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The Expanse Discussion


DAL59

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No, not season 3. But I can tell you that it takes less energy to destroy Ceres than it does to rotate it to provide 1/3 g at its circumference... as in, rotating it would destroy it. And if you have that much energy to throw around on a human timescale...

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1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

No, not season 3. But I can tell you that it takes less energy to destroy Ceres than it does to rotate it to provide 1/3 g at its circumference... as in, rotating it would destroy it. And if you have that much energy to throw around on a human timescale...

the spin up thing is kind of silly, but hey at least its not artificial gravity magic.

anyway it looks like they are going to be cramming whats left of book 2 and some of book 3 into this season. they also threw in some references to book 4, but i dont think they will get that far this season.  dont expect them to follow the story exactly though im curious to see what they do with it. 

 

*made vague so as not to spoil.

Edited by Nuke
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3 hours ago, Nuke said:

the spin up thing is kind of silly, but hey at least its not artificial gravity magic.

Yeah, I bought it till I saw other's doing the math, but in theory it makes sense, so I roll with it.  Its what the entire series is based on, so it kinda needs to work. 

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17 hours ago, Nuke said:

book 2 and some of book 3 into this season.

thats going to be difficult.  I haven't seen the gate in any trailers though...

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Honestly, once it’s done with Book 1, I’m not terribly interested in it. At least until later on, but that’s not really the real thing, just a thing thing. 

(Made vague just to be extra confusing. :D)

I’ll just wait until S3 hits BluRay next year. Even the mild censorship practiced by SyFy bothers me, and the show is obviously shot and structured for no commercials. 

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2 hours ago, DAL59 said:

thats going to be difficult.  I haven't seen the gate in any trailers though...

well i did kind of read them all in rapid succession so theyve kind of blurred together in my head. 

 

but i think heres whats going to happen:

the rest of caliban's war

mid season finally

abaddon's gate (either partially or in full)

 

why else would you introduce anna and ashford this season?

Edited by Nuke
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15 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Yeah, I bought it till I saw other's doing the math, but in theory it makes sense, so I roll with it.  Its what the entire series is based on, so it kinda needs to work. 

well they calculated the energy to spin up ceres, but has anyone figured out what you would have to do to maintain structural integrity? i figure the process of simply reinforcing the rock would be a lot more difficult than the spinup operation. you would have to tear up the whole rock and rebuild it anyway. 

figure it would be easier just to strip mine the whole rock and use the materials to build a massive oneil cylinder with enough external radiation shielding to keep everyone alive. even easier would be a large number of surface centrifuges built in domed over pits. every time the population becomes untenable, build another one.

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37 minutes ago, Nuke said:

figure it would be easier just to strip mine the whole rock and use the materials to build a massive oneil cylinder with enough external radiation shielding to keep everyone alive. even easier would be a large number of surface centrifuges built in domed over pits. every time the population becomes untenable, build another one.

Not even tearing apart the entirety of Ceres is needed for that. Heck, Eros could give you an O'Neill Cylinder that could comfortably support as many people as Ceres is said to support. The only difference is that the Cylinder would actually give that population a higher quality of life.

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On 4/12/2018 at 9:44 PM, Bill Phil said:

The only difference is that the Cylinder would actually give that population a higher quality of life.

Thats not the goal though.  The Belters are supposed to be pseudoslaves of Earth and Mars.

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1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

Thats not the goal though.  The Belters are supposed to be pseudoslaves of Earth and Mars.

And notice how many problems that's caused?

The happier they are the less likely they will be to try and revolt. Bread and circuses. Not only that but the sheer cost of spinning up Ceres is just plain ridiculous.

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3 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Not only that but the sheer cost of spinning up Ceres is just plain ridiculous.

Its a fusion drive that runs on hydrogen, and ceres has plenty of ice.

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Just now, DAL59 said:

Its a fusion drive that runs on hydrogen, and ceres has plenty of ice.

And even then it would take centuries with a realistic amount of engines. They do it in half a generation. Sorry, but no. Ceres is not a spaceship, it's far larger.

And also, that fusion drive has some problems of its own...

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Just now, Bill Phil said:

And also, that fusion drive has some problems of its own...

Yeah.  The ships should be molten metal.  Add radiators!

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1 hour ago, DAL59 said:

Its a fusion drive that runs on hydrogen, and ceres has plenty of ice.

the thing that bugs me are the structural engineering problems. you want to spin up ceries it will work, slowly. but at the tipping point where g goes negative your dward planet becomes a slightly denser asteroid belt and not a habitable station.

Edited by Nuke
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  • 1 month later...
On 4/16/2018 at 2:03 AM, Bill Phil said:

And also, that fusion drive has some problems of its own...

Its a classic black-box McGuffin, I actually quite like the way they did it, they just go with "someone invented a torch drive" and dont bother with trying to shoehorn it into any science - because of course that would ruin it. The whole point is "What would the solar system look like if we had this thing?" how "the thing" works is not relevant to the idea of the story.

It is a bit jarring though when they talk about how it (the Epstein drive) gave them the solar system but not the stars - because being able to accelerate at 1g for long periods of time (apparently the inventors drive is still running and can still be seen running in deep space) most certainly would give you the stars, time dilation would even make it a trip doable in one lifetime. Heck if you can accelerate at 1g for a mere 100years, it would give you the universe.

IMO The Expanse is the best Sci-Fi show to turn up in a very long time, I just started reading the books.

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1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

Its a classic black-box McGuffin, I actually quite like the way they did it, they just go with "someone invented a torch drive" and dont bother with trying to shoehorn it into any science - because of course that would ruin it. The whole point is "What would the solar system look like if we had this thing?" how "the thing" works is not relevant to the idea of the story.

It is a bit jarring though when they talk about how it (the Epstein drive) gave them the solar system but not the stars - because being able to accelerate at 1g for long periods of time (apparently the inventors drive is still running and can still be seen running in deep space) most certainly would give you the stars, time dilation would even make it a trip doable in one lifetime. Heck if you can accelerate at 1g for a mere 100years, it would give you the universe.

IMO The Expanse is the best Sci-Fi show to turn up in a very long time, I just started reading the books.

 

well they were kind of at the cusp of going extra solar. they only had the epstien drive for about a hundred years when the show/books starts. the drive isnt the only problem you have to solve. how to keep a life support system running for 100+ years, how to set up a compatible ecosystem when you do find an appropriate planet. hell just time to design and build the ship, a megaproject in its own right, would have consumed most of that time. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/24/2018 at 6:59 AM, Nuke said:

well they were kind of at the cusp of going extra solar. they only had the epstien drive for about a hundred years when the show/books starts. the drive isnt the only problem you have to solve. how to keep a life support system running for 100+ years, how to set up a compatible ecosystem when you do find an appropriate planet. hell just time to design and build the ship, a megaproject in its own right, would have consumed most of that time. 

Fred Johnson said a bit about the flight profile of the Nauvoo- it would accelerate to its interstellar trajectory, and then the engines would shut off- the drive wasn't a problem. It the ecosystem of the Nauvoo was the big issue.

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  • 2 weeks later...

s03e12 pefectly illustrates the discussion which happened here several months ago.
Will the enough advanced interstellar civilization be studying local floras, faunas, and civilizations to get something new from them (my opponents),
or since some level of their development they won't even study, but from the very beginning either utilize, or sterilize star systems without any attempt of research or contact, treating local civilization like just a one more piece of expendable resource (my assumption).

Protomolecule illustrates the situation just perfectly.
It's not hostile. And it finds here nothing interesting to study.
It just doesn't speak to a food, unless the food can be consumed more effectively with speaking.

P.S.
Just watched s03e13.
Why did the Behemoth rotating wheel not stop when out of power?
Unlikely it rolls on ball bearings, probably it's suspended in magnetic field.
 

Edited by kerbiloid
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