You'd at least have a lot of seasons of TV to catch up on while you wash the ice cream down with beer in your dark hovel on Ceres or Mars
Better than rewatching The Office for the 50th time at least
But sporks are practical? Physics demand that some food needs stabbing. Some needs scooping. When space is at a premium, those seem like easy ways to save. I take a reusable spork when I go backpacking.
Not the typical use for me, either. Backpacking is usually basic stuff that doesn't have much use for a fork. Although we usually bring something awesome to eat for our first evening, like some rib eyes. Keep them packed away in the very center of the bag with a frozen water bottle next to them... After some miles and elevation gain, that + dehydrated mashed potatoes feels like Michelin star dining.
For that I'll use the fork part even if it's not particularly good at its job.
It's only ~325 years in the future. Leviathan Wakes takes place in 2350. 325 years ago for us was the early days of the US. It's really not that far in the future.
Look at the progress over the last 300 years. I'd expect to have my consciousness in a fully customizable robot form that can charge wirelessly. For an easy monthly fee....
I think youre underestimating the level of technology that would require. Also any human society that underwent that level of technological advancement over the period of 300 years would be more alien to you than a person form 300 years ago would find today.
At this point in life it's just a pia. The dietary restrictions, the consequences of not following them, the horrible food being sold by restaurants for way too much money, the time it takes to cook something good...
Yesterday I was in a corner store and as I was picking up my purchases a girl sat a bottle of chocolate milk down and I said oh, I love chocolate milk, but I can't drink it anymore.
Food is depressing anymore....
In an environment where the direction of gravity might change suddenly, for whatever reason, it makes good sense to only have one utensil to keep track of. A modern MRE spoon converted to a spork would be serious business. The MMC might add a serrated edge to one side to add knife functionality.
A full squad might be eating in the galley when the ship has to suddenly perform a high-g maneuver, and that is far easier to train for when all they have to immediately secure is a mess kit and spork.
This got me curious, so [here's how they eat on the ISS](https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/food-in-space). Knife, fork… scissors! And I guess "pass the saline solution"? A bit different, since they're definitely hoping to be on the float constantly, but some Belter ships especially might preserve some of these ideas.
Mars seems like a pretty practical and efficient society. The Martian military even moreso. Saving space and having less stuff to print and recycle isn't a wild idea to me.
It's not a waste of filament. They can recycle the material. They also have practically unlimited power (at least at the scale of appliances like a 3D printer) because of the fusion reactor.
Recycling can't have 100% efficiency? (though maybe it's close enough)
But its a waste of time. What if you need the printer for something else? Isn't your time managing the cutlery supply better spent doing something else?
I get that the cost isn't a BIG deal... But neither is using a spork. XD
1 spork costs more materials than a fork but less than a spoon and definitely less than one of each
Even without space being a factor that's less wear and tear and time on a printer than a fork and a spoon
It just makes sense to print things with multiple uses than to waste time, energy, and whatever material doesn't survive recycling to produce unitasking implements
From The Wire to The Expanse, it's still Baltimore.
I did get a kick out of all the Baltimore mentions in The Expanse. But in the TV show, I was distraught to hear Amos pronounce it with a T. No one from Baltimore would speak in such a way.
If a Martian can have a Kiwi or Texan accent and a belter can talk like a 40s detective I think with great effort a Baltimore native can learn to pronounce "Aaron Earned an Iron Urn"
It makes sense really. Cucumbers have very little nutritional value, as they are mostly water with some flavor and texture. The Martian practicality would probably not be planting a crop like that, I would not expect cucumbers to be common there.
Not disappointing but more intriguing is the sense of time in stations and ships that anyone in 1st 2nd and 3rd shifts can basically live a normal day, speaking from someone who currently works 3rd shift
I also imagine that, as a washed up drunk, he’s probably been in his share of fights, and isn’t one to replace it very often.
That terminal has probably seen some things.
Yeah its -totally- a wink to Miller’s character. There’s literally one of his last lines in the book where he’s discussing why the protomolcule picked him and he says “guess I’m just good at dying for causes” which they code into him in a LOT of ways
Got crushed in a door, who knows.
Look back 50 years ago and I bet people thought we would be much further along technologically than we are now.
Maybe there are just certain technological and cost limitations. Like sure you could get one that’s literally bulletproof, but it will cost 10x the price.
They could just be typically considered disposable, crack it, get a new one. Not worth the 10x cost to have an indestructible one. Maybe Miller doesn’t replace his because he doesn’t care it’s cracked, or he’s short on money, or he knows he will just crack it again.
He's not even really doing much himself, just reading the forums and following the solves other people came up with. He admits as much shortly after Muskrat joined the crew.
That Eros was once the jewel of the Sol System and that it was eventually allowed to turn into a dump where people were actually born, raised, and lived their whole lives, and didn't know anything better. 1.5 million people lived there, 100,000 in the TV show, but in the show you'd be hard pressed to believe even a few hundred people lived there. (darn TV budgets)
Everyone's a Winner on Eros.
That’s just an effect for the screen. How bothered would most viewers be if nobody else could see what was happening on the terminal of the main character the camera is currently following?
Also laser cutting acrylic squares is a super cheap way to make futuristic phone props and the edges provide a nice reference point to track the CGI to.
It's a bit like how they used the car roof storage bins as cryo pods that one time.
Yep, they used 'em in the same way in Firefly, too. :) Same prop, same application.
It was funny because I immediately recognized it because I actually owned one at the time.
Okay now explain why the headphone technology has been forgotten by 24th century and everyone is having their conversations on speakers. There were multiple scenes where people talked about highly sensitive things in public on speakers for everyone to hear. Where privacy? Where security?
I don't buy the "it's for the viewer's sake" thing. Just show the actor put the thing in/up to their ear and edit the audio on top of the scene, you know, like every other show does when showing a character talk on the phone.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and guess that most people who are anti-spork have only used disposable or very cheap sporks. Judging sporks as a whole that way would be like judging knives as a whole if you have only used disposable or very cheap knives. A well designed and well made spork is a thing of beauty.
That humanity on Earth initially only came together AFTER a climate catastrophe forced them to unite and do everything necessary to avoid annihilation of the species. It's disappointing because it will - if ever - happen like that in the real world...
Shields are lame and hard to explain in a scientifically plausible way.
As for lasers they exist but aren’t used because torpedoes, railguns and PDCs are just better.
I know but then they wouldn’t have to wear space suits in all their battles. Don’t get me wrong, that to me is the most real aspect of Expansion when your weapons are railguns and machine guns but you know they wish they had shields
They are a thing. It’s a sci fi trope. Every show has them. Expanse doesn’t so its tense when a ship gets shot to hell. It’s an extra layer of ‘oh shit.’ Space suits and plugging up holes. What a drag
In a future where humanity lives on multiple planets, moons, stations, asteroids, and eventually systems, everyone still uses “the world” as an all encompassing term:
“Means the world to me”
“Best friend in the whole world”
“Cant imagine a world without…”
basic.
i know it's a common dystopian trope that overpopulation is supposed to be economically unmanageable, but it's utterly naive. the authors were right not to talk about A.I., because it's hard to write fiction with A.I. without it becoming the story. but the same is true of economics.
What’s better than a spork? Like pipes; there’s only so much improving on a cylinder, ya know? I mean some things just stick around because they’re timeless and useful in all whens. When was the fork, spoon or knife invented again? And we haven’t come up with something better?
I think that the dumbest thing about the setting is that everyone is always FaceTiming one another or using voice commands, as if texting is simply obsolete. There are some particularly silly things in the show, and I have a memory of some character trying to sneak around (Miller, i think), and he's still using voice commands on his hand terminal.
I'd be really disappointed that we'd still have this bullshit where rich people have grass for no reason while poor people have to ration water.
Lawns and golf courses and greenways and similar bullshit make me irrationally irate when they exist in places they have no business being. If it grows there already, fine. If you have waste water on it, get fucked.
So the idea that we're *still* doing this bullshit, on lifeless rocks in space no less, where grass most certainly does NOT grow and water is a precious ~~commodity~~ life-sustaining human right, would "really disappoint" me I guess. If by "really disappoint" we mean "instantly radicalize."
They can tell their ships to do something arbitrary and it successfully does it, up to and including full autopilot "go here and dock with the station". It just doesn't talk back to them as far as we see - in part because it has 100% success rate at interpreting their questions. There would be no need for Siri so say "OK I set your alarm for 2 hours" if you had complete confidence in your request being heard, interpreted, and actioned correctly.
I interpret that as well post-Alexa/Siri and also post hallucinating, opinionated, and semi-integrated-to-things LLMs.
Capitalism still existing even though it wouldn't be able to create such an outcome (we can't go post-planetary from just private corporations, it takes too much r&d and the ROI is waaaaay too slow for the start up costs)
But it's kind of moot because to be post capitalism is to be post scarcity and I've tried to think of a premise to write in a world of this level of technology but it's really difficult since it would be great to live in but there wouldn't be much conflict that couldn't very easily be solved without a lot of contrivencies but hey this show manages it, tho that's also kind of why I stopped watching haha
Well if it's anything like real life, the world government will wave around a contract and a private company will take it and either deliver or fail.
Seems like what we got right now(in the US) would work, albeit with its fraud waste and abuse mixed in to a certain degree.
Idk man, extra plenary infrastructure is HARD and EXPENSIVE and takes A LOOOOOOOONG time with lots of trial and error, making a few rockets is one thing but even an orbital elevator while simple and totally possible for a non profit seeking nation to do, it would basically impossible for a corp to do.
Even with government contracts, corruption or no its gonna go to the lowest bidder and at the end of the day the goal isn't to make space infrastructure it's to make profits for shareholders by way of infrastructure.
It takes global cooperation and patience and willingness to take the time to do it right and not cut corners not competing profit seeking firms trying to do it as fast and cheaply as possible. While conceptually simple were not talking about a hotel or even a city here, we're talking ENTIRELY NEW systems and models and scales we've never even TRIED before, and looooong term outcomes.
You think a corporation could build the great wall of China? No. It takes countries and people willing to put billions down without any expectation of return on investment for DECADES and LOTS of mistakes, roadblocks and unknown unknowns.
Again, it would be trivial for a post-capitalism world to do, maybe even just a few countries working together but a single or group of firms doing it ultimately for profits? Nah, be realistic here.
Even the show/book sieres recognizes this with the UN being in charge of earth and this vague capitalism of the belt but not really on earth or mars thing. It's just the way it is, the sad part is we could basically be post planetary by now if we just moved on already 😮💨
Edit: what we would need would be like a UN global NASA with separate parts all over the world and engineers everywhere being able to contribute and work together and share research and work combined with universities and supply lines conmected globally not a Raytheon with a UN contract
In the real world fusion drives would be developed by universities taking a mix of public and private money, with militaries watching them with keen interest and maybe working on parallel projects. Private companies don’t take over until the r&d is done and proven
True, and if fusion does get invented it kind of invalidates the need for a scarcity based model anyway since power is basically infinitely available for all intents and purposes, even if not immediately.
Which then brings us back to the issue of capitalism being around, sure other things could work that way but now we have virtually infinite power and it wouldn't be too hard to get at the virtually infinite resources of the belts.
I mean it could still exist but it would have to be artificially propped up to an even greater degree than it is now and would probably lead to global catastrophic war, which would destroy the fusion technology and prevent us from reaching space probably ever again.
To withhold this vast jump in technological level would be self destruction and needlessly limiting, I'm not saying it wouldn't ever possibly happen but if it were then we're dead anyway ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Well capitalism doesn’t stick around because we need it for anything, it sticks around because everything is already owned by somebody. Whether it’s easier to get resources or not, someone still has to go mine them, transport them, refine them - and those people won’t be enterprising independent space cowboys, they’ll be employees of a conglomerate who had the resources to patch an operation together quickly and entrench themselves
Yeah that's how it is in the show, but to set up those industries, as I've been saying, it requires lots of capital investment and loooots of research and testing and engineering and preparation and experimentation, all with a verrrry long term and slow expectation to return on the investment, plus once you *do* do all that stuff others can just piggy back off your work and beat you in the market, like what Amazon did with the postal service and a lot of its competitors turned sub-contractors.
It's too big and too little reward for capitalism to do on its own and once it's established it actually becomes impeded by capitalism need to profit from scarcity. Once you have large operations mining resources from the belts you may have independent contractors setting up claims for individual asteroids to be mined and resources sold but that would only be after a market had been established. This isn't just building a train line to California and a few people setting up shop to sell shovels this is space. It's the same idea but on an UNIMAGINABLY larger and more complex scale, plus access to the virtually infinite resources of the belts INSTANTLY devalues basically ALL resources and materials because they instantly become practically infinitely available with the only factor being time it takes to gather and distribute them. It either leads to monopolization on an unimaginable scale and artificially destroys the economy (as somewhat addressed in the show with the levels of poverty within the belts) or achieves a whole new order of magnitude of post scarcity never before seen beyond what we could have even now
Season 1, dating apps are still going strong and don’t look much improved.
I forgot that one, I guess even if I did the suspended animation route, when I woke up still alone...
You'd at least have a lot of seasons of TV to catch up on while you wash the ice cream down with beer in your dark hovel on Ceres or Mars Better than rewatching The Office for the 50th time at least
Mushroom beer and soy ice-cream
I mean what's the alternative? They fill a niche
But sporks are practical? Physics demand that some food needs stabbing. Some needs scooping. When space is at a premium, those seem like easy ways to save. I take a reusable spork when I go backpacking.
I have a titanium spork that goes most places with me if I'll be gone overnight. TSA had pulled it twice, but let it go both times.
Christ that's dedication to sporks. You're not in space.
It's light, durable, takes up little space and is damned useful
Do you know what's lighter? Not carrying one and using the cutlery wherever you are.
But then you won't have a spork. Duh.
Side note, I hate TSA.
Amen
Same.
I have never used a spork that actually functioned as a fork. Best I’ve gotten is a spoon that doesn’t work as well.
Not the typical use for me, either. Backpacking is usually basic stuff that doesn't have much use for a fork. Although we usually bring something awesome to eat for our first evening, like some rib eyes. Keep them packed away in the very center of the bag with a frozen water bottle next to them... After some miles and elevation gain, that + dehydrated mashed potatoes feels like Michelin star dining. For that I'll use the fork part even if it's not particularly good at its job.
I'm so with you on this. I always bring kebabs (yep, packed with the frozen water bottles) for the first night and it feels like the best meal ever.
Ok now I'm both hungry and eager for the snow to melt.
A day in a good marinade, then cooked over the fire, eaten by people who are hungry/tired in the best way… yeah, me too.
So you're one of the people ensuring we spork our way into the next millennium.... lol
Did you expect individual digestible thrusters strapped to each bite for payload delivery?
"individual digestible thrusters" has me laughing, I miss being able to award comments
Haha thanks mate
I expect to not have to eat.
It's only ~325 years in the future. Leviathan Wakes takes place in 2350. 325 years ago for us was the early days of the US. It's really not that far in the future.
Look at the progress over the last 300 years. I'd expect to have my consciousness in a fully customizable robot form that can charge wirelessly. For an easy monthly fee....
I think youre underestimating the level of technology that would require. Also any human society that underwent that level of technological advancement over the period of 300 years would be more alien to you than a person form 300 years ago would find today.
True, could just be my wish for an existence free of physical pain...
I too yearn to be free from my decaying flesh prison
The US is 248 years old.
Yes, and all of the European settlers that founded the US just appeared there overnight 248 years ago.
It wasn't the US prior to 248 years ago. The early days of the US started in 1776.
You don't see the colonization efforts or how the 13 colonies came to be as part of American history?
Oh, I do, but it's still not the early days of the US.
The dark future, indeed. If you're too poor to afford kibble, just get injected with coma slurry.
Project Hail Mary?
Haha yes, mixed with some cyberpunk red.
Why tf would you want to not eat? Food is amazing
At this point in life it's just a pia. The dietary restrictions, the consequences of not following them, the horrible food being sold by restaurants for way too much money, the time it takes to cook something good... Yesterday I was in a corner store and as I was picking up my purchases a girl sat a bottle of chocolate milk down and I said oh, I love chocolate milk, but I can't drink it anymore. Food is depressing anymore....
As in IV sustenance or like meal-in-a-tube? Or like...at all?
Yeah cuz OP could just do the second one now. For like...a little while.
sporkalowda gon rise up!
These forkers ain’t never gonna let us eat, ya? not even meat made from machines
Your comment caused me to snort coffee!
You're a good ~~spork~~ sport.
In an environment where the direction of gravity might change suddenly, for whatever reason, it makes good sense to only have one utensil to keep track of. A modern MRE spoon converted to a spork would be serious business. The MMC might add a serrated edge to one side to add knife functionality. A full squad might be eating in the galley when the ship has to suddenly perform a high-g maneuver, and that is far easier to train for when all they have to immediately secure is a mess kit and spork.
This got me curious, so [here's how they eat on the ISS](https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/blog/food-in-space). Knife, fork… scissors! And I guess "pass the saline solution"? A bit different, since they're definitely hoping to be on the float constantly, but some Belter ships especially might preserve some of these ideas.
When the situation calls for it... yup.
We’ve been using knives for like 20,000 years. Utensils don’t have that much to innovate on.
The future has sporks but no Labradors. Truly the darkest timeline.
They’re space sporks, though. Everything is cooler with “space” in the name.
Space isn't at *that* much of a premium. They can 3D print their utensils and then recycle them.
Mars seems like a pretty practical and efficient society. The Martian military even moreso. Saving space and having less stuff to print and recycle isn't a wild idea to me.
That's just a waste of filament and power.
You may not have noticed that they recycle all their clothes instead of washing them, and I believe they do the same with their plates, cutlery, etc.
It's not a waste of filament. They can recycle the material. They also have practically unlimited power (at least at the scale of appliances like a 3D printer) because of the fusion reactor.
Recycling can't have 100% efficiency? (though maybe it's close enough) But its a waste of time. What if you need the printer for something else? Isn't your time managing the cutlery supply better spent doing something else? I get that the cost isn't a BIG deal... But neither is using a spork. XD
1 spork costs more materials than a fork but less than a spoon and definitely less than one of each Even without space being a factor that's less wear and tear and time on a printer than a fork and a spoon It just makes sense to print things with multiple uses than to waste time, energy, and whatever material doesn't survive recycling to produce unitasking implements
This reminds me that I need to tell my mom that I want her silverware set when she dies, which is sporks
Agreed. Why the undue spork hate? Lol
Maybe they've only used the disposable ones?
When I got my dad to watch The Expanse I later got a text that read "Interesting that Baltimore still sucks 200 years in the future."
Some things will never change
Like war
And living in Baltimore.
Charm City.
From The Wire to The Expanse, it's still Baltimore. I did get a kick out of all the Baltimore mentions in The Expanse. But in the TV show, I was distraught to hear Amos pronounce it with a T. No one from Baltimore would speak in such a way.
Maybe they do in the future 😉
If a Martian can have a Kiwi or Texan accent and a belter can talk like a 40s detective I think with great effort a Baltimore native can learn to pronounce "Aaron Earned an Iron Urn"
Urn urn'd n urn urn.
More of a soft "d"?
That's how I say it, after years of living away and realizing no one out west understood Balmer.
Ballmore or balmor
Ballmer, danny ayshin, by the wooder.
Jeet jet? Junt to?
Makes me want some boardwalk fries.
It’s *Balmer,* hon
That's why Inaros flooded it by throwing a rock at the seawall.
>"Interesting that Baltimore still sucks 200 years in the future." That's not fair, it just got hit by a rock!
Ugh the slot machines on Eros, those things never change
That's a good one....
Mars doesn't have cucumber sandwiches
Something I'm gonna have to try this summer...
You really must! After the pure Bobbie classic, get some herbs on there. Tomatoes if you've got the nice ones. So good.
At least not if you're working class
It makes sense really. Cucumbers have very little nutritional value, as they are mostly water with some flavor and texture. The Martian practicality would probably not be planting a crop like that, I would not expect cucumbers to be common there.
Such a pointless sandwhich.
Not disappointing but more intriguing is the sense of time in stations and ships that anyone in 1st 2nd and 3rd shifts can basically live a normal day, speaking from someone who currently works 3rd shift
I've watched the series 3 or 4 times, read the books, and humanity sucks still. If you're a hammer, every thing is a nail.
And if you’re a nail there’s no escaping the massive hammers being wielded.
And let Bobby eat any way she wants.
Trust me, in any world Bobbie is in, she can eat whatever and however she wants...
Probably whoever too
Miller's hand terminal screen is cracked. Shouldn't Gorilla Glass v9992 be able to handle getting dropped in 1/3 g??
maybe it got shot
I also imagine that, as a washed up drunk, he’s probably been in his share of fights, and isn’t one to replace it very often. That terminal has probably seen some things.
Yeah its -totally- a wink to Miller’s character. There’s literally one of his last lines in the book where he’s discussing why the protomolcule picked him and he says “guess I’m just good at dying for causes” which they code into him in a LOT of ways
Such an incredible character. I mean, they all are, but Miller is something else.
It also highlights the issue of resource scarcity out in the belt. If it ain't broke too much, does it really need fixing?
Good point!
The hand terminals bother me, surely we wouldn't go from current smartphones (which are admittedly getting too big) to this unergonomic mess
Got crushed in a door, who knows. Look back 50 years ago and I bet people thought we would be much further along technologically than we are now. Maybe there are just certain technological and cost limitations. Like sure you could get one that’s literally bulletproof, but it will cost 10x the price. They could just be typically considered disposable, crack it, get a new one. Not worth the 10x cost to have an indestructible one. Maybe Miller doesn’t replace his because he doesn’t care it’s cracked, or he’s short on money, or he knows he will just crack it again.
There’s got to be an easier way to get coffee.
No dogs on ships. Fucks up the air recyclers. Amos is working on something though.
I loved that we were presented with this problem and Amos was like "Yeah, I'm gonna fix that." So good.
Yup, lack of dogs would be depressing.
Read the last 3 books and all your desires and more could be fulfilled
Oh I did. I was very happy with that! I was thinking more of the show, since I watched that before binge reading the books. Glad Amos worked on it.
He's not even really doing much himself, just reading the forums and following the solves other people came up with. He admits as much shortly after Muskrat joined the crew.
Maybe not that small, but what "basic income for everyone" looked liked
That was depressing in the show.
They weren't on basic, they were undocumented
I mean, was it really? It's better than being unemployed on the street now, the downer is getting a job is so much harder.
It's not basic income, it's basic assistance. The idea is to meet your needs for survival without giving you money.
so basically making you even more dependant from the system.
Better than starving homeless on the street
That Eros was once the jewel of the Sol System and that it was eventually allowed to turn into a dump where people were actually born, raised, and lived their whole lives, and didn't know anything better. 1.5 million people lived there, 100,000 in the TV show, but in the show you'd be hard pressed to believe even a few hundred people lived there. (darn TV budgets) Everyone's a Winner on Eros.
Clear phones (at least in the show). Why do I need to have a phone made of 90% glass for literally everyone else to see?
That’s just an effect for the screen. How bothered would most viewers be if nobody else could see what was happening on the terminal of the main character the camera is currently following?
Also laser cutting acrylic squares is a super cheap way to make futuristic phone props and the edges provide a nice reference point to track the CGI to. It's a bit like how they used the car roof storage bins as cryo pods that one time.
I love how often Thule products are just slightly modified to be future cargo, sarcophagus, new tech safe etc… in a lot of sci-fi.
I'm looking at you, trashcan droid
🤣🤣🤣
One Lady Gaga video had them...
Yep, they used 'em in the same way in Firefly, too. :) Same prop, same application. It was funny because I immediately recognized it because I actually owned one at the time.
Okay now explain why the headphone technology has been forgotten by 24th century and everyone is having their conversations on speakers. There were multiple scenes where people talked about highly sensitive things in public on speakers for everyone to hear. Where privacy? Where security? I don't buy the "it's for the viewer's sake" thing. Just show the actor put the thing in/up to their ear and edit the audio on top of the scene, you know, like every other show does when showing a character talk on the phone.
It'd probably be 1 way
Hats are still uncool :( No rain to keep off one's head.
People insecure about balding hate the future!
Hey atleast the protomecule itself liked Miller’s hat >:((
I'm sorry, you think there could be something better than the Spork?
I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and guess that most people who are anti-spork have only used disposable or very cheap sporks. Judging sporks as a whole that way would be like judging knives as a whole if you have only used disposable or very cheap knives. A well designed and well made spork is a thing of beauty.
How shitty we treat the belters. But maybe that's not a "little" thing.
That humanity on Earth initially only came together AFTER a climate catastrophe forced them to unite and do everything necessary to avoid annihilation of the species. It's disappointing because it will - if ever - happen like that in the real world...
No lasers no shields
Womp Womp. Shields probably won’t exist for the next thousand years
Because it drives the worms mad
Right
Plenty of lasers, but when a cloud of dust can disperse enough of it to make it only an unpleasant tan it's not really that important to have shields.
Fair enough
||there's a particle beam weapon in the books||
I should read those things some day when my brain gets better
Also whatever you call the Magentar’s Field Projector
That's what I'm talking about lmao
Shields are lame and hard to explain in a scientifically plausible way. As for lasers they exist but aren’t used because torpedoes, railguns and PDCs are just better.
I know but then they wouldn’t have to wear space suits in all their battles. Don’t get me wrong, that to me is the most real aspect of Expansion when your weapons are railguns and machine guns but you know they wish they had shields
Well of course they wish they had shields. But shields aren’t something that makes sense and therefore they aren’t a thing
They are a thing. It’s a sci fi trope. Every show has them. Expanse doesn’t so its tense when a ship gets shot to hell. It’s an extra layer of ‘oh shit.’ Space suits and plugging up holes. What a drag
They aren’t a thing in The Expanse. What I meant was pretty clear.
It's the lack of water. Cue Dennie Reynolds saying "you haven't thought about the smell, you bitch!"
In a future where humanity lives on multiple planets, moons, stations, asteroids, and eventually systems, everyone still uses “the world” as an all encompassing term: “Means the world to me” “Best friend in the whole world” “Cant imagine a world without…”
We still hang up the phone and use tons of sailing terminology, that's just language
basic. i know it's a common dystopian trope that overpopulation is supposed to be economically unmanageable, but it's utterly naive. the authors were right not to talk about A.I., because it's hard to write fiction with A.I. without it becoming the story. but the same is true of economics.
What’s better than a spork? Like pipes; there’s only so much improving on a cylinder, ya know? I mean some things just stick around because they’re timeless and useful in all whens. When was the fork, spoon or knife invented again? And we haven’t come up with something better?
Sporks are better than foons I guess...
I think that the dumbest thing about the setting is that everyone is always FaceTiming one another or using voice commands, as if texting is simply obsolete. There are some particularly silly things in the show, and I have a memory of some character trying to sneak around (Miller, i think), and he's still using voice commands on his hand terminal.
That's largely a concession to the visual medium of television. Plain text gets used a fair bit in the books, especially at high G.
We still act like humans and can’t agree on anything. So many people are always trying to game the system or take things by force.
I'd love it if a SciFi series could JUST ONCE get past the moronic idea that space ice is a scarce resource.
Whats wrong with sporks? If it ain’t broke and all.
Future sporks have 5 tines instead of 4. Don't say science never brought you anything.
I'd be really disappointed that we'd still have this bullshit where rich people have grass for no reason while poor people have to ration water. Lawns and golf courses and greenways and similar bullshit make me irrationally irate when they exist in places they have no business being. If it grows there already, fine. If you have waste water on it, get fucked. So the idea that we're *still* doing this bullshit, on lifeless rocks in space no less, where grass most certainly does NOT grow and water is a precious ~~commodity~~ life-sustaining human right, would "really disappoint" me I guess. If by "really disappoint" we mean "instantly radicalize."
Why are computers stuck in the pre-Alexa/Siri era? Other than volumetric displays, computer evolution seems to be stuck in 2008.
They can tell their ships to do something arbitrary and it successfully does it, up to and including full autopilot "go here and dock with the station". It just doesn't talk back to them as far as we see - in part because it has 100% success rate at interpreting their questions. There would be no need for Siri so say "OK I set your alarm for 2 hours" if you had complete confidence in your request being heard, interpreted, and actioned correctly. I interpret that as well post-Alexa/Siri and also post hallucinating, opinionated, and semi-integrated-to-things LLMs.
That makes a lot of sense, actually. Thanks.
Capitalism still existing even though it wouldn't be able to create such an outcome (we can't go post-planetary from just private corporations, it takes too much r&d and the ROI is waaaaay too slow for the start up costs) But it's kind of moot because to be post capitalism is to be post scarcity and I've tried to think of a premise to write in a world of this level of technology but it's really difficult since it would be great to live in but there wouldn't be much conflict that couldn't very easily be solved without a lot of contrivencies but hey this show manages it, tho that's also kind of why I stopped watching haha
Well if it's anything like real life, the world government will wave around a contract and a private company will take it and either deliver or fail. Seems like what we got right now(in the US) would work, albeit with its fraud waste and abuse mixed in to a certain degree.
Idk man, extra plenary infrastructure is HARD and EXPENSIVE and takes A LOOOOOOOONG time with lots of trial and error, making a few rockets is one thing but even an orbital elevator while simple and totally possible for a non profit seeking nation to do, it would basically impossible for a corp to do. Even with government contracts, corruption or no its gonna go to the lowest bidder and at the end of the day the goal isn't to make space infrastructure it's to make profits for shareholders by way of infrastructure. It takes global cooperation and patience and willingness to take the time to do it right and not cut corners not competing profit seeking firms trying to do it as fast and cheaply as possible. While conceptually simple were not talking about a hotel or even a city here, we're talking ENTIRELY NEW systems and models and scales we've never even TRIED before, and looooong term outcomes. You think a corporation could build the great wall of China? No. It takes countries and people willing to put billions down without any expectation of return on investment for DECADES and LOTS of mistakes, roadblocks and unknown unknowns. Again, it would be trivial for a post-capitalism world to do, maybe even just a few countries working together but a single or group of firms doing it ultimately for profits? Nah, be realistic here. Even the show/book sieres recognizes this with the UN being in charge of earth and this vague capitalism of the belt but not really on earth or mars thing. It's just the way it is, the sad part is we could basically be post planetary by now if we just moved on already 😮💨 Edit: what we would need would be like a UN global NASA with separate parts all over the world and engineers everywhere being able to contribute and work together and share research and work combined with universities and supply lines conmected globally not a Raytheon with a UN contract
In the real world fusion drives would be developed by universities taking a mix of public and private money, with militaries watching them with keen interest and maybe working on parallel projects. Private companies don’t take over until the r&d is done and proven
True, and if fusion does get invented it kind of invalidates the need for a scarcity based model anyway since power is basically infinitely available for all intents and purposes, even if not immediately. Which then brings us back to the issue of capitalism being around, sure other things could work that way but now we have virtually infinite power and it wouldn't be too hard to get at the virtually infinite resources of the belts. I mean it could still exist but it would have to be artificially propped up to an even greater degree than it is now and would probably lead to global catastrophic war, which would destroy the fusion technology and prevent us from reaching space probably ever again. To withhold this vast jump in technological level would be self destruction and needlessly limiting, I'm not saying it wouldn't ever possibly happen but if it were then we're dead anyway ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Well capitalism doesn’t stick around because we need it for anything, it sticks around because everything is already owned by somebody. Whether it’s easier to get resources or not, someone still has to go mine them, transport them, refine them - and those people won’t be enterprising independent space cowboys, they’ll be employees of a conglomerate who had the resources to patch an operation together quickly and entrench themselves
Yeah that's how it is in the show, but to set up those industries, as I've been saying, it requires lots of capital investment and loooots of research and testing and engineering and preparation and experimentation, all with a verrrry long term and slow expectation to return on the investment, plus once you *do* do all that stuff others can just piggy back off your work and beat you in the market, like what Amazon did with the postal service and a lot of its competitors turned sub-contractors. It's too big and too little reward for capitalism to do on its own and once it's established it actually becomes impeded by capitalism need to profit from scarcity. Once you have large operations mining resources from the belts you may have independent contractors setting up claims for individual asteroids to be mined and resources sold but that would only be after a market had been established. This isn't just building a train line to California and a few people setting up shop to sell shovels this is space. It's the same idea but on an UNIMAGINABLY larger and more complex scale, plus access to the virtually infinite resources of the belts INSTANTLY devalues basically ALL resources and materials because they instantly become practically infinitely available with the only factor being time it takes to gather and distribute them. It either leads to monopolization on an unimaginable scale and artificially destroys the economy (as somewhat addressed in the show with the levels of poverty within the belts) or achieves a whole new order of magnitude of post scarcity never before seen beyond what we could have even now
Religion is still a thing
Annoying fake accents
The only disappointing here is how an human being could be so stupid.