|
vermin posted:With everyone on Basic, Earth would get to control the price of movement away from Earth. It sounds like the main way people get to escape is through being fabulously wealthy or work visas. The government (with a little help from megacorporations) decides the price of travel and who gets which work contracts, so in that way Earth is the solar system's staffing agency. The people already living out on the Belt can always be replenished by Earthers who're willing to work somewhat cheaper. Companies living out on the Belt probably have to choose between accepting inexperienced cheap Earth laborers or cutting costs by any means necessary to afford vetted OPA workers who're already there which results in dangerous working conditions. That's exactly how it works. Leaving Earth is expensive. The books mention how multiple families will band together to buy lovely ice haulers and mining ships just for a chance at a new life (remember the guy that flung the mined rock at the martian ships from season 1?)
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 20:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:43 |
|
|
Paradoxish posted:I mean, even this isn't strictly true. If you've got sufficiently cheap energy then at some point you can start substituting that for other types of resources, even without magical replicator technology. Synthetic alternatives that might have been too hilariously inefficient and expensive before are suddenly reasonable, new methods of extraction open up so that now you can get at resources that were previously uneconomic, etc. It's kind of a problem with sci-fi settings like this in general - the fact that they're using something more efficient than regular old fusion means they're pretty much at post-scarcity already. Almost all problems of scarcity are really about energy generation and transport. Even carrying capacity problems tend to be about fresh water and biosphere food production limits, both of which can be trivially solved if you just throw more power at the problem. Eventually human activity might involve so much energy that it heats the planet significantly and directly (not via the greenhouse effect or land use changes). Nearly all energy eventually becomes thermal, and all heat must be radiated to space (no conduction or convection with a vacuum). That puts a hard limit on humanity’s terrestrial energy budget.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 20:50
|
|
|
Surprised no one mentioned the most disgusting thing in the entire series happening in the last episode. loving Amos drinking canned chicken juice. God drat.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:13
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:Eventually human activity might involve so much energy that it heats the planet significantly and directly (not via the greenhouse effect or land use changes). Well we also have an atmosphere that boils off constantly so we lose heat via what is basically evaporation
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:15
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:Eventually human activity might involve so much energy that it heats the planet significantly and directly (not via the greenhouse effect or land use changes). To be fair, a constant 2.3% energy growth rate for the next thousand years would require a pretty ridiculous amount of population growth. I suspect you'd physically run out of space to put people before our energy usage turned the Earth into a new Sun.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:27
|
|
|
ten_twentyfour posted:Well we also have an atmosphere that boils off constantly so we lose heat via what is basically evaporation what? no
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:06
|
|
|
Pellisworth posted:what? no We do, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape Every once in while, a molecule of gas happens to get going 11 km⁄s and doesn’t run into anything on its way upward. Earth presently loses about 3 kg of matter per second via this mechanism. The thermal effects are minimal, but they do technically exist. e: To put this into perspective, the raw kinetic energy of 3 kg of matter moving at 11.2 km⁄s is 200 MJ. Per second makes that 200 MW. Earth would cool by more if we covered Vatican City in mirrors. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
I'd always boil the air and oceans off the earth when playing sim earth, worked well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:15
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:We do, though. yeah but I was trying to wrap my head around "boiling off" and "evaporation" in that context that wikipedia article says the major loss is actually from the atmosphere to the planet, not into space, which is interesting and new to me
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:17
|
|
|
Justin Credible posted:Surprised no one mentioned the most disgusting thing in the entire series happening in the last episode. loving Amos drinking canned chicken juice. God drat. Everything on this show involving Amos and food is a goddamn home run.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
Minor Churn spoiler about leaving Earth It seems like leaving is restricted. Amos has to go through a whole big thing to get off the planet, it's not as simple as just getting a ticket. Though even if you can just buy a ticket you'd need money, which most people don't have.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 03:13
|
|
|
I think Earth has by far the most oppression points and no one has the right to criticize them. The belt needs to stop punching down.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:14
|
|
|
Gonna be hard for them, being outside the gravity well and all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 08:35
|
|
|
I would say the average Earther has it the roughest, but the Earther upper class also probably has it the best (still have live in a biodome with all the amenities). I guess the thing that bugs me the most about the leadership of the UN is that they're cracking jokes and edging towards war with Mars at the same their leadership has been a complete disaster. The Belt is in near-open rebellion and the quality of life on Earth itself seems pretty miserable. The MCR seem to be dicks, but also not nearly as arrogant and self-destructive. I guess Avasarala will eventually get what she wants, but it seems the biggest problem with the system itself is that the leadership of the UN is crap. Also, so far, the UN is pretty poo poo and seems like significantly worse than the MCRN at this point. That said, certain OPA factions are probably the worse of them all: openly genocidal with no real other goal than mass murder. (Also, this season really justified Miller's disgust with the OPA.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 11:19
|
|
|
Apart from maybe the gung ho marines (maybe on both sides) and isolated factions, I'm pretty sure neither Earth nor Mars really want a war because they know it's a M.A.D situation if it escalates fully.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 11:26
|
|
|
The idea that after eros anyone thinks protomolecule is a great thing is hilarious to me. It is like you somehow manage to contain the menace in the movie The Thing and your next thought is "how loving great, lets weaponize this hurrrrrr". Also every faction in the expanse is pretty awful, just some seem to be run less idiotically run than others. Mars just wants to terraform their stupid rock so badly that they tend to act the most rationally. I also don't buy earth reaching 30 billion, but that is the narrative choice the show wanted to make I guess.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 11:38
|
|
|
Longbaugh01 posted:Apart from maybe the gung ho marines (maybe on both sides) and isolated factions, I'm pretty sure neither Earth nor Mars really want a war because they know it's a M.A.D situation if it escalates fully. Eh, the leadership of the UN seems to be far less interested in peace than the MCR and seem to be taking the talks far less seriously. They also blew up Phobos, which also escalated the situation. Now it sounds like they think they could "win the war" and want to press their advantage. At the same time essentially the VP of the UN is implicated in assisting in mass murder (which isn't a first time thing for the UN, ask Fred Johnson). Granted, we see far less of what is happening from the MCR side but the UN seems more aggressive, arrogant and reckless. The MCR are dogmatic jerks and everything, but they have a point that the UN is a bunch of dangerous nutballs (and Avasarala is the best of the lot). Also, I guess you could argue about the science of Terra-forming Mars (according to the show at least it is feasible), but it seems worthwhile to at least try to support another functional ecosystem in the system especially since no one knows what will happen to Earth in the long-term. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 11:43
|
|
|
I thought the first step in terraforming mars is run a bunch of Oort objects (very large space icebergs/spaceberg?) into it. What would be the next step?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 12:12
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:That's not very persuasive. Us hoi polloi are immensely profitable to the rich. Capitalism is a game of upward capital accumulation. All our buying and selling of goods and services profits them. Anyone who likes money has incentive to desire a booming middle-class. poo poo dude, we know this, and we can't even loving convince them to raise the minimum wage to $15, even if it will stimulate the economy by driving even more demand the current world generates more than enough food to feed everybody. medical systems can be scaled upwards to take care of everybody. you can get enough network coverage and give people socialization and a meaningful life. but we don't have the political will or incentives to do so, even if it is in the rational self interest of the capitalist world order
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 13:05
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Eh, the leadership of the UN seems to be far less interested in peace than the MCR and seem to be taking the talks far less seriously. They also blew up Phobos, which also escalated the situation. Now it sounds like they think they could "win the war" and want to press their advantage. At the same time essentially the VP of the UN is implicated in assisting in mass murder (which isn't a first time thing for the UN, ask Fred Johnson). The US and USSR still involved themselves in proxy wars and other provocations even though it was a M.A.D situation, but when push came to shove full scale war was averted. unlawfulsoup posted:The idea that after eros anyone thinks protomolecule is a great thing is hilarious to me. It is like you somehow manage to contain the menace in the movie The Thing and your next thought is "how loving great, lets weaponize this hurrrrrr". Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't stop anyone from developing and building more nuclear weapons. Collateral posted:I thought the first step in terraforming mars is run a bunch of Oort objects (very large space icebergs/spaceberg?) into it. What would be the next step? That's really the only step as far as I know (without getting into soil and biologicals). They're basically mining ice from the Belt, shipping it to Mars, and then using facilities all over the planet to convert it and pump it into Mars' atmosphere to slowly build up the kind of atmosphere they want/need. I might be simplifying it, but that's essentially it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 13:07
|
|
|
also i watched these last 3 eps back to back, and in general, i really like the direction the show has gone over the book. characters act more real, they have better motivations for their actions. holden has a proper arc, his morality has been steadily slipping from eros station onwards, the audience is second guessing him more and more. that other dude took prax's role as the irrational dad from prax. prax isn't just a quest giver that the roci crew plucked out of the wailing masses, but an actual lead in an investigation into protogen. holden and co don't just walk in and convince people to do things with hidden speech checks, they have to work for it, and if that means the roci crew sometimes work against one another, that's all the better there's a sequence near the end of caliban's war where holden does a one-man army thing, and i always hated that part in the book because it was completely unconvincing and just screamed that the DM split him from the rest of the roci, and he basically rolls a speech check with a random npc in the sequence to get him to aid holden out of almost nowhere. and it's completely not something that holden (or any dude) would behave
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 13:42
|
|
|
I want to start telling people that random books are based on RPG campaigns and watch them interpret everything according to how the game must have gone.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 13:48
|
|
|
Toast Museum posted:I want to start telling people that random books are based on RPG campaigns and watch them interpret everything according to how the game must have gone. The star wars prequel webcomic of the Phantom Menace that interprets it as a RPG campaign gone wrong remains the pinnacle of human creative endeavor.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 13:52
|
|
|
Toast Museum posted:I want to start telling people that random books are based on RPG campaigns and watch them interpret everything according to how the game must have gone. This. It seems as soon as people in this thread find or found out it was an RPG at one point then EVERYTHING from the show seems like an RPG! Phobophilia posted:there's a sequence near the end of caliban's war where holden does a one-man army thing, and i always hated that part in the book because it was completely unconvincing and just screamed that the DM split him from the rest of the roci, and he basically rolls a speech check with a random npc in the sequence to get him to aid holden out of almost nowhere. and it's completely not something that holden (or any dude) would behave Um. This should probably be spoilered. (Book spoilers. We're not there in the show yet.) Longbaugh01 fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:09
|
|
|
a few more notes i like the direction we're going with errinwright. anything that gives more motivation and internal depth to characters on screen is good. we really do seem to be pushing the angle of "maybe mars is working with mao", we don't really know, but the fact that mars is talking about reparations and such with earth is not consistent with an idea that mars has a new super powerful bioweapon second, im not a plant biologist, or an ecologist. do people really talk about cascades like that? or was it invented wholesale by the writers/scripters?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:11
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:a few more notes When we have a closed artificial system like Gannymede, with associated experts and jargon, then I will let you know. It does sound technically probable, but I am no agritech.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:34
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:a few more notes Who knows whether biologists/ecologists really talk that way, but all of that dialogue for Prax is from the books. In general, the books go into Prax as a character much, much more, and in the books I felt like a bunch of that dialog was him trying to make sense of a crazy, upside-down world in the only way he knows how: as a scientist.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:35
|
|
|
Collateral posted:When we have a closed artificial system like Gannymede, with associated experts and jargon, then I will let you know. It does sound technically probable, but I am no agritech. There's been plenty of experimentation with closed artificial systems (and still is) since at least the 60's or 70's.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:39
|
|
|
There was one biodome experiment where the tree's ended up collapsing on themselves from their own weight, because there was no wind in the system to strengthen the tree's.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:41
|
|
|
unlawfulsoup posted:The idea that after eros anyone thinks protomolecule is a great thing is hilarious to me. It is like you somehow manage to contain the menace in the movie The Thing and your next thought is "how loving great, lets weaponize this hurrrrrr". To be fair, this is pretty much the plot of all the Alien films.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:50
|
|
|
Collateral posted:I thought the first step in terraforming mars is run a bunch of Oort objects (very large space icebergs/spaceberg?) into it. What would be the next step? The first step would probably be melting the ice caps. That'd start thickening the atmosphere and get some more water in the system. You can also start processing soil into atmospheric gases. Bringing ice would be useful but that's a bigger task than starting to increase the atmosphere and start up global warming, we know how to do that already.  It's also still an unknown how much ice/liquid water there is under the surface, other than "a lot" for the ice and "apparently some??" for the liquid. It's possible Mars has plenty of water on it already it's just all underground. One of the things that isn't immediately obvious is Mars is very poor in nitrogen. In KSR's Mars trilogy they start shipping it from Titan, it has plenty.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:52
|
|
|
I'm trying to think of a sci fi story where there was a huge dangerous thing and there wasn't some government or corporate faction that tried to control or weaponize it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:53
|
|
|
The TV series is better than the books
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 16:36
|
|
|
unlawfulsoup posted:The idea that after eros anyone thinks protomolecule is a great thing is hilarious to me. It is like you somehow manage to contain the menace in the movie The Thing and your next thought is "how loving great, lets weaponize this hurrrrrr". Most power players don't get the whole picture like we, or even Holden and his crew, got. Also, I doubt Mao would be telling whoever is supporting him in the MCR everything he knows. Hence, if you have seen a technology that's capable to break known Physics, wouldn't you want to make use of it?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 17:58
|
|
|
Avasarala is still being a bit two faced about the whole thing though. The evidence she was handed clearly exonerates Mars from anything to do with the proto molecule and puts the blame squarely on Mao and his UN cronies, but she tries to use it as a lever to open up Bobbie.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:23
|
|
|
No it doesn't. What makes you think Protogen hasn't infiltrated / corrupted the Martian government the same way they did Earth? Why are the Martians covering up the seventh man? The seventh man initially attacked the Earth side, did it escape from an Earth lab or was it released from a Protogen facility? Why did the fleets in orbit start shooting? depsite what the Martians said, the space battle happened before the ground action. Protogen's main objective in season one was Eros, and they were willing to start a ear between Mars and Earth to allow Protogen a free hand. Protogen dosen't gently caress around when it comes to cover ups. The Martian delegation is actively involved in a massive cover up.
|
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:30
|
|
|
Longbaugh01 posted:Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't stop anyone from developing and building more nuclear weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki went precisely as planned, though. Enola Gay didn’t become sentient and make a beeline for D.C. at mach 5 till a Pinkerton agent convinced it to bomb Molokai instead.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:53
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:We do, though. How does that 3 kg/s gas loss compare to the rate at which we accumulate matter via meteoroids? And further, since almost all of them burn up in the atmosphere, and they do contain Oxygen in the form of soon-to-be-disassociated water ice and probably Nitrogen in a similar manner, what is the net effect on our atmospheric mass?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 18:56
|
|
|
Also America was fairly constrained in how it used its nuclear threat even when there wasn't a MAD situation and they had a monopoly on them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 19:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 16:43 |
|
|
unlawfulsoup posted:The idea that after eros anyone thinks protomolecule is a great thing is hilarious to me. It is like you somehow manage to contain the menace in the movie The Thing and your next thought is "how loving great, lets weaponize this hurrrrrr". It's remotely possible they learned the story of Marie Curie at some point and didn't take away the lesson that you should just avoid researching anything that can be dangerous or assume it can't be adapted for useful or beneficent purposes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 19:19
|
|
