|
I guess the question would be "why" It's going to be ridiculously more expensive to build a floating venus city, which would need to be a totally sealed environment anyways not some starwars cloud city, when you could build a tube in orbit for cheaper and have way less poo poo to deal with? Also you don't want to build colonies anywhere near natural gravity because you've just made any exports or transport a billion times more expensive. That's the problem with planets in scify. There's no reason to ever colonize a planet once we've left our own. Sure for science, or tourism, but for mass habitation its going to be space tubes. You settle a planet with low enough gravity that trade is still economical and you end up with gross sickly belter type people, you settle a planet with human-friendly gravity and you're now essentially cut off from trade. Also mining and most economic activities are just harder on a planet. All the poo poo you want to mine tends to not be near the surface of a planet, mining asteroids is so much easier. Planets other than earth are useless, everything you need is in space, easier to get at in space, and cheaper/easier to build habitats actually suited to humans in space.
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Xealot posted:On this point, do the Expanse books go into Venus at all?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:23
|
|
|
I've always thought sky cities were neat but not really very hard sci fi-ey. How do you deal with turbulence and poo poo? Atmosphere doesn't really give you a stable platform to build anything on, and what happens when a random hurricane below means a low pressure burp that sinks your whole assembly down a mile without much warning? I don't think a lot of engineers would like the idea of building something expensive on top of a system with as many chaotic variables as even the most sedate atmo. Like, if you have anti-grav tech to work with then it's way more reasonable but they explicitly don't have there here. To the Venus question specifically, (this is very vague) it comes up, yes.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:24
|
|
|
Xealot posted:On this point, do the Expanse books go into Venus at all? Floating Venus cities in the upper atmosphere are one of my favorite hypothetical off-Earth colony ideas. And the gravity there would be 0.9g or so. Venus is sort of a plot point in the books; it's hard to say any more than that without spoiling things.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:26
|
|
|
I don't even think what people are saying is wrong, but everyone seems to post with an awful lot of authority on what is practical for living in space. From a planet which can collectively barely be bothered to keep up a single orbital lab. Perhaps the physics is there to do all this today but spacer psychology, economics and culture sure aren't.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:41
|
|
|
Xealot posted:On this point, do the Expanse books go into Venus at all? Floating Venus cities in the upper atmosphere are one of my favorite hypothetical off-Earth colony ideas. And the gravity there would be 0.9g or so. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:50
|
|
|
Non-spoiler Venus book thing: at the start of the series, all plans for doing anything with Venus have fallen through thanks to a decades-long quagmire of lawsuits over access rights.
Toast Museum fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jan 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 20:53
|
|
|
Venus is featured in the books, but (book spoiler) as a colony for the protomolecule.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 21:02
|
|
|
Why would you post that in this thread when the question has been answered? It's just leaving a land mine for a show watcher to mouse over.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 21:13
|
|
|
Oh boy, book readers getting upset for show watchers because someone gave an actual response and not just "Yes."
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 21:19
|
|
|
To be fair it was a yes or no question.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 21:42
|
|
|
For some non-spoiler book setting info, the mega elites of the Expanse who go up the well spend their time in palatial domed resorts on moons in the Jovian and Saturnian systems if they're on vacation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:06
|
|
|
That seems like a super long way to go for a vacation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:12
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:That seems like a super long way to go for a vacation. Not with an Epstein drive.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:13
|
|
|
flosofl posted:Not with an Epstein drive. What are the in-universe travel times any way? Obviously it can vary hugely based on the time of "year" but I take it earth to jupiter isn't like a year+ long trip ?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:15
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:That seems like a super long way to go for a vacation. Ugh, I know, the first year we went with a lovely travel agent, booked us on a flight with a single Epstein drive. It took hours to get to Saturn, a complete nightmare. Obviously this time we booked a Triple.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:16
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:What are the in-universe travel times any way? Obviously it can vary hugely based on the time of "year" but I take it earth to jupiter isn't like a year+ long trip ? So the neat thing about the Epstein drive is you can pretty much fly a straight vector to your destination since the drive is hyper-efficient in the solar system. It really is the big "magic" of the books and show, but who cares because without the drive the pace of events stretches to weeks and months and years. Obviously you need to dodge any large objects, but if Jupiter is mostly on the same side of the sun as the Earth, you're looking at about 2.65au of acceleration followed by 2.65 au of deceleration. At 1g that's just under a week. If Jupiter's on the other side of the solar system, then just double your input distances and you get just under 10 days. The reason the total time doesn't double is because acceleration works on velocity exponentially. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jan 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
How would belters or Martians do that then? Could they even survive a week of 1G?
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:36
|
|
|
Cojawfee posted:How would belters or Martians do that then? Could they even survive a week of 1G? They can in emergencies. Remember the crash couches for acceleration, what with the injection of whatever chemical cocktail, the bracing of the body, and the bite guards? But the real answer is no one does, because for anyone but Earthers it would be uncomfortable to Martians and possibly fatal to true Belters over a sustained period. But acceleration still stacks up. That same trip I did before but at 0.5g this time is still only 10 days at the shortest distance and 14 days at the longest. E: They can't for a whole week, misread. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:42
|
|
|
Seems like Earthers have all the advantages. They can get across the system the fastest. If they get pursued by Martians, they can just out accelerate them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:47
|
|
|
I didn't know their drives were quite that star-trekky magic-tech. But I guess that's nothing compared to what are next!
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:48
|
|
|
They still can't out-accelerate a rail gun. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:50
|
|
|
If you guys want to read the short story prequel outlining the creation of the Epstein drive, it's free to read on the Syfy website: http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 22:57
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I didn't know their drives were quite that star-trekky magic-tech. But I guess that's nothing compared to what are next! They're not Star Trek style reactionless drives or anything, they're just orders of magnitude more efficient than anything we have today. They are limited in ways much more analogous to modern spacecraft than to high Scifi ships seen in settings like Star Trek. The biggest barrier to higher performance spacecraft in the setting are the Gs that the human crew can survive, and how much reaction mass and reactor fuel you need to carry for long trips.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:00
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:I guess the question would be "why" In fairness, there are aspects to a planetary colony that are extremely difficult to reproduce in a vacuum. At a high enough altitude, the ambient pressure on Venus would be ~1 bar, so a hull breach in a colony wouldn't result in explosive decompression. The temperature would likewise be within human tolerance, so that might make the interior climate easier to maintain. It's also speculated that despite the lack of a magnetosphere, just being within an atmosphere like Venus' might help with radiation shielding (vs. being in naked space.) And it'd be possible to source breathable oxygen or other resources from CO2 that already exists in the atmosphere, which wouldn't be the case in space. Your points all make sense, though. Abstractly, it's easier to add to things than it is to take away, and a hell planet of sulfuric acid clouds is a ridiculous challenge.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:02
|
|
|
ATP_Power posted:They're not Star Trek style reactionless drives or anything, they're just orders of magnitude more efficient than anything we have today. They are limited in ways much more analogous to modern spacecraft than to high Scifi ships seen in settings like Star Trek. The biggest barrier to higher performance spacecraft in the setting are the Gs that the human crew can survive, and how much reaction mass and reactor fuel you need to carry for long trips. Yeah, if you handwave away the actual how of the drives, the effects of using them are all modeled pretty realistically in the universe. Going anywhere consists of accelerating for the first half and then flipping around and accelerating in reverse for the second half, and you have to deal with the acceleration forces and the time that the travel takes. There's no magic anti-gravity drive or whatever to keep people standing on the "floor"; it's all based on thrust gravity, which means spacecraft are constructed more like flying skyscrapers. I don't remember if it came up in show, but the books also make a point of emphasizing how lightspeed communication can have lag anywhere from seconds to hours, so you can't maintain a real-time conversation with somebody without weird stuff like watching them laugh at a joke you told 10 seconds ago.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Why don't the space people just spin their poo poo a bit faster? For wholly artificial stations, there isn’t much of an excuse, but Ceres would come apart under the strain, and ships would waste fuel.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:26
|
|
|
Yeah earth to moon is enough to make real-time talking annoying, anything past that and you're into email/video message territory.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:29
|
|
|
404notfound posted:I don't remember if it came up in show, but the books also make a point of emphasizing how lightspeed communication can have lag anywhere from seconds to hours, so you can't maintain a real-time conversation with somebody without weird stuff like watching them laugh at a joke you told 10 seconds ago. That's actually interesting, and I never really noticed in the show, but there's never really any realtime ship to ship communication at distances more than a light second or so. Everything else is like email or SMS communication, or in the case of Holden doing the equivalent of CC: Everyone of SUBJ: My_Angry_Vlog.mpg
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:31
|
|
|
Cojawfee posted:How would belters or Martians do that then? Could they even survive a week of 1G? Martian military can. I’d imagine that civilians who work out religiously can as well.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:33
|
|
|
In the show people leave each other a lot of video voicemails but they never actually point out that it's because long-range communication is incredibly annoying. I noticed this on a rewatch -- stuff like Miller getting info from his friend on Eros, Julie's angry dear-dad letters, and even Johnson giving the Roci people his 'I'll protect you' speech are all canned messages with no back-and-forth.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:42
|
|
|
The speed of light is a harsh mistress.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:54
|
|
|
At one point in the books a character has a message exchange on something like a one-minute delay, and is kind of pissed off at how it's not long enough to justify firing off a long message, but too long for anything like a conversation to work.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:55
|
|
|
Cojawfee posted:Seems like Earthers have all the advantages. They can get across the system the fastest. If they get pursued by Martians, they can just out accelerate them. They can't out-accelerate a torpedo that doesn't give a poo poo about like 20 G though
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2017 23:56
|
|
|
flosofl posted:So the neat thing about the Epstein drive is you can pretty much fly a straight vector to your destination since the drive is hyper-efficient in the solar system. It really is the big "magic" of the books and show, but who cares because without the drive the pace of events stretches to weeks and months and years. Well, flying in a straight line in space is a bit tricky. If Earth and Jupiter are in opposite orbits, then you have to slingshot around the sun to get there. Likewise, with direct transit, even with computers to do perfect calculations so you don't over/undershoot the moving planet you're going for, you'll still have to deal with gravity wells pulling you at both ends of the transit. I expect that a lot of these trips are actually long arcs designed to work around whatever gravity is present, so they don't have to waste as much fuel fighting it. Even then, aiming for something like a Jovian moon without overshooting or getting sucked into Jupiter's gravity sounds like a nightmare. I expect a lot of "direct" trips to Ganymede would resemble a nervous driver doing a ten-point turn to get into a tight parking spot. You'd need great orbital models and really experience pilots or it would be absolute hell (or bone crushing death) for the crew.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 00:25
|
|
|
Duckbag posted:Well, flying in a straight line in space is a bit tricky. If Earth and Jupiter are in opposite orbits, then you have to slingshot around the sun to get there. Likewise, with direct transit, even with computers to do perfect calculations so you don't over/undershoot the moving planet you're going for, you'll still have to deal with gravity wells pulling you at both ends of the transit. I expect that a lot of these trips are actually long arcs designed to work around whatever gravity is present, so they don't have to waste as much fuel fighting it. Even then, aiming for something like a Jovian moon without overshooting or getting sucked into Jupiter's gravity sounds like a nightmare. I expect a lot of "direct" trips to Ganymede would resemble a nervous driver doing a ten-point turn to get into a tight parking spot. You'd need great orbital models and really experience pilots or it would be absolute hell (or bone crushing death) for the crew. Well, there are three dimensions. I imagine for little more fuel (remember 99% efficient fusion drive) and couple more days on the trip, there's nothing to stop you from do a shallowish hyperbolic arc over or under the orbital plane of the solar system.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
flosofl posted:Well, there are three dimensions. I imagine for little more fuel (remember 99% efficient fusion drive) and couple more days on the trip, there's nothing to stop you from do a shallowish hyperbolic arc over or under the orbital plane of the solar system. That’s where all the terrible space monsters live, though. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 00:41
|
|
|
It really helps to play something like Kerbal Space Program to get a basic handle on how travel in space works, it's pretty much never straight lines no matter how good your engines are. If you're in space you're in orbit of something, usually many things, and orbits are all about arcs.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 00:45
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:It really helps to play something like Kerbal Space Program to get a basic handle on how travel in space works, it's pretty much never straight lines no matter how good your engines are. If you're in space you're in orbit of something, usually many things, and orbits are all about arcs. The engines in The Expanse are impossibly better than any KSP engine (and by extension any real engine). The Epstein Drive prototype takes a ship that’s (IIRC) about three quarters fuel and accelerates it to 5% the speed of light. If your ship is three‐quarters fuel in KSP (or in reality; same equation) and your engine has specific impulse of 400 s, you’ll reach a grand total of 0.00002% of the speed of light after exhausting your fuel. When your engine is several hundred thousands of times more efficient, you really can take straight lines. e: I’m wrong about the three-quarters fuel thing—it has to have a fuel percentage in the high nineties. I can’t be bothered to work out the exact calculus, and Solomon may not be the most reliable narrator anyway. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Jan 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 01:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 17:46 |
|
|
Or at least curves that are straight enough that the curvature is irrelevant to planning.
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2017 01:45
|
|