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There goes the water rationing narrative in The Expanse...
by outworlder 6y ago
There goes the water rationing narrative in The Expanse...
- ckuehl 6y agoThe authors of The Expanse published an article last year acknowledging and paying tribute to the mission ("How a NASA robot messed up our science fiction"): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/02/dear-dawn-james-sa-corey-pays-tribute-nasa-ceres-mission/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/02/dear-dawn...
- EdwardDiego 6y agoLove them even more for that.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThe book(s) acknowledges it's made of ice. You can't drink your entire habitat.
- jojobas 6y agoAll the water on Earth was drunk at some stage wasn't it?
- shkkmo 6y agoI suspect that isn't true, but it is an interesting question. There is a lot of water on the planet, some of it spends long periods locked up out of reach of drink ability. I would guess that at most water has been drunk multiple times, but that there is some miniscule a fraction that moved between icecap, permafrost and deep water table and has avoided being consumed by an animal since it arrived on earth. I would be interested to read a mathematical estimate of how many 9s of water on earth has been drunk at some point.
- martinpw 6y agoThere is a related interesting observation that every breath you take contains on average one molecule that was breathed out by Julius Caesar in his dying breath: https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/are-we-really-breathing-caesars-last-breath/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/are-we-really-brea...
- mturmon 6y agoAvogadro’s number is very large.
- thebluehawk 6y agoSomewhat related XKCD What if: https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/
- autokad 6y agodrunk by a human or drunk at all? I'd suspect that not all water has been drunk at all, but lets cover the human part. Lets say the average human drinks 3 liters per day and lives 80 years (3 * 365 * 80 ) = 87,600 liters per human. there have been about 100 billion humans so 100 b * 87600 =8,760,000,000,000,000 liters have been drunk. there are about this many liters in Earths 5 oceans (source google search): 1,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 Assuming no one has ever drank the same amount of water before, 8,760,000,000,000,000 < 1,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 It sounds fairly certain that not all water has been drunk by a human, even if my math is way off
- klyrs 6y agoThe title says "water" but the article says "brine". Don't count on it.
- walrus01 6y agoAssuming for a moment the technology/scifi world of The Expanse, one thing that doesn't seem to be a scarce resource is electrical power, due to plentiful nuclear reactors. Wouldn't it be possible to flash brine into steam and separate the h2o from the salt, storing the salt in solid cubes or something?
- dflock 6y agoBrine is pretty corrosive, more so if you heat it up, but you you could do that, yes.
- hinkley 6y agoMy recollection was that Mars raided Ceres for ice, prior to or while spinning it up. It would take a hell of a lot of mass drivers, all pointed in the same axis, to spin up a dwarf planet.
- Cyphase 6y agoNah, kopeng mi; inyalowda, dey stole da owkwa from beltalowda!
- nomoreservices 6y agoOh man, that was perfect :)
- ragebol 6y agoDey stole ere luf, sasa ke.
- bloopernova 6y agoMiller to Diogo: "Don't mess wit de owkwa!"
- bjo590 6y agoNo, it doesn't create a plot loop. The book explains that all of the H2O on Ceres was used to apply spin to Ceres to create artificial gravity. This is a symbol of Inner Planet's dominance over the Beleter's, because a _real_ Belter would never trade precious water for artificial gravity. This is mentioned fairly subtly in the first book, and is easy to miss while taking in the rest of the world. In addition the spinning up of Ceres is often mentioned as one the of many engineering feats attributed to Tycho. EDIT: For scientific context to my statement H2O can be turned into really good propellant. Two of Blue Origin's engines run on Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen for example.
- progval 6y ago> For scientific context to my statement H2O can be turned into really good propellant Note that in The Expanse universe, water isn't usually used as propellant, but simply as reaction mass. All we know about the actual propellant is that it's used in fusion reactors and is surprisingly efficient.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> All we know about the actual propellant is that it's used in fusion reactors and is surprisingly efficient. Since we're being specific with terminology, if it's used in a fusion reactor, it's not a propellant, since propellant is a combination of chemical fuel and oxidizer.
- bjo590 6y ago> Note that in The Expanse universe, water isn't usually used as propellant, but simply as reaction mass. All we know about the actual propellant is that it's used in fusion reactors and is surprisingly efficient. It's actually ambiguous if Ceres was spun up before the Epstein drive was invented or not. If the H2O was consumed in an Epstein drive (fueled by D-He3 fusion) then only Hydrogen was consumed to produce thrust. What's not ambiguous is that the H2O on Ceres was consumed We know that mars was colonized 200 years before the Epstein drive was invented. We know that the OPA was founded about 100 years after the Epstein drive was invented, and that 130 years after the Epstein drive is when the main story starts. We know Earth was the first owner of Ceres. We don't know how old Tycho is, other than Fred Johnson was not the first leader of Tycho. It's an open question on to what extend the belt had humans in it during the 200 years humans were on Mars before the invention of the Epstein drive. It's safe to say that answer is somewhere between more than none, and less than what is shown during the opening of the series. It's highly plausible Ceres was spun up during that time.
- totetsu 6y agoI thought Co[r]vid-19 had already blew most of The Expanse out of the water.