Re: Generation Ships: Non-Stop, Orphans of the Sky and what else

On 25 Apr 2006 16:35:31 -0400, jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx (James Nicoll) wrote:

In article <4jus42pngos7jqfiatji8dp6uetc6tgrtq@xxxxxxx>,
William George Ferguson <wmgfrgsn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 24 Apr 2006 17:39:33 -0700, "Bombardier Planetary"
<vacuumsuperfortress@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship

[snip list]
television series Firefly

The last isn't canonically true. At best it's an extrapolation from the
fact that we don't see FTL drives in operation. The refugees from Earth
That Was could still have made the trip in less than a generation their
time, if they could crowd C. The civilization clearly has gravity control
and reactionless space drives. The civilization also routinely uses
cryo-sleep when sending groups of people from one planet or moon to
another, a time frame of weeks or months, so sleeper ship transit is also a
possibility. There may also have been more exotic transit options (one way
trip via wormhole as an example). to move tens if not hundreds of
thousands, maybe even millions, of people from Earth That Was to new
system.

If they had an epic voyage on a generation ship, wouldn't
it have figured into their communal mythology? But there's less
evidence for that than there is for the existance of a Chinese
population of any size in the new system.

While we see scattered Chinese in the background of the outer worlds where
the Serenity hangs out, we know that one of the two major worlds, Sihnon,
Inara's birthplace, is primarily settled by Chinese (the other, Londinium,
is settled primarily by people of European descent). A common speculation
is that the Chinese are actually the dominant group (note the anglo 'new
rich' Tams have adopted a Chinese surname), and mostly well off Central
Planet folks, while the bulk of the poor folk, whose ancestors were thrown
on newly terraformed planets and moons with a plow and maybe a couple of
herd animals, are mostly European. The Serenity hangs with the poor folk
and thus doesn't run into the rich Chinese that often.

Nobody even looks for wormholes, which would be useful
if they existed, so I assume they don't.

I would guess sleeper ships + the FTL drive Earth neglected
to mention to the crews of the B-Arks. I base this on the contradition
of "cheap space travel", "no ftl but here we are anyway", "super-
terraforming tech", "Earth is Big" and "we used up the Earth." The
backstory seems to be a lie, which raises the question of who was
lying to whom and why? Earth doing a periodic cull of the gullible seems
like a reasonable explanation.


Are you speculating that the original settlers were made up of manicurists
and public telephone sanitizers?

--
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit)
.

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