Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

I'm amused at FTL being considered more acceptable than a multi-world system with unspecified terraforming.

Whedon's been explicit about "being on the losing side of the Civil War" being a key part of his inspiration. (Not that Whedon's family was; seems pure Yankee AFAICT, he's just intrigued.) Some people accuse him of whitewashing by losing the slavery issues; I think they're nuts. For that matter, there's still near-slavery on the Rim, and Whedon's also said he doesn't think of the Alliance as clearly bad guys. *Parts* of Alliance, now...

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Because FTL is also part of the setup - at least, there's no mention of cryogenic suspension or other forms of long-term hibernation being routine that I can recall. All those people, and all that equipment to set up the first colonies, must have gotten there somehow...

What I can believe is that there was a faster FTL method known, but that it was deliberately destroyed and the records erased to prevent people from even trying to go back to Earth-that-was. I can also believe that the first steps of the method were rediscovered, giving a short-range FTL capability, but that any further progress is deliberately and carefully suppressed by the Alliance, partly for political reasons and partly for the same reasons they got rid of it in the first place.

That would be a lot more believable to me than a system that just happens to have that many naturally-occurring Terra-grade worlds in that many orbits around a single star, or that they had the ability to move entire Earth-size planets but somehow lost that ability (while misplacing an entire world).

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Uh, as we've already said: they do have cryogenics, though we don't know the maximum duration, and Miranda wasn't "misplaced", it was considered a failed colony.

And if you take the Paul Birch route of mass stream flybys, they needn't have lost the ability to move planets (within a system, not between stars), it just wouldn't come up after you'd finished moving them, because it's expensive infrastructure, not some magic planet-moving drive.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

They don't have FTL - they have high STL. Nowhere does it claim they ever had FTL.

But we see high STL.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

That's axiomatic due to the lack of oxygen.

One can survive the average 6 mBar surface pressure, and the bitter cold, without a pressure suit, provided one has a pressurized oxygen mask. It's not comfortable, and will result in edema... but it's only the lack of oxygen that's deadly.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Gets a mite chilly, most places.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Officially the trip took about a century.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Which requires enough of a violation of physics to might as well use FTL.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Needing a mask and oxygen tanks counts as special gear.

Re: Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting
 

Less hospitable than Antarctica isn't exactly a nice tourist trap.