How Fast Are Spaceships In 'The Expanse'?

[@ayasano6646]

Silly Scott, you know all fictional spacecraft travel at the Speed of Plot.

[@fgergver]

Flynn Pierce lmao

[@ThreesixnineGF]

Every plot drive is a plot device!

[@DamianReloaded]

But you gotta twist the plot half way to the end.

[@myslmysl]

@all of aboe. Thank for the morniong smile guys.

[@xandalis]

That's probably why speed values were never mentioned in Firefly or Serenity.

[@duncanurquhart5278]

"How does the Epstein drive work?" "Very well. Very efficiently."

[@tedarcher9120]

Very easy, barely an inconvwnience

[@PixXx31]

So basically -"how does it work?" -"yes."

[@watchesfromthecloset1493]

@@PixXx31 "How does your penis work?" "no"

[@fuzzywzhe]

The Jeffery Epstein drive? It only goes up to 14.

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@fuzzywzhe It is good enough if it goes to 11.

[@dionemoolman]

What I like about the books is that they show there actually being technological development. In book 8, there’s a ship called the Falcon that can easily accelerate at thirty Gs for long periods of time. This is so intense that users have to be submerged in high G fluid and have their lungs filled with oxygenated fluid to simply avoid them being squashed.

[@GiovanniV69]

Which sounds similar to what they did in Event Horizon; crew in submerged tanks to be able to survive the drive acceleration. Otherwise it would have "liquefied your skull," as said by D.J., the trauma surgeon.

[@andrewreynolds912]

Irl liquid oxygen or liquid breathing is possible

[@reanetsemoleleki8219]

Sounds like what they did in The Forever War also. 🤔

[@king_dot]

Yeah this solution’s a much nicer one then how it’s handled in the later Hyperion books and one of the Asimov stories (Killing the crew then resurrecting them when the ship slows down to resolvable Gs)

[@nathanarbuckle3180]

Yeah but I believe a great deal of that was due to the fictional aspect called protomolicole

[@RamirodeSouza]

I really liked that they didn't use some "magical" device that generates artificial gravity, instead the ship is constantly accelerating and decelerating.

[@Jhakaro]

Yeah but to be honest, with the discovery of gravitational waves it's only a matter of time before they most likely find gravitons and learn how to control them to manipulate gravity at will so the whole hand wavy artificial gravity seen in many shows and stories will probably actually happen within the next few hundred years so for any media beyond that, their version is probably more realistic.

[@Dareyouhow]

Jhakaro Gravitational waves from my understanding dont imply the existence of any sort of gravitron though, gravity is associated with the geometry of the fabric of space, and waves can ripple through this 'fabric' rather than be the activity of some unknown particle. Of course dark matter does makes things more complicated and difficult to understand and I'm no physicist either

[@rocksfire4390]

+Sean Hughes might not be a gravitron but more alike to a warpdrive. warpping space around the craft and pushing it through time. BSG ships had this concept, they even had nice effects for when a viper warped away close to the main ship. parts of the hull where RIPPED away. the real question is, what is *GRAVITY* and what type of fuel is driving gravity to do what it does. you cannot act upon another object without some kind of exchange of energy. so where is the energy that gravity is forcing everyone and everything we know to move around space? the gravitational waves where a step in understanding this to some degree. we don't actually know anything about gravity expect that it pulls other objects towards one another. it sucks that most of us wont get to see what the future holds but at least we can still dream about it right? =(

[@Mortlupo]

Gravity is a byproduct of mass and it's interaction with space-time from what I understand. You produce gravity, however small it is.

[@seanhiatt6736]

Conventional propulsion systems like Nuclear rockets can do everything in this show. During the cold war the USA designed and did testing of nuclear rockets that could potentially reach 12% of C. These kinds of engines seem more " realistic" because we could build alot of this stuff now if money was put into space travel. However Warp Drive appears to be possible. It only seems "magical" because we have not figured out how to do it.

[@wolfbyte3171]

During the time of the Expanse, if you have a powerful telescope, you can still see his little yacht speeding away at a good percentage of the speed of light. The longest, most spectacular funeral in history. Fortunately, his plans for the drive were stored on his home computer.

[@bombingblody5473]

wolfbyte3171 but his drive ran out of fuel and would be nothing but a black dot that would not be visible

[@wolfbyte3171]

I was quoting the book, but depending on light lag, as well as the shine of the hull, he could be seen.

[@takanara7]

Maybe it just had a shitton of fuel stored on board since it was designed to have a torch engine?

[@arthurdent6256]

Sure, but it's not like he's making a course change.

[@MultiZirkon]

Did his wife get royalties from the design??

[@BradiKal61]

You scored big points with me when you referenced Niven's universe. Niven was one of the first hard scifi authors to not treat spacecraft like magic cars and took deceleration and relativistic effects into account.

[@Garryck-1]

Rubbish.. Heinlein was doing all this long before Niven even got started.

[@BradiKal61]

@@Garryck-1 Id appreciate it if you could take a few minutes off from being impressed with yourself and list some examples

[@Garryck-1]

@@BradiKal61 - Sure. But it's not myself I'm impressed with.. it's Heinlein. 1947 - 'Rocket Ship Galileo', the book on which the very scientifically accurate (for the time) 1950 movie 'Destination Moon' was based, and for which Heinlein served as a science/physics advisor. 1948 - 'Space Cadet'. (Which incidentally also provided the first inspiration for cell phones!) 1950 - (written 1949) 'The Man Who Sold the Moon'. 1951 - 'Between Planets'. 1952 - 'The Rolling Stones' (also known as 'Space Family Stone'), one of the best examples of what you're talking about. 1953 - 'Starman Jones'. 1956 - 'Time for the Stars', an excellent treatise on both acceleration/deceleration and relativistic effects on both ship's crew and those left at home. Shall I go on? Niven didn't even get started writing until 1964. Heck, he probably read all the above books when he was a teenager!

[@jichaelmorgan3796]

@@Garryck-1 did any of them realistically deal with cosmic dust?

[@Garryck-1]

@@jichaelmorgan3796 - Not that I'm aware of.. but remember, when all the above were written, we still hadn't even *reached* space. I'm not sure, but so far as I know, we didn't know cosmic dust existed at that point.

[@SoccerBoyAP]

The Expanse started out as a MMO??!!! Uhm we need that MMO, you know now that the show and books have some good popularity.

[@corumeach]

I think you can feel that in the whole setup. Politics, factions, colors, characters, their motives, everything has the depth and look & feel of a video game.

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

+Boris Budeck Bullcrap.Its just well thought out. Thats not unique to games in any way.

[@hazonku]

@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 Did the last new video game you play happen to be Pong? I don't play many RPGs because they're a huge time sink & I won't even touch MMOs for the same reason and even I found myself midway through the first season saying, "This feels like it was supposed to be a video game." They threw more rules, lore, and fine detail world building at us than some "well thought out" shows have done in their entire runs *cough* Firefly *cough*. Being well thought out makes for a great book, film, or show but a game is unique because it HAS TO be meticulous with its rules, details, and lore due to it being an interactive medium. In RPGs and MMOs the user tells their own story and the developers just set the stage. THAT IS unique to games. The Expanse feels VERY much like a massive well made framework of a stage meant for people to tell their own stories on and we're just along for the ride in this particularly big story because you wouldn't have a book series or show otherwise. I'd really love to see it take off to the point where they could one day revisit the original intention.

[@tedarcher9120]

That was the idea, yeah

[@nemo99nemo83]

Play Elite Dangerous gets pretty close to the theme.

[@Horesmi]

-How fast is the production of 'The Expanse'? -WAY. TOO. SLOW.

[@davecrupel2817]

AlHoresmi 1 fps

[@beaconofwierd1883]

Maybe if they hire Louise Epstein it would speed up the process!

[@To-mos]

The speed of plot

[@AQDuck]

Beacon of Wierd Too bad he fucked off into deep space...

[@beaconofwierd1883]

First off all, it's more than 100 years till he does that, secondly I said Louise Epstein, not Solomon Epstein who is some writer that's alive today x)

[@D00kerT]

It really puts the speed of light into perspective that even at one of the furthest distances one could travel in The Expanse solar system, the fastest they'd be going is less than 1% the speed of light! Unreal!

[@leroyjenkins1032]

Well to be fair, if you were going to try and go to pluto at 1g acceleration i think youd reach like 10% the speed of light at the half way mark, or something close.

[@Zacharysharkhazard]

@@leroyjenkins1032if you were to attempt a brachistochrone trajectory from LEO to Pluto at 1g, your peak velocity at the halfway point would be about 7610km/s, or 7,610,000m/s. That’s only 0.0254c, which is fucking fast, but still barely holds a candle to light speed. If you were to burn towards Pluto at 1g but decelerate at 2gs, it would only be a bit under 9000km/s, still not enough.

[@Beer_Dad1975]

According to the book Eros was accelerating at over 30g by the time the Rosi gave up the chase.

[@zedex1226]

A definitely thrilling plot point that they decided to put the rosi on auto to keep up and keep painting the target even if the crew stroked out or were poisoned by toxic levels of the juice. It came up before Holden's christ complex got tiresome for me.

[@moritzrank01]

The roci chasing eros is still my absolut favourite sequence in the whole show

[@RobertMorgan]

And it wasn't worried about stopping or slowing down, so that cuts the travel time calculation considerably, no deceleration burn.

[@maxnaz47]

@@moritzrank01 Except for he whole physics part. The Rosi crew where almost dying and couldn't keep up yet on eros, the detective dude and the chick can move freely, accelerating at over 30g's...? Kinda ruined it for me...

[@bryans6539]

MAXNAZ 47 that ruined it for you? Not the giant space rock being controlled artificially by blue alien goo? It just employs so kind of g-mitigating energy.

[@pauldonlin3439]

As an avid KSP player, I thought the same thing during the "I'll just gravity assist down to Ganymede." My thought: yeah, great, that'll take weeks, even if the moons are aligned.

[@Torus2112]

If the "18 days to cross the solar system" estimate is right then that actually makes the Expanse's history of space travel line up with ocean travel IRL. Right now IIRC it takes about three months to get to Mars, which is comparable to an Atlantic crossing in the 18th century (I do believe that if Mars was as desirable as North America we'd be there by now). They don't say how fast early fusion drives were but as you said modern ships can travel the system in times comparable to ocean voyages now, basically paralleling the impact of steamships IRL.

[@badbeardbill9956]

Actually a Mars mission may take 6 months or more to get to Mars - but the real kicker is that you have to wait for the transfer back. And that would take around 2 years. Well, it could be much less, depends on the type of mission you fly.

[@warren286]

What fascinates me is that if you could accelerate at 1g constantly, you'd reach the speed of light in a little under a year.

[@smanni01]

well... you never reach the speed of light, your velocity become asymptotic when you get close to it. So you can be arbitrarily close to c without ever reaching it. I minor point I know :)

[@thekito4623]

@@smanni01 do you know the meaning of the word "if"? He said IF you could constantly accelerate at 1g. His statement is correct in itself.

[@HeadHunterSix]

@@thekito4623 In the words of an even more famous Scottish engineer: "Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon."

[@AdmiralStoicRum]

@@HeadHunterSix a Volks wagon taxi, gives anybody a ride if they're willing to pay

[@ryanrising2237]

The Kito I think special relativity allows you to continuously accelerate at 1g from your perspective, but due to time dilation (and/or Lorentz contraction? I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but I think it’s safe to say locally people still measure f=ma) people on the outside won’t see it that way.

[@s0litaire2k]

in the books, (not sure about the TV show) ships in hard burn had periods when the shut down the burn to let the crew recover from the effects of the"drugs" and the effects of higher G forces. so travel time was in weeks rather then days. p.s. the writers did hold their hands up with the gravity assist sequence, they went with great visuals over actual realty.. ;)

[@uhli1896]

Bill Cumming from what i've seen in the show they mostly burn continously at about .3 g and higher only in situations when its necessary. Also completely shutting down the drive would probably do more harm to the crew than just burning slower because humans are really not good at being in 0g environments

[@uhli1896]

PS: scott used those .3 g to calculate the travel time between saturn & ceres so it would still be the 18 days for 12 AU

[@Thorgon-Cross]

In the show they say over and over....and over they burn at 1g! not 0.3g....why is everyone always saying 0.3g? From the books?

[@bombingblody5473]

Bill Cumming but they would only slow to about .3 or .5 of a G especially when they are going to new terra (I think)

[@gavinkemp7920]

when do they 1g in the sho?, they mention something like that for mars ships rushing to ganymede but that fairly unusual.

[@sonnder]

"It's over here..." Next time, capture the mouse pointer for this, please. :)

[@fryphillipj560]

YES

[@jonathanbush6197]

IS there an app that captures the mouse pointer? Maybe the KSP app needs a "markup" feature.

[@ddobrien1]

So annoying.... plus I never really learned what speed the ships are travelling. 10 G's guess- whatever the f*ck that means.

[@DeathlyWolf42]

@@ddobrien1 Uh... one G is one Earth Gravity... it's a standard measurement.. it's 9.8m/s^2

[@isMatvei]

@@ddobrien1 sir it looks like you just had to learn what a g was first

[@jayclyde6045]

You still have to admit, this is most likely the best sci-fi show of our generation yet! I am damn proud of the amount of study and research gone into the writing and scientific narrative of this show!

[@paveltsvetkov7948]

Did you read the books? I find them more interesting than the TV show. Althought I must admit that Amos and Avasarala are cast very well.

[@tedarcher9120]

Pavel Tsvetkov i love alex too. He's perfect. But naomi is not

[@starrychloe]

Pavel Tsvetkov - Amos is a sociopath.

[@Y.M...]

The only out of place actor is James Holden's. I mean, Book Holden is naive and reckless, but TV Holden is just trying too hard to channel those qualities and comes across wrong to me.

[@Daniel-rd6st]

I really liked Avasarala, especially when she started to curse like a sailor in season 2 :D Though funnily enough i think my favourite character was Draper. She had some scened i really liked.

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

+starrychloe No shit.

[@2sudonim]

Any ship accelerating at Mars standard gravity (3.72m/s^2) would take ~4.64 days to arrive at its destination. I assume this is the standard non-military acceleration as Belters were shown to be incapable of withstanding Earth gravity in the show and 1g was shown as being uncomfortable and possibly dangerous for untrained Martians. Because of how brachistochrone orbits work, all trips taken at this acceleration not including a coast phase will take the same amount of time. Ships are routinely shown traveling past the orbit of Neptune with payload fractions greater than 70%. This means getting to the ring wouldn't have been a months long journey, It would have taken less than a week. And so would going from Saturn to Ceres. And so would have going from wherever the Donnager picked them up to anywhere else. Any ship accelerating at 1g (9.8m/s^2) would take ~2.86 days to arrive. This means Earther and Martian warships, which all burn at at least 1g would take this long to get anywhere. It also means any vessel crewed entirely by Earthers would be almost twice as fast in transit than one with Martian or Belter crew or passengers. It also means that ships crewed entirely with Earthers would be all but immune from attack by Belter pirates as they could comfortably accelerate away from them at rates that would be legally torture to the Belter crew. This also implies that most of the Belt habitats rotate at Mars standard gravity or they would be lethal to most Belters who stepped foot on the station. it also means that Holden & Amos had been living in 1/3rd G for years. Their muscles would have atrophied to the point that returning to Earth would have been uncomfortable if not dangerous to them.

[@GergelyGyurics]

Muscular atrophy and bone density loss are discussed in detail in the books. They train using something called resistance gel to keep themselves in shape, but before landing, they do take medicines for weeks to prepare them. Naomi - and many Belters - can't enter a gravity well even with the pills. And Belters do have a disadvantage in speed, as shown when the Behemoth has to begin it's journey half done, because the crew wouldn't survive the high G burn they'd need to catch up with the Inner fleets otherwise. It's also shown when Marco has to push the Pella and her crew in a Free Navy battle.

[@SamnissArandeen]

At least Holden and Amos, having grown up on Earth, have developed the necessary skeletal and cardiovascular structure to train back up for Earth gravity.

[@XkriskrossX]

You don't need fusion propulsion to move a starship. Just Thomas Jane's concentrated rage

[@leifhietala8074]

"You're gonna need a bigger ship."

[@vaatvattamus6633]

"Stay away from te aqua."

[@HeadHunterSix]

A ship so powered would achieve acceleration that is simply... punishing.

[@redroyal4287]

@@HeadHunterSix stop. just stop. go take a walk. (that was just sarcasm about the joke... no offense intended)

[@elektra81516]

Spoiler Or his love interest that becomes a asteroid

[@phanta_rei2910]

Man you do really LOVE The Expanse. Can't blame you though.....

[@2KOOLURATOOLGaming]

phanta_rei Did you see the last episode on season 2? If so read on (Spoilers) There is a hole in the rocinante's airlock, with the little girl/blue monster inside the shipp!!!!!!!

[@wildwillly]

all the books are good except the sixth one. It is the weakest. Give them a shot tho bro.

[@JohnnyZenith]

phanta_rei It's not that good.

[@1Schnellbachniko340]

phanta_rei 👍😎👍

[@mastodon0124]

phanta_rei Best Sci-Fi show ever made.

[@Elfandspartan]

We need to clone Scott so every Sci-FYI writer can have him looking over their shoulder.

[@catoblepas2577]

Nah, make him do my maths homework

[@Duncan_Idaho_Potato]

That's the beauty of sci-fi cloning, you can do it as many times as necessary. Just don't clone a clone or you might end up with "Special" Scott. But lets face it, Special Scott would probably still be smarter than most of us, so I guess it's up to you.

[@heinyhxc]

PLEASE, I NEED HIS MATH

[@HeadHunterSix]

Scott should see about becoming a technical consultant for screenwriters!

[@davidw5993]

the best moment was when that dude got liquefied when he hit the ring barrier thank God I wasn't drinking coffee or I'd have needed a new laptop 😄

[@BlessedTea555]

David W wtf?

[@davidw5993]

@@BlessedTea555 the episode on season 3 where this pilot was trying to set some kind of record and decided to blow thru the ring and the barrier stopped him dead...literraly. he turned to jello lol was gross but awesome

[@davidw5993]

Season 3 episode 7 the very very end it's a total OH SHIT moment

[@BlessedTea555]

David W fine if you find that funny

[@richardhockey8442]

9.9 out of 10 on the strawberry jam scale

[@charlesmcmurray1616]

I could write so much on this but I will limit my response to two unfortunate issues with the Epstein Drive. 1.) Reactions from fusion consist of three basic products; protons, high energy photons, and neutrons. The protons are fairly easy to recover momentum from - magnetically focus them to the rear of the ship. The high energy photons MAY be possible to recover momentum from by focusing the photons to the rear of the ship. While difficult, this may be possible. We can currently guide X-rays with waveguides and turn them to limited degree. Maybe gamma rays may be possible someday. But the main problem here is the neutrons. And this isn't a engineering problem - this is a physics "Standard Model" problem. There is just no material that can exist that can reflect neutrons. The only way I could see to do this would be to manipulate gravity and/or the Higgs field - and if you can do that then you may not need an efficient fusion drive. 2.) How can we let these ships jet around the solar system at 1G? A constant burn to Jupiter at 1G is hitting some VERY high velocities - velocities that make asteroids look slow. Every ship in Expanse is a potential planet killer. We are worried about planes flying into buildings now days. How can we have planet killers flying around the solar system? Oh! You kinda mention this ( I say after watching your video! )

[@scottmanley]

Good points there. Glad I already made them in videos so I can look smart :)

[@charlesmcmurray1616]

I think you fully explored #1 - but I don't think you fully explored the implications of #2. Niven's "efficient drive rule" really just implied that a efficient drive became a weapon like a laser. I'm talking about the potential energy of the spacecraft. It depresses me because I can't see how such a future can come to pass unless we are controlled AI puppets!

[@achtsekundenfurz7876]

1) Aneutronic fusion, the kind that doesn't release any neutrons, or only very few through secondary reactions. It solves two issues: One, it makes efficient fusion drives (light-weight, don't sterilize the rest of the spacecraft) possible . Two, the most promising fuel is Helium-3, which could fuel (no pun intended) the next generation's gold rush. Its % abundance is lower than even U-235, but then again, the abundance of gelium is higher by many orders of magnitude. 2) Look at all those missile silos we still have. If we get cheap materials from space, orbital construction becomes easy, and we could have 1000 times as many in orbit. And because a would-be "planet killer" capsule would come in fast, we only have to put a tiny, maybe pencil-sized missile in its path to disintegrate the craft. Even smaller, maybe paperclip-sized missilets (is that a word?) could take care of the part of remaining debris that's still on a collision course with Earth or low / important orbits. That kind of "planet killer" and debris could be readily identified by sky survey platforms, essentially Hubble Telescopes. And if we hadn't relaunched the Space Shuttle program, we could have launched 13 all-new replacement Hubbles (!) instead, with the same budget.

[@hutton5740]

**SPOLIERS** Another point with Eros, I don't think that there was any intention of it slowing down, so you don't have to include deceleration time

[@autochton]

In the books, Eros makes rendezvous with Venus, rather than impacting it at hypervelocity. So assuming it would also rendezvous with Earth makes sense.

[@McCbobbish]

Hutton Cearley Also, Eros runs on SpookySpaceGoo brand SpaceMagic.

[@4tech404]

McCbobbish still, the crew of Roccinate was able to tag along but only on high G, I dont remember the actual number but we know how fast was it going so we can estimate the time it would take to reach Earth.

[@MotoGoato]

Eros was still accelerating away from the Roci when they broke off pursuit

[@corumeach]

Bad mistake by the producers. That alien goo/protomolecule stuff was destroyed by nukes and a ship drive exhaust but survived a high velocity impact with a planet... well, always as you need it.

[@nicosteffen364]

Just started watching The Expanse on bluray, i love it, even when somethings are matching physics. Anyway, its great to see that many things are accurate like repuslive breaking and debris after a ship or station got destroyed. In many shows ships just desapear when exploding, that always hurts my brain!

[@Staremperor]

one other thing about that marvelous scene with gravity assist rescue. At one point, all four gallilean moons are visible in one frame, which is impossible as 1:2:4 resonance of Ganymede:Europa:Io prevents all three to be lined up on one side of Jupiter.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

Staremperor you realize that the moon he came from was not on the same rotational plane as the other moons right? Meaning that the "resonance" has no bearing on whether he can see them.

[@badbeardbill9956]

Only two are ever in line, yes, but it may be possible for all three of the resonant moons to be on one side, with Callisto just vibin’.

[@BHFJohnny]

In the book, one of crew member of Rocinnante mentioned all the shots that missed the target. Still there. On the extreme elliptic trajectory. Imagine you get shot by a round, travelling 100 km/s say five hundred years after it was fired. Big system, lot of free space, I know. But did you see how many rounds missed? Correction: On the second thought, that is not possible. Escape velocity and that stuff. So now you get shot by something that wasn't even fired in your solar system!

[@evoluxman9935]

To quote like... Everyone ever: Space is big.

[@evanwright6244]

Possible? Yeah I guess... probable? Not by a long shot!

[@minetech4898]

@@evanwright6244 Was that pun intended?

[@olliered9924]

"Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth.That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-***** in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law? Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir! Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot! Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir! Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire a husk of metal, it keeps going until it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your **** targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a **** firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip. If you know you know

[@paulsmart4672]

There's a random event you can get in Stellaris where one of your ships gets hit with a bullet fired 100,000 years ago.

[@GDIBass]

I never realized I wanted an expanse MMO...

[@barrybend7189]

We need it to be all system compatible for all systems. Like war frame.

[@Jonny-zl1nw]

me too haha. but welll... here I go resubscribing Eve Online

[@achtsekundenfurz7876]

If anyone makes it, please call it "The Expanse: The Expansion"

[@caphalor7252]

If u can ignore the bugs Star Citizen is actually great for The Expanse fans

[@GDIBass]

@@caphalor7252 I already picked up Elite Dangerous, and am loving it

[@yomancs]

just finished the audio book, 19 hours of pure enjoyment, one week for my next audible credit, cant wait

[@xXcjmckXx]

If you reference from the books there is quite a large portion discussed about thrust speeds and distance. The third book goes pretty in depth into this kinda thing. Book 8 has a pretty cool example too

[@DanAaslandProduction]

The book Leviathan Wakes that it is based on is much better and far more accurate when it comes to the science.

[@kentslocum]

The show brushes off travel time more than the books. The books talk about it taking weeks to make some trips, on account of the ever-changing distances between orbiting bodies and the one-third g of acceleration.

[@jasonjohnson1404]

I got curious about the time dilation effects of moving at .75% of the speed of light on that 18 day trip between Saturn and Ceres. Turns out that even at these insane speeds, you would only experience about 15 seconds of time dilation for the 18 day trip. So no coming home to your 5 year old now being an adult on your long haul trip.

[@addickland5656]

actually, the events of the expanse take place 200 years from now (both showproducers and writers have said that) so the story of solomon epstein and mars` rise is only 50 years from now, right around when according to the books the stubborn colony "hit self-sustainability" (anyone else thinking that musk`s spacex vision has aims of outperforming that timeline? the expanse setting was created long before that was around)

[@nekitbobzhantsev3686]

Wait, was that a Buck Rogers reference?

[@blshouse]

Sounded like it to me too. :-)

[@Tarrax7]

It sure was and I'm so glad others picked up on that.

[@RCAvhstape]

You bet, Buck! bidibidibidi

[@FrizbyFerrit]

Dang well hope so!

[@boutinpowered8373]

How about the fact that Belters survive flights in Spaceships that create gravity greater than Earth when they can't even handle Earth's gravity. Their whole concept is that they are made for 0 G. Naomi shoulda been flattened throughout the show using the show's own story. While science can be bent for a story, they don't follow through with their own science fiction.

[@Psycorde]

8:30 - looking at this it's easy to imagine space as a liquid, strange stuff.

[@bobthompson4319]

it seems to me that alot of people forget that if you accelerate at 11gs for 37hrs then to stop you have to slow down at 11gs for 37hrs. you can't just stop on a dime from these extreme speeds.

[@delayed_control]

It's not mentioned anywhere in the Caliban's War that Alex was orbiting Celene, however the way it was narrated suggested that they got from Ganymede to Europa in something like 2 minutes, which is fishy

[@jimcricket8128]

In the books, not sure about the show (haven't watched it), you have to turn and burn with the epstein drive. That is, half way to your destination you have to flip your ship around and use thrust to decelerate.

[@CaptainPip26]

It's the same in the tv show kinda. Seasons 1 and 2 dont get it super right but 3 and 4 seem to be pretty good.

[@RommelRico]

I'm a simple man. I see "The Expanse". I like and subscribe.

[@bigearl3867]

What do they use for hull shielding? Would not micro objects be a hazard?

[@RamirodeSouza]

Speaking of The Expanse (I do realize I'm a bit late), how do you plot a path that requires you to be accelerating a deaccelerating at 1G (or at a constant acceleration for that matter)? Do you shoot straight to the target or do some eliptic trajectory? Would you have 1 or more transitions between accelerating and deaccelerating? Could you maybe show an example on KSP? Thanks and keep up with the amazing work!

[@v44n7]

Straight to torget. You can try it yourself in KSP with a high TWR spacecraft & with infinite fuel cheat. I am sure will get used to it once we got KSP 2. As someone who Is bad at math i was really suprise i came out with the ecuation to calculate how long it takes to travel from A to B with constant g

[@elheber]

All the driveless gravity assist runs (AKA "slingshotting") in the show have the pilots experience hard Gs as they whip around the gravity wells... but in reality the pilots would be in zero-G the whole time. Heck, they wouldn't even know they were cornering at all if not for windows. In a very real sense, they're basically traveling in a straight line.

[@sierra1513]

I think when the "slingshotters" are slingshotting they are actually burning when they reach the planet to alter their course for the next, although i could be wrong

[@kb5zhh]

Be kinda unfortunate if a crazy belter were to figure out how to use those engines as a weapon...

[@zacher2917]

kb5zhh and maybe steal some stealth coating...

[@suspiciousadress]

kb5zhh in 6th book they used ship to accelerate metal bars with primitive guidance system to 150 km/h for assault on shipyard

[@toddkes5890]

No stealth in space. Ships that are the temperature of ice are ~273 Kelvin, and the background temperature of space is 3 Kelvin. Now getting a chunk of rock between you and the other guy is useful (like the slingshot maneuver around the moons where Rocinante nearly gets spotted by a Martian battleship), but for most of empty space tracking ships would be a minor exercise for a heat sensor and a computer

[@YodaWhat]

Todd Kes -- One does not find space ice at ~273 Kelvin. At that temperature the vapor pressure of water ice is relatively high, so it would quickly sublime away to nothing, and look like a comet while doing so. The reason there is ice in the rings of Saturn is at that distance from the Sun, the sunlight is only ~1% as intense, which would give a blackbody equilibrium temperature around 80 K. Most of the heating in the rings is due to infrared coming from Saturn itself. That still does not elevate the temperature much. At such low temperatures, water ice is hard as rock and sublimates _verrrry slowly._ As for "stealthing" a ship from the perspective of thermal emissions, there are just 2 words necessary: Polished gold. As a nearly perfect reflector of infrared, _polished gold is a terrible emitter of infrared._ As long as one has some other way to store waste heat temporarily, or radiate it on the non-stealth side of a ship, the IR signature of the ship's internal heat would be imperceptible from the "stealthed" side. Put a coating of elemental silicon (which is transparent to IR) over the gold to absorb visible light, and the gold will no longer show up in visible light, either. Such preparations are called Selective Surfaces. They absorb visible light preferentially and turn it to heat, but are terrible at radiating heat. In a sense they are 'blacker than black'. One still must deal with the heat in some way, at some time, but one may absolutely be "stealthed" temporarily. Some kind of thermal barrier would be required between space ice and the ships hauling it around, unless they don't mind wasting some of the precious cargo to unneeded sublimation. OTOH, if they don't mind looking like a comet, they could hide behind the cold ice and the (still cold) gaseous emissions from the ice. That way, they can pour all the waste heat they want to into the ice, to keep the ship cool via venting of sacrificial coolant. Most likely they would alternate between such modes, since it's notoriously difficult to keep waste heat in storage for long because of the extra mass required. Were it not for the initially cryogenic temperature of the ice, they would have to start venting coolant almost immediately they deployed the "stealth shield".

[@toddkes5890]

Then to make you happy, imagine a metal ball at 273 Kelvin. The detection range is identical The heat assumes you know exactly where the other person has sensors. Plus if you turn on the engine, your stealth is gone. Anyone can observe the thrust, the movement of the thrust, measure the spectroscope of the output, and get an idea of your mass and bearing. If you turn off the engine, the computers will still know your prior bearing and velocity, and extrapolate out your course. For a small ship they might not have the updates, but at that point you have a multi-month duration of hiding before ambushing, and that is assuming the PC ship will be in the same course your stealth ship plotted months ago. For the comet idea, most comets would be already known, so a new comet showing up would be studied. You still have the multi-month timeframe to work with, and anyone having to hide using the comet would do their best to keep others away from it so they don't spot the extra heat source inside it.

[@MotoGoato]

And don't forget that Eros was travelling (and accelerating) way faster than the Roci could handle .. even in hard burn they couldn't keep up and had to back off or risk tearing the Roci apart ;)

[@arthurdent6256]

In the book they planned to fire missiles ahead of it because they were worried it would outpace anything coming at it from behind.

[@SayBinidus]

I feel like the transit times in the expanse are way too long to be accurate. I tried the same thing as you Scott in space engine and found a 1g bakista-whatever burn from earth to neptune to be about seven days for the configuration they were in. The book has that taking a couple months at least. Even at 1/3g that's still under a month, and many ships make trips with even higher acceleration.

[@smasher123ism]

SayBinidus Consider deceleration and acceleration and position of planets as well as navigating celestial objects, fuel stops etc. They would probably have to shut down a little to cool down the engine

[@dsdy1205]

It's quite possible for the Neptune journey they weren't using a brachistochrone, just a very fast transfer orbit. If they accelerated and decelerated for a much shorter time with a long coast in between it saves gas but takes a longer time

[@josephtome9600]

Larry Niven co-authored Lucifer's Hammer, a story of a large comet strike to earth. Well worth the read!

[@caloss2]

Loving the Expanse series, I try not to break down the mechanics while watching any sci-fi hehe but it is fun to do.

[@The1stDukeDroklar]

Just binged all 6 seasons. This is the first time I have ever considered rewatching it just because I want there to be more so badly.

[@ricq]

this is the video that introduced me to The Expanse! favorite TV show, and it got me back into reading! just stopping by to say thank you! :)

[@t4rv0r60]

i love one section in "leviathan wakes" where it is mentioned that you can still probably observe epsteins ship driving away from sol, you just need to know where he is and a telescope with enough power xD

[@mingerone]

I think the books take more care with this stuff-the show speeds up the flow of time for story telling reasons I assume. It's great we have a season 3: i'd like to see your video on the realism of wormhole physics in the Expanse for sure!!

[@scottmanley]

The numbers I use are from the books, and the show is mostly faithful to those numbers.

[@bagehi]

The show creators picked a moon with a nice name, shot it all, then only later realized how far Cyllene was from Ganymede. They left it in, accepting that it is a bit of a jarring deus ex machina in the series. Like Scott said in the video, it defies physics in all sorts of ways. Here's a link to the blog post: www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-losing-science-drama-finding-drama-science/

[@DamianReloaded]

I'm not entirely sure it it would feasible to physically tolerate 3 gs during 18 days.

[@PuristPlays]

Not 3 g, 0.3 g. I'm pretty sure they would.

[@DamianReloaded]

Oh silly me. ^_^

[@Sammie1053]

The Eros scenario is even more feasible when you remember that the apparent intent was a collision with earth; no deceleration required. There are legitimate plot reasons why Eros *would*decelerate but if we assume no deceleration, as seemed to be the case in the show, it would close the distance in much less time.

[@arthurdent6256]

The protomolecule isn't great at half measures.

[@wb6anp]

I have heard about Expanse, have not read the books or seen the show, My guess would be to read the books first?

[@bombingblody5473]

Hawkertech read the first book it's the best

[@motokid6008]

No sorry I gotta say watch the show first! I did this with a few series based off books. Read the books first... then all i could do when watching the show was criticize it for what it cut out from the books. It ended up ruining it for me. So definitely watch the show first. Then start read the books. Because then its a matter of all this addition, more detailed content and it actually improves your experience with the series. For instance Game of Thrones. Watched the show first then when going to read the books i was amazed and delighted at all these extra characters, scenes and bits of dialogue. Where as if I had done that in reverse I would've been disappointed to find those characters and scenes aren't in the show.

[@uncleelias]

I've read all of the books before the shows. I've enjoyed both. I'd advise anyone to simply remember that TV and movies are "adaptations" of original works. Even movies of Shakespeare's plays are often different. As far as spoiling one medium over another, I prefer spoiling the simpler one. Surprises in books make a greater impact for me. It may be different for others. Everyone should figure that out for themselves.

[@barnmaddo]

Doesn't really matter, both are great. Personally I found the books overly complicated (like Game of Thrones), and burned out after the first three. I preferred the TV shows streamlined story telling.

[@RCAvhstape]

My policy: always watch first, then read. That way you won't get upset when the show/movie doesn't match the book.

[@Poklaz1]

Scot Manly I want you to be the pre-production scientific accuracy checker of new scifi shows!

[@user-mt4zr5kp7h]

I wonder what his time dilation would be at that speed...

[@jackflap]

I think not very much. Time dilation only occurs as you approach the speed of light (I.e. 0.9c and above)

[@MichaelNNY]

@@jackflap Nonsense. Time dilation is a curve, not a wall you hit. Dilation has been proven with atomic clocks in orbit. Now, MEANINGFUL dilation, sure. Need to be going pretty fast...

[@J.D....]

@@MichaelNNY At 5% the speed of light time would be at 99.87492177719089% (where 100% is normal time).

[@TrueThanny]

@@MichaelNNY That's not due to velocity, but due to less gravitational force. And it is very meaningful with global positioning systems. That time dilation has to be accounted for in order to get an accurate position.

[@HeadHunterSix]

@@J.D.... Doesn't sound like much but that is nearly 11 hours a year.

[@pieppy6058]

This man has an intuitive idea of the distance between stars because he played elite

[@timothymclean]

Out of curiosity, did you use Newtonian equations for kinetic energy or Einsteinian ones? I think the upper range of your calculations are starting to get to the point where the difference between them is greater than a rounding error.

[@scottmanley]

5% of the speed of light has a tiny lorentz factor - 0.125% so it doesn't make much difference.

[@bombingblody5473]

Scott Manley wouldn't Venus getting hit with an asteroid that size destroy the planet? also have you read the books?

[@gajbooks]

Assuming it didn't slow down, definitely. It would have kinetic energy about equal to the yearly energy output of the sun, around the mass energy equivalent of Saturn's moon Prometheus. (Assuming it was only .5 AU from Venus.) If it slowed down to a standard asteroid speed, then no. Asteroids can "destroy" Earth because they mess up the biosphere, not from any injury to the planet. (Venus doesn't have life in the TV show, at least, not yet.)

[@timothymclean]

Scott Manley I can never remember when that starts to matter...

[@randomnickify]

I watched yesterday's Space X launch, some of the extreme closeup shots of returning Falcon 9 are looking like something pulled directly from the Expanse, brilliant stuff :)

[@MrDisaster88]

Good thing the guys name is Solomon and not Jeffrey, otherwise you would have to name your craft "Lolita express"..

[@vrnorwaynorway6048]

o_O dark but funny i like it 10\10 would laught again

[@Jinglewooble]

Jesus christ. This comment still relevant in 2019. Get the fucker in jail already.

[@keirfarnum6811]

@@Jinglewooble Well, that aged interestingly.

[@mrgazpacho3316]

Solomon Epstein DID kill himself.

[@efulmer8675]

@Scott Manley My theory for that myriad transfers that Alex Kamal does, because he tells the computer "no engine" but he does not say "no thrusters" is that the specific transfer he calculated takes advantage of the fact that his thrusters are still working, although why the transfer still needs to be that complicated is because he needed to avoid patrols and enter Ganymede from the correct direction. But that's an ad hoc theory at best.

[@sk.7452]

The Expanse is one of my favourit series!😍

[@montylc2001]

A few little minor discrepancies in the show, yes, but overall one of the best and most accurate one EVER. Take it from me, I've been watching Sci Fi for over 50 years.

[@mattthesparky]

Hi Scott, I really like the videos you do explaining what is likely possible with near future technology. would you consider doing a video on your thoughts on the breakthrough starshot project? Id like to hear what you think about what might be involved, what kind of energy resources would be required and what kind of scientific payloads (mass-wise) might be sent to nearby solar systems and in what kind of timeframes you think it might be possible.

[@erichopper4979]

One thing I'd like to point out is that Eros is moving with a drive that appears to be both reactionless and ignores the inertia of the object being pushed. So, while I suppose 10G is a valid measure of acceleration is some sense, it implies things about what might be going on inside of Eros. Anybody inside Eros likely felt no acceleration at all, for example.

[@treizTUBE]

Can't wait for the next season

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

The power requirements to accelerate Eros with 10+ G are GARGANTUAN. I always wanted to legit use that word.

[@MarcioHuser]

Too bad the mouse wasn't capture, because the "up here and down here" sound futile as there is no pointer :D

[@Romoredux]

This is a show I can't wait to just bing watch all seasons when it's finally over. I feel like I've missed sooo many details watching each episode week by week then just doing a 5 minute recap video when the new season drops.

[@B20C0]

Damn, I would've totally sold my Star Citizen stuff for an Expanse MMO :D

[@dovesk1]

The creators of The Expanse have stated that Star Citizen is The Expanse MMO, once someone mods it

[@adamb8317]

@@dovesk1 Elite: Dangerous? It's pretty close.

[@cristianlungu5732]

In the TV show, season 1, episode 8, Fred Johnson talks about how the Nathan Hale(I know I've probably butchered the spelling), the UN warship which was going from earth to Tycho station, had flipped and began it's breaking burn. ETA: 2 days. Is it possible (I didn't try it myself yet), to calculate the distance from Earth to Tycho at that moment, the entire travel time of the Nathan Hale, its speed, etc, based on this fact alone?

[@Dziki_z_Lasu]

Maybe Rossi has RCS thrusters even more amaizing than Epstin drive - metalic hydrogen as monopropelant? BTW, with fusion drive, they should have data from probes in another star systems, if maned heavy spaceship reach 5% c so a probe will do much more.

[@Leispada]

Omg! All this time binging the show I thought it would make an excellent video game, with the way the story unravels and the amount of action. Not surprised this was originally meant to be one!

[@timothyblazer1749]

I think the "water mining" thing is a bit far fetched as well. Hydrogen and oxygen are plentiful, and if you have a torch drive, you have a power source to convert any available carbonates and organic molecules, or any other hydrogen containing species, into water locally. Also, its silly to make a space station out of an asteroid if you have such a drive. You can launch materiale into space extremely cheaply, made from polymers (or whatever else we come up with) and purpose built. I suppose someone would do it as "art".. essentially a very cool piece of furniture. But it wouldn't be necessary, or desirable. If you have a fusion drive, you have fusion power. In theory, you also have elemental transformation.. which means nothing on the periodic table is scarce anymore. So scarcity is over. Manufacturing costs drop to nothing as automation takes over, AI and robots do 100% of the grunt work, and the human species stabilizes as plenty brings peace, and we are freed to do whatever we want to do with our lives. We would likely merge with our AI as well, over time. I really wish someone, somewhere would imagine a story based on this basic idea (Yes.. Ian Banks.. I know. But he still created conflict out of scarcity). Star Trek, for example, still had artificial resource scarcity to create story lines. Any conflict would be ideological, not resource driven, which would entirely change the panopoly of human experience. Power struggles would be entirely different, as scarce resources are what drives humans to conflict in general. It's written in to our evolutionary code to hoard for "bad times". But if there will be no bad times.. what happens next? No fear of loss or hunger, minimal fear of disease, and you can just go to sleep for 100 years if you don't like it right now. Would we become bonobos? Would we lose our intelligence and knowledge over time, giving everything over to the AI? Or.. would we create struggle in order to enhance our lives? Or all of the above? I can imagine a Dune-like scenario, where populations of people raise their children in harsh conditions with no knowledge of the outside civilization, giving them education in science but not technology, and may the best ones win. Or, a group of people who literally live day to day as hedonists. Another group who value exploration and novelty, And on and on. It could be really interesting.

[@manjelos]

Also, "water mining" do always bring fresh water but what happen to water that is already brought before? Just thrown away instead of recycling and used again? But space station on asteroid make sense. Ok, you can bring lot of material to build it, but inside of asteroid you are more protected from impact of micro and macro meteors. Also when they travel and calculate route, they don't know where they will hit some of micro meteorites. Just one small rock size of apple but right speed can do quite big damage.

[@SmellyBones]

You ask good questions, but the amount of text in this post could have been the first few pages of a new story. More of the same please, but with characters and a plot.

[@mrichar9]

Without scarcity,you elimenate aspiration. We would stagnate and become pawns of of AI masters while distracted by "plenty." Think "WALL-E" and the fat people on the Axiom.

[@Jhakaro]

I don't think scarcity is every going away. There's already enough food to feed everyone on the earth over their recommended calories per day for a healthy, active lifestyle but millions starve everyday. This is the real issue. War is not needed. Guns are not needed. People don't have to kill each other. People could all just work together and be kind to one another, in theory. In actuality, this just isn't practical in the world we live in. It just will never happen. The top 1% have enough money to basically pull entire countries out of poverty but they won't share it around even though, after they did, they'd still be millionaires themselves and have more money than any man or woman needs to live a healthy, well looked after, enjoyable life. Greed is the destroyer. Scarcity isn't the problem. We just think it is. If we create self replicating nanobots that can form into nearly anything, a house, a chair, a tv, a gun etc. eliminating scarcity, where do you think you get the nanobots to begin with? Or the machine to create them? To program them? Someone has to work to make those things possible. Therefore that person needs to be paid and if their work can eliminate scarcity of nearly all things, they are going to be paid exorbitant amounts. To make that money back, the consumer will pay exorbitant amounts. To get schematics for a new design of chair to program the nanobots to turn into, you buy those schematics so again, everything will be limited by money. On top of that, you invent machines to eliminate scarcity of nearly any common material or item and now millions upon millions are out of work which collapses the entire economy. There's just so much to consider with these type of things. Knock on effects no one ever thinks about. It's always easy to say, "in the future, this will happen" as a concept but really delving into what it would mean for people and society is much harder and is what separates poor or good sci fi from great sci fi in my opinion; the little details. Having plenty of something will not bring peace. Rich people have far more than they could ever need but their drive to increase those numbers never goes away, they keep pushing, more and more and more. Often they are the worst kinds of people. Scumbags don't care about nothing but their profit, it's all about the numbers and they trick, use and abuse others to get what they want. True, the more poverty there is, the more crime usually as people are forced into such a life to survive or at least they believe it's the only way or the easiest way to get by but just having a lot won't stop human nature. Greed will always play a role. There's also the issue of, if everything can be had by anyone, why bother? It's not special anymore. If everyone can get a ferrari, what's the point? People won't give it the reverence it normally has because it only has that air of superiority due to it being so expensive and rare. Lack of any scarcity makes everything mundane and boring. I mean perhaps it's more fair or helps people to stop caring about material possessions and more about their skills and life but it also sucks all the magic out of saving up to buy something special for yourself. Honestly I think scarcity will always exist, even if it's manufactured scarcity and not required because frankly, that issue plagues today's society in many ways too.

[@sgregg5257]

A question I have is why go to the trouble of trying to be accurate by turning retrograde and cutting delta-V when the whole time the ships are head someplace, they continue to poor on the delta-V? I can see why the do it to allow for gravity, but that sure is not very efficient. And since they seem to slow with the same gravity, then that would mean they would have to start to decel at the midway point in any journey. This does not seem to be the case.

[@Ivan-ir2xc]

That is exactly the case

[@spy2778]

On a 1 to 10 scale, the expanse lost at least 5 points for the simple fact that the spacecraft made sounds in space.

[@starkillerz6235]

No it does not, thats for the audeince, the only things making sound and if you lession is when objects hit things shot from things and the thrusters. The charcters dont hear sounds in space and there are multiple scence where there is no sound at all and some with only music. The directors tryed with no sound at all but it did not work. So there is limited sound in space scenes and the charcter never hear these sounds in universe.

[@spy2778]

@@starkillerz6235 hey don’t get me wrong, I watched and enjoyed all of the Expanse, but every scene with a spaceship had very clear rocket / missile / explosion sounds, which to me showed a lack of imagination. Have you seen the film ‘Gravity’? That was one of the most exhilarating space movies to date and made a great success of showing the audience the hostility of space.

[@starkillerz6235]

@@spy2778 again your wrong, in saying that with an absolute statement, read my comment. Also if this minor thing infulenced your rating from a 10 to 5, then i dont think you care much for the show. Lol. Well unless you jokin around, but sounds like a petty thing to judge a work on.

[@Hiramas]

don't forget that you have to add frequent periods of free fall to this. There are rest phases for the ship and crew, maintenance that can only be done in microgravity (e.g. between the hulls).

[@duranpredur1098]

Well, resting is better when your body is under Gs you experienced your whole life (0,3 for martian, 1 for earthers)

[@arthurdent6256]

Not micro grav, 0.3 was common in the books as a resting speed.

[@TheTonyMcD]

It really takes place in 2350? I imagined it being closer to 2150-2200. I guess it is kind of hard to tell just from the series. But it seems like there would be a lot more infrastructure way further out into the system after 150 years of the Epstein drive, plus the 150 years before the drive was invented (assuming we start colonizing by 2050). I mean, the first working railroad was built in 1806, look at how far we were by 1956! Next look all the way back to 1656, Isaac Newton would have been 14. That is the same kind of time scale we are talking about, the beginning of our understanding of gravity, to our ultimate defeat of it with Sputnik/Gagarin/Apollo. So if we assume extra-terrestrial colonization starts by 2050, I think we should have achieved much more by 2350. Just to be clear, I don't really have a problem with the first half. I can feasibly see it taking 200 years from now to develop something like an Epstein drive. But once we have that technology, once space travel becomes THAT cheap, it opens the flood gates. That 150 years should have seen tremendous expansion and the human population should have absolutely exploded, dozens maybe even over a hundred billion people by that time. Also, did they ever recover Solomon Epstein? I assume that he had kept notes or something about his drive and told his wife that he was taking it for a test. When he didn't return, she likely gave the notes to somebody capable of furthering his work. But to actually retrieve him or the ship would have been a challenge. He was only at Saturn when his ship ran out of fuel, but at ridiculous velocity. On top of that, they'd still have to build a drive to actually get him (or tweak an existing one, whatever he did to his). Would be a daunting task for sure. It would be cool to see the math on that. If somebody left in 2350, how long would it take to get to Solomon at 1g of acceleration. What about 2g? That might be long term survivable for smaller people without a lot of physical exertion. What if somebody had left earlier? Assume 20 years for people to discover, build, and gain a certain nostalgia for the drive, at least enough to want to retrieve him. How long would it take them to retrieve the ship in 2220 at 1g? 2g? (And obviously this should include flip and burn halfway and whatever other adjustments are needed to actually match his velocity) Lastly, the difference is probably negligible just because of how far he is / how long it's been, but how much longer would the trip back be? Solomon accelerated at 11g for 37 hours which means he is traveling at approx 14,400 km/s or ~5% the speed of light (not accounting for relativistic affects). So, at 1g or 2g, how long would it take to dump all that velocity and retrace the distance covered? Oh, actually lastly, how much time would the travelers actually have experienced? This is likely to be a small difference, but I would like to know. What was their peak velocity? It would have to be a significant percentage of the speed of light (although for most of the journey they are going much slower). Thinking about it, this would probably be a very difficult equation to construct. To make it easier, assume endless/weightless(or unchanging weight) fuel supply, constant acceleration/deceleration. But what about Solomon? He's been traveling at 5% basically his entire journey, that would be much easier to calculate.

[@70briareos]

""A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." Holy crap. That reminds me so much of the Wave Motion Engine from "Space Battleship Yamato" ("Starblazers" to our American friends). The Engine powered the FTL propulsion of the ship and also the famous Wave Motion Gun. Basically the Yamato (Argo) is a double-ended Wave Motion Engine; one end moves the ship to FTL speeds and the other end kills anything in its path.

[@101m4n]

Am I the only one that was annoyed by the last episode with the fkn slingshot thing around the jovian moons? Moving back behind the moon because there was a martian ship there? Come on..... Never heard of momentum?

[@Empiro3]

Minor spoilers: in book 4, it gets established that a civilian freighter took 18 months to travel about 5 light-hours. That's an average speed of 114 km/s. It takes under 11 hours to accelerate that at .3G, so most of the trip was at a constant speed in 0-g. For reasons established in the book, the ship also would have needed to stop once in the middle. If you assume that the ship also has fuel to get back (so accelerating ~114 km/s 8 times total), then it establishes that the total delta-V of the ship is around 1100 km/s (if it were much higher, then you'd want to use it to shorten the trip of 18 months). It's also possible that the authors didn't really think that much about how much delta-V the ships really had, and wanted a long travel time for the purposes of plot.

[@corumeach]

using a simple excel sheet to produce consistent numbers was obviously too much to ask of them. back in the days writers did some research on their topics. it seems all the research they did was playing some video games.

[@dagonofthedepths]

I guess there is a fine line between how accurate science can be before it cuts into the drama in any show

[@manictiger]

Same with military. Reality is so much slower than T.V. You don't see the 200 days of soldiers digging ditches or sitting around doing nothing, or the dozens of minutes it takes to ensure a complex craft is safe to launch. You just see the pew pews and the bang bangs. Even the politics are interesting in T.V. IRL, it's 2 hours of bullshit and 5 minutes of useful info.

[@AlaskaFinal]

Ever heard of *"Earth & Beyond"* ? The faction break-up in that game was similar to the Expanse: Earth vs Mars vs Outer Planet (Jupiter mostly) The flavor text of the various space stations and asteroid outpost imply societies pretty similar to what we see of the Belters. Then there are the Bogie; who pretty much are the Belters, except, living among Alpha Centauri.

[@corumeach]

It's more like western block vs eastern block and some poor workers caught in between. They even give the factions blue and red colored visors like in any other video game (Command & Conquer?). What does that tell us about how educated the authors think their audience is?

[@errinwright]

Back here again because I finished Season 4 ahh.

[@NathanChirnsdie]

I've heard you wouldn't even need a fusion reactor to get the energies required for a drive like this, fission would be just fine. The main problem would be the heat these reactors generate. A significant portion of your crafts mass would need to be radiators or you would turn to slag as soon as you turned the reactor on.

[@Ancientreapers]

Overall so far, The Expanse does a good job in balancing real world science and physics while remaining entertaining and not boring the normie watchers.

[@4lines633]

correct me if i’m wrong, no ship can really reach light speed because the drive should “launch” an equal mass of the ship at the speed of light (conservation of momentum) so it should have at least double it’s weight as fuel. Well that’s not really because it should also have the energy to launch that fuel (E = mc^2, basically the same quantity of mass of the fuel “launched”). so accelerate a 1kg ship to light speed you actually need your ship to be at least 3kg, but now you have a 3kg ship, so now you need +6kg and you’re now to 9kg and so on in a loop

[@mirandela777]

Even after this comprehensive analyze, I will keep my conviction about a proven fact: "The Expanse" is, by far, THE most scientific embedded movie ever made in the last 20 years. Is light years ahead of any crappy BS made by Hollywood illiterates, is a true masterpiece of modern cinematographic SciFi - all that without using "great names" from industry, and without spending billions to produce the series. Brilliant producer team, great actors, and I am convinced something else helped a lot in maintaining the amazing quality of the series, constantly, over 5 - now 6 series - the books authors worked close with the producers, and they kept an eye on detail, on the books' story, without making any concessions - preventing, like that, a potential disaster ( see the slaughter of Eragon series when a retarded producer was free to, literary, spit on the book...).

[@kedrednael]

The problem with Cyllene could be a little smaller because it is in an eccentric orbit. If the moon was on periapsis when Alex went to save his friends it would have only taken 2 months to get to the inner moons with a hohmann transfer (also tested it in space engine). Still, doing gravity assists to land on ganymede is going to be quite impossible.

[@dzbanki]

Expanse books are more correct than tv show :D

[@scottmanley]

The numbers I'm using are all from the books.

[@GunnerRA155]

That scene where Alex transfers to Ganymede I think is the most depressing bit of Sci-fi I have ever seen. The rest of the series is excellent but that particular scene made me cringe all the way back to my 2 times table.

[@dzbanki]

i dont remember it being in the books but im not 100% sure

[@scottmanley]

They should have just had him chart a course where all the burns are on the far side of moons relative to Ganymede.

[@chrisrico2458]

The executive producer had a post on Daniel Abraham's blog talking about this very issue. By the time they realized the mistake, the scene was too far into production to fix. www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-losing-science-drama-finding-drama-science/

[@ApisIniustus]

For the calculation of how quick it would take Eros to reach the Earth, did you calculate it under the assumption that it would take that long if it was accelerating for half the trip and decelerating for the other half? If Earth was assuming that Eros was being used as a weapon, then they would be operating under the assumption that Eros was going to be accelerating for the entire trip to Earth (since the assumed objective was to impact as a weapon, not land).

[@scottmanley]

It's a factor of sqrt(2) so only 30% faster if there was no flip & burn. However, Julie Mao was dreaming she was flying her razorback, so it's reasonable to assume she was flying a course like a spaceship.

[@NicleT]

“The thing with accelerations, of course, they build up over time” Wuahahahaha!

[@joyl7842]

I've always wondered about Voyager-1 reaching the termination shock and heliopause of our solar system. What kind of forces/energy exist there and would they damage the little explorer? Or did it already pass these points (true interstellar space)?

[@98Mustangguy18]

2017: we’ll call it the Epstein drive, that’s original 2020: the Epstein drive, facepalm. Boy that didn’t age well...

[@quantum_chezburger2279]

You mean 2011...

[@danielpickrell8311]

202: Epstein still didn't kill himself on purpose

[@calmetosis]

Bear with me if that's a stupid question but will you be under g-force only while accelerating? Say the engines are accelerating and then it stops, will you still be under the same g-force until the ship decelerates?

[@corumeach]

yes and no. If the engines suddenly stop, the ship and crew will not accelerate any further, but keep it's current velocity pretty much forever. The gravity you experience while and because you are accelerating will be gone, too. You will float at zero-g in your spaceship that continues to fly in a straight line at speeds of dozens to hundreds of kilometers per second until it eventually hits an object (like a star). An effect you can experience every day driving a car (although at lesser speeds and without zero-g). As long as you continue to accelerate the car, you get pressed into the seat. If you suddenly take away the gas your body gets pushed out of the seat a bit (but the car instantly decelerates due to friction and the gravitic pull of the Earth below it). If the car breaks heavily you get pushed through the windshield.

[@TruculentGoose]

Fun fact, The Martian by Andy Weir is in the same Universe as The Expanse.

[@icecream3265]

No, it's not.

[@chillwestmusic]

I’m very disturbed by the amount of asteroids that come close and cross Earth’s orbit!

[@stardude2006]

I 💚 The Expanse

[@mr1enrollment]

Scott, so you have presented velocity as function of acceleration, how about the energy density of the fuel required to fly the magic drive thru these trajectories?

[@scottmanley]

See my other video in the rocket science if the expanse

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

Fusion gives a good couple magnitudes more energy dense than any chemical propellant.