Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive

Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by redthrowaway on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @01:07PM (#14454101)

Let's not go giving The Expanse too much credit, here. That no-thrust gravity slingshot around all of Jupiter's moons in 2 hours was...stretching it.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @01:16PM (#14454181)

Well, that (and the shots showing several Jupiter moons simultaneously) was a creative decision - one I strongly disagree with - but otherwise The Expanse is pretty good, and they get lots of minor details right (like engines heating up some metal beams on the exhaust path, or that scene where a PDC round penetrated the Roci and its trail didn't move until they started manoeuvring, etc.).

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by mitchty on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @02:21PM (#14454754)

That and the ships having to flip to slow down burn makes the expanse one of the more realistic portrayals of space flight (minus the epstein drive which is basically magic) in modern tv.

Also, they show decompression way more realistically. Its not like a bomb goes off when a hole opens up in the side of the ship, which is nice.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by cmsd2 on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @07:02PM (#14456621)

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php

assuming an epstein drive is possible yeah it opens up more or less direct brachistochrone trajectories between here and mars. Just wait until the planets align and burn.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by redthrowaway on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:41PM (#14455293)

Burn-flip-burn is nice. It'd be nice to see them performing realistic burns to alter orbits, but that might be too much to ask for.

>minus the epstein drive which is basically magic

It's canonically a fusion rocket, isn't it? So beyond today's means, but hardly "magic".

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by DennisP on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @05:11PM (#14455949)

It's a lot better than people think fusion rockets would be in real life. But the writers actually acknowledged that, in the episode that goes into the drive's history. They had fusion rockets before Epstein, they just weren't near as good before the breakthrough.

And most of the story wouldn't even change if it took longer to go places. The only difference would be that they couldn't show normal gravity inside a spaceship and attribute it to acceleration. It's a slight distortion that saves them money on special effects.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @06:40PM (#14456494)

They especially don't show long travel times, but in the books travel is usually counted in weeks or months. Also, in the books they usually travel at ~0.3g for the sake of Martians and the Belters, who are mostly not comfortable with Earth's 1G.

(This is not merely a detail, it's one of the core plot points of The Expanse, as tolerance to gravity is what makes Martians and Belters almost a different species from Earthers; the former can not live on Earth, and so they don't care much about it.)

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by mitchty on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:49PM (#14455359)

Any advanced technology... :)

I don't actually recall what the in universe explanation of it was outside of it running off water as its fuel. Either way its specific impulse is crazy.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by sjburt on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @04:43PM (#14455742)

The authors intentionally made it the one thing they weren't going to try to explain using known physics. It's reactionless and fusion powered.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by baq on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:05PM (#14455052)

yeah, there is a blog post with one of the producers apologizing for it: http://www.danielabraham.com/2017/04/04/guest-post-losing-sc... (minor spoiler alert)

nb. i'm in complete love with the show and that particular scene can be best described as... pretty.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by redthrowaway on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @05:32PM (#14456102)

That's a great writeup, and it highlights the fact that sometimes these things happen for purely pragmatic reasons.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by ajmurmann on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:00PM (#14455022)

There was a scene in the first episode that drove me crazy. They were on the ship hull after a huge explosion had occurred. Tony debris kept flying by in the background at what looked like 30/mph. That broke immersion for me so bad.

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Re:Kerbal Space Program Acquired by Take-Two Interactive by rocqua on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @05:55PM (#14456245)

I think in the show they are 'flying teakettle' which means flying on steam exhaust. That is to say, there was some thrust.

Reversing to hide behind a moon seems dodgy though.

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