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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 bas

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.

redthrowaway 9y ago
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".
- mitchty 9y ago
  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.
  - sjburt 9y ago
    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.
- DennisP 9y ago
  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.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    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.)
cmsd2 9y ago
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php 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.

redthrowaway 9y ago

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".

mitchty 9y ago
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.
- sjburt 9y ago
  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.
DennisP 9y ago
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.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  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.)

cmsd2 9y ago

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