Plot [Rumor]

Started by ikarop, Jun 30, 2011, 12:05:09 AM

Author
Plot [Rumor] (Read 37,772 times)

harlock

harlock

#105
So, looking over things, I see there is some alarm over the year the film is set in. The following is going off info that may not be seen as canon by some, so excuse me for that;

The alien timeline from various sources places Ripley being born on 2092 and the film Prometheus has been said by Scott himself to be thirty years before Ripley - that would place things at 2062.

I dont like the idea of faster than light travel either, but with Scott saying time dilation will feature, one would think near or STL will be involved in some capacity - saying that Avatar did space travel quite realistically for a scifi blockbuster. We also know nothing about Prometheus as a ship so far.
Hopefully when someone mentions a planet is a certain number of light years away, it will take the same number of years to travel that way - at least. If the world is 20 light years away - it best not take sooner than that (20 yrs) to reach it. Time dilation will keep the actors from physically aging if the dilation effect and distance travelled is totalled by someone who at least finds the Space Math Resources for Science Fiction Writers site.

Also I get a feeling, just from reading this new info, that if the Company and humanity would have had no idea of the alien in Alien, then possibly the Prometheus reached the planet by accident, say the ship got damaged and it gets pulled into the gravitational pull and orbit of the Jockey's world as its hopelessly drifting...

I think thats all I wanted to say here, I'm still new so thanks for reading. Comments welcome.

JaaayDee

JaaayDee

#106
Ridley Scott said 2085, and it was before the events of ALIEN (which takes place in 2122), not Ripley in particular.  The only explanation of a date that early is with young Elizabeth Shaw.  See this post to see what I mean.

Highland

Highland

#107
There's always the possibility that what they find is Prometheus or the instructions on how to build it.

(Contact - Jodie Foster)

harlock

harlock

#108
I have read a little known manga called 2001 nights recently, it harks back to the old hard scifi of Clarke and Asimov. Anyway, a certain chapter got me thinking about Prometheus;

We can expect the ship is going to travel a distance enough for time dilation to play a part, so I expect the ship may fly for years. Now a ship going for years with a crew needs alot of supplies. This is where you mileage may vary on matters;

Say the Prometheus is sent out as an exploration vessel, it is piloted and crewed by automated systems (androids?).
The actual people who will venture on new worlds are kept as donor eggs and sperm. These are then made into test tube babies once a planet is reached in orbit.
The android systems act as parents until the children are old enough to venture down to the planet. Very little resources will be needed, as the planet will be expected to sustain the humans when they go dirt-side.

I dont think this will happen in its entirety though!  :D It does explain a younger Shaw, if that is a true rumour, but how would time dilution be included in such a thing, unless the children are raised mid-trip, in a journey that may take from Earth POV more decades than a human could be useful as a crewmember.
Time dilation in the film will probably just justify the ship taking a long journey (of decades) whilst barely aging the crew and not turning it into a generation ship (as in the children of the original crew inherit the jobs of the old), mainly to the above post I have written about the ship supposed to be moving STL and planets that would feasibly hold extra-system alien races being more than a couple of tens of light years away.

Something to remember also, the Zeta-Reticuli binary system in RL lies about 12 light years away from Earth. Something to ponder on...

Mr. Mick

Mr. Mick

#109
Cannot wait to see more of this.

Highland

Highland

#110
Quote from: harlock on Jul 03, 2011, 10:56:55 PM

The actual people who will venture on new worlds are kept as donor eggs and sperm. These are then made into test tube babies once a planet is reached in orbit.
The android systems act as parents until the children are old enough to venture down to the planet. Very little resources will be needed, as the planet will be expected to sustain the humans when they go dirt-side.


Nice little theory, I might pick that manga up.

There would still be a discrepancy between those events and the ones in Alien 30 years later though.  :(

harlock

harlock

#111
2001 nights is a rare gem, there are eight volumes overall, the first few and last being the best. A google may let you know how to get hold of it.

I'll say how they can avoid a discrepancy about whether the Company knew about aliens before hand; the crew run up to the planet by pure incident... this could be from accidental damage leading to course-change to drifting until they reach it, communication not reaching the distance, theres quite a few ways for a ship to get out that far without comms reaching Earth with their destination.

This of course would mean the crew never get back to Earth or a report made never reaches Earth. Broken comms, busted ship seems most likely, or there are no survivors - I'll go with the first as it leaves room for sequels  ::)

As an aside, heres an interesting point about Time Dilation, I ran some numbers using this website;

http://www.cthreepo.com/lab/math1.shtml

Using the Long Relativistic Journeys calculator, setting a distance of 12 light years (to Zeta-Reticuli from Earth), if accelerating at 10Gs, time dilation makes the crew age 0.9 years in the space of the 12.2 year trip.

I think thats manageable for a film to keep the crew looking the same roughly as before and after a trip. This would also mean that the crew need to be kept in Event-Horizon style Grav-Couches (note - theyre not cryogenics!!) for the trip.

I'm not sure what this means for the ship - acceleration at 98.1metres per second is crazy fast and the ship would need to be light and carry alot of fuel - but if the Prometheus will be a Jockey-ship, I'm willing to suspend disbelief  :)

Deuterium

Deuterium

#112
Quote from: harlock on Jul 04, 2011, 11:35:06 PM
2001 nights is a rare gem, there are eight volumes overall, the first few and last being the best. A google may let you know how to get hold of it.

I'll say how they can avoid a discrepancy about whether the Company knew about aliens before hand; the crew run up to the planet by pure incident... this could be from accidental damage leading to course-change to drifting until they reach it, communication not reaching the distance, theres quite a few ways for a ship to get out that far without comms reaching Earth with their destination.

This of course would mean the crew never get back to Earth or a report made never reaches Earth. Broken comms, busted ship seems most likely, or there are no survivors - I'll go with the first as it leaves room for sequels  ::)

As an aside, heres an interesting point about Time Dilation, I ran some numbers using this website;

http://www.cthreepo.com/lab/math1.shtml

Using the Long Relativistic Journeys calculator, setting a distance of 12 light years (to Zeta-Reticuli from Earth), if accelerating at 10Gs, time dilation makes the crew age 0.9 years in the space of the 12.2 year trip.

I think thats manageable for a film to keep the crew looking the same roughly as before and after a trip. This would also mean that the crew need to be kept in Event-Horizon style Grav-Couches (note - theyre not cryogenics!!) for the trip.

I'm not sure what this means for the ship - acceleration at 98.1metres per second is crazy fast and the ship would need to be light and carry alot of fuel - but if the Prometheus will be a Jockey-ship, I'm willing to suspend disbelief  :)

Well, then prepare yourself to suspend disbelief.  Do you have any conception of how much energy it would take to CONTINUOUSLY accelerate a multi-ton spacecraft at 10G's for approximately a year?  Forget about the fact that one would have to deccelerate the spacecraft at same rate, roughly half-way through the journey, in order to achieve closed orbit within target interstellar system.

The required energy output is WELL beyond the means of any current or postulated technology, even given the hypothesized accelerated advancement in state-of-the-art physics and technology.

Pn2501

Pn2501

#113
I'm sure they'll implement so sort of energy deus ex machina to describe it.

Deuterium

Deuterium

#114
Quote from: Pn2501 on Jul 05, 2011, 03:17:24 AM
I'm sure they'll implement so sort of energy deus ex machina to describe it.

No doubt.

harlock

harlock

#115
Of course there will be a deux ex machina for the trip to be made, which makes me think the use of Jockey-tech will happen. Also I actually got mixed up on the distance, it is 12 parsecs to Zeta 2 Reticuli, which totals 39 light years.

A similar effect will happen by increasing the Gs of continual thrust to 12. To clarify, I'm talking from a scifi writers point of view - not an "I believe we can do this now" POV. I know we can never achieve something like this with our tech - for a start the amount of fuel would be horrendous, I dont even think we could get a rocket to accelerate that fast - but then with a Jockey-tech Drive on the Prometheus, the viewer can put all that aside.

Also, despite the fact I realise such a thing would be impossible by our technological stand-point, I really dont think they teach PHD Physics in high school  ;) Remember the first Alien film had cryobooths and FTL travel among other things which are impossible - if they show in this film though that they are retroteching Jockey-tech into ships, then it doesnt matter anymore.

The Alien series is not a hard scifi series, I just wanted to use a time dilation calculator to show how a trip to LV-426 would work for a crew of actors to not be shown to age significantly on a near 40 year trip from Earth POV.

Pn2501

Pn2501

#116
i also don't think that it has been mentioned that Prometheus is jockey technology, that was only part of the false synopsis that this thread regards.

Deuterium

Deuterium

#117
Quote from: harlock on Jul 05, 2011, 09:45:55 AM
Also, despite the fact I realise such a thing would be impossible by our technological stand-point, I really dont think they teach PHD Physics in high school  ;) Remember the first Alien film had cryobooths and FTL travel among other things which are impossible - if they show in this film though that they are retroteching Jockey-tech into ships, then it doesnt matter anymore.

The Alien series is not a hard scifi series, I just wanted to use a time dilation calculator to show how a trip to LV-426 would work for a crew of actors to not be shown to age significantly on a near 40 year trip from Earth POV.

Harlock, sorry if my post came off as smarmy...as that was not intended.  I have edited it in order to delete my previous reference to "going back to school" for the advanced physics and relativistic field theory.  Your use of the relativistic rocket / calculator was a good idea, and indeed, it does show that (in theory) the trip could be made within the lifetime of both the ship's crew (who would age slower) as well as the inertial observors in Earth's frame of reference.  Cheers, and happy 4th.

harlock

harlock

#118
^ No problem  :) Like I said, I realise it couldnt happen, but if it could, thats how it would.

Also Pn2501, I realise that Prometheus may not be Jockey-tech (we dont know either way yet), but to make a theoretical trip for near 40 years at a constant 10G accel/deccel cycle (the amount of fuel needed would be astronomical and theres the point of a set of drives with that acceleration) with a huge spaceship that'll reach near light speed to make the crew age just over 10 months instead of 40 years calls to mind some type of tech we cant build.

This makes me think that although the entire ship may not be a Jockey-ship, the drive tech might be (possibly some advanced gravitic drive will be used that doesnt need remass, just a source to keep it powered up).

Pn2501

Pn2501

#119
like i said earlier the drive technology will probably consist of something that we are yet to discover (dues ex machina). but like you said it could go either way.

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