Serenity: Bug Report1. Mal disguises Serenity with skeletons and red paint to look like a Reaver ship. But such a visual disguise would be of little use in the immensity of space. Even supposing that every ship carries a ten-meter telescope as standard equipment, a ship would have to come exceedingly close, say within ten thousand kilometers or about the diameter of a planet, before it could see details the size of a skeleton (limited by the Rayleigh criterion). Resolution: Mal must have expected that Serenity would indeed be flying exceedingly close to Reaver ships (see below). Also, spaceships could have super-telescopic imaging power through some technological trick, such as dispersing an array of sensors in a cloud around the ship. 1(b). In the Outer Rim, in the endless nothingness of space, why does Serenity fly within what appears to be a few hundred meters of a fleet of Reaver ships? Resolution: We can only conclude that the close approach was deliberate, and Mal believed it was better to seek out the Reaver fleet and fly within kissing distance of it, rather than give any appearance of avoiding it. It is slightly odd that Serenity was able to slip away from the Alliance ships, but Mal had no confidence in her ability to avoid detection by the Reaver fleet. Perhaps Mal knew from experience that the Reavers actually had better detectors than the Alliance. 2. Why does the Serenity crew physically carry the Miranda "black box" recording to Mr. Universe? Why not send it to him as an email attachment? Note that although the Alliance is not particularly backward in data storage technology (they can store and display video in a 4x8 glossy photograph), the "black box" recording is quite large, somewhere in size between a drink coaster and a paperback book. This suggests that it either contains a great deal of data, or some kind of authentication technology, or both. If the "black box" contained some kind of physical apparatus to confirm the authenticity of the record, Mr. Universe's equipment might need physical access to the recording medium in order to confirm authenticity and satisfy others that the record was genuine. Perhaps Serenity did not have the level of communications gear required to guarantee authenticity. This would help explain why the Serenity crew needed Mr. Universe's help at all (instead of just sending the video themselves to everyone they could think of), and also why anyone would believe a video circulating on the Internet. |