The Expanse Season 3

[Asbo Zaprudder]

So they're in zero-G and clomping around with their magnetic boots (even though their body language screams gravity), and they made a point of saying they're all in zero-G. Which just makes me watch their behavior closer. While is zero-G, one person leaned casually against a wall, and two people sat down on seats. The director really needs to watch out for stuff like that. yeah, yeah, i know there are practical limits on portraying zero-G here on earth, but ferchrissake, don't have people plop down into a chair!

2001: A Space Odyssey was also guilty of such errors - particularly in the non-centrifuge areas on Discovery - even with a meticulous director such as Stanley Kubrick. For example, why climb the ladder from the pod bay laboriously when you could propel yourself with just your hands? As @Christopher has mentioned, magnetic (or Velcro) boots don't work at all well in zero-G, but they suffice to suspend disbelief for some of the audience.

 

[The Wormhole]

Given the Drummer is an amalgamation of the characters I guess there's nothing in the book to really indicate where it's gonna go from that direction.

Spoiler: show speculation laced with novel spoilers

Well, I personally have a had feeling Drummer's going to eat a bullet from her XO very soon, given the storyline involved the death of Sam, who Drummer seems to be standing in for, with the XO filling the place of the ship's insane Captain in the novel.

Probably nearly a year on TV as well, at this point. Season 1 through 3.0 seemed to take place more-or-less continuously, but episodes might've still covered days or weeks with travel times, plus the six-month time jump earlier this season between 3.0 and 3.5. And Avasarala came down hard on Mao and his family, when, late season 1?

Oh, did she begin persecuting the Mao family in season 1? For some reason, I thought it only started towards the end of season 2, when Avasarala first arrived on Mao's space yacht.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I'm more bothered by the fact that nobody got nausea, or floated up a bit, or otherwise reacted when they shut down the engine and were in Zero G, than the fact that few people sat down or leaned. The woman sat down, then the gravity went away but she didn't feel like moving in that moment. Big deal. She could have looked around as it surely must feel weird, as her senses got confused where up was, but then, maybe she didn't usually feel too well after doing so, so she chose to remain still or not turn her head. I have only ever been in free fall for a couple of seconds, but those were some very confusing couple of seconds, which I suspect every transition must feel something like this. Like wondering how the horizon could be literally under me, then how the sense of ‘under’ started moving but the horizon didn't. Your intuitive reaction is not to make sudden moves, or move at all, although you do feel an urge to move your head slightly to experiment with the feeling. Given how much I love sitting on a couch the wrong way around (sitting on the backrest), sitting down during enteringzero G would probably be next favourite thing. But why she didn't feel slightly confused at to what her posture needed to be, or why parts of her didn't hover slightly, that I can't tell.


I'm also not totally convinced that gravity boots are impractical in a fictional world like the one of the show, where ground can appear and disappear at will. If you're on the free floating ISS, sure, they wouldn't be of any help, as ‘walking’ would be more cumbersome than floating around. However, to the best of my knowledge, we have never actually tried walking with mag boots in zero G, so we don't know the real limits of their usefulness. Walking with them might be less difficult than it would seem (especially if the boots assist by changing the strength of the magnet). In the show's universe, I would totally buy that someone mandated magnetic boots as safety precaution for the ever-changing acceleration – to be used for regular walking only, with floating still the preferred for zero G. But then people started walking with them, first to mess around, then out of habit – kind of how you use the touchpad of your laptop when your mouse is a foot away, even though the touchpad is ridiculously impractical device. So it became a trend, and the mag boots became a thing.

 

[Marc]

Think floating between locations works in a small environment such as the ISS but in bigger vessel and with lots more people it would be dangerous.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, did she begin persecuting the Mao family in season 1? For some reason, I thought it only started towards the end of season 2, when Avasarala first arrived on Mao's space yacht.

It's not persecution if they're actually guilty and she's pursuing justice, no matter how much they may claim it is.

I'm more bothered by the fact that nobody got nausea, or floated up a bit, or otherwise reacted when they shut down the engine and were in Zero G, than the fact that few people sat down or leaned.

The ship presumably took weeks to get to the Ring from Earth, so the passengers have already had time to get their space legs and learn how to adjust to the transition from thrust to free fall.

I'm also not totally convinced that gravity boots are impractical in a fictional world like the one of the show, where ground can appear and disappear at will. If you're on the free floating ISS, sure, they wouldn't be of any help, as ‘walking’ would be more cumbersome than floating around. However, to the best of my knowledge, we have never actually tried walking with mag boots in zero G, so we don't know the real limits of their usefulness.

NASA did experiment with magnetic boots decades ago:

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-astronauts-wear-magnetic-shoes-to-simulate-gravity

In the show's universe, I would totally buy that someone mandated magnetic boots as safety precaution for the ever-changing acceleration – to be used for regular walking only, with floating still the preferred for zero G.

Except that having your feet on the floor contributes no protection against acceleration. Try standing up in the subway without holding onto a rail or strap. It would never work. After all, your center of mass is in your midsection, a meter or so away from your feet. To keep yourself from flailing around under acceleration, you need to anchor yourself closer to your center of mass, say, by clutching a handhold at chest level, or by sitting in a seat with a back. And of course the highest priority is to protect your head from being flung around, and being anchored at your feet is literally the worst possible way to do that. This is why we use handholds on buses and subways instead of foot straps. This is why we buckle ourselves into cars with belts around our waists and chests rather than strapping our feet to the pedals.

Handholds and straps are going to be the best protection against acceleration either in free fall or under thrust. And typically a spacecraft's acceleration changes would not be unpredictable. Astronavigation is a precise science with every firing maneuver calculated well in advance. The pilots or flight computer of a ship would know exactly when and how hard it was going to thrust, and thus the crew and passengers would have plenty of advance warning to strap themselves in. And if a situation arose where rapid, unpredictable changes in thrust were needed, like a battle, then logically everyone would strap in before it started, like they generally do on The Expanse.

And as the above link points out, the other reason mag boots are a stupid idea is that they interfere with shipboard electronics, and that most ship materials aren't ferromagnetic in any case.

 

[Mr Awe]

They're is a much simpler answer. The mag boots are just a plot device to help explain away why they're walking around in supposedly zero G. Some viewers might have a hard time getting past that without some sort of explanation. Shoot, some viewers even have a hard time letting the show off the hook for filming in 1G!

 

[YellowSubmarine]

NASA did experiment with magnetic boots decades ago:

If the picture is an actual shot from the experiment, not comparable at all. It looks like a person on Earth walking upside-down in -1g. That's not at all comparable to space use in 0g. That's like orders of magnitude of difference in the necessary magnetic strength.

Except that having your feet on the floor contributes no protection against acceleration. Try standing up in the subway without holding onto a rail or strap. It would never work.

I've done that since 5 on trams and buses, our subway added rails or straps between the doors two years ago. Works just fine. If the jolt is low, it only feels that the floor is slightly tilted during the acceleration. Sure, if the jolt is high, you wouldn't be able to stand.

And also not comparable. The majority of the acceleration is up/down (or gravity appearing/reappearing in the direction of the engine nozzle). So it would be like going up and down the elevator. I certainly don't hold any rails for that.

Manoeuvring is a different beast, of course, but with the ways the extreme version of it have been depicted in the show (shut down engine, turn around on thrusters, fire up engine again), it's not an issue, plus everyone straps in for it. Minor course corrections shouldn't be felt at all.

And the protection is that you don't float away when the engine turns off, to only fall 50 feet when it turns back on. Not that you don't fall on the ground.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know why we're talking about this like a hypothetical. There have been people living and working in space on ships and stations for many years now. If magnetic boots were a good idea, they'd use them. They don't. They prefer floating free and using handholds. That's what actually does work for them, tested and proven over decades of space travel. The question is already answered.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I think there's tech advances to take into account though. I assume the magnetic boots in The Expanse are much lighter, more efficient and "smarter" than the ones experimented with so far so there wouldn't be the same disadvantages to using them.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I don't know why we're talking about this like a hypothetical.

Excuse me. What? It is a hypothetical. The astronauts haven't ever tried magnetic boots (neither practical designs as Mr. Adventure suggests, nor any). The only space experiment I'm aware of was of shoe hooks attaching to floor of Skylab II, which sounds like chess, not walking. If you have only tried only one of the options (well, one and a half), no matter how much you tested and proved it, all the others remain hypothetical until you actually try them out. Steam engines being proven, tested and working for trains didn't somehow make electrical train engines ‘not hypothetical’. Building an electric train made them not hypothetical. I'm sure they would have sounded impractical and ridiculous to engineers of the first trains.

Astronauts also haven't tried working in wide open spaces, as depicted on the show, or working while the spacecraft is accelerating. The show is very deep into hypothetical waters on all counts. We know what works for our astronauts, but we don't know what would works for those on the show.

 

[Christopher]

Look -- space isn't Earth. You wouldn't try swimming by strapping weights to your ankles and walking on the bottom of the pool. That would be dumb. Each environment has its own way of moving that's optimal for its physics. Walking is optimal-ish for moving on land under Earth gravity. Hopping is better for locomotion under Lunar gravity, which is why the astronauts on the Moon did it. Swimming is better for locomotion in water. And floating free and using handholds has been proven through extensive experience to be optimal for moving in space. Watch some footage of astronauts on the ISS sometime. They aren't struggling. It's not cumbersome or difficult for them to move around. It's fast and fluid. They have enormously more freedom of movement than we do, can move far more efficiently and with far less exertion.

Astronauts also haven't tried working in wide open spaces, as depicted on the show

Which is why no sane engineer would build a ship with such wide open spaces in the first place, obviously. Those are sets for a television show, so they're spacious for the sake of camera access and actor movement. Obviously an actual spacecraft would not be designed with the same priorities.

or working while the spacecraft is accelerating.

Same issues as working while an aircraft is accelerating. You strap yourself in, obviously, or at the very least you hold onto something. I already pointed out how nonsensical it is to think that people in a spacecraft would not be warned in advance of accelerations. And naturally workstations could be designed with variable acceleration in mind, with things like velcro surfaces to stick equipment to, hooks to clip tools to, etc. It's naive to think that the goal is to find a way to make things work in space exactly the same way we're used to them working on Earth. The goal is to invent a new way that works for that environment.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

And floating free and using handholds has been proven through extensive experience to be optimal for moving in space

Optimal is a synonym of best. It implies a degree of comparison. You mean ‘good’.

 

[EmoBorg]

Clarissa Mao aka Melba is gonna make a good antagonist for this season. I am not a fan of the actor playing Holden, so if she kills him, i don't mind.

I do know that would be a divergence from the books.

 

[The Wormhole]

The important thing to remember about the magnetic boots, they aren't just a means to get around the fact the show is filmed on Earth in 1G, the mag boots actually are in the novels, and there's certainly no budgetary necessity for them there.

It's not persecution if they're actually guilty and she's pursuing justice, no matter how much they may claim it is.

Jules-Pierre Mao is the only one in his family who is guilty. There was no reason to arrest and interrogate everyone else, like his cousin who is a monk and has spent the past few decades secluded in a monastery, or his daughter who planned social events for him (and according to season 2 was cooperating with UN authorities). There's especially no reason now to continue holding other members of the Mao family or continue hunting the ones who haven't been apprehended, a month or so after Jules-Pierre was arrested. That is persecution.

 

[Marc]

Found via facebook - a 360 degree tour of the Behmouth set.

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[crookeddy]

So, is the show planning to finish up the 3rd book by the end of this season?

 

[The Wormhole]

Since no one here has inside information about the show, how would we know?

 

[crookeddy]

Since no one here has inside information about the show, how would we know?

I haven't read the books, and am just asking about how the show is progressing through the story. if they are in the last 25% of the 3rd book's story, I'd make the assumption that the season finale plans to finish it.

 

[David cgc]

Since no one here has inside information about the show, how would we know?

Back when it was cancelled, the producers did assure use that it would end at a natural stopping point, and as the season goes on, the book-readers have seemed more and more certain that we'll hit the end of book three by the finale.

 

[Christopher]

The free-fall fire in Naomi's skiff was beautifully executed, very realistic. I literally applauded. They did a good job with moisture in free fall too, like the blood drops responding to air currents and the tears pooling around Tilly's eyes. If only they could do the same for humans in free fall...

The very static sequence with Drummer and Ashford trapped in place for most of the episode seemed like a way to do a large part of the episode very inexpensively so they could free up the budget for all the CGI and wirework and the big fight scene at the end. Reducing the cast size (no Miller, virtually no Holden, etc.) would've helped save money too.