which system is this?

[solarbird]

I can’t figure out whether this crazy quintuple-star system is from Nightfall, the Colonies of Battlestar Galactica, or the Verse from Firefly.

WHAT SAY YOU?
[ GO HERE TO VOTE ]
Which scenario does this real life star system best fit?

• [ ] Isaac Asimov's Nightfall
• [ ] Battlestar Galactica's Colonies
• [ ] Firefly's "the Verse"
• [ ] Another system (vote in

Comments

[rmd]

Not sure, but I bet you can find something like it in Elite: Dangerous.

[solarbird]

If not now, then in a future map rev I'd bet.

[rmd]

They programmatically generated the galaxy. A bunch of explorers have made their way to saggitarius A*. :)

[solarbird]

Excellent.

[wrog]

Given that The Dark Crystal is fantasy and has magic in it, I'd have to go with that one.

Because in real life, with this many stars this close together, there's NO WAY you have planetary orbits that are long-term stable enough for earth-like planets to develop. Imagine, if you like, that our solar system had a WHOLE bunch of hyper-Jupiters -- perturbations galore, and only a matter of time before a given planet is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets tossed into one of the suns or out into deep space or just into some Completely Different Orbit that fucks over whatever is currently managing to survive there.

[wrog]

well okay, given that the Firefly cosmology never made any sense (*) and was never expected to make any sense (**), that could work, too

(*) other than Joss Whedon [or whoever was advising him] realizing that if you want to do space opera on a scale that people understand and not have to deal (too much) with relativity, you pretty much HAVE to do it within the confines of a single solar system -- which, I'll admit is more thought than most authors give it

(**) yay, more thick and chewy fantasy.

[solarbird]

Well, if I recall correctly, neither does Nightfall's. I seem to remember a lot of people trying to make that system work and going "nope."

The Colonial metasystem is actually quite a bit more complicated - and is at least borderline possible - but I wanted to throw that in because hey, Battlestar Galactica. :D

[wrog]

The Colonials had FTL. I was assuming separate solar systems for each of the 12 Colonies and the distances could be arbitrarily large (since whatever the constraints are on hyperspace travel, physical-normal-space distance apparently isn't one of them -- I mean even a stupid little Raptor can go a half-million light-years without breaking a sweat) though it sounded like they were somewhat close to each other in the same galaxy.