Maybe the ‘Alien-verse’ just has solar systems a LOT closer together than our reality. Why not, it’s fictional.
Worked for Firefly.
Firefly didn’t have a bunch of solar systems really close to each other - it took place in one solar system with an absurd number of habitable planets.
Yes, I know. Same difference.
A difference which makes a difference IS a difference.
What did Firefly gain by having “one solar system with an absurd number of habitable planets” and no FTL, as opposed to the convention storytelling standard of FTL and lots of solar systems? Nothing! And they make it worse in that, instead of just accepting FTL as possible and many solar systems, we’re supposed to believe one system has many habitable planets all over and far enough from each other to have “an outland” and yet still be liveable ? Going with our reality that FTL is impossible as “hard sf” just makes the absurdity of their system even more obvious.
I completely disagree. The deal with Firefly is not that that there a magically a bunch of habitable planets in one system, but that they have terraforming technology.
Assuming there is a wide habitable zone, this is somewhat plausible. Certainly more so than FTL travel, which for all its ubiquity in SF, is still complete fantasy and can in no way be characterized as hard science fiction.
They’d need the ability to move planets around, too. Terraforming any planet into a livable one with soil and breathable atmosphere doesn’t do much good if it freezes over in five years, or it is too far from the sun to grow plants.
And terraforming would likely take centuries. Yes Firefly is 500 years in the future. I submit that’s no nowhere near enough time. How far away from Earth are they, was that ever mentioned? Because without FTL it would take, well, a long time to get there.
While relativistic space travel makes for a way around no-FTL, it is pretty much as impossible as FTL. Without magical star trek shields, you’re not going to be able to go very fast. I wonder if you could even do 5%c.
It should be noted that a lot of different firefly worlds are moons, too, which increases the potential amount of areas in the habitable zone.
In terms of orbital mechanics, is there a reason that a star couldn’t have 5+ planets (and dozens of moons) in the habitable zone of a star? Like if our solar system had 5 planets between venus and mars instead of one, would they all crash into each other or get thrown out of orbit? Or is it just how it happened to turn out, and in the Firefly system it turned out differently?
Exactly. The premise of the show is that the Firefly system has lots of planets and moons in the habitable zone along with terraforming. No planet moving necessarily needed.*
You can certainly argue about the timing and feasibility, but at least this doesn’t violate any laws of physics like FTL travel (and Star Trek shields, for that matter).
In that sense it is far more plausible. Whereas any “science fiction” with FTL travel in the form of “warp drive” or “hyperspace” is basically space fantasy.
*Although..note that even planet/moon moving is at least theoretically possible in that it doesn’t violate any laws of physics, unlike FTL travel.
Terraforming also expands what counts as “habitable zone”: You can do things like deliberately giving a further-out world a strong greenhouse effect, or a lot of high-altitude clouds to reflect light from one closer in.
I remember seeing a map of “the Verse” which may or may not have been official (could have been from the RPG) which showed the Firefly system as having at least five stars in it. Found it here, towards the bottom of the page:
And something else just occurred to me. Why was Ripley being grilled by the company’s executive board about what happened to the Nostromo, when it was the company who purposely sent the ship near the alien moon for the purpose of retrieving a xenomorph? They knew there’d be a dangerous xenomorph on board, and Ripley knew that they knew, because she saw the secret directive. Why the third degree? And why wasn’t she tearing them a new one for completely disregarding the lives of the crew of the Nostromo?
That type of thing was common for me. Besides being confusing and even frustrating for me, it detracted from the overall effect of the movies in question. About a year or so ago, I decided I just wouldn’'t do it anymore. If a movie that I really want to watch is in progress, I just set it up to record from the beginning (Direct TV) and then leave it. When I have time to watch it, I watch the recording. I have to say I like this much better.
Because there’s no evidence that any of that happened. It was a covert operation, and if it was sanctioned by the then-board, they are all dead or retired. No one is going to keep a paper trail of such an operation anyway. The message, the order, the computer logs, the testimony of the crew, the fact Ash was an artificial person - none of that is available. It all turned to dust when the Nostromo was destroyed..
As far as anyone knows, Ripley fucked up and blew up the ship by accident and is making up some fantastical story (the equivalent of Star Trek “it was all mind controlling aliens, I swear!”) to get out of it.
Burke knew. After he heard her testimony, he dug trough the records and either found it or found enough corroborating evidence. Then buried it.
To me it was “The Neverending Story”, I always did catch the movie when the Snail rider and the Rock Biter first appeared, and other critters discussed about what was destroying Fantasia.
Curiously, to me, it made it a great fantastic movie when I found; together with the other beings of Fantasia, that we were inside a book…
And, yes. I was a bit disappointed when a few years later I finally did see the complete movie.
One of the nice things about the current era is that they have finally restored and properly cobbled back together the old silent movies. We finally have the 1925 The Lost World about 95% complete, and it makes a huge difference to see it all back in place. I watched the film over the years as the missing parts were accreted back in place, and it makes a huge difference And not all the missing parts were “filler” – they took out scenes of the brontosaurus rampaging through London, and of its eventual escape at sea, which were pretty nifty special effects shots.
Similarly, when I first saw Fritz Lang’s Metropolis it was in a terrible nth-generation print that had abysmal contrast that destroyed small details. I didn’t even realize that there was an animated title card until saw the Giorgiou Moroder reconstruction in 1984. And later we got the German film restoration, then finally the restoration of the lost scenes from the Argentinian copy. We now have that film about 99% complete, and it makes a HUGE difference. Even though I read Thea von Harbou’s novelization, there was still a lot that was unclear.
In both films there still appear to be missing sequences, since some unanswered questions remain, but I suspect these were never filmed or cut out earlier.
I suspect that the whole operation was one c-suite guy whispering in Ash’s ear. No records at all.
Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting about how long she was gone. Weyland-Yutani was probably a completely different company when she returned.
There is an untold story here: the W-Y people that sent the Nostromo on its one-way mission to oblivion, I wonder what they thought happened. Did they ever try to send someone else after the Nostromo was never heard back from? Did they get the insurance payout for the lost ship and cargo? $42M in adjusted dollars*. That’s minus the payload, of course.
Come on movie people! There’s still some movement in the dead horse of a franchise!
*There must have been a currency adjustment. You can’t even buy a bizjet for that, probably not even in 1986.
Some of this is covered in Alien: Romulus.