Sci-Fi's The Expanse (spoilers)

[Thanas]

Still nonsense.

No nation just loses high tech like that, or allows it to develop independently. Never has happened, never will happen. Not even when people could just screw off and disappear off grid for years at a time in the age of sail. Nothing ever came out of it that could threaten a SotL.

[Gaidin]

Not really nonsense.

When you can't track everything, and when you suddenly have timelag reinserted into everything to the point that they can be their own political power and you can't do crap about it, guess what.

"Oh look, Earth government sent a message five months ago."

"Huh, what'd they say."

"They want an update."

"Eh, whatever. We'll send it next month."

Now, I'm exaggerating this slightly, but the point still fucking stands and you can't get around it.

[Thanas]

We have had such situations before in Earth history. Never have they resulted in anything like this. You don't seem to get just how high tech and how expensive this is.

[Gaidin]

Dude. We can't even track everything now. Not that we really lose the information. We just can't track it. Do you know how often the right hand not talks to the left by it's very nature? Bureaucracy is just slightly a bitch. Forget if you know how to manipulate it. How many whistleblowing cases in modern earth would we have missed out on if the Bureaucracy functioned as well as you really think it does? Much less three governments in a solar system as big as this one with the megacorporations that come with it?

Answer me this. Sensibly please.

[biostem]

There's also the possibility that the workers at the shipyard simply carried about their normal business up until the very last possible moment, so as to not let on their true intentions. Given that there was a mention of some sort of stealth tech, perhaps they implemented some similar technologies to conceal any other clandestine activities that were going on...

[Alyrium Denryle]

Still nonsense.

No nation just loses high tech like that, or allows it to develop independently. Never has happened, never will happen. Not even when people could just screw off and disappear off grid for years at a time in the age of sail. Nothing ever came out of it that could threaten a SotL.

Your mind is failing to deal with an Outside Context Problem.

These are not Ships of The LIne. A rock with a cold gas thruster strapped to it is a threat to these battleships. There are large colonies in the outer planets that are de facto self-governing that have ship building facilities. This is how Mars got its fleet and peacefully declared independence. There was sweet fuck all earth could do because of travel time.


There are PMCs that own their own space stations in the asteroid belts, surrounded by everything they need to build a warship from scratch or readily able to contract with a private shipyard. There is no way for the government to even know about a secret shipyard unless they know where to look. Space is too vast. Even if they did know of a shipyard, it could be building missile frigates in secret, because the components needed to build a missile frigate and the components needed to build an armed freighter (which exist out of necessity in this universe) are not very different. Stealth is... difficult in space, but it can be done. Radar absorbent materials are known quantities (readily available in the asteroid belt) and heat sinks (liquid ammonia works well) can be used to avoid detection for a while. Until you fire up your engines.

There is absolutely nothing you need to build a fission torpedo that you cannot get in space without any government oversight. Casing? Got that. Solid or liquid fueled engine and RCS systems? Got that. Computer control? Strictly speaking you could do it with a rasberry pi and a programmer right now. Tracking? The sensors needed are readily available, or you can built them yourself. Entirely off the shelf. All you need is fissile materials and those are available readily in the asteroid belt.

Railguns? If you can build the combined fusion reactor/particle accelerator this is the Epstein Drive, railguns are trivial.

[Batman]

Except we're not told any of this in the TV series.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Except we're not told any of this in the TV series.

I am positing possible scenarios based on inference. I dont need to be told in the series that armed freighters exist, or that building a fission bomb is going to be pretty easy. We already see that Tycho station is basically self-governing. Mars gained its independence due to travel lag and the ability to build its own fleet without interference (the SyFy channel site has some world-building information as well. I dont even have to delve into the books for this shit, though I could. I am just rigidly avoiding spoilers)

[Imperial Overlord]

We have had such situations before in Earth history. Never have they resulted in anything like this. You don't seem to get just how high tech and how expensive this is.

Yeah, this is the issue. Not the ability to pop a SotL with existing weapons or having armed freighters or secret shipyards. Managing the colossal expense of building a warship with the capabilities to directly take on and defeat a fleet flagship of the most technologically advanced major power in a head to head confrontation. This isn't sneaking a nuke on board or an ambush, this is having the personnel and infrastructure to build a cutting edge warship with capabilities that exceed that of the major powers. Thousands of specialists to build and design the ship and the weapons (do you think those missiles which outperform the weapons in Martian military simulations are easily available on the open market or are easy to build and test in secret). The resources and personnel and time required are tremendous.

It's possible the series has a good answer to it, but the idea that a couple thousand plucky asteroid colonists can build warship that can take a major polity's battleship in straight up fight is libertarian nonsense.

[Thanas]

Exactly this.

[K. A. Pital]

Why do you think OPA is behind the Donnager attack, though?

[Imperial Overlord]

Why do you think OPA is behind the Donnager attack, though?

I don't. I'm just saying that a band of radicals (not that I think that the OPA is Space Al-Queda) with a secret shipyard in the belt isn't a credible source of a super advanced warship with nifty stealth technology. Black ops by parts of Earth's military, on the other hand, is a far more credible origin of the bad ass stealth ship.

[K. A. Pital]

OPA is not Al-Quaeda, they are pictured quite positively in the books as, well, brave rebels who are considered a threat to corporations and governments. Somewhat like the original IRA that took on the British Empire in early XX century. As for your guess as to the origin of the ship, it is quite close. Of course (and that is the good part of Abraham's books, which I think somewhat offsets their bleak nature), the military and the corporations always walk hand in hand...

[Imperial Overlord]

Yes, that's why I specifically said I don't think the OPA is Space Al-Queda.

[Adam Reynolds]

Not really nonsense.

When you can't track everything, and when you suddenly have timelag reinserted into everything to the point that they can be their own political power and you can't do crap about it, guess what.

"Oh look, Earth government sent a message five months ago."

"Huh, what'd they say."

"They want an update."

"Eh, whatever. We'll send it next month."

Now, I'm exaggerating this slightly, but the point still fucking stands and you can't get around it.

For radio signals(moving at lightspeed), you are talking about mere hours, even to the edge of the solar system. The edge of the Kupiter belt is 50-51(based on Earth's orbit) AU out. That would take only 6.8 hours in principle. New Horizons, in its flyby of Pluto, had a one way latency of 4.5 hours. While this is obviously impractical for a conversation, it is more than adequate for simply giving orders and receiving reports. Numerous empires throughout history have had far worse communications than that and yet still failed to have such problems.

It wouldn't take months unless you are talking about moving into the Oort Cloud(if it even exists). While that would certainly be interesting, that is not what is occuring in The Expanse.

Though in fairness, it is also true that when technology proliferates, it usually benefits subversive attackers over time. Having that combined with slow communications would indeed be interesting.

[Thanas]

So having seen episode 5:


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I can't see why they do not just go to Mars. They do have the recordings of the donnager to prove their point, no?

[Batman]

I think that was adequately dealt with in the episode. Sure, they have evidence of what happened to the Donnager...but not of their role in it, and they're the sole survivors of the Canterbury. I can see where that would look a tad suspicious in the eyes of the Mars government.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Snip Spoilers

Massive Spoilers





Massive Spoilers





For the love of god spoilers






They *could* go to Mars, yes. But it is a damned risky proposition. They cant fly with their transponder on, because they risk being tracked by more assholes. They are the sole survivors of the Cant, and the Donnager. Every ship they have stepped on has exploded out from under them, and everyone knows it. If the Martian government was willing to accept the idea that maybe they are not terrorists (and they were trying to pin the blame on Naomi), they certainly would not now. They would never be able to get a hearing with a martian ship before being vaporized.

Even getting through all that, they are still on an ostensibly stolen MRCN ship and there is every chance that they would be disappeared and "interrogated" in a martian hole in the ground.

Their best option then is to turn to the OPA (and keep in mind, the OPA is highly factionated. There are legit groups, and terrorist groups. No unified command and control structure).

[Parallax]

"...an ostensibly stolen MRCN ship"

Technically, yes and no. I would assume that on a ship as advanced as the spanish-name-here is, that every single thing the crew does is recorded in considerable detail. Including the second-in-command from the Donnager handing over full access and command functions with no hint of coercion from the survivors.

I would like to know how the ship knew naomi was an engineer.
And why the transponder on a modern military ship is apparently much easier to tamper with than a civilian ship.

On an entirely different subject...
The Belter accent is weird. What are they going for? South African mixed with something?

Edit: On a more subjective note, this is a pretty darn solid sci-fi series. I'm not seeing any major flaws (at least, not counting questions that haven't been answered yet).

[Imperial Overlord]

And why the transponder on a modern military ship is apparently much easier to tamper with than a civilian ship.

It isn't. It's explicitly stated to be a bigger, scarier deal to try and mess with a military ship's transponder.

[Parallax]

And why the transponder on a modern military ship is apparently much easier to tamper with than a civilian ship.

It isn't. It's explicitly stated to be a bigger, scarier deal to try and mess with a military ship's transponder.

Huh. The way I read the dialogue was that if they had attempted that with a civillian transponder, it surely would have melted itself into molten graphite. Whereas with the modern military ship, it didn't seem too hard - even if they were afraid the ship would blow up, it didn't come across as a realistic outcome.

[Imperial Overlord]

Huh. The way I read the dialogue was that if they had attempted that with a civillian transponder, it surely would have melted itself into molten graphite. Whereas with the modern military ship, it didn't seem too hard - even if they were afraid the ship would blow up, it didn't come across as a realistic outcome.

The dialogue says if you fuck it up with a civilian transponder the transponder slags itself but if you fuck it up with a military model anything up to blowing up the ship might happen. Then nothing happened, but it could have been really bad if the OPA guys hadn't known their shit or they had bungled following the instructions.

[Alyrium Denryle]

"...an ostensibly stolen MRCN ship"

Technically, yes and no. I would assume that on a ship as advanced as the spanish-name-here is, that every single thing the crew does is recorded in considerable detail. Including the second-in-command from the Donnager handing over full access and command functions with no hint of coercion from the survivors.

Which would be great. If they EVER let you get anywhere near them in a ship carrying a fuckton of high yield plasma torpedoes. Which they wont. The Donnager had no way of sending a transmission saying that the Tachi was carrying survivors. They were being jammed to hell and back. If Lopez had survived he could have answered the challenge-response code of the day that might be used for authentication, but that is the sort of thing you very pointedly dont keep in the computer banks.

I would like to know how the ship knew naomi was an engineer.

Probably because Lopez uploaded the personnel data before they accelerated to 12 Gs and crushed his already damaged chest.

And why the transponder on a modern military ship is apparently much easier to tamper with than a civilian ship.

It isn't. Much harder. Even a civilian model will slag into molten graphene. But they explicitly said that a fuckup would probably result in them being turned into a cloud of superheated gas. They just had very very good instructions.

On an entirely different subject...
The Belter accent is weird. What are they going for? South African mixed with something?

[/quote]

The accent sounds like south african mixed with something like jamaican, yeah. The language itself is a mix of English, Spanish, German, French, and I think Swahili with a bit of Romanian and Mandarin tossed in. There might be some I am missing. Having the text from the books helps, but I am not a linguist.

[Batman]

Don't know the books but if there was german in the one spoken in the series I sure as hell missed it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Don't know the books but if there was german in the one spoken in the series I sure as hell missed it.

Its in the books for certain. Pretty sure I caught a word or two in the first episode as well, but I could be mistaken.