Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

In my case it would be because I can't internalize the 'FTL = causality violation' bit. I'll take Einstein's word for it (since it has been vouched by so many other scientists). I've even had it explained to me and understood it (although I forgot (mentally rejected?) the explanation again fairly quickly). But I just can't accept, emontionally, that I can't move at any speed I like, spend some time wherever I went, fly back again, and some reasonable time has now elapsed. It just doesn't make sense. Emotional sense, that is.

So FTL travel may be impossible, but it ought not to be, while miracle systems are just silly.


Hans

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

One other issue to be thought of, disappearing in an STL-verse pretty much requires the person looking for you to quit looking at you.

Assuming Serenity has a non-magical drive and makes trips on the order of days or weeks instead of months or years (in a single biggish star system), it's going to be trivial to spot its drive plume from anywhere unless it is occluded by a planet or star. And given the Alliance controls the Core Worlds, it's unlikely to ever be in every interested party's blind spot. Burn the engines, and everyone knows where you are, what you are, where you're going, and when you'll get there.

So really, the question isn't a choice between impossible FTL and implausible star system. It's Magic A or Magic B (or sensor capability far worse than we have today).

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Maybe because FTL is simpler?

A single black box (or peculiar Steampunk spinning Thing) in the engine room is also smaller and less intrusive than very large black boxes that can re-make planets in negligible timespans.

It's a principle of world creation elegance that you don't make your story enabling miracles larger and more intrusive than they need to be.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Ftl is almost universally rationalized by the conventions of a hypothetical coexistent universe, subuniverse, pocket universe, whatever. We can make those conventions what is convenient for the story. A star that carries several dozen planets each terraformable exists in OUR universe.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

FTL isn't needed. An open cluster that takes a couple of years to cross wouldn't make the setting less like the frontier in the 19th century.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Interesting concept. How close can you pack stars to get an SLT accessible cluster? And by packing stars I mean worldbuilding while remaining sorta plausible.


Hans

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

A typical open cluster's core is about 3-4 light-years across with a density of about 1.5 stars per cubic light year. The corona is about 5 times that diameter with a decreasing density. Globular clusters, of course are bigger and denser, but are terrible environments for habitable planets.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

It has to start with a star that can be reached from Earth. Centauri is already four light years.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Which is what got me started on the musing that lead to this thread.

Besides grey goo, there might be someone/thing intelligent and hostile in the Solar system that the refugees wanted to get away from.

My favorite idea would be something like the Comprise from Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers. A technological hivemind that incorporates anyone it can get by force. In VF it can't leave Earth because the more than a second of communications lag causes hivemind schisms, which are Bad Things.

For the psuedo-Firefly setting, assume it can handle a few days of lag, but not more.

We could make Firefly a VF sequel if we worked at it. The very end of the story has almost as fast as light inertialess travel invented and colonies setting off into interstellar space, because Earth just got an anti-schism mind technology.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

The Hyades cluster is 150 light years away with about 160 F, G, and K stars packed within ten light years and would be a pretty interesting setting for a space opera game.