Tech Levels: "Firefly" vs. "Battlestar Galactica"?

More than that, it’s common sense.
If you look at a brass cartridge, as I reckon most armorers do, you will see that it is all sealed up tight where water and air can’t get in. :slight_smile:

Maybe this has been said clearly and I missed it, but Battlestar Galactica is intentionally using lower technology so the Cylons can’t infiltrate their computer systems. Ultimately, the Cylons did get a virus in, but it took a lot longer.

I would say that clearly the Alliance on Firefly has higher tech. than the humans on Battlestar, but the Cylons may have the Alliance beat.

No, they aren’t using networked devices so that the Cylons can’t enter their systems.
It was when they networked to rapidly calculate the fleet’s jump that the Cylons got in.

So? How much firearms training involves learning chemistry?

It’s difficult to compare levels of tech in different fictional universes. For example, in Trek, everybody and their dog seems to be able to build a warp drive. Perhaps in another fictional universe, warp drives are physically impossible or only the most advanced races could develop FTL. How about energy weapons. In the BSG universe it seems matter weapons are much more effective than energy weapons. Does this mean Trek is more advanced than another universe because their writers allow various pieces of technology to be rather easily obtained compared to another universe where it is much harder to develop them or even physically impossible?

Actually, IIRC, building a warp drive (or at least designing one) is a required assignment at least at the high school where Geordi LaForge went to.

There seems to clearly be some sort of constant-acceleration propulsion technology in the firefly universe. Trips across the solar system take weeks. Given a constant, say, 1g drive, how long would it take to travel, say, 8 light years? (counting, of course, deceleration)

About 9 years. With 1g constant acceleration it takes a little less than a year to get up to the speed of light. Another year to decelerate on the other end. But in those two years of acceleration and deceleration you’d travel about a light year, so you have 7 more years of zipping along at c in between. Since you can’t go faster than c, any high constant-acceleration drive will get you where you want to go at about the speed of light. That’s assuming that their drive can sustain those kinds of accelerations at relativistic speeds - something we have no evidence of at all.

Also, since the Firefly 'verse has gravity control, we have no evidence that they can only accelerate at 1g. For all we know, they can accelerate at 10 gs constantly. If that were the case, they could accelerate to the speed of light in about 2 weeks.

Accelerating at 10g while the cattle in the hold experience 1g seems even stranger than FTL. :slight_smile:

I was assuming though, that they wouldn’t have been traveling too much faster than 50% C, since I’ve read at those speeds, collisions with interstellar dust particles can start really ruining your day.

We know a generation never saw the outside of a spaceship, so let’s say that’s about 70 years. They went to a “nearby” solar system, so let’s say it was about 20 LY away. So how fast does that make them? They were hauling ass, but I guess they weren’t moving at ridiculous speeds. It does sound doable though.

Speculation, just as there is speculation that the Alliance has some horrendeously expensive FTL method to move to the solar system “when Earth was used up.”

Why? We know they have gravity control. They can stand in the cockpit while re-entering the atmosphere - a manoever that would easily put multiple g’s on the ship. They don’t get thrown around by even wild manoevers like the Crazy Ivan in the pilot - it was enough to just hang on to something. That implies some really serious control of acceleration impulses.

We have no idea how fast those ships can accelerate. For all we know, they can accelerate at 100 g’s and flit about the system at high fractions of the speed of light.

Didn’t someone say that this was from the Visual Companion for Serenity? A Joss Whedon bit no less?

Not that I recall.

Re: Gravity control. What the hell. They do it on Star Trek. :slight_smile:

Nope. Joss’s own words.

Provide a cite other than another post, and I’ll stand corrected. :slight_smile:

I’m looking at the book right now. Would you like me to tell you what is says on page 37? :slight_smile:

How about telling me where I can get one?

Serenity Official Visual Companion :smiley: