Firefly "Map of the Verse"

[McC]

Images here

Clears up a lot of questions. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the price tag to see it in full detail.

[Slacker]

It looks like a much bigger, more detailed version of one of the maps in one of the Serenity RPG books. That said, it's still pretty damn cool, and I wasn't even a huge fan of the show.

[Junghalli]

So it's a cluster of 5 stars?

I guess that makes sense. Say each star has two gas giants in the life zone, and each one has four habitable/terraformed moons, that's 40 habitable worlds. Of course, I doubt it'd be quite that neat, but you get the idea.

[Peptuck]

215 worlds?! Whoa. Crazy. I do like that they finally settled the issue of how big the Verse is. Quintiple star cluster with multiple star systems plus proto stars. Also, looks like there's at least one red star and one blue one, which is probably what gave rise to the Blue Sun name.

Yeah, I know what I'm getting for Christmas.

[Junghalli]

215 worlds?!

That's 43 worlds per system ... how does that work? Even if you assume a habitable zone 2 AU wide you're looking at an average seperation of only 7 million km, only around 20 times the seperation of Earth and the moon. I'm pretty sure there's no way a system like that is going to be gravitationally stable.

The only way I can possibly see it working is if one of the stars is a huge supergiant, like Betelgeuse, with an obscene assload of terraformed outer planets and moons.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Here are just some of the questions the Map of the Verse answers:
[...]
How can there be enough space for 215 livable worlds in one system? (Hint: There isn't.)

I count 72 planets on the planet chart (not including Earth and Mars). The number 215 deals with the amount of planets and moons combined, and while I can't see it clearly enough to count all the moons, that looks about right for the chart.

It still seems like an absurdly high number. There's one yellow star there with 17 planets and a few other objects (dwarf stars?) orbiting around it, more than double our own system unless you count dwarf planets, and these are all supposed to be habitable. Then again, there appear to be an abundance of dwarf stars orbiting the primaries, which may help extend the habitable zone, so it's not quite as bad as first glance.

[TheLostVikings]

Here are just some of the questions the Map of the Verse answers:
[...]
How can there be enough space for 215 livable worlds in one system? (Hint: There isn't.)

I count 72 planets on the planet chart (not including Earth and Mars). The number 215 deals with the amount of planets and moons combined, and while I can't see it clearly enough to count all the moons, that looks about right for the chart.

It still seems like an absurdly high number. There's one yellow star there with 17 planets and a few other objects (dwarf stars?) orbiting around it, more than double our own system unless you count dwarf planets, and these are all supposed to be habitable. Then again, there appear to be an abundance of dwarf stars orbiting the primaries, which may help extend the habitable zone, so it's not quite as bad as first glance.

Actually its pretty horrible to anyone who know even the slightest bits about stellar mechanics. Since the lifetime of a star is inversely proportional with their size, blue supergiants like the one in the centre last a really "short" time, certainly way to short for life being able to evolve. And even if it was colonized from another star system long ago as the canon hints at, the constantly changing habitable zone of the supergiant as it expands would make life impossible anywhere near it.

And since the blue supergiant is the one thing holding the other bodies in place with its gravitational pull, that messes everything else up.

Of course the actual system of bodies depicted is so ridiculously unstable that even with Clarkes 3rd law type magitech you'd still need active thrusters on every single planetary body in order to actively stabilize them, or the entiere system goes straight to hell in a hand basket in time scales short enough to screw the show over.


Of course its a Chinese inspired space western, so some degree of suspension of belief is required anyhow, but he would have been better off simply admitting that the firefly universe has FTL travel from the get go. I mean the main drive of the firefly itself is clearly a reaction-mass-free propulsion system that breaks a ton of physics as we know them today, not to mention that its specifically mentioned that there was used "gravitational generators" of some sort to normalize the gravity across the different sized moons in order to make them habitable.

So with all the far-out stuff there already he might as well have saved a ton of trouble and simply gone with FTL or near-relativistic travel across a few close star systems without creating the total clusterfuck that is the canon firefly system.

[Peptuck]

215 worlds?!

That's 43 worlds per system ... how does that work? Even if you assume a habitable zone 2 AU wide you're looking at an average seperation of only 7 million km, only around 20 times the seperation of Earth and the moon. I'm pretty sure there's no way a system like that is going to be gravitationally stable.

The only way I can possibly see it working is if one of the stars is a huge supergiant, like Betelgeuse, with an obscene assload of terraformed outer planets and moons.

I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of the "worlds" are moons of varying size, with only a few actual planets.

Terraforming all of those worlds is likely going to be a bitch, but they did cover how difficult that is in various episodes and the movie.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Our solar system has ninety-seven 'world's', so I don't think spreading out 215 over 5 solar systems is too insane.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Actually its pretty horrible to anyone who know even the slightest bits about stellar mechanics.

I said it wasn't quite as bad as having 215 planets in the habitable zones of five stars, not that it wasn't horrible.

I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of the "worlds" are moons of varying size, with only a few actual planets.

Actually, only 2/3rds (66.5%) are moons, according to that chart.

[Samuel]

Our solar system has ninety-seven 'world's', so I don't think spreading out 215 over 5 solar systems is too insane.

I think only 9 would be habitable with magi-tech.
Earth
Moon
Mars
Venus
Titan
Io
Europa
Ganymede
Callisto

[Braedley]

Yeah, but what happens if you try and ignite Jupiter (as per SG-1 ep 2010)? I'm sure a number of other jovian moons suddenly become habitable, assuming conditions don't become like what mercury deals with. Also, having these much smaller companion stars with their own orbiting planetoids (they're not really moons nor planets) increases the number of habitable planets in a star system, and can also add enough energy to a green house planet outside the habitable zone to make it habitable. Sure, long harsh winters and short but sweltering summers may not be ideal, but it still might be habitable.

[Stark]

It's hilarious to me that anyone can say 'ignite Jupiter as per <lame scifi show> episode '2010''. It makes me cackle.

[Paradox]

For everything else that they got right in Firefly, I'm willing to let the stellar mechanic issues slide. Plus they actually had a good storyline going.

I'm sure if they tried to make 5 seasons out of it and milk it dry, the show would start to suck like any other though.

[Bilbo]

In the show it is mentioned that most of the non-core worlds are not the nicest places to live. They were terraformed but are still very marginal.

[Junghalli]

So with all the far-out stuff there already he might as well have saved a ton of trouble and simply gone with FTL or near-relativistic travel across a few close star systems without creating the total clusterfuck that is the canon firefly system.

Or he could have just added more stars. The system works fine if you assume it's a big star cluster like the Pleiades with hundreds of stars, or a globular cluster. Throw in terraforming and that wouldn't even be particularly implausible. I think there actually is an RL open cluster a few thousand light years that's old enough to have potentially have habitable worlds, it should fit the bill.

[Uraniun235]

Yeah, but what happens if you try and ignite Jupiter (as per SG-1 ep 2010)? I'm sure a number of other jovian moons suddenly become habitable, assuming conditions don't become like what mercury deals with. Also, having these much smaller companion stars with their own orbiting planetoids (they're not really moons nor planets) increases the number of habitable planets in a star system, and can also add enough energy to a green house planet outside the habitable zone to make it habitable. Sure, long harsh winters and short but sweltering summers may not be ideal, but it still might be habitable.

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

Was this a comedy episode?

[Stark]

Oh U I already been there, it's funny as shit.

I prefer to think kids these days just don't know, y'know?

[Bounty]

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

Was this a comedy episode?

Reset-button future "what if" show. The Jupiter bit isn't even part of the plot, it's a throwaway line by a writer with marginally more cultural awareness than Braedley.

[Ford Prefect]

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. However, there is a later episode (the lazily named 2001) featuring the aliens from 2010, the Aschen, and a briefing about them mentions that they did convert a gas giant into a star. Arthur C. Clarke got namedropped in this briefing, as I recall.

EDIT: I think Bounty has defeated me.

[Darth Onasi]

The Verse looks like a bigger clusterfuck than an average Sins of a Solar Empire system, and that's saying something.

[Stark]

It's what happens when you absolutely must bend over backwards to generate a 'plausible' (note: not plausible) structure to throw around your fiction to make it enjoyable. There are people out there who simply cannot enjoy fiction unless they can contort it into a 'realistic' form that could 'exist'. Doing this for Firefly seems crazy, but there you go.

[tim31]

Just had a quick look at wikipedia re: this.

All of the following bodies were terraformed and made to have a standard gravity in order to be capable of supporting human life.

If this is canon, it could be evidence Q exists in the FFverse.

[Solauren]

You never heard of artificial gravity generators?

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

[tim31]

Strikes me as a bit of a stretch for FF-tech, but then again I never saw an episode where they had trouble walking around of a planet for the higher gravity, so I guess it's the only sensible explanation.