The Expanse Season 4

[chimericoncogene]

Also at least one redditor appears to have been confused enough to ask reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/com ... =post_body

[bilateralrope]

Fitting the ships onto horizontal screens seems a good reason for a TV show to put the ships in that orientation. Do you know of anyone who was actually confused by it ?

Yeah, it's not an unreasonable thing to do, I understand the logic behind it, and I never felt it was unreasonable. I just found it irritating. I'm sorry if I came across too strong, but I just recoil every time I see pictures laid out like that. Gut reaction-ish. I'm probably too earthbound and prefer to see everything with a consistent direction of "up" instead of floating around.

So how would you orientate the ships of Babylon 5 ?

Ships which have large spinning sections to generate gravity.

[chimericoncogene]

So how would you orientate the ships of Babylon 5 ?

Ships which have large spinning sections to generate gravity.

Horizontally. Spin gravity direction towards tops and bottoms of the screen. They never show control rooms in zero gee, or use zero gee compartments much, don't they? (I'm too young, and never saw B5 in its heyday). Yeah, not all of the drum will be oriented correctly, but enough of it will.

Or maybe horizontally on the float, vertically under thrust (since the ship is mostly built like a tower apart from spin section). Did B5 ever have thrust gravity... Nah. It would have been to their backs.

Horizontally.

Expanse ships other than Behemoth don't spin much, so the problem is kinda less of a thing.

I'm of the view that idiotproofing the visuals for the kids aged 3-10 is important, but that's just me. I did find at least one confused redditor, link to the relevant thread in the post before yours. The comments on that thread echo a little what I've been saying.

[Knife]

I'm of the view that idiotproofing the visuals for the kids aged 3-10 is important, but that's just me. I did find at least one confused redditor, link to the relevant thread in the post before yours. The comments on that thread echo a little what I've been saying.

Is this show oriented to that demographic? I somehow doubt that and even if true, that is ridiculous.

I mean, I guess you're free to obsess over what you want to, but this seems so trivial. The show definitely goes out of it's way to work 'hard sci fi' in it. But, basically, you're saying they should have depicted all ship scenes with the ship coming out of the bottom of the TV screen and fly up to the top to reinforce a theme of the in universe rules?

[chimericoncogene]

Is this show oriented to that demographic? I somehow doubt that and even if true, that is ridiculous.

I mean, I guess you're free to obsess over what you want to, but this seems so trivial. The show definitely goes out of it's way to work 'hard sci fi' in it. But, basically, you're saying they should have depicted all ship scenes with the ship coming out of the bottom of the TV screen and fly up to the top to reinforce a theme of the in universe rules?

The upsides are minor, but so are the downsides. Worst case, you lose a few small money shots. I'm not saying "always", I'm saying "more frequently".

Yeah, I know what the show's demographic is. But kids watch TV too. People who don't pay attention watch TV. Visual storytelling requires some idiotproofing. 6-year olds watching TV is how you reel kids into sci-fi. If kids can be reeled into hard sci-fi, all the better.

I keep telling you, it's not a showstopper, but it would have been a nice touch to aid the less attentive. It was a mild suggestion borne from irritation, not something I would deduct a lot of marks for. Minor modifications to TV shows are not exactly a controversial topic.

[FaxModem1]

Moving onto a more broad topic. Is the season's Earth plotline, with the election, meant to be a strike against populism, or not? Or just a broad corollary to today's issues? Because there's clearly a parallel there between wealthy elites and career politicians arguing for the status quo, while an up and comer politician, from the lower classes, is advocating for solutions to help Earth out via shaking up things and advocating colonization.

If I didn't know this was based on a book series, I'd say the new Secretary General character was a bit of a parody of AOC.

[chimericoncogene]

Moving onto a more broad topic. Is the season's Earth plotline, with the election, meant to be a strike against populism, or not? Or just a broad corollary to today's issues? Because there's clearly a parallel there between wealthy elites and career politicians arguing for the status quo, while an up and comer politician, from the lower classes, is advocating for solutions to help Earth out via shaking up things and advocating colonization.

If I didn't know this was based on a book series, I'd say the new Secretary General character was a bit of a parody of AOC.

Well, if you've read the books, it all becomes irrelevant pretty soon (and becomes relevant again a few books down the road).

But yeah, there is a streak of that in the overall picture. History rhymes, even in (and especially in) fake fictional history.

But I think the primary theme of the central conflict is government responses to technologically-induced social/geopolitical change, and the political responses therefrom.

"AI" (the current scare), the internet, nuclear technology, and the interstellar gateway network in the Expanse are all highly disruptive technologies, with immense potential benefits and unknown/poorly-understood but extremely scary potential risks, as well as geopolitical change. Governments need to decide how to respond to these technological changes.

Nuclear technology brought the promise of limitless power coupled with the threat of nuclear proliferation to every developed nation on the planet, and by extension the existential threat of massive nuclear war. In 1960, before the Nonproliferation treaty, people thought there would be twenty nuclear weapons states by the year 2000. Geopolitically, the H-bomb completely upended the planetary balance of power, allowing the US to hold off the Soviets without massive spending on conventional weapons and by some accounts preventing WWIII (which may well have broken out within thirty years of WWII had nukes not been in play).

AI brings the promise of technological plenty (for the rich only, depending on who you believe), and the possible downsides (depending on who you believe) of technological unemployment, further income inequality and mass social change resulting therefrom (also, if you ask some people, superintelligent AI killing us all). As for geopolitical implications - well, we can't let the Chinese get the lead in 5G or AI, now can we?

The Ring promises mankind a thousand empty colony worlds to settle and populate, infinite space, and infinite resources for all. It was also built by a now-extinct forerunner civilization with powerful unknown enemies which used a horrible zombie-virus to create its ring network, and is a pretty shaky foundation to build a civilization on, considering that it is maintained by alien-designed superintelligences with no user interfaces which could shut the whole thing down tomorrow. Also, something killed the forerunner civilizaton, and it's still out there (the weird blob at the end of S4). As for geopolitical implications... well, Mars and the Belt have to compete with a thousand earthlike planets as settlement and investment destinations now. Mars is already feeling the pinch, as Bobbie's spiel shows...

In either case, governments can choose to heavily restrict/heavily regulate the development of the new technology, or try to exploit it as quickly as possible for economic or geopolitical gain. Avasarala represents the former option, while the new SecGen is of the latter camp. Nuclear technology has been regulated into insignificance, and the nonproliferaton treaty worked for at least forty years. As for the current scare, "AI"... well, only time will tell if the risks outweigh the benefits, and how our societies will handle the inevitable currents and tides of technology.

As Avasarala says... only one of them can be right. She thinks it's her. She hopes its the new SecGen.

The risks of using the Ring network are existential. But then again, the same could be said of nuclear war and superintelligent AI (I do not subscribe to the idea that AI risk is a major risk, but the possibility, like that of nuclear war, exists).

[FaxModem1]

Moving onto a more broad topic. Is the season's Earth plotline, with the election, meant to be a strike against populism, or not? Or just a broad corollary to today's issues? Because there's clearly a parallel there between wealthy elites and career politicians arguing for the status quo, while an up and comer politician, from the lower classes, is advocating for solutions to help Earth out via shaking up things and advocating colonization.

If I didn't know this was based on a book series, I'd say the new Secretary General character was a bit of a parody of AOC.

Well, if you've read the books, it all becomes irrelevant pretty soon (and becomes relevant again a few books down the road).

But yeah, there is a streak of that in the overall picture. History rhymes, even in (and especially in) fake fictional history.

But I think the primary theme of the central conflict is government responses to technologically-induced social/geopolitical change, and the political responses therefrom.

"AI" (the current scare), the internet, nuclear technology, and the interstellar gateway network in the Expanse are all highly disruptive technologies, with immense potential benefits and unknown/poorly-understood but extremely scary potential risks, as well as geopolitical change. Governments need to decide how to respond to these technological changes.

Nuclear technology brought the promise of limitless power coupled with the threat of nuclear proliferation to every developed nation on the planet, and by extension the existential threat of massive nuclear war. In 1960, before the Nonproliferation treaty, people thought there would be twenty nuclear weapons states by the year 2000. Geopolitically, the H-bomb completely upended the planetary balance of power, allowing the US to hold off the Soviets without massive spending on conventional weapons and by some accounts preventing WWIII (which may well have broken out within thirty years of WWII had nukes not been in play).

AI brings the promise of technological plenty (for the rich only, depending on who you believe), and the possible downsides (depending on who you believe) of technological unemployment, further income inequality and mass social change resulting therefrom (also, if you ask some people, superintelligent AI killing us all). As for geopolitical implications - well, we can't let the Chinese get the lead in 5G or AI, now can we?

The Ring promises mankind a thousand empty colony worlds to settle and populate, infinite space, and infinite resources for all. It was also built by a now-extinct forerunner civilization with powerful unknown enemies which used a horrible zombie-virus to create its ring network, and is a pretty shaky foundation to build a civilization on, considering that it is maintained by alien-designed superintelligences with no user interfaces which could shut the whole thing down tomorrow. Also, something killed the forerunner civilizaton, and it's still out there (the weird blob at the end of S4). As for geopolitical implications... well, Mars and the Belt have to compete with a thousand earthlike planets as settlement and investment destinations now. Mars is already feeling the pinch, as Bobbie's spiel shows...

In either case, governments can choose to heavily restrict/heavily regulate the development of the new technology, or try to exploit it as quickly as possible for economic or geopolitical gain. Avasarala represents the former option, while the new SecGen is of the latter camp. Nuclear technology has been regulated into insignificance, and the nonproliferaton treaty worked for at least forty years. As for the current scare, "AI"... well, only time will tell if the risks outweigh the benefits, and how our societies will handle the inevitable currents and tides of technology.

As Avasarala says... only one of them can be right. She thinks it's her. She hopes its the new SecGen.

The risks of using the Ring network are existential. But then again, the same could be said of nuclear war and superintelligent AI (I do not subscribe to the idea that AI risk is a major risk, but the possibility, like that of nuclear war, exists).

It's worth noting that it isn't technological, it's cultural. Only the Mormons funded an exodus ship(that was promptly stolen by the Belters, but alas). There's really no reason, unless the UN is poorer than the Mormons, couldn't do the same and fund several Ark ships to give humanity a chance beyond the solar system and help with the excessive overpopulation on Earth.

The ring system is just the same potential solution, only faster.

But if they did that, the UN wouldn't have millions of people to throw at problems whenever.

[chimericoncogene]

It's worth noting that it isn't technological, it's cultural. Only the Mormons funded an exodus ship(that was promptly stolen by the Belters, but alas). There's really no reason, unless the UN is poorer than the Mormons, couldn't do the same and fund several Ark ships to give humanity a chance beyond the solar system and help with the excessive overpopulation on Earth.

The ring system is just the same potential solution, only faster.

But if they did that, the UN wouldn't have millions of people to throw at problems whenever.

That ship was ludicrously expensive, and would have transported only several thousand people to ACA over a hundred years.

Generation ships are hardly a solution to overpopulation, nor was that one generation ship threatening anyone's position in the Solar System.

The Mormon ship would have changed nothing. A hundred Mormon ships would have changed a lot more - they would have been a military threat, and any Great Power capable of churning out a hundred generation ships a year would have the ability to build a thousand warships a year. So everyone would have been building generation ships to keep an industrial base up for diversion to war if necessary. If the Belters had tried to put up a generation ship program - no way, Jose. Too many fusion torches, unless the designs they used were intentionally demilitarized.

A way to cheaply settle the stars with existing ships within a few years - and a bunch of pre-picked habitable star systems filled with alien technology at that - is a completely different ball game.

It was mostly technological, interacting strongly with cultural factors.

[FaxModem1]

It's worth noting that it isn't technological, it's cultural. Only the Mormons funded an exodus ship(that was promptly stolen by the Belters, but alas). There's really no reason, unless the UN is poorer than the Mormons, couldn't do the same and fund several Ark ships to give humanity a chance beyond the solar system and help with the excessive overpopulation on Earth.

The ring system is just the same potential solution, only faster.

But if they did that, the UN wouldn't have millions of people to throw at problems whenever.

That ship was ludicrously expensive, and would have transported only several thousand people to ACA over a hundred years.

Generation ships are hardly a solution to overpopulation, nor was that one generation ship threatening anyone's position in the Solar System.

The Mormon ship would have changed nothing. A hundred Mormon ships would have changed a lot more - they would have been a military threat, and any Great Power capable of churning out a hundred generation ships a year would have the ability to build a thousand warships a year. So everyone would have been building generation ships to keep an industrial base up for diversion to war if necessary. If the Belters had tried to put up a generation ship program - no way, Jose. Too many fusion torches, unless the designs they used were intentionally demilitarized.

A way to cheaply settle the stars with existing ships within a few years - and a bunch of pre-picked habitable star systems filled with alien technology at that - is a completely different ball game.

It was mostly technological, interacting strongly with cultural factors.

Wasn't most of that expense Fred Johnson billing them for space station facility construction? Basically billing the Mormons for upgrading his entire space station into a 1st class spacedock? As part of a plan to make the Belt independent of Mars and Earth?

While the UN would have to eat the same kind of costs, they would be having said facilities already developed anyway. They could still have been building at least one generation ship every decade or so if they wanted to. A second lottery to their job training lottery. Plus, it would have opened up new jobs and new spots, as there would be all those jobs needed for spaceship construction.

[chimericoncogene]

Wasn't most of that expense Fred Johnson billing them for space station facility construction? Basically billing the Mormons for upgrading his entire space station into a 1st class spacedock? As part of a plan to make the Belt independent of Mars and Earth?

While the UN would have to eat the same kind of costs, they would be having said facilities already developed anyway. They could still have been building at least one generation ship every decade or so if they wanted to. A second lottery to their job training lottery. Plus, it would have opened up new jobs and new spots, as there would be all those jobs needed for spaceship construction.

Even if Fred was overcharging the Mormons, a spacecraft that can last one hundred years is a tall order, and the spacecraft was generally described in the book as being state-of-the-art.

Cost is one of the issues, but the other issue with your idea is population. A colony ship takes a hundred years to transport the children of the original colonists to Tau Ceti (apparently). How many colonists are you fitting on Nauvoo, a two-klick long colony ship massing under a "hundred million tonnes"? Ten thousand or so (from the wiki page, it's in that ballpark). My upper limit guess is 100,000 people. Maybe a million, if you have really good life support.

So... ten thousand ships to get rid of a billion people. Not exactly doable.

OTOH, consider the old people mover http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... _Transport.
Because you're not running a colony ship with limited offboard support and rescue capacity, you can really pack the people in. You can get by with as little of five tonnes of life support per sardine-packed colonist for a six month trip.

One hundred million tonnes of low-speed Ring-using colony ship would be moving somewhere in the ballpark of 1-10 million people (all these numbers are purely impressionistic). Oh look, you need 100-1000 ships instead of 10,000 ships, and because the round trip is a year, you can just build ten to a hundred ships and reuse them ten times to move 1-10 billion people offworld instead of dumping 10,000 ships into the void. You're looking at a 100-fold drop in cost and a 100-fold reduction in travel time here. Gargantuan difference.

Also, you're not sending people out into the void to grow old and die in flying retirement homes. Because that's what a generation ship entails.

[Knife]

How much did it cost for Mars? How much for the Ganymend station? Their fleet was old, but how much for the big cruiser.

Earth had the means for a generation ships as soon as it had an Epstien drive.

[chimericoncogene]

How much did it cost for Mars? How much for the Ganymend station? Their fleet was old, but how much for the big cruiser.

Earth had the means for a generation ships as soon as it had an Epstien drive.

Yeah, but there would have been little point spending similar amounts of money on another multi-century project with worse rates of return. It's the same reason space colonization is unprofitable in the real world, only translated to an existing interplanetary civilization. Plus, with a cold war on, I'm sure nobody would have been interested in spending money on generation ships instead of a Navy.

So an NGO (the Mormons) went ahead and did it for religious reasons instead.

The Ring allows for interstellar colonization at similar cost to colonizing Mars or the Belt (possibly lower, since many exoplanets on the other side have breathable air). Tau Ceti certainly might not have breathable air (I dunno exactly why they skipped ACA, though).

[FaxModem1]

Wasn't most of that expense Fred Johnson billing them for space station facility construction? Basically billing the Mormons for upgrading his entire space station into a 1st class spacedock? As part of a plan to make the Belt independent of Mars and Earth?

While the UN would have to eat the same kind of costs, they would be having said facilities already developed anyway. They could still have been building at least one generation ship every decade or so if they wanted to. A second lottery to their job training lottery. Plus, it would have opened up new jobs and new spots, as there would be all those jobs needed for spaceship construction.

Even if Fred was overcharging the Mormons, a spacecraft that can last one hundred years is a tall order, and the spacecraft was generally described in the book as being state-of-the-art.

Cost is one of the issues, but the other issue with your idea is population. A colony ship takes a hundred years to transport the children of the original colonists to Tau Ceti (apparently). How many colonists are you fitting on Nauvoo, a two-klick long colony ship massing under a "hundred million tonnes"? Ten thousand or so (from the wiki page, it's in that ballpark). My upper limit guess is 100,000 people. Maybe a million, if you have really good life support.

So... ten thousand ships to get rid of a billion people. Not exactly doable.

OTOH, consider the old people mover http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... _Transport.
Because you're not running a colony ship with limited offboard support and rescue capacity, you can really pack the people in. You can get by with as little of five tonnes of life support per sardine-packed colonist for a six month trip.

One hundred million tonnes of low-speed Ring-using colony ship would be moving somewhere in the ballpark of 1-10 million people (all these numbers are purely impressionistic). Oh look, you need 100-1000 ships instead of 10,000 ships, and because the round trip is a year, you can just build ten to a hundred ships and reuse them ten times to move 1-10 billion people offworld instead of dumping 10,000 ships into the void. You're looking at a 100-fold drop in cost and a 100-fold reduction in travel time here. Gargantuan difference.

Also, you're not sending people out into the void to grow old and die in flying retirement homes. Because that's what a generation ship entails.

Reminder that the majority of humans on Earth are living on the streets, either starving, diseased, desperate, or in need of help. Dying comfortably of old age on a generation ship as it heads towards Tau Ceti would be a huge step up for most of them. Building O'neill cylinders for Earth-loyal citizen habitation would be a step up, as would the UN government doing SOMETHING other than just barely keeping them alive on Basic Assistance, without meds, exposed to radiation, chemicals, and other problems.



Even if Nico is lying through his teeth(he might be about why he wants the drug, but the conditions people are going through sounds rather true), we see that there are a LOT of people on Earth living that way.

That the majority of people are living like this says enough about Earth in the Expanse to be terrifying, and that they're instead focusing on spending the money on engaging in a cold war with Mars(same way that Mars is focusing on their Navy instead of focusing on terraforming). So yeah, I'm rather with Nancy Gao on the UN doing more to help the people of Earth rather than focusing on Navy spending or on obsessing with the protomolecule.

[Solauren]

Everyone's caution with the Ring Gates and planets it revealed is due to said protomolecule, and the dangers it, it's creators advanced technology, and the species that wipe them out represent.

The UN is trying to figure out how to explore safely, so untrained civilians don't accidentally reveal ourselves to, or piss off aliens that actually existed and had the capacity to wipe out solar systems with the same effort we put into swatting a fly.

[FireNexus]

Moving onto a more broad topic. Is the season's Earth plotline, with the election, meant to be a strike against populism, or not? Or just a broad corollary to today's issues? Because there's clearly a parallel there between wealthy elites and career politicians arguing for the status quo, while an up and comer politician, from the lower classes, is advocating for solutions to help Earth out via shaking up things and advocating colonization.

I think this season’s storyline mostly served to give Chrisjen something to do, and to increase the internal tension caused by some later plot points. I don’t actually think it was intended to cast either side as right or wrong, or good or bad. It was just two people who honestly held different beliefs about the best direction for their polity.

Probably, Chrisjen’s attitude was always impossible I’ve the long term. Think about how much strain we have with a structural underclass anywhere from one to two fifths of the population. Now think about the strain of trying to tell a structural underclass making up 90% of your population that they can’t pursue bold new opportunities promised by your opponent because it’s too dangerous.

She wasn’t wrong. But neither was Nancy Gao. They just decided to prioritize different problems. And I think the relative importance they assigned cane from their background. Gao got off basic with some help but had to work like a dog to achieve rank. Avasarala was the embodiment of a privileged position, so much so that she couldn’t foresee how exposed attacking Gao for working the system left her own background.

If anything, this was more about showing that someone we like and trust has blind spots, and can make wrong decisions. And without spoiling anything, her defeat is a big deal if the plot goes the way of the books.

If I didn't know this was based on a book series, I'd say the new Secretary General character was a bit of a parody of AOC.

Gao is a book character, but Chrisjen is in a different position generally and especially in relation to Nancy Gao. She may have been designed to channel a little bit of AOC, but also Justin Trudeau and other inspiring young politicos. Again, and importantly, neither Gao nor Avasarala were supposed to be read as wrong. Just with different perspectives.

Well, except that the plot has already indicated they’re both too blinded by their Earthbound hubris to realize the main threat to Earth has nothing to do with immigration.