Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
Saturday 19 March 2016
The Expanse is, ummm....
Two episodes in to The Expanse. So far I have no idea what all the fuss is about. Feels like Firefly if you sucked all the humour out with a big sucky-outy thing.
Oh, I'm in it for the scientific accuracy. In a spinning habitat, the whisky pours at a funny angle due to the coriolis effect. Belters use their hands for gestures instead of facial expressions, because the latter do not show up well when you are wearing a space suit. The direction of "down" in a spaceship is in the direction the exhaust is travelling. And when the thrust ends, everybody floats around. Ships do Brachistochrone trajectories, though the show uses the trendy term "flip-and-burn." In a spinning habitat, the airlocks are in the floor, not the wall. If your aging space suit gets a short in the helmet wiring, you can open the helmet in vacuum for about five seconds to rip it out without dying. And there is one glorious scene I won't spoil that uses Newton's Third Law to good effect.
Winchell Chung said it all Rhys Taylor as far as scientific accuracy goes it's the best thing that has hit television scifi ever.
I know with your professional commitments reading the novels might be a hard time commitment to sell, but I do highly recommend them. For reasons that are understandable the television series went with a slightly different take on the characters, and I think they lost something in the translation.
And Rhys, you must meet Chrisjen Avasarala as she is in the novels. I think everyone should have a little Chrisjen in their lives, it would make the world a better place.
Indeed. What else is out there? We can all sit around picking at flaws. For my old brain, re-watching and reading the plot scenarios online is quite helpful. Personally, I feel that our robotic overlords will provide us with more comfortable lifestyles, but hey.
Oh, I'm not giving up on it and I don't hate it by any means. Two episodes is not enough to judge a show. Though I am rather weary of bleak sci-fi to say the least, but that requires a full write-up or none at all.
"In a spinning habitat, the whisky pours at a funny angle due to the coriolis effect."
Gravity is one of the most confusing things in the show. That whisky pour was on Ceres (as far as I could tell) so why would there be such an effect here ? Granted I was watching it after 18 hours of travelling in 2 days so my brain may be somewhat addled. I like that they have magnetic boots, but a lot of the time the characters just seem to be walking normally without them. Which means the ships must be doing crazy near 1-g accelerations for hours at a time, unless I'm missing something.
Actually the thing that bothers me the most is that they're mining ice to use as rocket fuel, yet water is considered more precious than gold. They've got access to the freakin' asteroid belt yet are still short of resources. This I simply do not understand.
Rhys Taylor Large swaths of the back-history are just somewhat implied and you don't get the details in the television version in quite the same way as the novels. To be expected, there's some handwavum involved.
1. Ceres whisky pour coriolis effect. At some point in the backstory Tycho Corporation spun Ceres (and Eros) up to something like 1/3g, which took several decades and an ungodly amount of propellant. So everyone is walking around with their feet pointed out to the stars and their heads pointed to the center of the rock. Later you'll notice, at the Dock level, the big cargo locks are in the floor. The deeper you go into the rock the more pronounced the coriolis effect becomes.
2. Spot on, the spacecraft are using fusion torches of near magical efficiency doing crazy near 1-g accelerations for hours on end.
3. Short of resources. Yeah, that's not really well explained. Ceres is apparently mined out of water ice by Earth and Mars. Presumably Mars used a great deal in their incomplete terraforming process, the complete why and what for are never explained.
William Black That makes sooo much more sense ! Especially Ceres ! There's a scene where the police guy is threatening to throw someone out of an airlock in the floor that had me thinking he must have transferred to a spaceship without me noticing.
I tolerate handwavium far better when I know where it's being used. So, high continuous acceleration ships are fine as long as I know that's what they're supposed to be doing. Still there's something hugely ironic about mining ice for a living and having a water-shortage that I don't think I'll ever be able to fully accept.
Rhys Taylor In the novels they make much less of the scarcity of water, in the television series the water shortage stands in place of a more complex social/class division. In the novels Belters are dependent on Earth and Mars for the expensive drug therapies to address an array of medical problems resulting from children growing up in a low g environment. Those families that can afford it travel to Ganymede so mothers can give birth, and the children can spend the first year or so, in a higher gravity field. The belt mines metals but needs import foodstuffs from an extensive greenhouse industry on Ganymede. Still the scarcity of water makes little sense when mining for propellant would be a large scale industry.
Rhys Taylor Yes, their major handwaving is the Epstein Drive, some species of fusion drive that has an absurdly large propellant mass flow and can provide 1 g acceleration for days at a time (I did some back of the envelope calculation and figured it had a mass flow of about 0.09 kg/s) http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Fusion--%7B_Epstein_Drive_%7D
Rhys Taylor The show is famous for "show but don't tell." Like the coriolis effect, there is nary a word about it in the dialog, you are supposed to deduce using ones knowledge of science. The producers have said if you see something confusing in the show, do some thinking about it and you'll figure it out.
Rhys Taylor of course there are cases of "the amazing thing is not how gracefully the dancing bear dances, the amazing thing is that it dances at all." Case in point was rotating Ceres. This works great with nickel-iron asteroids, not to much with stony asteroids. Stony Ceres probably does not have the tensile strength to withstand the stress of 0.3 g outwards at the surface. But it is an impressive point for people who get their science from Star Trek. And I've seen worse scientific mistakes in Larry Niven novels.
Winchell Chung "of course there are cases of "the amazing thing is not how gracefully the dancing bear dances, the amazing thing is that it dances at all.""
Very true. Trying to make an accurate show and missing a few points is orders of magnitude better than not trying at all, as a rule.
I'm less keen on the idea of "show not tell". I consider it an essential part of good storytelling that the audience should understand what's going on. If something complicated is happening, it's the storyteller's responsibility to explain that to their audience. There's no way I'd ever have figured out that the Ceres habitat is actually inside and that gravity is pushing away from the centre. Some things you just have to explain to people. That said, I did like the kicking scene.
I'm up to episode 4 and things are becoming more interesting. Still wouldn't rate it as the greatest thing ever, but I suspect I'll be up to episode 6 by the end of the day.
Rhys Taylor Just be reassured that the three seemingly disparate stories will eventually link up (Detective Miller, Holden in the Rosinante, and UN big wig Avasarala)
Rhys Taylor well, RE: "show not tell" Pretty much any time they do this it is not a major plot point, more like a strange thing in the background. With a few exceptions like the kicking scene.
Rhys Taylor The "show not tell" sat a bit weird with me too. I hate unnecessary exposition, but expecting viewers to figure out that Ceres is spun-up and everyone is living upside-down seems a bit much. I wonder if the show's producers just figure we live in an age where no one watches anything in isolation and that things will get figured out through conversations like this. That, or the viewer will just think "that's weird" and move on.
I do love that the show seems to deliberately be defying tropes. The Donnager battle episode may be the best example of this where it is done again and again. Still, my favourite may be the scene where a Belter opens his visor in space for a few seconds. We've seen everything from instant ice-cubes (including Gravity) to heads exploding.
I forgive the show on the zero-g oops. It's just so hard to do. Characters will walk over to someone on a console and then lean against it to get a better view. There's another scene where someone is asleep on a bunk in zero-g without them being strapped in or anything. Zero and low g environments are just so tough, I can't blame a TV series to cheat a little bit.
William Black I've gotta make time for these books. It's good to know the water shortage isn't as big a deal in the novels.
Mike Aben re: problems with show not tell. Yes, that is a concern. The SyFy network does have web page with sections for the "Science of The Expanse, Season 1, Episode 8" and the like. So there is an "official" source of explanations for puzzling show bits. http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/photos
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.
It takes a while for the series to find its groove, but be warned, it does take itself pretty seriously. Don't expect it to get lighter.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm a sucker for a good space opera and spaceship porn.
Oh, I'm in it for the scientific accuracy.
ReplyDeleteIn a spinning habitat, the whisky pours at a funny angle due to the coriolis effect.
Belters use their hands for gestures instead of facial expressions, because the latter do not show up well when you are wearing a space suit.
The direction of "down" in a spaceship is in the direction the exhaust is travelling. And when the thrust ends, everybody floats around.
Ships do Brachistochrone trajectories, though the show uses the trendy term "flip-and-burn."
In a spinning habitat, the airlocks are in the floor, not the wall.
If your aging space suit gets a short in the helmet wiring, you can open the helmet in vacuum for about five seconds to rip it out without dying.
And there is one glorious scene I won't spoil that uses Newton's Third Law to good effect.
Winchell Chung said it all Rhys Taylor as far as scientific accuracy goes it's the best thing that has hit television scifi ever.
ReplyDeleteI know with your professional commitments reading the novels might be a hard time commitment to sell, but I do highly recommend them. For reasons that are understandable the television series went with a slightly different take on the characters, and I think they lost something in the translation.
And Rhys, you must meet Chrisjen Avasarala as she is in the novels. I think everyone should have a little Chrisjen in their lives, it would make the world a better place.
Indeed. What else is out there? We can all sit around picking at flaws. For my old brain, re-watching and reading the plot scenarios online is quite helpful. Personally, I feel that our robotic overlords will provide us with more comfortable lifestyles, but hey.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm not giving up on it and I don't hate it by any means. Two episodes is not enough to judge a show. Though I am rather weary of bleak sci-fi to say the least, but that requires a full write-up or none at all.
ReplyDelete"In a spinning habitat, the whisky pours at a funny angle due to the coriolis effect."
Gravity is one of the most confusing things in the show. That whisky pour was on Ceres (as far as I could tell) so why would there be such an effect here ? Granted I was watching it after 18 hours of travelling in 2 days so my brain may be somewhat addled.
I like that they have magnetic boots, but a lot of the time the characters just seem to be walking normally without them. Which means the ships must be doing crazy near 1-g accelerations for hours at a time, unless I'm missing something.
Actually the thing that bothers me the most is that they're mining ice to use as rocket fuel, yet water is considered more precious than gold. They've got access to the freakin' asteroid belt yet are still short of resources. This I simply do not understand.
Rhys Taylor Large swaths of the back-history are just somewhat implied and you don't get the details in the television version in quite the same way as the novels. To be expected, there's some handwavum involved.
ReplyDelete1. Ceres whisky pour coriolis effect.
At some point in the backstory Tycho Corporation spun Ceres (and Eros) up to something like 1/3g, which took several decades and an ungodly amount of propellant. So everyone is walking around with their feet pointed out to the stars and their heads pointed to the center of the rock. Later you'll notice, at the Dock level, the big cargo locks are in the floor. The deeper you go into the rock the more pronounced the coriolis effect becomes.
2. Spot on, the spacecraft are using fusion torches of near magical efficiency doing crazy near 1-g accelerations for hours on end.
3. Short of resources. Yeah, that's not really well explained. Ceres is apparently mined out of water ice by Earth and Mars. Presumably Mars used a great deal in their incomplete terraforming process, the complete why and what for are never explained.
William Black That makes sooo much more sense ! Especially Ceres ! There's a scene where the police guy is threatening to throw someone out of an airlock in the floor that had me thinking he must have transferred to a spaceship without me noticing.
ReplyDeleteI tolerate handwavium far better when I know where it's being used. So, high continuous acceleration ships are fine as long as I know that's what they're supposed to be doing. Still there's something hugely ironic about mining ice for a living and having a water-shortage that I don't think I'll ever be able to fully accept.
Rhys Taylor
ReplyDeleteIn the novels they make much less of the scarcity of water, in the television series the water shortage stands in place of a more complex social/class division. In the novels Belters are dependent on Earth and Mars for the expensive drug therapies to address an array of medical problems resulting from children growing up in a low g environment. Those families that can afford it travel to Ganymede so mothers can give birth, and the children can spend the first year or so, in a higher gravity field. The belt mines metals but needs import foodstuffs from an extensive greenhouse industry on Ganymede. Still the scarcity of water makes little sense when mining for propellant would be a large scale industry.
Praveen Kulkarni got it in one. That's the scene I was thinking of.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor Yes, their major handwaving is the Epstein Drive, some species of fusion drive that has an absurdly large propellant mass flow and can provide 1 g acceleration for days at a time (I did some back of the envelope calculation and figured it had a mass flow of about 0.09 kg/s)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Fusion--%7B_Epstein_Drive_%7D
Rhys Taylor The show is famous for "show but don't tell." Like the coriolis effect, there is nary a word about it in the dialog, you are supposed to deduce using ones knowledge of science.
ReplyDeleteThe producers have said if you see something confusing in the show, do some thinking about it and you'll figure it out.
Rhys Taylor of course there are cases of "the amazing thing is not how gracefully the dancing bear dances, the amazing thing is that it dances at all."
ReplyDeleteCase in point was rotating Ceres. This works great with nickel-iron asteroids, not to much with stony asteroids. Stony Ceres probably does not have the tensile strength to withstand the stress of 0.3 g outwards at the surface.
But it is an impressive point for people who get their science from Star Trek. And I've seen worse scientific mistakes in Larry Niven novels.
Winchell Chung "of course there are cases of "the amazing thing is not how gracefully the dancing bear dances, the amazing thing is that it dances at all.""
ReplyDeleteVery true. Trying to make an accurate show and missing a few points is orders of magnitude better than not trying at all, as a rule.
I'm less keen on the idea of "show not tell". I consider it an essential part of good storytelling that the audience should understand what's going on. If something complicated is happening, it's the storyteller's responsibility to explain that to their audience. There's no way I'd ever have figured out that the Ceres habitat is actually inside and that gravity is pushing away from the centre. Some things you just have to explain to people. That said, I did like the kicking scene.
I'm up to episode 4 and things are becoming more interesting. Still wouldn't rate it as the greatest thing ever, but I suspect I'll be up to episode 6 by the end of the day.
Rhys Taylor Just be reassured that the three seemingly disparate stories will eventually link up (Detective Miller, Holden in the Rosinante, and UN big wig Avasarala)
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor well, RE: "show not tell"
ReplyDeletePretty much any time they do this it is not a major plot point, more like a strange thing in the background. With a few exceptions like the kicking scene.
Rhys Taylor The "show not tell" sat a bit weird with me too. I hate unnecessary exposition, but expecting viewers to figure out that Ceres is spun-up and everyone is living upside-down seems a bit much. I wonder if the show's producers just figure we live in an age where no one watches anything in isolation and that things will get figured out through conversations like this. That, or the viewer will just think "that's weird" and move on.
ReplyDeleteI do love that the show seems to deliberately be defying tropes. The Donnager battle episode may be the best example of this where it is done again and again. Still, my favourite may be the scene where a Belter opens his visor in space for a few seconds. We've seen everything from instant ice-cubes (including Gravity) to heads exploding.
I forgive the show on the zero-g oops. It's just so hard to do. Characters will walk over to someone on a console and then lean against it to get a better view. There's another scene where someone is asleep on a bunk in zero-g without them being strapped in or anything. Zero and low g environments are just so tough, I can't blame a TV series to cheat a little bit.
William Black I've gotta make time for these books. It's good to know the water shortage isn't as big a deal in the novels.
Mike Aben re: problems with show not tell.
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a concern. The SyFy network does have web page with sections for the "Science of The Expanse, Season 1, Episode 8" and the like. So there is an "official" source of explanations for puzzling show bits.
http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/photos