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INTJ Mastermind posted:So we have five super secret next-generation stealth light-attack ships, what's the best way to use our STEALTH ships? Oh I know, let's burn directly at the enemy battleship in a big rear end group to make sure they see us coming from hours away, so we can get rolled by the enemy's superior firepower and armor. Stealth ships aren’t magic. You can’t hide a rocket engine, so unless your target’s path enables you to ambush them, you have no choice. Deceiving the Donnager about the size and firepower of their force was the best they could do.
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Sep 8, 2016 00:27
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Hughlander posted:The space ship that is radiating heat to keep the people inside from roasting to death is still warmer than the background of space. Sorry, no stealth. Yes, but you can at least try to store it internally for a time, then radiate it in a direction no one is looking when the store has reached capacity.
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Sep 8, 2016 04:30
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Grand Fromage posted:The setting seems to presume AI is impossible, there's no evidence of it. There's better versions of the stuff we have today but nothing revolutionary. There’s no evidence of human‐created AI.
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Sep 8, 2016 07:29
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Phobophilia posted:But of course, you can't really tell a story when all the players have near perfect information, which is a concession to the fact that it is a piece of fiction. I would suggest hand‐waving it with “Epstein drives have low [read: plot‐convenient] signatures”. They can be tracked, but only with relatively sensitive receivers at relatively short ranges. The first paragraph of the first chapter of Leviathan Wakes makes that (and all stealth) kind of difficult, though: “Then Solomon Epstein had built his little modified fusion drive, popped it on the back of his three‐man yacht, and turned it on. With a good scope, you could still see his ship going at a marginal percentage of light speed, heading out into the big empty. The best, longest funeral in the history of mankind.” You could argue that “a good scope” has a very limited field of view, but it’s still a tiny, unpowered ship 7.5 ly out (it’s been travelling at 0.05 c for 150 years). Those are some drat good scopes. e: Envelope arithmetic says if Epstein’s ship was the size of the Graf Zeppelin, illuminated by starlight, and you had a detector the size of the Moon, you could expect one visible light photon to strike your detector every few months. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Sep 8, 2016 |
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Sep 8, 2016 08:24
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When the Donnager’s CIWs start firing, it’s notably the first time CIWS has been used in space combat, by anyone. The major powers had never gone to war.
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Sep 9, 2016 02:26
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There aren’t provisions of maritime law that deal with taking control of drifting ships that are a danger to other vessels?
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Sep 9, 2016 16:47
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Phi230 posted:And yeah, from a Watsonian perspective, there is an assumption the law has changed as of The Expanse I mean you’ll notice Earth has a single planetary government in the form of the United Nations. That’s quite the political shake‐up.
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Sep 10, 2016 01:42
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:So does this mean that all the maritime law stuff Matt Damon was talking about in The Martian is bullshit? That's a shame. They’re fictional universes, so not really.
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Sep 10, 2016 13:50
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I imagine they’ll use zero‐g effects for the bitchin’ space battle in Cibola Burn, but not for the boring bits.
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Sep 15, 2016 13:38
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Not that investigator. The are book spoilers in this thread.
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Sep 15, 2016 20:01
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https://twitter.com/jamessacorey/status/650382119449964544
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Dec 21, 2016 17:11
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Amazon datacentre de‐synchronisation?
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Dec 22, 2016 05:31
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There is a preposterous amount of light in the ’stans.
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Dec 22, 2016 06:46
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Baronjutter posted:Earth has what like 20 billion in the expanse, something ridiculous. Gotta put those cities somewhere. Thirty.
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Dec 22, 2016 07:47
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Grand Fromage posted:Mars and the Belt were colonized with pre-Epstein ships. Mars was colonised, but not the belt. Last page of “Drive”: “If he had control, he could reach the asteroid belt. He could go to the Jovian system and be the first person to walk on Europa and Ganymede. He isn’t going to, though. That’s going to be someone else. But when they get there, they will be carried by his drive. “And the war! If distance is measured in time, Mars just got very, very close to Earth while Earth is still very distant from Mars. That kind of asymmetry changes everything. He wonders how they’ll negotiate that. What they’ll do. All the lithium and molybdenum and tungsten anyone could want is within reach of mining companies now. They can go to the asteroid belt and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. The thing that that kept Earth and Mars from ever reaching a lasting peace isn’t going to matter anymore.” Platystemon fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 10:37
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Exponential growth is really powerful. If everyone does their duty for the Supporting that kind of population growth in an environment hostile to life is nuts, but it’s not outright impossible.
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Dec 22, 2016 10:54
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Counterpoint: no human has been farther than low Earth orbit in forty‐four years. The youngest person to exceed that altitude is now eighty years old.
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Dec 22, 2016 12:45
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Bates posted:If a space town declares independence you just build another one on another asteroid - and there's millions of them. There are millions of asteroids, but most are tiny. Ceres alone constitutes 31% of the Belt's mass. There's nothing else like it. Vesta is next at 8.6%. If you fail to get that, Pallas is a decent consolation at 6.7%, but after that there's Hygiea at 2.9% and five rocks between 2% and 0.95%. As a rough comparison to Earth's land area, Ceres is Eurasia. Vesta is Antarctica. Pallas is Canada. Hygiea is India. There are fourteen more rocks proportionally larger than Texas. And then you're out of Texases.
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Dec 30, 2016 12:37
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Three and four are bad. One, two, and five are cool & good.
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Dec 31, 2016 16:16
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Baloogan posted:In my mind the crash couches were spheres embedded in the walls, that as soon as you are in them the sphere rotate independently, and also maintain pressure inside the sphere I imagine beanbags, like this:  I believe that’s actually the UN Navy dress uniform.  Toast Museum posted:I'd always assumed the ladders and handholds were metal, but I don't remember them ever explicitly saying it, and rope does seem like a better idea than having metal projections all over the place. Belter ship:  Inner planet ships have plastic walls/floors/ceilings with soft edges. This is the type, but with less obsolete crap built‐in: 
Platystemon fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 04:15
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Evernoob posted:Well, unless coming from an outside force, all significant thrust has to come from the main engines which are all located at the back of the ship and all point in the same direction. Battleships probably don't have omnidirectional crash couches, but ships like the Rocinante seem to behave more like fighter planes (because fighter planes are  ). I wouldn't be surprised if the Roci can thrust as hard backwards as forwards—just with much less efficiency (no impossibly efficient Epstein drive).The Rocinante can definitely thrust somewhat greater than 1 G at 90° to the floor, because it belly-lands on Ilus Platystemon fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 14:05
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AirborneNinja posted:Every ship in the Expanse has a single powerplant at the rear of the ship, so technically everything can decelerate as hard as they can accelerate, they just have to flip and burn like the Cant did. Roci will make velocity changes considerably faster since it has less mass to rotate and accelerate and a higher thrust to weight ratio, but shes still operating under the same principles as the big boats like Donnager and Canterbury. The hard limit on any maneuver being the endurance of the crew/structural durability of the spaceframe. Yes but then you’re pushing everyone into the floor again, so no need for omnidirectional crash couches. I’m suggesting that corvettes like the Tachi feature enough RCS to reduce closing speed at 1 g or more while keeping the nose pointed at the enemy. Probably not enough acceleration to kill the crew, though, which the Epstein drive is certainly capable of.
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Jan 3, 2017 13:03
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WAR CRIME SYNDICAT posted:Which then launched a missile in retaliation and you only saw the resulting explosion in the poor kid's visor Suicide by cop.
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Jan 3, 2017 19:41
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Fister Roboto posted:One of the weird things you'd have to deal with is the lack of friction. 1/6 of normal weight means 1/6 of normal friction with whatever you're standing on, so you'd slip really easily if you tried to walk normally. someone on Quora posted:Have you ever gone on a hike with a loaded pack? Ever carried a child on your shoulders? Remember how the weight shifted your balance and you had to take a moment to adapt?
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Jan 4, 2017 02:16
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Milky Moor posted:I think Bobbie comments on exactly this in Caliban's War, how Martian marines would get trounced by Earther marines if they ever had to fight in a standard gee. I think her concern is less“standard gee” and more “rifle behind every blade of grass”.
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Jan 4, 2017 02:47
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I, for one, appreciate conservative spoiler tagging because if you read enough minor details, you can start to infer the bigger picture. 
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Jan 4, 2017 04:47
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Fister Roboto posted:I'm really glad you spoilered the character's gender. That would have completely ruined things for people. You are welcome, friend.
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Jan 4, 2017 22:51
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Needs more belter cats.
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Jan 12, 2017 01:25
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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.
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Jan 12, 2017 23:26
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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.
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Jan 12, 2017 23:33
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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. 
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Jan 13, 2017 00:41
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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 |
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Jan 13, 2017 01:06
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I’m on Team Avasarala. #MEGA Minor book difference speculation: Bobbie is really channelling Martian animosity. I wonder if that’s just a trailer thing. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Jan 14, 2017 |
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Jan 14, 2017 05:05
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Baronjutter posted:Why doesn't earth have a fairly strict 2-child policy? Or why didn't they have one like 10 billion people ago? This is basic information about the setting, but it’s only explicit in the books, AFAIK, so I’m spoilering it: It does. Earthers have to apply for licenses to Platystemon fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jan 14, 2017 |
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Jan 14, 2017 09:25
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I think the reasons for Holden’s unusual parentage are subtly different in the show and the book, but I’d have to watch the relevant scenes again. The book is easier to text search. It comes up during his interrogation aboard the Donnager. Kassad posted:It's surprising that's not a more common arrangement than this one family (that we see), now that I think about it. The state isn’t happy about it and probably closed the loophole when Holden was a child.
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Jan 14, 2017 09:50
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Doctor Butts posted:Is 'Holden's angry vlog' just a reference to one of his transmissions to the solar system? It’s an ongoing thing with him.
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Jan 26, 2017 19:38
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Remember when that guy got crushed on the Cant and they talked about an expensive flesh & blood arm vs. a cheap cybernetic one? It’s cybernetics.
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Jan 28, 2017 17:26
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I don’t have good experience getting Amazon Instant videos the night of airing.
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Jan 31, 2017 01:18
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Jarl posted:3) Why do Holden go to Fred Johnson after the mars battleship is attacked? Fred contacts them out of the
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Feb 3, 2017 19:07
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