>Still, assuming light speed travel, Firefly's inhabited planets are still a heck of a lot closer, since the crew doesn't seem to noticeably age between the hal

>Still, assuming light speed travel, Firefly's inhabited planets are still a heck of a lot closer, since the crew doesn't seem to noticeably age between the half dozen or so star systems that they visit My understanding is that Firefly does not have FTL travel at all, in fact that makes it rather unique among spaceship sci-fi. Also, they're in a single (though very large with multiple stars) system. They get around quickly because their ships are a lot faster than our slow-ass chemical rockets, but they're still traveling at sublight speeds, which is why it takes days or weeks to get places, instead of mere minutes (for example, at lightspeed, it would take less than 6 hours to get to Pluto). Notice that, in the show, they took paying passengers, and it took a fair amount of time to get between the "outer worlds". It was a lot like cargo ships of yesteryear, rather than modern airplanes, as far as travel time. They don't have tech to halt their metabolisms for the same reason we don't: they haven't invented it yet.