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Coincidentally I'm working through the book series right now. It is mostly good, though it would be nice if the main characters weren't quite as consistently l
by keenerd 9y ago
Coincidentally I'm working through the book series right now. It is mostly good, though it would be nice if the main characters weren't quite as consistently lucky.
The author's handling of energy is really annoying. I can overlook the structural impossibility of spinning up an asteroid for example, but I can't overlook the fact that they can command that sort of energy. It is made even more frustrating because they understand the offensive capabilities of kinetic weapons and rocket exhaust.
For example, the mirror array on Ganymede was stupid. The greenhouses use electric lighting for half of the time anyway, when behind Jupiter. Why build this giant orbital mirror array when you could install a second fusion reactor instead and leave the lights on all the time? And then it could all be underground too.
Magnetospheres make some locations very desirable. Why not lay down some super conducting cables, hook up a fusion reactor to it and make your own magnetosphere? This would have been a great plot device too, since any rich civilized place would do it, but it also makes detection of the habitat trivial. Poorer places would keep their's off and take the risk of cancer, turning it on only for protection from solar flare bursts. Seedy places would never install one at all.
- greglindahl 9y agoIf you're interested in the science behind spinning asteroids, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky%E2%80%93O%27Keefe%E2%80%93Radzievskii%E2%80%93Paddack_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky%E2%80%93O%27Keefe%E2...
- keenerd 9y agoThat has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. In The Expanse, they hollow out and spin up asteroids to use as a space station with centripetal artificial garavity. A typical rubble-pile asteroid would fly apart well before that. Even solid rock couldn't take the forces since they are all tensile.
- greglindahl 9y agoSorry, I thought you (or the other people reading this thread) might be interested in how asteroids behave in the real world. I wasn't saying that's what was happening in the show.
- keenerd 9y agoI didn't mean to come off sounding so harsh. YORP is fascinating stuff, particularly when it can happen to such an extreme degree to make a stable asteroid break up.
- greglindahl 9y agoI find YORP interesting because it makes things change in a part of the solar system that otherwise might be pretty boring... a lot more interesting than slowly outgassing volatiles and maybe an occasional collision.
- geuis 9y agoIn the novels, it's described how the asteroids like Ceres have been reinforced internally for precisely that problem. Now the energy requirements to spin up something that massive, that's another issue.