FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

OoG mistake...

POSTED BY: CHRONICTHEHEDGEHOG
UPDATED: Friday, October 8, 2004 06:47
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Monday, September 20, 2004 9:40 AM

CHRONICTHEHEDGEHOG


Maybe it's just me forgetting some bit of dialogue in the episode and it was all explained but why did the ship stop? There's no friction in space so the ship should have been constantly moving in a straight line once the catalyser blew even with the engine not turning. It's only a little thing but it's been bugging me for a while now. Anyone got an explanation?



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Monday, September 20, 2004 9:50 AM

SHEPHERDQ


Who said it stopped? Speed is relative. It may appear to be stopped when nothing else is passing by to see a direction and speed relationship. Many shots show Serenity " coasting " .. and I would hope, but not seen it, that reverse thrust would be used to brake for a period of time before planet fall. ( That is why Serenity's engines can rotate 180 degrees ).
The engines were running for thrust to build speed to get to destination when it blew, so it just coasted after that, but no where near the spped to make planet fall in time to be alive when they got there.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 9:55 AM

DUG


Why say you it stopped?

Things ejected from the ship would have been moving at a speed relative to the ship and would have drifted along side it; perhaps even drifting back towards it as the only local source of any gravity. that explains the flotsam and jetsam around the ship. The ship appears motionless from outside, but as space is rather empty there is no frame of reference. It could be drifting along a quite a clip.

It would just take WAY too long to drift to anywhere with civilization, since Wash had them way off the radar. Wash said that what should be a short trip would take them the better part of a week. And they only had a few hours of air and no heat.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 9:56 AM

GRRARRG


I don't think it stopped - I just assumed that they couldn't change their trajectory and head to get repairs, so they were dead in the water. Not literally stopped, but figuratively stopped. But I remember something about the commentaries on the pilot - when they passed the reaver ship the first time, they should have both been travelling so fast that they barely saw each other, but it played out as if they were slow-moving ocean liners. They acknowledged that that was innacurate (I don't remember if it was an accident or if they took creative liberties with physics for the sake of heightening the drama), but I'd imagine that the would say the same thing if the ship literally stopped in OoG.

I mock you with my monkey pants

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:01 AM

WYDRAZ


It COULD have stopped, if it was using inertialess drives. Since they can control gravity, it's not a big leap to assume they might also have an inertialess drive. If so, the ship can counteract momentum, so only moves when its drive is on! This could also prevent the crew from being splattered against the walls during maneuvers like the Crazy Ivan...



Oh, and play Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. http://digital-eel.com/sais

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:09 AM

THEGREYJEDI


Well, I figured the sudden expulsion of explosion and gas might have stopped their forward motion.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:13 AM

LITTLEMANLOVESFIRE


Another question which is sort of relevent - in OiS is Serenity still? Because how could Earley jump down onto the ship like that?

I thought that was very odd for a long time, but then with the crew, including Wash asleep at the time would they simply bring the ship to a halt rather than have the autopilot take over?

It LOOKS like it's moving because the "spinney bit" is still rotating. However I assume this is less to do with propulsion and more to do with keeping life support etc online...

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:14 AM

BIKISDAD


The comments about Serenity probably not being stopped make sense from the momentum standpoint. However, while it may not be completely stopped, it would have to have slowed considerably when they vented the fire (which included some debris) out of the cargo bay door. That venting would have slowed their forward progress to some unknown degree - impossible to say how much.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:20 AM

GUILDSISTER


Quote:

Originally posted by Littlemanlovesfire:
Another question which is sort of relevent - in OiS is Serenity still? Because how could Earley jump down onto the ship like that?



That's another relative motion situation. When Early matches his velocity to Serenity's the two ships would appear stationary one to the other. With no active thrust taking place on either ship they should remain in exactly the same positions relative to each other forever, unless acted upon by an outside force. They could be traveling at tremendous velocities relative to the rest of the 'verse, but are unmoving relative to each other.

Only qualification is that when Early jumps from his ship he's applying a small, but significant amount of force to his ship (law of motion stuff here) that should start his drifting away from Serenity. I'll go with an autopilot feature here to compensate for that, as when Early hit the edge of his ship in that glancing blow before spinning out into space, the ship twitched then righted positions.

Guildsister

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:28 AM

BIKISDAD


Quote:

Originally posted by Littlemanlovesfire:
Another question which is sort of relevent - in OiS is Serenity still? Because how could Earley jump down onto the ship like that?




Movement is relative. When the space shuttle docks with the international space station, they're traveling at close to zero m.p.h. relative to each other, but they're both going about 20,000 m.p.h. relative to the surface of the earth. The important thing concerning said docking is that their speed relative to the earth is meaningless - they're not landing on the earth, they're docking with each other at a very safe relative speed of almost nothing.

Same holds for Early landing on Serenity. Both ships may be going 200,000 m.p.h. (or probably a lot more) relative to the closest planet, but as long as their relative speeds are identical, they don't appear to be moving at all if you just look at the two ships.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:29 AM

GUILDSISTER


Quote:

Originally posted by wydraz:
It COULD have stopped, if it was using inertialess drives.



Urrrr... when they're using flame-out-the-tail uttermost basic physics engines for primary drive thrust?

Of course, there's the FTL conundrum--they have to have FTL in some form to match the requirements of the stories.

See... this is why show creators don't have to figure all this stuff out--just show us the stuff, make it reasonably logical, and we'll figure out the technicalities, physics, and rationalizations. Trek used to do that with their multitude of continuity glitches.

Guildsister

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:30 AM

WILDHEAVENFARM


Maybe the faint gravitational fields of the nearest stars slowed her down.

Mary
Always a beast, never a burden.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:32 AM

MISGUIDED BY VOICES


Quote:

Originally posted by Littlemanlovesfire:
Another question which is sort of relevent - in OiS is Serenity still? Because how could Earley jump down onto the ship like that?



See B5 - the spinny bit creates the gravity - whether Serenity has that built in in any way, who knows.


"I threw up on your bed"

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Monday, September 20, 2004 10:46 AM

GROUNDED


"perhaps even drifting back towards it as the only local source of any gravity."

I do hope you're joking ;)

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Monday, September 20, 2004 12:41 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Well, if you recall, Kaylee tells Mal " she's not moving". At the time, they're looking at Zoe lying in sick bay, and we're led to believe that they're talking about her, but then Kaylee follows up with... " Serenity's not moving".

Now, did Kaylee literally mean she ship was absolutely still ?...or just that the engines weren't working and they were "dead in the water."

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

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Monday, September 20, 2004 12:41 PM

LITTLEMANLOVESFIRE


I understand that Earley's ship matches Serenity's speed - if she is moving this is - but then what is propelling him? He jumps down from his ship and it takes him a good 5 seconds to land on Serenity. HE hasn't got boosters. He isn't matching Serenity's speed even if his ship is, surely he would vanish into the distance before he could land on her?

Or am I seriously misunderstanding the basics of physics here?

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Monday, September 20, 2004 1:01 PM

RABIT


Quote:

Originally posted by Littlemanlovesfire:
Or am I seriously misunderstanding the basics of physics here?

Not seriously - just enough to have a problem.

There is nothing to slow him down. He's actually traveling at the same speeds as the two ships, as their is no air resistance - or anything else for that matter - to decelerate him. Since he starts out going the same speed as his ship, he's still going that speed when he leaves it. (Basically - give or take a little due to the forces of his foot on the floor pushing off, etc., as was stated earlier... )

Hope that helps!

Rabit

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Monday, September 20, 2004 1:27 PM

BIKISDAD


Quote:

Originally posted by Grounded:
"perhaps even drifting back towards it as the only local source of any gravity."

I do hope you're joking ;)




Actually, that would be absolutely true. All matter produces a gravitational field in proportion to its mass. Since Serenity is the only object around the debris with any significant mass, it would exert a small gravitational pull that would eventually attract all of the expelled debris back to the ship. Since the gravitational field is inversely proportional to the distance between objects, the closest objects would be pulled back more quickly and more distant debris would return at a slower initial rate, but would accelerate as they got closer.

If you don't think the gravitational field of something so "small" as a spaceship is capable of that, then the formation of stars due only to the gravitational attraction of many individual hydrogen atoms should shed some "light".

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 2:02 PM

ZOID



Grounded wrote:
Quote:

"perhaps even drifting back towards it as the only local source of any gravity."

I do hope you're joking ;)


In addition to what bikisdad wrote in response, remember what Jayne said to Simon in "Bushwhacked":

JAYNE
"Impressive what "nothing" can do to a man. Like that feller we bumped into. Yeah. He's likely stuck up under our belly about now. That's what space trash does, ya know. Kinda latches onto the first big somethin' stops long enough.

"Hey -- now that'd be a bit like you and your sister, wouldn't it?"

I wouldn't necessarily assume Firefly's writers are clueless on the science implied on the show...


Respectfully,

zoid

P.S.
That scene also puts paid to fantasies about Jayne and River hooking up, in my book. He sees them both as nuisances to be rid of. He's a crim, not a nanny.
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 213 days, 5 hours, 11 minutes, and 43 seconds left until The BDM!

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Monday, September 20, 2004 2:16 PM

CORWYN


Quote:

Originally posted by grrarrg:
But I remember something about the commentaries on the pilot - when they passed the reaver ship the first time, they should have both been travelling so fast that they barely saw each other, but it played out as if they were slow-moving ocean liners. They acknowledged that that was innacurate (I don't remember if it was an accident or if they took creative liberties with physics for the sake of heightening the drama),



I always saw this as a CGI error rather than a script error. Mal says 'we are PASSING another ship...' To me this means they are traveling in roughly the same direction. This could mean that their relative velocities are small. It could take quite a while to pass them. The trouble is the outside view which shows them coming at each other.

Oh well.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 2:56 PM

BIKISDAD


Quote:

Originally posted by corwyn:
Quote:

Originally posted by grrarrg:
But I remember something about the commentaries on the pilot - when they passed the reaver ship the first time, they should have both been travelling so fast that they barely saw each other, but it played out as if they were slow-moving ocean liners. They acknowledged that that was innacurate (I don't remember if it was an accident or if they took creative liberties with physics for the sake of heightening the drama),



I always saw this as a CGI error rather than a script error. Mal says 'we are PASSING another ship...' To me this means they are traveling in roughly the same direction. This could mean that their relative velocities are small. It could take quite a while to pass them. The trouble is the outside view which shows them coming at each other.

Oh well.



Good point. I hadn't thought of that before, but it would have made more sense if they had both been shown traveling in the same direction - especially since the Reavers also ended up going to Whitefall (that may have indicated that they were also supposed to be going the same way when Serenity first encountered them). I agree with you. The script and CGI aren't exactly consistent and the CGI appears to be what's wrong.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Monday, September 20, 2004 5:51 PM

YT

the movie is not the Series. Only the facts have been changed, to irritate the innocent; the names of the actors and characters remain the same


Quote:

Originally posted by bikisdad:
Since Serenity is the only object around the debris with any significant mass, it would exert a small gravitational pull that would eventually attract all of the expelled debris back to the ship.



Not any of the expelled debris that reached escape velocity (for Serenity's mass @the distance of the cargo bay door from S's CoG), which looked like essentially all of it.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Allman Bro's Band, "Hoochie Coochie Man", from "Live @Ludlow Garage 1970"

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Monday, September 20, 2004 6:25 PM

THEREALME


As far as Kaylee saying that the ship isn't moving, she could just mean "Under her own power." It could be taken as a figure of speech. If someone said that Serenity was "dead in the water" I hope nobody would insist that proves that there are literal oceans of water in space...

As far as the passing of the Reaver ship, I am convinced that it was an error of the writer or production crew. But I can explain it! Imagine that the Reaver ship and Serenity were moving at almost exactly the same direction and speed - toward Whitehall. The motion that we saw was only the slight difference in velocities of the two ships. After all, a ship in space does not HAVE to point its nose in the direction of travel. Would it help to imagine the scene if both ships were pointed in a parallel direction as they slowly slid past one another sideways?



The Real Me

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Monday, September 20, 2004 7:48 PM

BIKISDAD


Quote:

Originally posted by YT:
Quote:

Originally posted by bikisdad:
Since Serenity is the only object around the debris with any significant mass, it would exert a small gravitational pull that would eventually attract all of the expelled debris back to the ship.



Not any of the expelled debris that reached escape velocity (for Serenity's mass @the distance of the cargo bay door from S's CoG), which looked like essentially all of it.

Keep the Shiny Side Up

Wutzon: Allman Bro's Band, "Hoochie Coochie Man", from "Live @Ludlow Garage 1970"



Good album. I actually prefer the version of "Mountain Jam" on this one to the version on "Eat a Peach", although they both have their interesting points.

I just went back and rewatched the fire scene in OoG just to make sure what happened. I was surprised by how little debris there was expelled from the ship. Mal only slightly opened the cargo bay doors - not enough to let large items through. So almost everything in the bay was still there when he closed the doors again. Kind of makes the debris argument moot.

Apathy on the Rise. No One Cares.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2004 12:13 AM

ZOID


And of course, Serenity's local gravity generator -- apparently Earth normal -- kicked back in as soon as the cargo bay door closed. The gravity drive was shot (no longer externalizing 1 or multiple G?), but there might be some 'attraction at a distance' on nearby objects.

Don't know about FTL, but Serenity's definitely got a gravity drive (think on: "secondary grav boot"), which'd be a pretty fast way to get around for free, or at least on Reality's dime, since TANSTAAFL.


Respectfully,

zoid
_________________________________________________

"Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me." The Ballad of Serenity

Only 212 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes, and 13 seconds left until The BDM!

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Tuesday, September 21, 2004 3:35 AM

FLYINGTAMS


It stopped because the writers don't know, or care, about physics - its about people.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2004 4:49 AM

HANS


Quote:

Originally posted by TheRealMe:
As far as the passing of the Reaver ship, I am convinced that it was an error of the writer or production crew. But I can explain it! Imagine that the Reaver ship and Serenity were moving at almost exactly the same direction and speed - toward Whitehall. The motion that we saw was only the slight difference in velocities of the two ships. After all, a ship in space does not HAVE to point its nose in the direction of travel. Would it help to imagine the scene if both ships were pointed in a parallel direction as they slowly slid past one another sideways?

The Real Me



I LOVE IT! I've always hated sci-fi films and shows that treat spaceships like airplanes, where they are all streamlined, fly like they are in an atmosphere, stop when their engine's stop, etc. Blame it on Star Wars... I have yet to see a sci-fi show or movie (other than 2001) that treats physics in space in a realistic manner. The simple fact is that most ships travelling any distance would spend as much time de-accelerating as accelerating, making it necessary for them to turn around part-way to their destination.

This is a list of the things I'd love to see in a realistic sci-fi series:

1. No sound in space (and the absence of sound in Firefly makes me thank Joss every day).

2. No artificial gravity (not because AG is necessarily unrealistic, I'd just like to see a show that doesn't take the easy way out and assume artificial gravity exists).

3. No FTL (again, not because it's automatically unrealistic, but it would be nice to see a show deal with the absence of easy FTL. Since I'm firmly in the "one system" theory for Firefly I'll give this one to Joss as well).

4. A true representation of the vast distances in space. Most space combat would take place at extreme distances, and a "nearby" ship would probably be 1000's of kilometres away...

5. As mentioned above, a true representation of Newtonian physics (a ship that accelerates to 10,000 km/second needs to de-accelerate the same amount at the other end of its journey).

The above points would make for a very different show from all the typical space opera out there (the Treks, Andromeda, Farscape, etc). It's certainly something I'd watch...

Hans

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Tuesday, September 21, 2004 5:29 AM

AGEHN


The turning around partway bit.. the Reavers did that in the pilot. The flip when they entered Whitefall's atmo was them turning around after being backwards to decelerate. The only other ship that I remember seeing reach a destination is Serenity, and even though it's facing foreward, the engines could be turned around for deceleration.

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Friday, October 8, 2004 6:47 AM

MWALKER


Quote:

Originally posted by Hans:

2. No artificial gravity (not because AG is necessarily unrealistic, I'd just like to see a show that doesn't take the easy way out and assume artificial gravity exists).



They do have artificial gravity. They show it being turned on as soon as they get back to Serenity in the pilot episode (the boxes all fall to the floor).

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