herbivore wrote:
Quote:
I agree its cool looking, but don't you think they'd just use cars when they're on the ground instead of horses?
But cars from where? Horses can reproduce, cars have to be traded for. Plus mechanical maintenance would depend on more off world trade, and that might sporadic. The real prosperous settlements might be able to swing it, if they had a valuable resource that they could extract easily. It seems likely that the average settlement might not manage much more than food or shelter. Serenity does have a four wheeler on board, but it is good for only one or two people.
Horses are pretty much all terrain vehicles, with virtually no spare parts required. Its all very well having your rover on the moon of gamma 6, but wtf do you do when the cylinder heads blow? It takes too long to get spare parts from one town to the next.. imagine how long it takes in space.. They also require no fossil fuels, or even sci-fi fuels, and failing anything else, you can eat them. The only thing that might be better would be camels, given their greater endurance capabilities.
Also, it probably doesnt take that much work to change a horses tack to fit a riding lizard from Ubuntu 14. I'll wager that if you cant easily swap a car from unleaded to diesel, then swapping your space-buggy from diesel to Ubuntan fire-juice is a lot harder.
Finally, horses tack can all be made with relatively low tech metal working. The new Hyundai-Boeing T345 Moon-Buggy with optional sunroof is probably a bastard to make parts for, and if you use your own, you invalidate the guarantee, and then the Space Health and Safety Force will be all over your ass for risk assessments.. or something.
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that you can't take part" [Mario Savo, 1964]