"All Ahead, Warp Factor #..."

[white avenger]

The colonists left "Earth that was," because it could no longer sustain them (I hope they left all of the oil barons behind!) and went...somewhere, a system with enough moons to be Terra-formed to sustain the obvious hordes of humans in search of new homes. My question is this: Do you think that the refugees traveled in faster-than-light, or multi-generation ships?

 

[Blondie Bear]

That is a really good question, and unfortunately Firefly starts too late in the process (they're obviously VERY well settled) for us to make an educated guess. From what I've seen, though, they don't appear to have FTL technology--it would be much easier for the Alliance to catch Mal and his gang if they did, I think.

 

[white avenger]

That is a really good question, and unfortunately Firefly starts too late in the process (they're obviously VERY well settled) for us to make an educated guess. From what I've seen, though, they don't appear to have FTL technology--it would be much easier for the Alliance to catch Mal and his gang if they did, I think.

According to Joss, the events of "Firefly/Serenity" take place only 500 years in the future, and just the terra-forming of the various planets and moons would take the better part of a generation, then building the cities, which would require locating and refining raw materials, then the actual construction, at least of several worlds, since several seem to be only at the frontier stage, would take a century or more, which would have been interrupted by a civil war involving at least several of those planets...

In order to get all of that done in a mere 5 centuries, the settlers would just about have to have FTL drive, plus, they would have to be leaving about a week from next Tuesday. I think Joss screwed up with his time frame. He just didn't leave enough time to develop everything that he had there.

 

[Kemy]

FTL drives do not exist in the Firefly universe, Joss has pretty much confirmed that. Even the Alliance starships spend months or years traveling the system at sublight.

Serenity shows Earth launching dozens of massive multi-generational sleeper ships at Sublight towards the system that later becomes their home, much of the 500 years between now and the show is the journey there, with over 100 years of terraforming and industrial development, meaning about 400 to get there. At 25% the speed of light thats 100 light years, at 50% c thats 200 light years, Hubble and the NGC catalouge currently list all *stars* within a 250 light year radius, but we know little or nothing about the planets (and number thereof) around them.

The Alliance occupies a system made up of dozens of planets, hundreds of moons, according to Serenity there is even a stable pattern to their orbits and at least 6 were immediately Earth type and orbited in the stars habitable zone, the others were heavily terraformed, the border worlds never achieving full vegetation becoming desert/old west arid type worlds.

Serenity herself, the ship, is powered by a "Photo-gravitic Pulse drive" that seems to involve a nuclear reactor, heating a gaseous material to a plasma state, spooling that material up and ejecting it to create an enormous amount of thrust that can propel her the distance equivalent to Earth/Mars separation or more in under three weeks.