Belter? I hardly knew 'er! The Expanse Blind Watch

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Belter? I hardly knew 'er! The Expanse Blind Watch

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Outer Planets Alliance.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 04:32

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:00

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

Acceleration, not gravity per se, but yeah.

I realized I had one more question about the Canterbury. Since she was destroyed by a nuclear weapon, wouldn't that set off detectors all over the solar system? Maybe it wouldn't make a difference to the plot since it seems someone is angling to frame Mars and start a war, but are nukes not considered egregious weapons in the 23rd century? So far it's passed almost without comment except from Holden.

I don't think they used nukes on the Canterbury, but I haven't read the book in years and the show isn't explicit on it. It has a fusion reactor that would have breached, so it's hard to tell the difference. I'm not sure you could detect it. Nuclear warheads are not that rare in the Expanse, either.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 19:25

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

zoux posted:

Holden says �they nuked the Cant� but that could just be colloquial

Could be either way. Nukes are used for mining in the Expanse so they're not really hard to get your hands on. And in space they're just big explosives since it's not like you're going to make space more radioactive or anything.

E: It is true nuclear weapons aren't the same in space. There's no air to create a pressure wave or firestorm so they won't destroy anything they don't hit directly, and the radiation doesn't matter beyond the initial pulse of gamma rays. That part is actually a bigger deal in space since air will filter out the gamma rays pretty quick, they don't generally make it out of the fireball for an atmospheric detonation.

Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 11, 2020

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 19:31

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

Still S1E3 for ongoing discussion context. Actually really E1. A fusion reactor can't go critical and explode like that when it's destroyed - it's so hard to keep fusion going that any disturbance will just stop the reaction, which is a really great benefit over fission for power generation because it's so much less dangerous. It could cause significant damage as the superhot plasma escaped, but a very far cry from a weapon detonation. The designs are just too different.

This is not how fusion reactors act in the show/books, however. Losing containment and having the now free reaction blow the ship up happens all the time.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2020 04:57

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

Well I haven't read the books either, have I? Even for a series trying to be more realistic I suppose I'll forgive it since that's a pretty standard sci fi thing, much like sound in space, especially since both make it more engaging. Something I just thought to ask, though, it's not matter/antimatter fusion, is it? That would make a big difference.

The official position of the authors on how the engine technology works is "very efficiently".

These are the clues we get through the series (no plot info here):

They refer to fuel pellets in the books. It's not specified what the pellets are. They're not antimatter engines. The reaction mass is water IIRC.

In the show we eventually see inside a reactor and it's inertial confinement fusion. But while the show is overall an excellent and pretty faithful adaptation, it does diverge in some ways. The authors work on the show so I presume they were okay with it being explicit like that.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2020 05:13

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Defiance Industries posted:

I always thought of it as the sudden release of that much heat and energy in a split-second just loving everything up.

Yep. They also reference "dumping core" to prevent the reactor destroying the ship, which implies a constant reaction going on in there since there's a mass of plasma at all times they can flush out the butt before it does bad things it isn't supposed to be doing. Ships that get their reactor holed by a railgun or whatever go boom but there's no more detail than that.

It could all be a lot worse, there's a series of books I read where the author clearly has no idea how nuclear weapons work. He at one point says that detonating fifteen one kiloton nuclear bombs on Mars renders the planet uninhabitably radioactive for a century. Got some bad news about how many megatons of nukes we've set off on Earth without making anything uninhabitable, author man.

Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Aug 12, 2020

# ¿ Aug 12, 2020 06:02

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

Is graphene really that reactive? I know I've seen some articles lately about potentially being able to use it for improved battery tech and superconductivity, but Naomi says if they get the transponder alteration wrong they'll be a "supernova" - just a future idiom that's been watered down through overuse like how we use "awesome" to mean more like "oh, neat, that's pretty good" instead of literally inspiring awe?

You're not supposed to be able to alter ship transponders, and if you do, the security system blows up the ship.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 18:16

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Yep. It's mimicking them since new suits don't burn you.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2020 16:01

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

They've already mentioned postproduction finished up a couple weeks ago, so it'll probably be out on time.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2020 06:16

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

With that in mind, what's the comparison with the books, then, it doesn't seem like season 1 fits a full book - especially book 1 - so is it like 2 seasons/book, or just whenever they get there they get there and the seasons are just however many they can afford to make at one time? Or is it just some Wheel of Time BS where the second half of each novel is just setting up for the next one without a really coherent structure? That did leave me wanting more, but after about four in a row by the time of book 7 I had to just give up.

They don't match up neatly. Book 1 is season 1 and part of 2, book 2 is the rest of season 2 and half of season 3, book 3 is the last half of season 3, and season 4 is book 4 + parts of 5. Other parts of book 5 have been scattered through each season. There are also novellas, one of those was folded into season 4. A short story was incorporated in season 1 and another one is in season 2. The authors of the books work on the show, so some of the revisions are just for the medium, others are edits the authors would make if they were doing the books again.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2020 04:25

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Yeah, the end of book points are real obvious when you hit them.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2020 04:54

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

The Epstein drive is extremely efficient because of storytelling reasons, yeah. It's not completely implausible but... best not to examine it too much. The official stance of the authors on how it works is "very well".

Ganymede is one of the bigger science goofs if you care about that. The magnetic field is the reason for all the Ganymede stuff, but even with its magnetic field Ganymede is radioactive as all gently caress because of Jupiter. It really doesn't help and you'd be better off just avoiding the Jovian system entirely. Or stay out on Callisto, which is far enough that the radiation dose is acceptable. Or go under the ice on Europa; water's a good radiation shield. Ganymede is also icy so if you were enough underground it would be okay, but the magnetic field really doesn't matter either way.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2020 04:32

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Amos is the way he is because of his childhood. If you want you can read the short story The Churn, which describes it and doesn't spoil anything since it takes place like 25 years earlier.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2020 05:38

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Yep. That last picture is more similar to what the farms look like, you see (a small part of) them a few times. Those random plants around the station are for air recycling and whatnot. Prax even explicitly describes that and says they're inedible.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2020 17:55

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

I can only assume Alex's thruster-only gravity assisted trajectory was heavily compressed for tv viewing purposes, because I'm sure it would have taken at the very least days, if not weeks, to complete, judging by the orbits of some of those moons. Good plan, though; even with future sensors I'm sure it'd be hard to differentiate an unpowered smallish ship from the no doubt innumerable rocks collected in the Jovian system.

This was probably the least scientific thing in the show. You could do it, but yeah, it would take months. I was willing to forgive since it was cool.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 04:58

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Son of Sam-I-Am posted:

I assume you mean aside from the macguffin.

I'm willing to give that unknowably advanced alien forgiveness. And they do make a point about it (mostly) still following known physics.

The only thing I can think of offhand that the Protomolecule does that is totally outside of currently understood physics is FTL communication.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 05:07

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

The maneuvering thrusters alone can impart at least 1 g of acceleration, so staying afloat around Ganymede is no problem.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2020 18:25

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Yeah, standard procedure. They were just sitting down in the machine shop instead of in the bridge. They never really explain why they vent the atmosphere but I've always assumed it's to prevent fires, and because atmosphere spraying out of a hole in the side of the ship means you have an assortment of brand new, uncontrollable RCS thrusters.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2021 04:38

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

There's one other fairly bloody moment coming up in a few episodes, but it's different and IMO much less gross.

About Reload: In the book version, that's basically what the protomolecule does in Eros. It's not glowy blue poo poo, it's the reshaped and repurposed bodies of all the inhabitants.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2021 04:05

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:00

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

Wouldn't usually post anything but if Miller being gone is the only reason you're quitting, you uh, might want to watch a few more episodes before making that decision.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2021 07:14

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Belter? I hardly knew 'er! The Expanse Blind Watch