERIAR

Quote:

Our trying to figure out that technology just by looking at it would be like a medieval person trying to figure out the meaning of the chord that connects my no-fuel-no-smoke-no-flame lamp to my wall just by looking at it. Any guess we can come up with based on our understanding of things would be like that Medieval person guessing that the chord is actually a string of fuel that very slowly gets retracted into the lamp and consumed, or maybe an as-yet-uninvented hose that delivers oil to the combustion point from wherever it's stored (if he or she is spectacularly imaginative).

That there was power in lightning was never denied. Said person could take the light bulb out and experience the shock... and may even recognize it if they've felt a large enough static charge before. They certainly already know that hot objects already give off light. Assuming their was no language barrier, and assuming they cared, it would not be hard to explain it to them.

Similarly, though we might not understand how to change the fine structure constant of a localized area, or fold space into higher dimensions, we -DO- understand how doing these things would allow one to move faster than the speed of light (even if all those things are really doing is making the speed of light that much faster).

The future is not necessarily incomprehensible. Amazing, probably, but unless we're talking about an alien invasion, the advent of magic, or something equally out of our perspective (River as a psychic might count, but I get the impression that experiments were building up to her, rather than having her talents pop out of nowhere) - it has to be comprehensible to be a part of our future in the first place.

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 8:14 PM

THATGIRLISABEL

Looks like the main drivebelt to me.

Hey I can fix just about anything on my truck with a can of Cherry Coke and duct tape but hell if I know what that ring is.

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002 8:22 PM

XERIAR

Quote:

Perhaps in 500 years physicists have developed a method of transforming the rotational energy of the ring into some sort of amplifier that translates to linear thrust to push the freighter through space (maybe that's the rotating device that Kaylee is always working on.) But if faster-than-light travel happens, well, we are in the realm of star trek and other fancies.

I did a little (obviously innacurate) plot about how fast we were going, and when humanity would be crossing the 'lightspeed barrier'. Around the year 2200. Of course, we might never escape time dilation and be wallowing around .75 (or whatever the lightspeed equivelant is).

But, there are ways to cheat those laws, we know as much, without looking to Star Trek. The question is is it even feasible to do so.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002 4:41 PM

SENSOU

I don't know what a collider ring is , but maybe it's the "real" engine and the other engine is actually a relay or mother-board-ish thing. The little thing that Mal fixes in "Out of Gas" looks waaaaaaaaaaay too small to propel Serenity at speeds necessary to escape gravity, much less make 18-hour interplanetary flights.
Alternatively, she could run off of electricity, and the ring is magnetic with certain materials in the hull, because, IIRC, spinning a magnet around some special metal creates electricity.

Sensou
Sweet is love when all is sane
Sweet is death to end the pain
Cruel is death when all is well
Cruel is love when all is hell

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