The Expanse - Ceres Station

Examining the science behind Ceres Station as portrayed on The Expanse. Careful for general spoilers! Commentary on depictions of science in this week's episode related to Populating Ceres, Artificial Gravity on the station and docking. Add your comments, observations and be sure to use this week's hashtag!
Spinning Asteroids To Make Space Stations by Scott Manley - • Spinning Asteroids To ...
CREDITS
The Expanse www.syfy.com/th...
MUSIC
Light Awash by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommon...)
Source: incompetech.com...
Artist: incompetech.com/

[@thepuncakian2024]

Keep in mind that in the expanse all of ceres' water has been mined out and given that most of ceres is water that would greatly reduce its mass, therefore making it easier to spin up.

[@matchesburn]

@@RubbittTheBruise _"Reduced diameter"_ It wouldn't be reduced. The mass would certainly be reduced, but the actual size would not be. The inside is mined, the outside shape and size stays the same.

[@Fridaey13txhOktober]

There's more, Earth atmosphere is barely 100 kilometers. If habitate A near the equator have Earth pressure, habitate B, 350 kilometers above, would have vaccum.

[@michaelskywalker3089]

If it were to be spun up that fast the tidal forces let alone the tensile forces would explode Ceres even if they somehow got the energy to spin a dwarf planet by 14 times.

[@thepuncakian2024]

@@matchesburn I never said reduced diameter. Reducing the mass reduces the amount of energy to rotate it.

[@thepuncakian2024]

@@michaelskywalker3089 That's why you would need to reinforce the structure. When they dig mines here on Earth, they put supports in the shafts to prevent cave-ins. Similarly, on Ceres, they wouldn't just dig tunnels without reinforcing them. The materials needed to reinforce them would certainly need to be stronger than the materials used in mineshafts on Earth, but I think it definitely should be doable, especially given that material science would inevitably advance 300 years in the future.

[@TimothySnowman]

My favorite detail about Ceres Station in The Expanse is when Miller pours himself a drink, but he has to pour it off to the side because the centrifugal motion of the station causes it to corkscrew out of the bottle.

[@fortuna19]

Coriolis force, not centrifugal. Besides, centrifugal force is an illusion, the proper term is centripetal

[@Ignisan_66]

Except that coriolis force here is greatly exaggerated.

[@wenzelkinsky677]

#mytheory couldn't they also put a massive gyroscope in the centre of the asteroid and us something like carbon nanotubes to hold the asteroid together

[@borisdorofeev5602]

The Guy wow I'm surprised that you have no thumbs up. That is actually a pretty good idea and the nanotubes would insure the integrity of Ceres. Given there is a cheap manufacturing method for carbon nanotubes. But if that were the case they would have no problem building the space elevators. Have a satellite in orbit with the same speed of a point and connect a chord of carbon nanotubes.

[@dismiggo]

Bo Do I don’t think the UN would want such a fragile and easily destroyable object in orbit. Especially with Mars and the OPA/Belt hating them

[@totherarf]

A basically sound idea! But you would want something a bit more than a simple gyroscope. If you simply spin a gyroscope up you would gain the momentum you impart to make it spin and that is your lot! What you want is to spin a gyroscope up fast and then to import a torque on it sideways. Precession. would then force the 'scope to move in a direction at 90 degrees to the torque applied. This torque would then be imparted to Cress which would then spin a tiny bit due to this force. Many gyroscopes (in the same axis) and much force over time would work ;0) The centripetal force would easily cause ice to shatter way before a usable psudo-gravity was achieved. the most efficient way to prevent this would be to band Cress round the equator and a fair way to the poles with a network of cables under tension. The tension would be needed to stop the ice shattering to expand to the width of the banding! One of the other neglected areas of concern is stability! You have a sizable mass spinning and you also have ships docking at the equator where their mass would basically cause a wobble to start. You could use this to adjust itself by having ships dock at certain parts of the equator ..... but it would make much sense to not cause the wobble in the first place by docking near the poles. Ballancing internal mass to stop the same problem would also be needed but this could be effected by having water pumped to various strategically placed insulated tanks within the ice giving you an easily automated controlled balancing system. ....... Or you could use some of those spare gyroscopes and alter the torque to ballance the wobble!

[@dartmada9733]

#MyTheory they could've reinforced Ceres prior to spinning it up. When they were hollowing it out and building all those tunnels that people live and work in and those tunnels that those tube trains go through, the tunnels could act as a reinforcement mesh to keep it from flying apart once it was spun up. Something like that using say carbon nanotubes is doable. And the spin that gives it 0.3 gravity is likely the maximum speed it CAN endure without it breaking apart

[@BromidicCompound]

In the book it was mentioned that the lowliest of Ceres occupants had 'holes' in the walls of the large corridors that were used to speed up the asteroid.

[@DrIcchan]

#MyTheory preservation of angular momentum? Maybe they dug out enough mass near the surface to move center of mass closer to the core and that would explain part of the spin speed. Similar to how figure skaters control the speed of their spin by stretching their arms and legs outward or inward.

[@thomashiggins9320]

The TV show draws heavily from the book series that started to be written about 10 years ago, based on some research done by one of the authors a bit before that. Back then, the idea of spinning up asteroids was getting kicked around, a lot, so it's not surprising that some science fiction authors included the idea in the setting. As it turned out, the idea simply isn't practical, for the reasons listed in this video. No matter how big Ceres might be, or even if someone melted the outer crust, spinning it up fast enough to produce one-third gravity would tear it apart. A much more practical idea would be to hollow out large caverns 30-35 km long and 18-20 km wide. Use the materials mined to build a couple of counter-rotating O'Neill Cylinder habitats, inserted into those artificial caverns. If each cylinder in the pair is 30 km long and 8 km in diameter, they could rotate 28 times per hour to produce one gravity, or nine times per hour to produce one-third G. We can do such engineering now; it's just prohibitively expensive. This method produces little in the way of coriolis force; gives an amazing amount of living space; provides easy access to the inside of Ceres to support mining operations; the rock surrounding it provides ample radiation shielding; and the structures that connect the two cylinders in each habitat mean the counter-rotation of each member of the pair cancel out any torque that could stress the connections to the larger asteroid. Moreover, the volume inside of Ceres is large enough to produce hundreds of such habitats, which could house tens of millions of people, in comfort. Each one built can provide the labor and support that reduces the expense of the construction of those that follow. The Expanse reflects a lot of the popular science of the day, and it gets an amazing amount right -- despite the fact that the authors quite frankly state it's space-opera disguised as hard science fiction. But, as with any science fiction, it reflects the thinking of the time, and that means some bits don't stand the test of time, very well. The notion of spinning asteroids is one of those ideas that didn't stand up very well, but at least it was a good effort. Moreover, it doesn't really detract from the show, at all, and provides a foundation for an interesting discussion about better ways to do things. :)

[@ferboten2286]

I could be wrong but from the books I thought they basically got Tycho to strap a bunch of drives to the surface and spent years firing them in order to spin it up. Would be interesting to see what kind of energy and how many drives it would take to do that.

[@LetsDoTheScience]

See the Scott Manely video I linked in the show notes, he does a great job with that math. It's in the millions.

[@roknor]

#mytheory instead of spinning the whole planet (I know it is clearly stated in the book that they did coax it up to speed), they could of mined out a tunnel around its equator. Then build a ring inside that tunnel and spin the ring instead.

[@LetsDoTheScience]

That would seem much more sensible to me yes. :) In the setting they seem to have the issue of radiation exposure solved, but one would think an internal ring like that would protect against that and micro-meteors very well.

[@nehorlavazapalka]

they've build fusion reactors and used gas core engines, that's how Ceres lost most of its water.....!!! (unreal physics mode)

[@Greg-ku7rn]

They would have to have accalerated the ring up to insane speeds, then either ejected it from ceres or kept it spinning at mach 100 forever. It would also have to be made up of some kind of invincible material or centruifigal force would have shattered it.

[@nehorlavazapalka]

the ring does not have to be at the equator or it can be even inside, so you end uo with km scale rings, not equatorial rings you likekly have in mind

[@phuturephunk]

It's an interesting concept but the internal map of the place means you'd have this giant rings that would have to be put on some sort of insane gimbaled bearing structure thing to allow it to rotate freely irrespective of the rotation of the planetoid.

[@macavitythemysterycat]

I believe there is a note somewhere in the expanse about them using orbiting mirrors to melt the surface together into a glasslike structure to give asteroids more surface strength in order to spin them up. with such vast reserves of water, could they use vented steam jets drilled around the perimeter as thrust, like Hero's aeolipile?

[@LetsDoTheScience]

Thrust is a dicey prospect, see the Scott Manley video on engines and spinning it up. Could be though, who knows.

[@sparrowlt]

In the end it would be much much more practical to simply make a spinning station like Tycho bur much bigger.. wich also being with a really big ring would need to spin slower and could be spun to 1G so belters being born and living there wouldnt suffer from the low gravity isssues.. that station would require much less overall "energy" and resources than spinning ceres to 0.3G outward aceleration and begin digging "upside down" upwards

[@johnpatz8395]

It would have to be one hell of a habitation ring to support over 6 million people.

[@TAKIZAWAYAMASHITA]

@@johnpatz8395 not really just make an oneil cylinder and in the expanse they the resources and tech to build far much bigger and better projects an Oneil cylinder can easily house about twice if not more than the population of ceres

[@johnpatz8395]

Yeah, but again it would need to be a very large cylinder, sure in the series they "have the tech" I was simply commenting that this isn't some little undertaking, every rocket ever sent into orbit from our planet wouldn't even come close to being able to carry about enough supplies to even start such a project, little lone finish it. I'm not saying at some point it wont be possible, just that it would be a massive structure, hell just the housing area would be massive and it would likely take far more room for all the life support and mechanical/electrical equipment then would be needed to house that number of people. Just one example, if they wanted to be self sufficient for food the current estimate is that it takes one acre to feed a person for a year, but even if advances decrease that 1 1/60th it would still be at least 100,000 acres of farming, which is over 156 sq miles to feed those 6 million people.

[@astrophonix]

Step One: Bury Chuck Norris in Ceres. Step Two: Talk shit about him not being much of a fighter until the torque produced by Chuck spinning in his grave speeds up Ceres to one revolution every 40 minutes, which would take about five minutes.

[@murvo]

My take on Ceres was at the point the novels begin, it's more space station than actual dwarf planet anymore and held together with so much interlocking construction and metal that spinning it up really wouldn't tear it apart. Just my imagination while reading though :)

[@EricTrang]

According to one of the authors, first step of building Ceres station is to melt the surface, and let it reconsolidate into a much harder shell. second step is to get rid of its most inner mass (namely waters). Then, third step is to figure out a way to spin it faster.

[@LetsDoTheScience]

I think it's fair enough to say it's an interesting narrative location. To me, none of that seems to indicate the kind of structural engineering that would be needed to holed Ceres together.

[@MikeAben]

#mytheory I like your modified YORP idea. Much better than strapping on engines. As for it holding together, I believe +Macavity TheMysteryCat is right about the show notes pointing to melting the surface. I believe Ty Franck has mentioned much the same thing in interviews. Unfortunately, this presents another problem, it would take at least hundreds of years for Ceres to cool down, unless ... Steam was mentioned. Venting steam could carry away heat. Maybe that's what happened to the last of the water on Ceres. That said, would it be enough? Another possibility is that there exists some future material that is really good at radiating heat away. After all, most of the ships carry around a nuclear reactor with no visible way of radiating heat apparent. Awesome episode once again. You've quickly become one of my favourite follows.

[@macavitythemysterycat]

Melting the surface and boiling the ice/water for steam reaction mass at the same time. I like! Such steam might even crystallize and eventually condense as snowfall - much like the cryovolcanoes of Enceladus

[@vladdrakuul]

I also like the yorp idea but there is an other force at play here and that is the fact that this planet lost 1/3rd of its mass that means without help to keep angular momentum it would spin 3*faster so the energy to speed it up is lovered and the mentionned Yorp effects can take place

[@antred11]

I wish the show concentrated more on artificial habitats like O'Neill cylinders and Bernal spheres, as these are much more within the realm of our technological abilities than hollowing out huge (relatively speaking) celestial bodies like Ceres.

[@martintheiss743]

i agree one should take into consideration something like Star Trek 2 and how long corps of engineers would need to hollow out a fair sized scientific research station. Granted the UN high command had such an option. (I laugh sometimes thinking of the United Nations getting so much authority on Earth.)

[@lmlmd2714]

My assumption was always that Ceres isn't completely hollowed out (it's population is only 6mln, and from what we see, hugely overcrowded) but rather that most of the old mining tunnels and caverns have just been re-purposed and expanded a bit. It's unlikely in the political-cultural milleu of The Expanse that what we see on Ceres was the result of a deliberate, systematic fixed term plan, and rather just a haphazard compilation of different developments that have evolved overtime in a rather inadequate whole.

[@Greg-ku7rn]

It seems far more likley that they hollowed out ceres first, mined it to the core, then spun it up. If you look at the UN gardens you see vast networks of white structures extending far into the distance. Those structures might be providing the structural integrity required to prevent a hollow Ceres from spinning apart, and make it lighter. If this was all real I assume the situation goes something like this: Step 1: Mine vast quantities of mateial from Ceres. Step 2: Eject the rock/ore into orbit from the surface of ceres to be collected by ships. Prevents ships from needing to have landing capababilities. Recoil would accalerate ceres. Step 3: Fill the vast gaps of space inside Ceres with large lattice structures to prevent the planet from spinning apart as it accalerates. =Repeat untuil Ceres has been mined to it's core= Step 4: Fill it with air Step 5: Inhabit. Though if this is all true then the obvious question becomes "why bother in the first place?". Just build a massive spin station since you are going through the trouble anyway.

[@waterdamnaged]

It's taken a few of these videos to make me realize that the books described the entire Asteroid being spun up, and not simply "The Staitions" built into them. I originally read it as the asteroids being "hollowed" out and the station built into the negative space being a cylindrical wheel spinning inside while anchored to the rocky body surrounding it. *Not literally the entire asteroid spinning!* I guess I just omitted the pertinent information which would have confirmed the scenario being described because spinning the entire asteroid was ridiculously preposterous to me, and obviously my comprehension of the author's words was in error. I unconsciously rewrote the scenario in my mind, to describe a scenario I could comprehend as being plausible rather than have my entire illusion of this fictional world collapse under the absurdity in one minor detail of it.

[@BrandonPooley]

I really like that you consider 'narrative concerns' when it comes to these details. I often find that real-world scaling/effects seem absurd to most sci-fi viewers. I remember getting in a bit of an argument over the line in Neuromancer alluding to '3mb of ram' being impressive--in the eighties, when it was written, that was like saying 3tb today. Anywho, here's my thoughts on the technical aspects of the series: Spinning up asteroids is a bit of a blunder on the author's part I think, Ceres does have some gravity--given a person would weigh only a few kilos, but with a heavy lead vest and other weights you might double it. .3g is a lot more than I'd think is neccessary, since we've seen Ganymede without any 'spin' at .1ish. Perhaps it's just the author's way of normalizing things to our Earthbound understanding. The fusion reactors in ships are suggested to run on He-3, as in season 1 the Rocinante is 'pretending' to deliver it to Eros. There's no other use for He-3 in our current understanding, plus it makes sense as it requires less shielding. Also, engines that can maintain 1g.....holy crap...that's a short trip everywhere....also heat dissipation would be ridiculous. One thing that's always bothered me about the Protomolecule is its apparent defiance of thermodynamics...but it's superalien tech, so...essentially magic. What's weird is that it is inconsistent in its response to heat, sometimes they can fry it off things, sometimes it survives the multi-gigaton detonation of an asteroid impact on Venus.

[@thefoxamongwolves9843]

Yeah the spinning of Ceres sorta breaks too many real world rules for me. I lie hard scifi :p The Epstein drive was acceptable though because you can just say "it's future tech" and leave it at that.

[@augustin9270]

Very interesting as always, keep up the good work !

[@jessietheandroid]

#MyTheory There are multiple factors involved with this "spin-up". The station tunnels and infrastructure could possibly be built to assist the celestial body, increasing it's rigidity and integrity. Based on how they currently move large bodies around, it's entirely possible they did incremental burns of detachable tugboat-type ships attached directly to much older load-bearing station infrastructure. As with Ganymede Station, there are a lot of older and unused station infrastructure that could be built exactly for this purpose, or infrastructure that was later repurposed. Ceres also wasn't the first station, just a major one after humanity's first expansion out into the solar system. There were likely a lot of technologies developed after Eros was established that allowed for better, faster, and more reliable methods of "spinning-up" bodies. Among those chiefly, I assume, would be micro-gravity tunneling drills and excavation that would allow for rapid construction and deployment of load-bearing infrastructure. On a final point, it's also likely that to achieve that level of spin, coupled with the apparent layout of the station, that some part of the surface would had to have been removed to assist in balancing out the displaced mass, or otherwise relocated somewhere beneath the surface. A lot of geo/orbital/material engineering would had to have gone into it for it to ever be a possibility.

[@chriskent8519]

#Mytheory - they didn't spin it up. They just use that language colloquially to refer to the station elements spinning within Ceres (rotor decks, grav train cars on circular tracks, etc.).

[@KlaxontheImpailr]

6:30 I think they would have just built a rotating habitat inside Ceres, like Isaac Arthur says.

[@jonnekallu1627]

How to spin up Ceres? Reflectors on the surface and using a solar/nuclear laser to spin it up like it was a big water wheel.

[@circuitboardsushi]

Maybe they used Ceres' natural water for reaction mass. #mytheory

[@abrahamwilberforce9824]

If they burned all the Hydrogen on Ceres that quick, I think they will have some Energy Problems very soon.

[@Coleo20]

I really like your cargo unloading idea, and it would have practical applications in most ring stations, like Tycho for example. I might have to incorporate it into one of my Space Engineers builds.

[@vedranbileta8346]

#Ceres. Thank you for continuing making amazing material even after the show has ended its season. I am a historian so, no theory from me. But I do have a small request. Can you make in one of next episodes a video about the ships of the Expanse. As this is probably the first time in sci fi, that one can see more or less realistic ship designs and functioning.

[@LetsDoTheScience]

Thanks. The ship design and Epstein drive will be a topic for a future show. The Epstein Drive has a number of different possibilities that I'm researching. I also need to get out of this period of business travel to do a proper show. :)

[@SAINT-ANTONIO]

I think that space stations would have bright interrior enviroments, similar to some shopping mall with botanic gardens inside half submersed ecodomes, aura soma therapeutic enviroments with lots of colors to compensate the darkness of space...

[@adomalyon1]

Could you not drill down into ceres and put anchors into the rock, also these anchors could act as siphons for ceres' water, which could provide deuterium for many small fusion reactors. The reactors could power the station, and the pylons could act as exhaust vents which sequentially fire to spin up the station. I guess perhaps cross-beam pylons and a web of super-tensile nano-fibres may help stabilise the surface of the asteroid to stop it flying apart?

[@janevanessaaarons]

What I would like to know is the physics of Cariolis effect on people on Ceres. It is mentioned many times in the novel, and ones in the tv series. I guess it causes nausea and it is different in different parts of the asteroid.

[@Ifinishedyoutube]

You presented the solution in the video they took all the water off for series they also hallowed it out. Series wouldn't have nearly anywhere near the mass that it did before so spending it up would be several times easier with engines. Not to mention they constructed a station in the outer parts of series so there's a layer of ice that's no longer there which was massive so if its diameter is smaller. With it being smaller it would require less spin to produce the same amount of gravity. This also being a station the entire thing is probably reinforced so it probably could withstand the energy of the spin which is a lot less than what you said it would be.

[@FunnCubes]

#mytheory Well they do not have any hand wavy energy fields like in star trek, so in order to spin up #Ceres they can only use the light and engine approach. If I remember correctly in the book they said engines were used, but I would supplement that with an adaptive coating arount Ceres. This layer would serve 2 purposes. 1: it would hold Ceres together, probably by also being tethered to lower levels of it, maybe with thethers going through the entire planet (if the core is hot it would obviously have to go around). I would suggest this has to be made out of cabon nano tubes or such to be able to hold enough force. This would be done, so if some part of the coating broke it would not mean the whole thing just exploded. The second use of this coating would be that it either had adaptive optics or some static lense and mirror system that would allow for the following effect: When one part of the surface is traveling in a direction from the dark side to having the sun in it's zenith it would be either absorbent or make the sunlight go into the opposite side of the rotation, then after the sun passed the zenith it would be reflective. I would say the easiest way of doing this is having one side reflective, one side transparent mirrors that just rotate around. At the dark side it could be set up to radiate any heat asymmetrical, so there is an additional thrust.

[@patryn36]

You fail to remember that the proto molecule used physics beyond what they understood. The epstein drive was the most advanced tech they had physics wise, they had no field tech since it is no starwars or star trek.

[@helicocktor]

There's a Loca Griega back in Ceres. Told him, pick all the pockets you want, roll drunks, but when you mess with the water, that's when you're going down.

[@TheSpeartip]

i can spin a play ground round about quite fast, stick a motor bike wheel to and it spin very very fast. i can also spin a magnet with another magnet. counter rotation effect. imagine 2 balloons touching, magnets are like balloons, find the magnetic ballon horizon a use a particle excel orator to provide the kick. if the moon does not have a magnetic core imagine a way to create one in the center of the moon. possibly position magnets devises at the point of the clock around the equator and make a magnetic cog.

[@Tristan3D]

You got an interesting optical illusion going on in your video: When you look at the rotating Ceres for about 10 to 20 seconds, and then look to its left (where the Milky Way Galaxy band is shown), the nebulas and stars seem to move in the opposite direction of Ceres rotation. Try it - it's fun :)

[@varun009]

I like to assume that they just used ceres as a scaffold to build the mine tunnels whose steel liners serve as structural elements upon further excavation.

[@seanhanson418]

In the books they mentioned using large engines to spin up Ceres

[@TheStRyder91]

My idea would be asteroid flybys, if they propelled enough asteroids of a high mass into an orbit that would slow them down wouldn't they impart a small amount of increase if sent in the right trajectory? If they did it right they could even reuse the same asteroids or even multiple asteroids at a time like a chain on a bike.

[@modeschar]

My thoughts exactly

[@bluntman82]

cool episode

[@eurogryphon]

Everyone's a winner on Eros!

[@spokraket4236]

I Would bury a lot of iron to replace the water. A big fat iron core would do wonders to gravity of ceres

[@starkat70]

what if they just stopped the spin all together then wouldn't gravity be produced by its mass so instead of walking on the underside of the outer crust they could instead walk normal as they do on earth albeit under its crust layer?

[@draconishluot4736]

Spin "gravity" would be .3G only at the equator. The centrifugal force would diminish as you go farther from the equator. Spin centrifugal force would have to take into account the counter force of Ceres gravity gradients.

[@Species1571]

I've watched all the episodes, and I don't even remember them talking about spinning it up. Wouldn't it also have the knock-on effect of altering the orbital paths of all the other moons?

[@kiedranFan2035]

To have ceres spin up and stay together it will have to be a solid block of rock surrounded by solid ice. In the show we see rocks and ice around ceres. I Think those were ejected from the spin up but the rest of the solid material is as solid as blocks of ice and rocks on earth and so cannot fall apart. Unlike the earth it is not liquid anywhere so it could stay together. That's just my theory, if ceres is not a rubble pile but two solid materials fused together then it would work

[@Templarfirst]

I like your coating theory for spinning #Ceres .

[@netook8]

What if Ceres was reinforced. If they needed to coat it to get it spinning they would need make sure it stayed put. Perhaps some super strong and super light material being used to hold the planet together

[@CoconutSundae]

#MyTheory is that the station isn't spun up to gravity at all: a large hollow interior portion spins in which people live while the majority of the rock around it spins in the opposite direction much more slowly. If I had to design something like this I'd never spin something up with engines because, as you say, the fuel economy is never going to be worth it. However, while a 10 Mega Newton engine corresponds to our most powerful rocket launches in the modern era, 10 Mega Newton metres of torque is easily within the range of your average ocean liner engine for days at a time without any reaction mass required, especially with a decent torque multiplier. Building a very big electric motor and torquing an inner habitable section against outer rock (with no fuel at all, just electricity) is well within the capacity of modern technology.

[@thefoxamongwolves9843]

Wait, so instead of the centre being "down" like here on Earth, the centre is "up" on Ceres? Because they're using it like a centrifuge.

[@platiuscyndar9017]

Yes, that is exactly what's happening.

[@vcmdpropulsion126]

#mytheory . solar mirrors to act on one side and a solar shield to block light on the other. might be enough force to speed it up because the colective light would be acting on the whole serface

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

#MyTheory. To get Ceres' interior to 1/3 G they had to have reinforced the equatorial region before spinning it up. The surface gravity on Ceres is roughly 3% that of Earth so bits of it would have broken away stealing away angular momentum long before reaching their 33% G goal. Since they had to reinforce Ceres they probably went just a bit further and provided for numerous mounting points for Epstein drives along the equator. Epstein drives mounted to thrust tangentially to the surface (sitting on the surface like NASA tests their SRBs) then running at full thrust for a few years aught to do the trick. Unfortunately Ceres did a number on the story's believability for me. It would have been orders of magnitude easier to have constructed rotating habitats from Ceres material than to have gone through the hassle of spinning up Ceres. Loving the show. Keep up the good work. #Ceres

[@lvd8122]

Scot manly did make an interesting video on spinning up ceres.

[@marklancaster5784]

#mytheory you did it again great job hope you put out more in the next year to give me my expanse fix

[@SirAroace]

The docking bay is not at the equator, it at the pole

[@markpoidvin5382]

#1 Problem we face in colonizing space is the strong gravity we need to escape to get there #2 Problem is the lack of gravity on the things we can colonize. Spinning space stations is the only solution with known physics. Even a trip to Mars is a pipe dream, without a ship that has some spin so the crew does not look like zombies when they get there. Notwithstanding Elon Musk's delusions of grandeur.

[@patricke0n]

A focused satellite laser array and push targets all along the asteroid surface. Sci fi Lasers are always mad strong and with an array you can always be hitting an average number of targets in one specific quadrant. Spin that puppy up. #mytheory

[@t4rv0r60]

i have no clue how they could make that happen...... but i like how they talk about what i miracle it was that they achieved to rotate ceres but never talk about how. just like in the 3rd mission impossible movie where they talk about the "rabbit paw" and how important it is without even mentioning one time what it even does xD

[@aajiv1748]

For the last , about 80 years now, in prose science fiction , if one sets the scene, say 200 year to 500 years from now, that if one does not violate basic laws of physics (this is important) that a technology will be devised to solve problems like explained here. The point being that the engineering science must only shadow 'magic' solutions , too much 'magic' spoils the story. This was the operating principle of the great editor John W Campbell . For great examples see the works of Robert A Heinlein.

[@fred6319]

i thought somebody says they used all the water to spin Ceres

[@kwwiedenfeld]

A thought experiment that I've had is the manipulation of heavenly bodies with a cascading domino effect. Would it be theoretically possible to precisely move a very small body to gravitationally effect a then slightly larger body and then sequentially line up a series of orbits in such a way that they would eventually push a given body in a certain direction?

[@elliotsmith9812]

Chaotic interaction. Start with the result and then calculate the interaction that would get you there. Except... nothing "Heavenly" about it, please.

[@jollyrogercjf1]

Would it be possible to use some sort of maglev device to gradually speed up #Ceres each rotation then remove it once proper rotation is reached? #mytheory...more a question.

[@LetsDoTheScience]

Could be though the obvious power it would take would be outside our current science . Maybe in the setting there's some property of Ceres that would make that possible.

[@pschroeter1]

I love this show and recently watched all five seasons of it in three weeks. I like that they don't have have artificial gravity and powerful lasers or beam weapons. It somehow makes it feel more realistic. I'm off to look for a video that discuses how long traveling around the solar system at 1 G would work. Do you get any relativistic effects?

[@fgtypezero0684]

Superman. Backwards, forwards...just Superman your physics.

[@SGrzesiek1]

3 season is out! Please, please make some new videos!!!

[@markus3978]

At least they didn't try to put a station on Uranus

[@modeschar]

They may have used smaller asteroids to yank at Ceres to spin it up.

[@MrSupraman15]

So what happened to epstein i thought maybe he would come back having only aged a little while meanwhile 140 years later he comes back and sees what the drive has done.

[@user-fk1we3gs4d]

I wouldn't mind living there,myself...

[@CABOOSEBOB]

I just assumed they spun up a structure inside of it

[@LordOfNihil]

physics nuts have a lot of reasons why this kind of thing would be impractical, but what i really want is the structural engineer's take on this. how would you reinforce that rock to keep it in one piece? its not implausible to spin up the rock with the drives they have (though those drives too have their physics issues). thing is in hard sci-fi you usually get one bit of handwavium to drive the narrative, but then the consequences of that allow for other possibilities, like spinning up rocks. the expanse does it in a way that really follows through. not just using it to justify x and forgetting about it from there on, but using that justification to make other decisions about the setting in a way that is believable. because we have x we can also have y, z, etc. and thats good writing.

[@nsambataufeeq1748]

what if ceres was ferromagnetic?

[@rhabdoviridae]

It’s called rebar.

[@dapeach06]

You said Eros is the 3rd largest asteroid? It's not even in the top 15 or 20.

[@thothheartmaat2833]

Ceres is the size of Texas and has the surface area of India.. space Texas.. space india..

[@coffeefish]

Great video. Saw the whole thing. #mytheory

[@noahchicoine4780]

Come on, epstein drive! It's the answer to everything in this show so far.

[@PongoXBongo]

Kobe Bryant the 9th spun Ceres up on his fingertip. #MyTheory

[@aldolny7055]

#mytheory They pump iron from other astroids, hollow ceres from water except from that water reserve they tlak about, increase the mass of ceres, increasing the gravity towards center, allowing it to spin faster without being broken !

[@joke_d]

But having more mass and gravity would be kinda counterproductive. Since then you have to spin the Ceres even faster to account for the higher gravity that pulls towards the undesired direction.

[@georgelionon9050]

While the show (and I guess the books) is great about many technical details, Ceres just isn't one of them. Also the whole belt thing is way too overstated. Ceres is 1/3 of the total mass in the whole belt. The belt wouldn't be nearly as important in matter of resources as de-pictured, Ceres accounting for 1/3 of the whole wealth of the belt is way too undervalued in contrast..

[@captainjackpugh6050]

Not Mars gravity!

[@gohardgibson]

Smoking trees on #Ceres, my guy!

[@rabbidjones8174]

So it's a micro Dyson Sphere okay cool

[@michaelskywalker3089]

Why didn't they do a basic analysis of Ceres before introducing the plot line dependent on the scarcity of water on a dwarf planet composed of at least 25 per cent water? How stupid could they possibly be?

[@rock3tcatU233]

#MyTheory Maybe they could have spun Ceres up by smashing it with a range of smaller asteroids in a tangential manner.

[@getit4595]

#mytheory they used Ceres's water and made Oxygen and Hydrogen from it. And lit up a big chemical rocket engine.

[@77Shinmu81]

#Ceres

[@jasondolph2785]

It is very curious that they didn't hollow Ceres out and put an O'Neill cylinder inside, keeping the mineral exterior as radiation shielding. Probably just boils down to a gap in the knowledge of the authors, or maybe they wanted to avoid the extra layers of exposition that would be required to explain to a typical reader about Roche limits etc. Hmm.. Although from a narrative standpoint it would be much harder to explain Belters' altered physiology if they lived in O'Neill cylinders, given that they could just provide 1g spin instead of 1/3 to 1/6.

[@tatarjj2007]

When I was reading the books, I always just assumed that the book's "Ceres" was a fictional body much smaller than the actual Ceres. That was the only way I could make any sense of it.

[@TheDunestyler]

only 6 million people? are you serious? that's nothing!

[@garethsmith7916]

I think the ability for Ceres to stay together is just a scientific inaccuracy. #mytheory

[@derekludwig3945]

Way to "do the science". Eros is an Amor asteroid, making it a NEO, not a main belt asteroid. So no, it can't be the third largest object in the belt or anywhere on that list, because it's not in the belt. But even disregarding that to consider solar system asteroids in general, "third largest"? What about Pallas? For that matter, what about Hygiea, Interamnia, Europa (52 Europa, not the moon), Davida, Sylvia, or any of the at least dozens of larger asteroids? Where in the world did you pull third largest from?

[@the1st14]

#ceres

[@WilbertLek]

ps: Answer to all your questions: goddunnit. And it dun eryting flat.

[@springbloom5940]

Nothing is really impractical, given time. Perhaps it took several generations to get it spun?

[@marianpazdzioch6632]

Every problem can be solved if you put enough rockets on it.

[@darrenmarchant1720]

there is a way to increase the spin of Ceres.

[@elliotsmith9812]

Step 1. wrap it in carbon fiber.

[@cassandrab4080]

#Ceres Gravity is the central issue here. You consider the difficulties of maintaining a 1/3 G environment on Ceres.... What about producing artificial gravity on a tiny cylindrical object like Eros? It's certainly not done via spin. Expanse science assumes that humanity has methods of producing and controlling gravity -- even in tiny ships like the Rocci. In the movies, artificial gravity requires an operational fusion drive. Fusion reactions and the magnetic bottle used to contain them certainly puts one in the area of relativistic physics, where matter, energy, gravity and time are distorted and interrelated.

[@Rainfall7]

Have you not watched the show? Asteroids like Ceres and Eros are spun to create centrifugal force. The ships are maintaining gravity ba constantly speeding up. The ships are build like towers, with the thrusters at the bottom.

[@darrenmarchant1720]

it would not be necessary to increase the spin of Ceres.

[@WilbertLek]

Please stop using words like 'theory' [scientific theory] when you're talking about a completely fictional ideas in your head.

[@-Lindol-]

Wilbert Lek No. Science may have its own definition of words, but it doesn’t own the word theory. Lots of words have many meanings depending on their context. It’s linguistic nonsense to make a demand like yours.

[@WilbertLek]

@@-Lindol- Actually it does. That you want to hang on to your layman's term for wild idea to strawman the shit out of every scientific theory out there just so you can have your flatasy disk planet is called: Intellectual Dishonesty. And it's childish. Now, go away, kid, you're bothering me, see...