Firefly "Map of the Verse"

[Sarevok]

You never heard of artificial gravity generators?

Sure, planetary scale is jaw dropping, but hardly impossible to imagine.

It's kind of hard to reconcile K II level mega engineering with employing slaves to dig up mud...

Still the original colonists must have had some good deal of superscience when they transformed alien worlds into Californian wilderness within blink of the cosmic eye. They mentioned the terroforming was largely automated right ? I wonder where the automatons and their driving intelligences went...

[tim31]

I heard that Whedon was saving them for a borg-like über boss, but the series got cancelled.

Seriously, as Stark's already pointed out at length, FF is one of those shows that we really should not be trying to rationalize.

[Bilbo]

One has to remember that we got only the smallest glimpses of the Alliance and the Core World. We get the equivalient of a trip through the backwoods of Somalia in Firefly and the movie. So think of it this way. Would a trip through Somalia give anyone a real indicator of the top technology available on Earth?

[Slacker]

I never understood why, if they had this sort of crazy terraforming technology, why they just didn't fix Earth.

[Shroom Man 777]

You never heard of artificial gravity generators?

Sure, planetary scale is jaw dropping, but hardly impossible to imagine.

It's kind of hard to reconcile K II level mega engineering with employing slaves to dig up mud...

Quiet, you! Them fringe world yokels got themselves a folk hero, y'hear!


By 'habitable', maybe those other worlds have hab domes or something. The handful of worlds we saw in the series didn't have domes or anything outrageous, they were just normal habitable planets, but what if they were rare and the worlds with domes and atmosphere containment fields were the real norm?


STRAK is right. Firefly is totally supposed to not make sense, and be all awesome while being so.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I never understood why, if they had this sort of crazy terraforming technology, why they just didn't fix Earth.

I always figured it was like Starcraft, where the powerful exiled humans were just the dregs of earth, where the REAL power was, and that there was something even scarier than the alliance that didn't want anyone messing with earth.

[andrewgpaul]

Wait, SG-1 actually had an episode titled "2010" wherein Jupiter is ignited?

I haven't seen 2010 in a while, but I'm fairly sure Jupiter wasn't turned into a dwarf star.

It did, at the end. The Monoliths replicated, then did <something> to ignite the planet into a star. It was to provide more energy into the Europan ecosystem, to allow the natives to evolve (hence the message: "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace. "

There was an epilogue, probably at the end of 2061, about it going out again in 3010. Looks like the Europans only got one millennium.

[Xess]

Wait, SG-1 actually had an episode titled "2010" wherein Jupiter is ignited?

I haven't seen 2010 in a while, but I'm fairly sure Jupiter wasn't turned into a dwarf star.

It did, at the end. The Monoliths replicated, then did <something> to ignite the planet into a star. It was to provide more energy into the Europan ecosystem, to allow the natives to evolve (hence the message: "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace. "

There was an epilogue, probably at the end of 2061, about it going out again in 3010. Looks like the Europans only got one millennium.

They were referring to the Stargate SG-1 episode, not the books.

[Ford Prefect]

I haven't seen 2010 in a while, but I'm fairly sure Jupiter wasn't turned into a dwarf star.

It did, at the end. The Monoliths replicated, then did <something> to ignite the planet into a star. It was to provide more energy into the Europan ecosystem, to allow the natives to evolve (hence the message: "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there. Use them together. Use them in peace. "

There was an epilogue, probably at the end of 2061, about it going out again in 3010. Looks like the Europans only got one millennium.

There was an episode of Stargate titled '2010', which is what I'm referring to there, not the movie/novel 2OIO*. Though now I know what Carter was referencing in the episode '2001'.

not the books by Heinlein

The books by Clarke, you mean.

*As an aside, I love writing the titles of 2OOI like this. I couldn't tell you why.

[Xess]

not the books by Heinlein

The books by Clarke, you mean.

*As an aside, I love writing the titles of 2OOI like this. I couldn't tell you why.

Yeah, I messed that up, I edited it out just after I posted to try and hide my shame.

[Ender]

You guys continue to yuck it up over a pop culture reference, I'm LOLing over the fact that they think they can get 5 stars of varying places in the sequence and a handful of protostars to form within a few AU of each other.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You guys continue to yuck it up over a pop culture reference, I'm LOLing over the fact that they think they can get 5 stars of varying places in the sequence and a handful of protostars to form within a few AU of each other.

Who said it was a natural star formation?

[Stark]

You guys continue to yuck it up over a pop culture reference, I'm LOLing over the fact that they think they can get 5 stars of varying places in the sequence and a handful of protostars to form within a few AU of each other.

Yeah, hence the whole 'plausibe... not plausible' thing. Particularly for Firefly (where it simply doesn't matter) I don't get why people think this kind of 'act of god' configuration is better than 'oh there are some planets around'.

[Ender]

You guys continue to yuck it up over a pop culture reference, I'm LOLing over the fact that they think they can get 5 stars of varying places in the sequence and a handful of protostars to form within a few AU of each other.

Who said it was a natural star formation?

Are you intentionally being dense or do you not realize that that doesn't change a single thing?

[CaptainChewbacca]

You guys continue to yuck it up over a pop culture reference, I'm LOLing over the fact that they think they can get 5 stars of varying places in the sequence and a handful of protostars to form within a few AU of each other.

Who said it was a natural star formation?

Are you intentionally being dense or do you not realize that that doesn't change a single thing?

If some race of stellar engineers put them all together a few thousand years ago and stuck some wanktanium-powered 'star-stabilizing engine' in the middle to keep it in place, that might make a difference.

Mostly it was a brain-melter joke, though.

[Ender]

If some race of stellar engineers put them all together a few thousand years ago and stuck some wanktanium-powered 'star-stabilizing engine' in the middle to keep it in place, that might make a difference.

The mass still has to be there in the first place, which is the issue with them forming naturally.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If some race of stellar engineers put them all together a few thousand years ago and stuck some wanktanium-powered 'star-stabilizing engine' in the middle to keep it in place, that might make a difference.

The mass still has to be there in the first place, which is the issue with them forming naturally.

Centerpoint Station could move stars, I believe. If not them, some other Type-III civilization would do.

[Ender]

If some race of stellar engineers put them all together a few thousand years ago and stuck some wanktanium-powered 'star-stabilizing engine' in the middle to keep it in place, that might make a difference.

The mass still has to be there in the first place, which is the issue with them forming naturally.

Centerpoint Station could move stars, I believe. If not them, some other Type-III civilization would do.

So when we are discussing Firefly, you bring up Star Wars as evidence?

[Samuel]

So when we are discussing Firefly, you bring up Star Wars as evidence?

He is trying to come up with a suitably wanked out solution to the problem. Star Wars has one. Basically "magic-tech" is the answer.

Yes, it is ridiculous using sci-fi as justification for other sci-fi. But that is the best to justify it- moving stars through hyperspace... wait, it didn't do that. It only moved planets.

[CaptainChewbacca]

So when we are discussing Firefly, you bring up Star Wars as evidence?

No. I said from the beginning it was a joke. Remember?

Mostly it was a brain-melter joke, though.

Pretty much, I was saying the ONLY way such a thing could happen is through wanked-out magi-tech, which is the complete antithesis of Firefly.

[Gil Hamilton]

Chewie is basically saying "Uhhh... MAGIC!" to address the fact that the Firefly settling doesn't make a damn bit of actual sense.

Of course, the thing with Firefly was that it was supposed to do the Western in SPAAAACE thing, but got stuck with the fact that you can't really do the whole planet hopping to new and different locales in any sort of realistic star system, unless you want everything set on the same planet or random asteroid/moon/space stations (which chances are aren't varied locales). So Firefly dispenses with all that and just crams that fucker full of planets. Then, like all sci-fi, was brought low because fans actually started thinking about it and wanted to know more.

[Bilbo]

I never understood why, if they had this sort of crazy terraforming technology, why they just didn't fix Earth.

The quote at the beginning of the move was: "Earth that was could no longer support our numbers."

So there is no indication that there was anything wrong with Earth. For all we know it was merely massively overpopulated and waves of colonists left in generational ships to find new homes. The Alliance may be one of dozens of human based interstellar societies created by these colonists.

Earth is probably still populated and incredibly advanced technologically wise. The Alliance if it was formed by one of the first colonial waves may be the largest and most stable.

Would make for an interesting story in the Firefly verse. Earth attempting to re-establish contact and dominion over her various far flung, thought they were independent, colonies.

[Sarevok]

Firefly would not have this problem and would be a hell lot better if they just avoided the every alien planet is somewhere in North America cliche. I imagine setting the independents as asteroid mining colonies rising up against the prosperous terraformed core worlds would had been very amazing to watch.

[Vendetta]

The quote at the beginning of the move was: "Earth that was could no longer support our numbers."

I believe the one at the start of the series is "earth got used up", implying that it was stripped of natural resources. Terraforming could probably make Earth that was into a tourist trap.

[Ender]

Firefly would not have this problem and would be a hell lot better if they just avoided the every alien planet is somewhere in North America cliche. I imagine setting the independents as asteroid mining colonies rising up against the prosperous terraformed core worlds would had been very amazing to watch.

I had an idea for a novel like that once. Only owing to the fact I wanted it hard sci-fi as much as possible it wasn't going to be your usual bang boom war. It would be a spy vs spy operation of each side sending agents out to try and subvert, turn, or eliminate players on each side. Setting would have been belt colonies as your dirty guys playing both ends towards the middle, Mars as your wild west wilderness, Luna as your uber-tech setting, Earth as the ones trying to flx muscle and keep everything under control, and a massive Island 4 type space station that was the chief break away antagonist (Island 4 was a variation on Island 3 that was bigger and designed with construction facilities built on the end to build more Island 3 types - hence it's importance and why earth wants to keep it)

Think James Bond/Mission Impossible/Alias set in space. Could be a really cool TV show as well.