Sci-Fi's The Expanse (spoilers)

[Thanas]

I just saw the first episode and I have to say it was really awesome. The setting is great, the characters were interesting and the overall universe is really, really interesting.

[Adam Reynolds]

I recently read the book that this is based on and have to agree that it was an interesting setting. I liked that it was limited based on real physics. Ships lack inertial compensators and thus are limited to single digit G accelerations. Even comms take minutes to hours to cross the distances involved. It was also interesting, though obviously impossible to put to film without a purely animated show, how individuals who grew up in different gravities grew at different rates. There was even a sense of racism between the "belters" and those who grew up on Earth or Mars based on this fact. There also aren't any aliens in the conventional sense, though something truly alien eventually appears. Which, like the Reapers in Mass Effect, was my only real complaint with the setting.

From the trailers it looks like it is diverging somewhat from the book in that it is showing several different perspectives. The book focuses on Detective Miller and Holden with alternating chapters showing each perspective. The woman from Earth is completely new and I don't recall anyone like her appearing in the book. Though she presumably existed behind the scenes as a part of the politics we did not see.

Is the show currently airing? I thought it wasn't until December.

[Gaidin]

From the trailers it looks like it is diverging somewhat from the book in that it is showing several different perspectives. The book focuses on Detective Miller and Holden with alternating chapters showing each perspective. The woman from Earth is completely new and I don't recall anyone like her appearing in the book. Though she presumably existed behind the scenes as a part of the politics we did not see.

They're basically giving a view of what the UN is doing in book 1 by putting a book 2 character in play. We get to see them reacting to the crisis in the books, but we never get to see them trying to avert it as someone who is high in a government with a likely decent intelligence arm might have a shot at doing.

[Adam Reynolds]

Was Chrisjen Avasarala from the second book? Haven't read it yet.

[Gaidin]

Yes. She was an Assisstant of some sort at the UN that had a lot more political pull mostly through back channel political power. In the series they seem to have actually given her the position.

[biostem]

I thought the ramifications of generations of people living in 0 or less than 1G was interesting. I do not accept that water/ice would be as hard to come by as they present - apparently they just jettison any wastewater into space, instead of recycling it?

The portrayal of the measures needed to perform the hard-G maneuver was kind of cool, but I can't imagine that doing such a maneuver without having to put such a strain on the crew or vessel would take that much more time to be worth it - the derelict craft was in such a state that they were not in an "every second counts" situation, so this didn't seem sensible to me.

Still, it was an interesting 1st episode, and I will surely continue to watch...

[Gaidin]

Water's basically used for anything and everything including forming air for breathing. Which means it's life. I don't remember how good their filtration systems are for recycling to make wastewater usable for other things than drinking, but who knows.

As far as the high G maneuver, they could've done a low acceleration, but when you're not using their FTL(which iirc are high risk as it is until you get to a certain size ship) you basically add weeks onto the maneuver.

[Tsyroc]

The first episode was available for Free on iTunes yesterday so people interested in watching this who don't have SyFy might want to check around and see if it still is on iTunes for free or of other services are also offering it.

I haven't watched it yet but I'm a bit more excited to do so after the comments her.

[Guardsman Bass]

I really enjoyed it. I've read the books in the Expanse series so far, and it looks like they're trying to do it well - about the only character who feels a bit off is the guy playing Holden.

[biostem]

Water's basically used for anything and everything including forming air for breathing. Which means it's life. I don't remember how good their filtration systems are for recycling to make wastewater usable for other things than drinking, but who knows.

As far as the high G maneuver, they could've done a low acceleration, but when you're not using their FTL(which iirc are high risk as it is until you get to a certain size ship) you basically add weeks onto the maneuver.

Maybe I missed it... was/is there FTL in this series? It seemed like it only took place within the solar system, with travel times being described in days. This, IMO, implied that they can travel at a fraction of C, but not faster than light.

[Gaidin]

OK, I'm thinking wrong. Maybe even thinking wrong series as far as that first statement. The Eptsein Drive. Not FTL. It's a type of magnetic coil exhaust acceleration drive that allows them to maintain thrust(and acceleration) all the way from the inner planets to the belt. They flip at about the halfway point to decelerate(hence the show's quote "Flip and burn"). Previous engine designs would not achieve the high velocities that allow for a good economy at those distances. IIRC, the first Epstein Drive had something wrong with it and its designer is still flying through space at a high velocity somewhere.

Just been a while since I read it, had to look it up to double check it. Sorry.

[Adam Reynolds]

OK, I'm thinking wrong. Maybe even thinking wrong series as far as that first statement. The Eptsein Drive. Not FTL. It's a type of magnetic coil exhaust acceleration drive that allows them to maintain thrust(and acceleration) all the way from the inner planets to the belt. They flip at about the halfway point to decelerate(hence the show's quote "Flip and burn"). Previous engine designs would not achieve the high velocities that allow for a good economy at those distances. IIRC, the first Epstein Drive had something wrong with it and its designer is still flying through space at a high velocity somewhere.

Just been a while since I read it, had to look it up to double check it. Sorry.

It was an extremely efficient drive system similar to an improved VASIMR. The idea was that it allowed both high impulse and high thrust simultaneously in a state that was better than both ion engines and rockets simultaneously.

As for the designer, I thought he kept traveling in a straight line away from Earth and was lost forever. Though that could of course set up something else later.

[FireNexus]

I thought the ramifications of generations of people living in 0 or less than 1G was interesting. I do not accept that water/ice would be as hard to come by as they present - apparently they just jettison any wastewater into space, instead of recycling it?

They use water to make hydrogen fuel for fusion, oxygen for breathing and reaction mass for their drives (thus they literally do throw it into space). Water might actually become relatively scarce under those circumstances.

[FireNexus]

As for the designer, I thought he kept traveling in a straight line away from Earth and was lost forever. Though that could of course set up something else later.

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

[Kingmaker]

The first episode was available for Free on iTunes yesterday so people interested in watching this who don't have SyFy might want to check around and see if it still is on iTunes for free or of other services are also offering it.

I haven't watched it yet but I'm a bit more excited to do so after the comments her.

You can watch the first episode on SyFy's website for free as well.

Linky

[Adam Reynolds]

You can also see the episode in its entirety on YouTube.

As for the designer, I thought he kept traveling in a straight line away from Earth and was lost forever. Though that could of course set up something else later.

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

It was long enough ago that I read the book that I can't remember the specifics and don't currently have it to check. I guess that was it.

Though that is a terrible engineer. I was thinking that he was half crazy and went on a one way course intentionally that might tie into the later series in some fashion.

[bilateralrope]

As for the designer, I thought he kept traveling in a straight line away from Earth and was lost forever. Though that could of course set up something else later.

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

Why the fuck did he decide that the first test flight of the drive should be done with a manned spacecraft ?

[Darth Nostril]

As for the designer, I thought he kept traveling in a straight line away from Earth and was lost forever. Though that could of course set up something else later.

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

Why the fuck did he decide that the first test flight of the drive should be done with a manned spacecraft ?

Try reading the story http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/
It wasn't even remotely the first test flight, he'd been testing various configurations for a year. All previous configs had given him less efficiency than existing standard drives, by his calculations this latest one would finally give him an increase but of a mere four percent over standard.
Instead he got something like 400%.

[Adam Reynolds]

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

Why the fuck did he decide that the first test flight of the drive should be done with a manned spacecraft ?

Try reading the story http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/
It wasn't even remotely the first test flight, he'd been testing various configurations for a year. All previous configs had given him less efficiency than existing standard drives, by his calculations this latest one would finally give him an increase but of a mere four percent over standard.
Instead he got something like 400%.

There is no way he is anything other than an absolute moron, even if a highly successful one. It is an amusing story in a sense, but like The Cold Equations*, it requires absolutely horrible engineering practices. Though this actually does have more of a basis in reality than that one in that many inventors historically have failed to do proper testing with ideas like this out of a desire to be first. If the researchers on the various atomic programs had behaved this foolishly all of them would have liked died. The higher the level of technology becomes, the need to be more careful increases.

* The problem with The Cold Equations is that the scenario happens because of a truly stupid concept. If they really could not afford the mass penalty of an additional person(which also begs the question of why there was even a closet for her to hide in), they should have conducted a proper inspection before leaving. Even modern airliners do something akin to this.

[bilateralrope]

He couldn't turn it off, and the efficiency ended up so much higher than he expected that the engine ran at a high-G burn until it killed him. He couldn't reach the emergency shutoff because of the higher-than-expected thrust, and the higher-than-expected efficiency meant the drive ran way longer than he had anticipated was possible on the fuel he had. So he died. The specifics are included in the short story "Drive" which is on Syfy's website.

Why the fuck did he decide that the first test flight of the drive should be done with a manned spacecraft ?

Try reading the story http://www.syfy.com/theexpanse/drive/
It wasn't even remotely the first test flight, he'd been testing various configurations for a year. All previous configs had given him less efficiency than existing standard drives, by his calculations this latest one would finally give him an increase but of a mere four percent over standard.
Instead he got something like 400%.

He reconfigured the engine and it performed way better than expected. That doesn't answer the question of why he decided to fly it personally.

But it does raise the question of: Did he even understand the physics involved in his engine if he could screw up his calculations that badly ?

[Jub]

He reconfigured the engine and it performed way better than expected. That doesn't answer the question of why he decided to fly it personally.

But it does raise the question of: Did he even understand the physics involved in his engine if he could screw up his calculations that badly ?

Yeah, I can't think of too many things that would cause an engineer to make a change that results in two orders of magnitude more effect than was planned for. Plus, even if that was the case he should have ramped his engine up slowly, run it on a test stand, modeled it in a physics engine, or any other number of sane things.

[Gaidin]

He reconfigured the engine and it performed way better than expected. That doesn't answer the question of why he decided to fly it personally.

Why no. No engineer has ever decided to field test their baby themself. That's utterly not normal.

[CaptainChewbacca]

He reconfigured the engine and it performed way better than expected. That doesn't answer the question of why he decided to fly it personally.

Why no. No engineer has ever decided to field test their baby themself. That's utterly not normal.

You've got that wright

[Adam Reynolds]

He reconfigured the engine and it performed way better than expected. That doesn't answer the question of why he decided to fly it personally.

Why no. No engineer has ever decided to field test their baby themself. That's utterly not normal.

You've got that wright

The difference is that the Wright brothers couldn't really hurt anyone other than themselves if they failed. Someone dealing with the type of energy portrayed in this story should certainly be regulated by a government.

[Gaidin]

You think government regulation for engineering field testing would've made a bit of difference in "Oh crap, I wasn't expecting that!"? And you think anybody but the designer would be more qualified to test the system themselves?