Gas = 10 gallons/$0.01
Beef = $500/8 oz. steak
Is it really that hard to imagine such a cheap fuel/expensive food universe?
Clearly you’re not geek enough then. Surely any geek would know that the chances of finding another earth-like world are slim to none. That even finding a planet capable of supporting human life at all is pretty rare. That there would likely be planets capable of sustaining life but poor for sustaining any kind of agriculture, but rich in some other resouce.
COME ON! Didn’t you play Master of Orion?
Saying you can’t suspend your disbelief about cattle being shipped around in a spaceship is actually dumber-sounding than posting a chuck norris joke.
If you paid attention, you’d know that in Firefly, they invent a process (terraforming) by which almost any planet can be transformed into an Earth-like world.
And if you’d paid attention you’d know that only the core worlds set out by the Alliance actually have been terraformed. In general, the places that Mal and crew end up doing odd things (like shipping cattle to) are worlds on the edge which haven’t been terraformed to be suitably earthlike, but nevertheless provide living space with atmosphere and moderately tolerable climate for folks who don’t mind the fact that they have to work to get their consumables and other goods. I mean, you’re not going to get great agriculture on a world where the soil is most useful when made into a refractory mud. At the same time, why spend all the money to make robots that can mine that mud when it’s a marginally habitable world and humans are cheap labor?
Just kinda think about the whole “Why can’t the sudanese have lush banquets on a daily basis even though we understand irrigation.” angle here on Earth.
I thought those were planets that they had tried to terraform, but it didn’t work that well, which made it look like the Old West.
Could be. Same net effect… planets that are marginally inhabitable. I thought you were trying to say that you didn’t believe the old west thing because they had terraforming. There’s an internally consistent reason for the old west planets despite having terraforming technology is the main point.
No, no, I buy it. I was replying to Ryan’s notion that finding another Earth-like planet is extraordinarily unlikely, which it is, if you don’t have a machine that makes any planet you want Earth-like (enough, at least).
Yup, the planets are only marginally habitable, are not industrialized, and the people living there don’t have the money for the high tech stuff the Alliance enjoys. So they use low tech stuff that they can make themselves and don’t need spare parts or fuel that they can’t get. The clothes and speech patterns you just sort of have to deal with, but it didn’t bother me.
So basically whatever Fox was doing kept me away from the show.
So Fox is to blame for apathy, eh?
Come on folks, those where live cows getting shipped. If they were just beef steak they would have been shipped as carcasses.
I have no idea, what you just said there.
I get the idea of colonizing earth like planets. I would accept the idea of needing to ship ONE live cow and ONE bull across space - but we’re talking herds here. If the planet can’t support agriculture, they don’t need a live herd, they need frozen meat, which can be packed much more effectively than a herd of goddamn cows.
And I hate that all planets look alike. The terraforming excuse is a good way to cover over a low budget, but still…
For some reason terraforming and ftl travel is much easier to swallow than flying cows through space and other illogical happenings. But still, great show even though the background and story is silly.
So there are no other reasons for shipping live cattle except as food? They couldn’t have been dairy cows? They couldn’t have been sent to start a sustainable herd now that the destination had finally developed a sustainable feed supply? They couldn’t have been sent to expand the genetic diversity of an existing herd? They couldn’t have been restocking a sustainable herd that had lost too many animals to disease? Why do people on Earth ship live cattle?
Regardless, does it really matter? Why focus on a fictional planet’s fictional need for fictional live cows any more than why I need to “Placate the Moakums” or “Seek the Magnificent Phial”? I’m tempted to say you guys are over-thinking this, but in reality, you’re doing just the opposite. “Why would a planet need cows?” two second pause “They wouldn’t! This is teh 57up1d!”
For that matter, they established the “expensive food” meme in the pilot, where the “treasure” that Mal is trying to sell all episode is revealed (shortly before the end) to be high-quality food rations.
Sorry, nope. See Ariel, the end of Our Mrs. Reynolds, or Trash. Probably a couple of other too that I’m forgetting.
Who says the destination planet can’t support agriculture? Have you even seen Firefly?
Welcome to the joy and frustration of being a Browncoat. :)
The guy wanted to sell his cows, the planet he was on outlawed the export.
Why did someone want to buy the cows? Use your imagination.
The post I was responding to - do keep up.
Anyway, I concede. It was an ill thought out point. A cow troll if you like. The minute you accept a universe where food seems more valuable than fuel and spaceships can land on, and more importantly, take of from planets, then you’ll also have to concede that hauling weird stuff across the galaxy isn’t prohibitly expensive so even herds of livestock makes sense.
I still find the entire setup silly, though. But the show does try to make some sense about physics, ie no sound in space and projectile weapons needing air to fire - the end of Our Mrs. Reynolds was cool (allthough the planet in that one looked like the rest… and was the one with Cliché Village One in it)
Watch what they’re eatin’ for dinner at the end of the episode too. ;)
The Message had a frozen planet. I’m almost done rewatching the series (watching Objects in Space tonight), and diversity in planets hasn’t been an issue.
You’re thinking of the beginning of that episode.