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ZombieLenin posted:Sure, okay. But again you are taking about people migrating because of economic conditions to a boom economy. These people, by in large, were migrating to developed cities in the United States where they new a large number of industrial jobs were available. These particular people were mostly migrating to as-yet thinly populated agricultural areas in the upper midwest, actually. Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, more than anywhere else. But yeah, it was after the truly "unexplored frontier" era and there was some infrastructure and stuff in place.
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Dec 10, 2016 14:13
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mossyfisk posted:I never understood how Belters could ever have an economy in this setting. Everything they do is based around cargo shipping, yet they suck at it. Why would you give your shipping contract to belters who have to burn at 0.5G or whatever, when you could get an Earther crew who can go at 1.2G? They just can't, you know, walk and live and stuff in 1G. Plus, for all the shipping they do, the belt is mainly useful for the easy to access raw materials. Microgravity mining. Honestly I don't know why they're becoming obsolete. You'll always want 0G industry and mining and stuff. All the other planets are down deep wells after all, it'd be silly to send raw materials up from those planets.
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Dec 10, 2016 19:53
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Eiba posted:Honestly I don't know why they're becoming obsolete. You'll always want 0G industry and mining and stuff. All the other planets are down deep wells after all, it'd be silly to send raw materials up from those planets. The Belter identity is rooted in living entirely in space. Why have and raise a child on Ganymede on even worse on Pallas or a ship on the float when you could have one on a planet with at least 1 G and a magnetosphere. The argument for devoting the kind of resources humanity did to the belt and similar projects pre-gates falls apart for a long time when there's thousands of new worlds to just land on. The mining operations that created the Belters as a people are going to become obsolete because the demands for the resources they provided are basically going to go away. Some of this changes with the nature of the universe post Nemesis Games, but in the long term deep space is going to end up being a place where settlements like Ceres, Eros, Pallas and the rest wont be as needed, and wont need to be crewed as permanently. The post-ring world would have deep space be most about transit - not settlement. and when the Belters become economically and politically marginal - they will die outside major intervention because the materials they need to survive will become too expensive for them to afford. The existence of the Epstein drive in this setting changes a lot of the economics of space, going up and down a gravity well isn't a costly thing in this setting compared to the real world, especially when you're discovering exoplanets that have been re-engineered into material depots out there.
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Dec 10, 2016 23:57
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That whole line of thinking is just dramatic irony though. It isn't just the belter way of life that has become obsolete - the entire economy, every aspect of life, and probably humanity itself has become obsolete by the protomolecule. The rebel martians ain't coming back human.
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Dec 11, 2016 03:13
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acumen posted:BA + Speculation: They sorta did explain the disappearing ships and Laconia. The gates can only handle a certain amount of mass when transporting to the slow zone and the rest get vaporized. The second alien race that killed the protomolecule creators seem to have some sort of influence in that dimension or whatever though. Laconia/Duarte are being set up as the next big bad and pretty clearly have the last protomolecule sample which they're using to engineer new tech. Maybe I'm misremembering the end of Nemesis Games but didn't the Martian Warship carrying the protomolecule get munched by the gate on the way to Laconia?
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Dec 11, 2016 07:59
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The mad scientist, Cortazar, tells Captain Sauveterre that the protomolecule sample arrived intact, in a message before something happens in a book that was released last year.
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Dec 11, 2016 14:49
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It feels like you should be able to protomolecule up the Belters so they can live wherever they want. So far they've been using it to make fancy composite materials, but things are going to go a lot further as the technology develops.
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Dec 11, 2016 16:25
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I hope Marco doesn’t come back. Murty was a better antagonist. But I expect he will return in some form. That’s generally how mysterious disappearances work in fiction. Also, what was with all the foreshadowing about the Protomolecule‐inspired Unobtanium composite? Red herring, or will there be something wrong with it, specifically? Platystemon fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 08:13
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Nemesis Games is stressing me out. I think I'm at the part where the poo poo is going to hit the fan (Naomi just got grabbed, Amos is having a nice time on earth, Holden just rescued the reporter, and Alex just got targeted by a mystery ship) and i find myself too nervous to read straight through and am posting here as a distraction.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:38
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Platystemon posted:I hope Marco doesn’t come back. Murty was a better antagonist. But I expect he will return in some form. That’s generally how mysterious disappearances work in fiction. Marco is such an absolute oval office I'd be happy with the entirety of Belter civilization and identity being destroyed just to spite him.
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Dec 12, 2016 20:46
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ATP_Power posted:The Belter identity is rooted in living entirely in space. Why have and raise a child on Ganymede on even worse on Pallas or a ship on the float when you could have one on a planet with at least 1 G and a magnetosphere. The argument for devoting the kind of resources humanity did to the belt and similar projects pre-gates falls apart for a long time when there's thousands of new worlds to just land on. The mining operations that created the Belters as a people are going to become obsolete because the demands for the resources they provided are basically going to go away. Some of this changes with the nature of the universe post Nemesis Games, but in the long term deep space is going to end up being a place where settlements like Ceres, Eros, Pallas and the rest wont be as needed, and wont need to be crewed as permanently. The post-ring world would have deep space be most about transit - not settlement. and when the Belters become economically and politically marginal - they will die outside major intervention because the materials they need to survive will become too expensive for them to afford. The existence of the Epstein drive in this setting changes a lot of the economics of space, going up and down a gravity well isn't a costly thing in this setting compared to the real world, especially when you're discovering exoplanets that have been re-engineered into material depots out there.
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Dec 12, 2016 22:41
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Ah, yeah that's bad. RIP earth.
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Dec 13, 2016 01:44
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I lol'ing so hard at this series being considered "hard sci-fi" by the OP. So very hard.
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Dec 13, 2016 01:53
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Mars4523 posted:Problem is that it'll always be easier to mine in a microgravity environment, especially with an already extant labor source and infrastructure, than to mine at the bottom of a gravity well and then expend the energy necessary to send those materials into orbit. There’s no need to move raw materials between worlds. For the foreseeable future, belters are needed for moving high technology and complex organics to primitive worlds as well as constructing spacefaring vessels.
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Dec 13, 2016 02:06
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Rime posted:I lol'ing so hard at this series being considered "hard sci-fi" by the OP. So very hard. And even hard sci fi is going to have some impossible things in it, just because if it didn't it wouldn't be sci fi.... It'd just be fi.
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Dec 13, 2016 02:18
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As I see it, there are two essentially magic technologies at the beginning: the Epstein drive and the “juice” that keeps acceleration from killing a person.
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Dec 13, 2016 02:29
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tooterfish posted:It'd just be fi. Non-fi 
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Dec 13, 2016 08:36
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If history is anything to go by people will be travelling and trading as soon or sooner than it's remotely practical. Even with a frontier to settle people don't wall themselves off and do nothing but internal infrastructure until they're caught up to developed nations.
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Dec 13, 2016 09:20
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I’m surprised Amos’ gangster buddies weren’t mentioned. I wonder what they’re up to.
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Dec 13, 2016 16:11
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Strategic Tea posted:If history is anything to go by people will be travelling and trading as soon or sooner than it's remotely practical. Even with a frontier to settle people don't wall themselves off and do nothing but internal infrastructure until they're caught up to developed nations. The exception being, religions, cults and political extremes. There is also the
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Dec 13, 2016 17:30
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Babylon’s Ashes felt more like a part 2 than a stand alone book. Also I'm pretty sure the gate-overload gimmick is the same magicks by which socks go missing from overloaded dryers.
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Dec 14, 2016 05:18
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The overload gimmick is dumb. For one thing, why are the gates so gorram big if one overclocked ice freighter represents enough mass/energy to redline them? Did the Forerunners pilot ships made of styrofoam and propelled by wet farts?
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Dec 14, 2016 05:45
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Platystemon posted:The overload gimmick is dumb. For one thing, why are the gates so gorram big if one overclocked ice freighter represents enough mass/energy to redline them? Given the poo poo Eros was able to do when it was infected and the insane durability of protomolecule manufactured materials and stuff I wouldn't be surprised at all if their ships were just a magnetically contained ball of gas suspended around an engine.
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Dec 14, 2016 10:48
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There is also the possibility that the 'overload' is completely intentional. We have no idea how the aliens that created the protomolecule created anything, much less why, so having a feature where certain objects are rerouted god knows where for reasons only known to them may not be a flaw at all. (Homer throws an orange into a vortex and it disappears.) Homer: Hey, pretty slick! (A crumpled wad of paper flies back out of the vortex and Lisa reads it.) Lisa: Quit throwing your garbage into our dimension. Blackchamber fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Dec 14, 2016 |
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Dec 14, 2016 11:48
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I considered the possibility that it was a remnant of the security system that enforced a speed limit in the slow zone. Who knows if the speed limit would have applied to the alien propulsion method Eros used? If you have magical bullshit drives and your enemy doesn’t, it would make sense for your ring gates to reject HIGH ENERGY objects. But if that’s the case, why didn’t The Investigator disable it, and why is the overloading object itself is not re‐routed to the ~alien dimension~? I can’t imagine why you’d want the fate of an incoming ship to depend on how much energy other ships transiting other gates were using.
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Dec 14, 2016 12:14
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Again, not enough information to determine whats going on. Perhaps an overloading ship is allowed to pass through so if it blows up it does so outside the slow zone and moves the incoming ships to a safe location. Maybe slow zone doesn't see it as an overload at all and as a different profile. Maybe its not a safety feature at all.
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Dec 14, 2016 12:34
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It might be a remnant of the counter measures they used against whatever eat them. The gates would have been used almost exclusively for resource transfer by their builders so something is wrong with them.
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Dec 14, 2016 16:45
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a kitten posted:Ah, yeah that's bad. RIP earth. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Though I think all the hullaboo about "Earth's done" isn't all it's cut out to be; according to estimates by the end of BA, half of the population was dead and half of the ones that were left were dying; something like ten percent weren't in strained conditions, which still leaves like 3 billion people doing fine and maybe 3 billion more on the edge but not in immediate danger. That's still the biggest catastrophe/genocide in human history, but by the time it levels out Earth will still be the most populated place in humanity, and likely will be for the foreseeable future thanks to the fact that the gate worlds have incompatible biology. Earth won't ever be as central as it was before, but it's not in danger of ever becoming a backwater or cleared out for good the way Mars and the Belt are. Avasarala's hamming it up for the camera, as usual. Speaking of end-of-BA-spoilers, gently caress Marco with a rusty railgun; getting eaten by gatespace Cthulhu is too good a fate for the worst war criminal in human history. Quorum fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 00:58
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I think that Earth is well poised for a pretty massive comeback. If it happened to us now, we'd be hosed because we still rely on traditional agriculture, but future Earth already has the technology to 1. Mass produce food in artificial conditions and 2. Power said production through a fusion reaction process. Nations that survive major devastation can rebuild quite efficiently of the source of the underlying the devastation is removed. The majority of infrastructure goes to supporting population and standard of living. When the population drops to a sustainable level, whatever that is, any new development (which will almost assuredly be more efficient than whatever it replaces) is bonus capacity. Pre-bombardment Earth was sufficiently overpopulated that the vast majority of people on the planet were idle. Bureaucratic infighting and the massive numbers of mouths to feed was what kept Earth from (even more) completely dominating the solar system. Halved, even quartered, the planet has more than enough of a population to rebuild and reorganize around a common goal. Rebuilding Eden is an organizing concept in the same vein as Building Eden was for the Martians and anyone who doesn't get on board with the plan can be boarded of to some random rear end New Australia beyond the gates. They're in no worse position than any of the new worlds. However damaged the biosphere is it is at least base compatible with flora and fauna. I imagine it's easier to adapt sea algea to cope with altered native conditions than it is to an alien biosphere. Between areas that were leveled and areas that were previously undesirable because of climate change there will be plenty of land that can be redeveloped faster than building an equivalent on Mars, in the belt, or on a fledgling colony world. Edit: I guess that my optimism presupposes a unified government which makes sense based on what we've seen. I don't recall a POV of a single character that considered a deeper nationality than Earth. Anna was sort-of Russian, but it didn't stop her from living in Africa. If that's not true it complicates the situation but the U. N. as presented seems to be a collection of states more akin to the modern U.S. Chef Boyardeez Nuts fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 01:53
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Seriously, Marco is at least four hundred Hitlers, and that’s if we attribute all deaths in the European theatre to Hitler (combat, Holocaust, famine, &c.).
Platystemon fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 01:56
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Was Dawes on the genocide train from the jump? The character really grew on me based on Jared Harris' work on the T. V. show, so I hope he doesn't get lynched. Filip
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Dec 15, 2016 02:18
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:Was Dawes on the genocide train from the jump? The character really grew on me based on Jared Harris' work on the T. V. show, so I hope he doesn't get lynched. Like, I'm trying to imagine it. Say China ruled the world and was loving with the livelihoods of the people around me and we were all scared if our way of life was going to survive or not... how hosed up would stuff have to get before a nuke going off in Shanghai wasn't something that would reduce me to tears at the incomprehensible tragedy of it? I know the whole point was that each side stopped seeing the other as meaningfully human, but... I still don't get it. Hitler made more sense, 'cause the Holocaust wasn't a propaganda point. It was something he was quietly doing because he thought he had to, and if it bothered ordinary Germans, they could pretend they didn't know about it (even though they obviously did), and concentrate on the "good" stuff he was doing for Germany. I guess the obvious comparison is people celebrating on 9/11, but even that is several orders of magnitude smaller scale. Or those weirdos online who were bizarrely triumphal when the Japanese tsunami happened because of Pearl Harbor generations ago. I guess... some people just can't comprehend mass tragedy? Most people? I'm having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around any of it, but I guess it's not necessarily unrealistic. I guess I would have expected more hand wringing at least from someone like Michio Pa, if not other Free Navy supporters. Because holy poo poo a ton of people died... every time they mentioned the state of the Earth, especially when they gave numbers, I couldn't help but get overwhelmed and tear up. It was loving horrific.
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Dec 15, 2016 04:19
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Eiba posted:Like, I'm trying to imagine it. Say China ruled the world and was loving with the livelihoods of the people around me and we were all scared if our way of life was going to survive or not... how hosed up would stuff have to get before a nuke going off in Shanghai wasn't something that would reduce me to tears at the incomprehensible tragedy of it? I know the whole point was that each side stopped seeing the other as meaningfully human, but... I still don't get it. How is the fact that we dropped a nuke on Japan, then we dropped a bigger one on them, and we didn't even really need to, the war was essentially over at that point, we just wouldn't accept anything other than unconditional surrender and they didn't want to give that, not the obvious comparison? It was what, like the '80s before we finally said, "uh, sorry." and left it at that. Maybe you'd cry, maybe a lot of people would, but that wouldn't stop it from happening or the people responsible from rationalizing.
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Dec 15, 2016 04:28
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:How is the fact that we dropped a nuke on Japan, then we dropped a bigger one on them, and we didn't even really need to, the war was essentially over at that point, we just wouldn't accept anything other than unconditional surrender and they didn't want to give that, not the obvious comparison?
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Dec 15, 2016 04:37
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There's a certain pragmatism involved I think, but I'm trying to find an appropriate metaphor. Like imagine you're shoved into a locked room with a grizzly bear and some random dude. The bear is hurt and confused the guy is just pummeling the poo poo out of it. If I'm on the outside looking in, I feel bad for the bear because that poo poo is cruel. If I'm on the inside, I'm going to work with that guy to kill the bear before it gets its bearings and realizes that humans are 1. Assholes, and 2. Easy to gently caress up. Basically, I don't trust an angry bear to differentiate between good humans and bad humans.
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Dec 15, 2016 05:06
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There's definitely a comparison to be made there: when the atomic bombs were dropped, they'd never been used in war before, and the horror of what happened when they were (combined with the swift expansion of their availability and effectiveness) has thus-far prevented further use. Dropping giant gently caress-off asteroids down a gravity well also hadn't ever been done before; I think a lot of the Belters are suggested to be pretty horrified, but also not really able to deal with the horror right now thanks to the immediate exigencies of the war. That's part of what Holden was trying to inspire with his sappy broadcasts; people start picking up the idea and showing off the humanitarian crisis that's happened on Earth, and it's what sparks a few of the Belter characters to not be such dickheads and consider rebellion.
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Dec 15, 2016 05:06
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The question i have now is: do i just plow right into Babylon's Ashes, or should i hold out and read something else for a bit? Keep in mind that i've read nothing but Expanse novels since starting Leviathan Wakes a few weeks ago. Even after telling myself to chill out and maybe space them out a little bit for crying out loud.
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Dec 15, 2016 05:28
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a kitten posted:The question i have now is: do i just plow right into Babylon's Ashes, or should i hold out and read something else for a bit? Babylon’s Ashes is like Nemesis Games Part Deux, so just plough into it.
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Dec 15, 2016 05:29
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If anything, the authors have vastly under-estimated the rage that would exist. Consider the non-ironic calls to nuke Mecca after 9/11 (which killed .0001% of the population). James Holden's This Ganymedeian Life notwithstanding, Earth is going to want blood. It's probably a good thing that the actual elected government died off leaving the civil service in charge because the politically expedient move would be straight up belter genocide. Even strategically, your best bet to kill a pirate navy is to eliminate its support faculties, which means a methodical campaign of total war where you occupy or destroy every settlement from the core outward. Innocent caught in the crossfire? Tough poo poo, pal. I don't have the resources to garrison Ceres so we're forming two lines. This line is for Earthers we know to be loyal. That other line ends at the airlock. Chef Boyardeez Nuts fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Dec 15, 2016 |
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Dec 15, 2016 05:46
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Really, now that I think about it, the logical response would be to forcibly remove the Belters and strictly limit in system spaceflight.
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Dec 15, 2016 06:27
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