Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by RyanW

That's not nearly as tough as everybody makes it out to be. Joss just missed the obvious: It isn't a single system.

The basic problem seems to be that, like many TV-SF writers, Josh wasn't too clear on astrodynamics and didn't realise that he could get advice on it. Like Terry Nation in the 1960s who didn't know the difference between a solar system and a galaxy, he just wrote more or less what other people had written.

The "all one solar system" stuff only comes in in the film, and stinks of desperate retcon. Treat it as RyanW says, a Traveller-style polity of several solar systems, and it pretty much works.