Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

We've looked closely enough to notice five main sequence stars including...somehow...a blue giant in a quintuple solar system.

Where do you get these details? I'm pretty sure Whedon wouldn't have bothered counting the suns or worrying about where they were on a Hertzsprung-Russel diagram; it's not his thing. As far as I recall, the show itself is mostly silent about the structure of the system other than to mention a bunch of planets and moons of varying habitability and wealth. The movie has the one bit about it being one system in the school flashback.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I don't see what makes it necessary. IMO, Firefly would have worked just as well in an open cluster (the Hyades is a really good candidate; both close and dense) with a very fast STL drive (probably some gravitic pseudovelocity warp drive). Taking a couple of years to get from the core to the fringe doesn't, IMO, hurt anything.

A couple years from core to edge DOES hurt the setting - badly.

In order to have a significant, protracted war (as the unification war was) you need at most a handful of months across.

Having the STL drive be capable of crossing the "system" in a few months (say, 3, edge to edge) won't be hurt (nor even seriously impacted) by another system 2 years away - that second system will essentially not exist for most purposes, except maybe deep range expeditions. It's just too far to make matters worth involvement. (It's why most people rightly reject the idea of any STL space empire - by the time you can react, it's too late.)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

A couple years from core to edge DOES hurt the setting - badly.

In order to have a significant, protracted war (as the unification war was) you need at most a handful of months across.

The US Civil War was mostly fought along the Mason Dixon line and the Altlantic Seaboard. It mostly wasn't fought on the frontier.

[tantric]

I read a GRR Martin book that featured a red giant surrounded by a ring of yellow dwarfs. Made me wonder about the habitable zones. In addition to the red giant's biozone, would there be a second one between the red giant and the ring of yellow dwarfs? Would the yellow dwarfs have enough distance between them to have planets? I know it's impossible, but I'd love to have a planet weave between the yellow dwarfs and make its own orbit 'round the giant. Maybe an asteroid belt in that pattern? Silly, but fun.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The US Civil War was mostly fought along the Mason Dixon line and the Altlantic Seaboard. It mostly wasn't fought on the frontier.

The edge of the Hyades Cluster is 7.7 light years from the what we could call the core. (which has a radius of 2.3 light years)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The edge of the Hyades Cluster is 7.7 light years from the what we could call the core. (which has a radius of 2.3 light years)

Yes, but this hypothetical setting doesn't need to be in every single stellar system in the cluster.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Yes, but this hypothetical setting doesn't need to be in every single stellar system in the cluster.

What if it is a single star system with multiple stars? Would that work?



Hans

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

What if it is a single star system with multiple stars? Would that work?

Hans

Arrrangements with more than 2 stars resolve themselves into pairs with a common center of mass. You can get a 3 star system with one pair and a singleton orbiting the pair like Alpha Centauri.

4 stars has to be 2 pairs with the pairs orbiting a common center. 5 then can then bring a singleton into orbit around the pairs. You can replace the outlying singleton with another pair for 5 but I've never heard of a bigger system than 6 with true orbits.

You might get by with only 10 AU between the 2 stars in a pair (First In allowed it) but you'll need much greater distances (like hundreds of AU) between pairs.

You can then play with double planets as natural occurrences but you still only have one real habitable zone per star.

Terraformable moons of gas giants remain hypothetical objects. Jupiter doesn't have any and only lack of knowledge about Titan's innards keeps it as a maybe. Go out to Neptune to find the next big moons and you're looking at places where nitrogen is a granite hard solid. Heat one of those to human-friendly temps and who knows if things would work out all right.

[Flyndaran]

Except that in reality, gas giant moons would be within the radiation belts and inhospitable to earth like life. Not to mention have extremely long day/night cycles, again not very earth like.

Firefly is a nice western in space, don't get my criticism wrong.

[mindstalk]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Except that in reality, gas giant moons would be within the radiation belts and inhospitable to earth like life. Not to mention have extremely long day/night cycles, again not very earth like.

In reality, Jupiter is the only one of our gas giants to have a huge and deadly radiation belt, and Callisto isn't within it. Long rotation periods seem more likely, given locking to synchronicity and multi-day revolutions around the giant.