The Expanse?

Dannyalcatraz said:

That just describes the fastest way to get from A to B in space with relatively RW physics.

But consider the speed the ships would have to travel to support that many people away from Earth and Mars, with system-wide commerce. As a practical matter, that's a LOT of ice/water and refineable ores to be transported. So we know they can go fast...'cause they'd have to.

The missiles used struck the second ship mere seconds after they cleared the asteroid. Sure, the smaller ship followed in hopes of helping, but they couldn't have gotten so far away from the asteroid in that time. Add in some time for shock, and then- snapping them out of paralysis- the announcement of the debris coming their way. They had time after that announcement to get into their seats, prepare for high-g burn, turn their ship around and start running. And they ran for a bit before the first debris strike.

So I still can't buy that the small ship was too far away from the asteroid to cover behind it. The only way I can make it make sense is plot-driven stupidity.

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It's also how you need to perform evasive manoeuvres; vector thrust. I can't remember how long they had been moving away from the asteroid, but it was presumably hours at least. That's hours of acceleration. Running in front of the debris from the explosion therefore first entails decelerating enough to bring effective speed to zero, then accelerating away from the debris. They could well have still been travelling toward the debris, while madly trying to accelerate away from it. My first year in college was general sciences, including a hefty dose of Statics and Kinetics, so my brain tends to work in vectors. Most SciFi like Star Trek and Star Wars gives us aviation style manoeuvring, rather than thrust vectors. I think that Babylon 5's Star Furies gave us the most realistic style of space flight that I can recall, other than this.

Missiles don't have to keep a payload alive, nor return it, and so can accelerate at truly horrific rates that would turn a human body to Jell-o. A 50G straight burn would go far, fast. A standard travelling acceleration isn't likely to be more than 1-1.5G, for practical reasons. A "high G burn", for a ship that contains humans, would be maybe 7G. In this universe, at least so far, there is no artificial gravity nor 'inertial dampers.'

Accel/decel gets you places fast. The ion drive, that is currently being experimented with, has relatively tiny amounts of thrust but can maintain them for incredibly long periods of time, using small amounts of propellant matter. This makes them effectively faster AND more efficient than conventional rockets. What we currently do is accelerate up to a speed and then largely coast, using gravity wells to change trajectories.

CapnZapp said:

Yes. Do not approach The Expanse with the hopes it would be realistic intelligent hard sci-fi.

You might still enjoy it if you accept it is pulpy and unrealistic, even though there aren't any space bears or green muppets.

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I think it's intelligent... but only (very) selectively realistic. I watched a good interview with the book's authors who called their approach "wikipedia plausible". Except, of course, for the alien space magic stuff.

Then again, I admit to being a little confused on what constitutes "intelligent hard sci-fi". Allistair Reynolds & Steven Baxter get accused of writing it, and both of them deploy a fair share of what might as well be termed 'alien space magic', particularly in their Inhibitor & Xeelee sequence novels, respectively.

Ryujin said:

In this universe, at least so far, there is no artificial gravity nor 'inertial dampers.'

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Yeah, in the Expanse universe, 'inertial dampening' means 'strap you in, shoot you full of drugs, hope you don't black out or die from the acceleration stresses'.

Re: using the asteroid as cover from the torpedoes vs. using them as cover from the Canterbury debris... my take-away was trying to maneuver into cover was a desperation move, trying to do something. It didn't actually work -- the shuttle simply wasn't the target. By the time the debris field was approaching, thanks to their velocity & relative position, it wasn't even worth trying as a Hail Mary. I'll have to watch the scene again when I get home tonight.

Ryujin said:

It's also how you need to perform evasive manoeuvres; vector thrust. I can't remember how long they had been moving away from the asteroid, but it was presumably hours at least.
(snip)
Missiles don't have to keep a payload alive, nor return it, and so can accelerate at truly horrific rates that would turn a human body to Jell-o.

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Again, I don't think your points close the plot hole:

1) the elapsed time- at least on screen- from one ship avoiding missiles to their impact with the other- was seconds., and just minutes of elapsed screen time passed between explosion and and the revealed danger of the debris field. We also know that the big ship was "2 days" off the path of the main shipping lanes, so traveling "hours" to get back to the main ship is possible but improbable. We have 2 possibilities: either they hadn't traveled that far and had plenty of time to get to cover, or- if you're correct and they had traveled hours- they were incompetent idiots for not realizing during that enormous passage of time they're headed directly into the debris field of the exploded ship.

2) we had just seen the large ship do a turn on its long axis, stabilize, then hit G's high enough to break part of the ship's metal infrastructure. In addition, we know from the Earth-centric part of the storyline, that the ships in the show reach accelerations high enough to kill humans without the chemicals their seats inject into them before a high-g burn. There's no reason the small ship couldn't have done the same axial rotation & burn.

The asteroid scene starts with the small ship 12,000k from the Martian ship right above the asteroid. If the monitors on the Knight are scaled and accurate, the Knight is @36,000k from the Canterbury.

It takes @20 seconds from launch for the missiles to go past the Knight. From the warning, "Canterbury, burn like hell- you've got incoming!", to impact & detonation, 29 seconds elapse. 40+ seconds pass between the Canterbury's destruction and showing the debris field approaching from an exterior view...which, BTW, still shows the Knight close to the asteroid. In the next episode, perhaps 6 seconds in the relevant scene pass before "Debris field!" is announced.

We know from the glow of their thrusters that the missiles were under constant acceleration.

The Knight was just able to get to get to the back side of the asteroid as the missiles passed, and did so vectoring at an angle perpendicular-ish to the missiles' trajectory.

Plot hole.

I don't think it's worth-while to debate the plausibility of individual Expanse scenes. It simply isn't focussing on believability in the details.

This does not mean The Expanse is bad. Only that it is well past the point where it could be called realistic.

I mean, if those missiles were to be fired on the Hermes of The Martian, I could see a fruitful analysis of whether they could travel that fast. Or, like how Sandra Bullock switched orbitale planes when she escaped the mayhem of Gravity.

But The Expanse? Please.

S P O I L E R

It had (episode 4) the flagship of the Martian Navy operate completely without screening vessels or other backup. That's about as realistic as catching an American carrier on its own. Which is to say: a complete and utter fantasy.

The only even remotely interesting thing to discuss about that mind-boggling decision is why the aliens could not be shown to blast their way through a few escorts, just as even a small nod to realism (even future tv-budget realism)... All that was needed was a few seconds of cheap CGI space vessels exploding and I would have bought it.

Another "agree to differ" thing, I guess, as there are many points open to interpretation. I'll just go on liking it, until they screw something up for me

The 3rd and 4th episodes haven't aired here yet.

I know I'm quibbling. I do so because I otherwise enjoyed what I saw, but that scene knocked me out of my willing suspension of disbelief. Like I said, the asteroid scene was pretty much the only thing about the first 2 episodes that bugged me.

We're nerds. Quibbling is what we do! You could say it's our speciality, if you wanted to insert a random Star Wars reference.

(Still need to re-watch that scene so I can quibble further...)

The trouble with quibbles is that they're carnivorous, and nearly indistinguishable from their cousins, tribbles.

Mallus said:

Then again, I admit to being a little confused on what constitutes "intelligent hard sci-fi". Allistair Reynolds & Steven Baxter get accused of writing it, and both of them deploy a fair share of what might as well be termed 'alien space magic', particularly in their Inhibitor & Xeelee sequence novels, respectively.

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They do write it; there's a certain modern contingent of 'hard-sf' fans that, unless it's done with all-next-five-years tech and show-the-math, decry anything else as 'not hard-sf'. It's just more fan-wars, which can be ignored for the meaningless twaddle it always is, same as gaming edition-wars.