The Expanse season 2

[Mr Awe]

But this ship wasn't trying to hide. It made a direct journey from Ganymede to Tycho Station. It's known when it arrived and roughly when it must have departed. It wouldn't be that hard to find. And for the third time, I'm saying this is what they could've fallen back on if more obvious, easy methods like checking the station's docking logs and surveillance footage. How many times do we have to go in circles on this?

Like I've indicated earlier, I do totally agree with that. However, that doesn't imply that they have the ability to monitor all traffic precisely. But, clearly the station should be aware of the ships that are arrive and unloading refugees! I do think that portion of the story was clumsily handled, which I mentioned earlier. So, completely agree on that point. But, disagree about the implication that the various parties can track all space craft precisely.

I think it falls back to the thinking in WW2 and other eras. People knew, people said nothing could be done, when in reality things could be done, there just wasn't the will to do it or the willingness to take the risk for that matter. If that lady had actually tried to raise a case against that ship, she might be spaced herself. After all, there was a coup just about to take place under that very same ill-will towards inners. The lady said she couldn't do anything but in reality she probably really meant she wasn't willing to make it an issue because of the personal risk to her.

It's painful seeing people not take action to correct a wrong but sadly history is filled with that.

Mr Awe

 

[Mr Awe]

And this is also the whole point about "stealth technology" being a first-strike weapon: because stealth ships are very hard to track even when they're CLOSE to something that would normally be watching for inbound threats. So it's a very serious game-changer in the Expanse world.

Spoiler

Which is exactly what happens in "Nemesis Games" when the OPA cover several small asteroids with stealth coating and fling them at Earth at high speed. The Earth's defense systems, which are specifically designed to keep this from happening, never see them coming, and 5 billion people die pretty much instantly.

Such is the ebb and flow of military secrets. New technology can be game changers!

Mr Awe

 

[Christopher]

But, disagree about the implication that the various parties can track all space craft precisely.

I don't believe that's what I said. What I said is, one, that all parties would have reason to try to track spacecraft as a routine safety precaution; and two, that this particular spacecraft would have had no reason to make any effort to evade such detection, and would have had trouble doing so anyway since its trajectory would be basically known. It's an elementary logical fallacy to mistake a specific argument for a general argument. I was not talking about every ship ever; I was talking about this ship. The fact that some ships in other cases might be able to evade detection does not refute my point that means of detection would exist. The fact that some people are trained to dodge security cameras does not mean there are no security cameras or that it isn't possible to track anyone ever.

 

[Mr Awe]

I don't believe that's what I said.

It's what you wrote.

So I'd expect every such spacecraft in the system to be carefully tracked as a routine precaution.

You emphasized every in your original post yourself.

So it just stands to reason that a civilization using such drives would track all interplanetary traffic routinely. If it doesn't, then that's a logic hole in the premise.

You very specifically said they should be able track every and all ships several times. You made such a point of it to even say it's a "logic hole" if they didn't. You even said tracking all ships would be done "routinely", which implies it is not a difficult task.

Maybe you didn't mean what you wrote, but that's how I took it. Sure, for security reasons, they'd love to track every single ship. But, the show has made it pretty clear they can't. I don't believe that's a "logical hole" but rather a believable technical limitation. I think they'd focus more on a defensive zone that they can actually monitor.

But, again, agree for that specific ship, it wasn't believable. It was ham-handedly handled! I think we've already agreed on the story logic behind that though.

 

[Christopher]

It's what you wrote.
...
You emphasized every in your original post yourself.
...
You very specifically said they should be able track every and all ships several times.

That's an excessively literal reading that badly misses my point. What I actually said was "So I'd expect every such spacecraft in the system to be carefully tracked as a routine precaution." I suppose I could've phrased it more precisely to avoid misinterpretations, but what I meant was that the system for routinely tracking Epstein Drive traffic would logically be expected to exist, for the same reason that widespread traffic cameras and air-traffic control radar exist. It simply makes sense that a system for tracking potentially dangerous vehicles would exist. Whether it could succeed in every single case is irrelevant, because I'm not talking about every single case, I'm talking about this one specific ship and the possible ways that IT could've potentially been identified.

Maybe you didn't mean what you wrote, but that's how I took it. Sure, for security reasons, they'd love to track every single ship. But, the show has made it pretty clear they can't. I don't believe that's a "logical hole" but rather a believable technical limitation.

Any light-emitting object anywhere in the Solar System can be observed if there's a telescope pointed the right way. There are no horizons to be below. There are no hills or bushes to hide behind. Epstein Drives are extremely powerful, thus they would be extremely bright and extremely easy to track, and there would be an enormously strong incentive to try to track them.

Remember, when Diogo evaded the Roci, he did it by shutting down the drive. He had to go dark and use thrusters alone to change onto a new course, so that when he did re-engage the drive, they wouldn't be looking in the right place. That's how you evade detection: By turning off the thing that makes your ship bright and easy to spot. The only chance is to dodge in an unknown direction and wait a while before reactivating the drive, so that when you do have to become bright again, your pursuers don't know which of the many drive signatures in view is yours. Although, of course, the Roci did reacquire Diogo, because he didn't stay dark long enough to get outside the range where they could reacquire him.

And we have seen plenty of scenes of things being tracked. When Earth launched those missiles toward Eros, everyone could track them. Logically, if you were going to make anything stealthy and undetectable, it'd be nuclear missiles. But nobody had any trouble keeping track of their trajectories, because they were firing their engines. The only ships that can't be easily tracked are ones that aren't under thrust and thus aren't emitting bright light. It's like cars driving on a flat, open desert road at night. You want to avoid being seen, you turn off your headlights. But as long as your lights are on, your motion can be observed. It's as simple as that.

But, again, agree for that specific ship, it wasn't believable. It was ham-handedly handled! I think we've already agreed on the story logic behind that though.

If you agree with me, then why the hell are you still arguing over irrelevant side points???

 

[Shawnster]

By the end of the episode, yes. But it shouldn't have been that hard to track the guy down before then, with a modicum of effort applied rather than none at all. And as I said, regardless of results, at least Alex would be more likely to try.

[QUOTE="Crazy Eddie, post: 11951611, member: 5691"

All the captain of the ship would have to say is "Ima lowda choked on his kilbble and we cut drift to space the body. See? It's right there in the nav logs, sa sa que?"
[/QUOTE]

I agree with Christopher that the ship could have been tracked down, but I really disagree about the authorities (of any kind) being able to track ships constantly, continuously or continually (whichever word fits) across the entire inhabited solar system. The show is clear that they can run silent and be unobserved or untraceable.

And even if they were tracking the ship, Crazy Eddie's comment above is a perfect cover, especially since it has the advantage of being true, from a certain point of view "We stopped to space the refugees that died during transit before we arrived at Tycho."

However, how far could Dr. Meng have wandered before telling the medical officer about the tragedy? He probably stopped at the first person he could get to. Let's say he wandered the length of a football field. How many ships could dock in that size area? He surely knew which side of the station he docked on (did he leave the airlock and turn left or turn right? I believe he turned right). Plus, like Christopher said, I'm sure they have security cameras monitoring the dock. Had someone believed him, they could have accessed the camera data and saw which ship he specifically got off of.

But that gets us back to Crazy Eddie's statement. The man was in shock and had just gone through an incredible trauma. He's obviously not thinking clearly. The poor guy got confused and his fragile, damaged mind made up a story. He was further traumatized by the deaths of the refugees in-route. His fragile mind twisted the truth into a story that they happened to space all the "inners" intentionally.

I'm sure the medical officer, while appearing to genuinely listen to Meng, must have thought he was in shock and making up something.

Jared Harris (Anderson Dawes) reminds me of the villain B'sogg (John Brumpton) from Farscape's "Home on the Remains.

 

[Christopher]

I agree with Christopher that the ship could have been tracked down, but I really disagree about the authorities (of any kind) being able to track ships constantly, continuously or continually (whichever word fits) across the entire inhabited solar system. The show is clear that they can run silent and be unobserved or untraceable.

Yes, by turning off their drives. What I've been saying is that ships using Epstein Drives are easy enough to track, because anything that powerful is going to be very bright. I've mentioned how Diogo tried to evade the Roci by shutting off the drive and dodging on thrusters. He had to do that because ships are easy to track while their main drives are engaged, which was my actual point. We know that ships in the Expanse-verse keep their drives on almost constantly, in order to have onboard gravity. Coasting at free fall is an exception to the rule, so generally ships could be tracked unless they were specifically trying to avoid pursuit -- which this particular ship was not. And it is this specific ship in this specific situation I am talking about, not every ship in every imaginable situation.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yes, by turning off their drives. What I've been saying is that ships using Epstein Drives are easy enough to track, because anything that powerful is going to be very bright.

Not necessarily. The point of Epstein drives isn't that they're incredibly powerful, it's that they're incredibly EFFICIENT. They're basically combining exhaust velocities competitive with modern ion engines with mass flows you'd normally get from chemical rockets. The exhaust plume may not be that much brighter than an ordinary chemical rocket of similar size, especially if it's heating the gas to a comparatively low temperature -- say, just hot enough to ionize it -- and using some sort of magnetic z-pinch or lorentz field to achieve the rest of that high acceleration. The latter is more likely, since Solomon Epstein basically invented his drive system by ACCIDENT and implies it was a relatively simple modification using a conventional engine in an unconventional way; probably he found some sort of way of regeneratively boosting the output of a magnetic nozzle by channeling waste energy from the exhaust plume into the field itself.

I've mentioned how Diogo tried to evade the Roci by shutting off the drive and dodging on thrusters. He had to do that because ships are easy to track while their main drives are engaged...

That from a distance of a few hundred kilometers, though. Note that Anderson Dawes was able to escape from Tycho pretty much the same way and was never seen again. The same thing happens to the Scopuli, in fact, which killed its transponder and went on the drift for several days so that nobody would know where it was going before it intercepted the Anubis. On that same note: the only reason the OPA knew where the Anubis was is because the ship was running with its transponder on. It did this because its drive plume would have been visible to anyone looking in that direction, and a ship running on drives without its transponder is like a gangster driving on the freeway with a giant neon sign on the top that says "getaway car" in big bold letters. So while the OPA knew where the Anubis was and what its flight path was, they had no way of knowing what KIND of ship the Anubis actually was, and were therefore very surprised to learn they had been sent to intercept a gunship.

The ship we're talking about -- the refugee ship -- was running with its transponder on as well as its drives. It's been tracked passively because it isn't doing anything all that suspicious. Cutting thrust for a minute or two wouldn't raise any eyebrows anywhere, because it still had its transponder on and had nothing much to hide. Cutting thrust AND turning off its transponders might look suspicious if anyone was looking directly at it, but the ship's trajectory would be hard enough to predict at that point that by the time it lit up its drives again it might not be on anyone's monitoring board and would be able to get where it wants to go undetected.

 

[Shawnster]

Not necessarily.


That from a distance of a few hundred kilometers, though. Note that Anderson Dawes was able to escape from Tycho pretty much the same way and was never seen again.

If I understand you correctly, and if Christopher is correct, then they should have been able to track Dawes once they figured out which decoy ship he actually departed from? If Chris is correct, then they should already have been tracking that ship unless it went intentionally dark AND cut it's drives, correct?

 

[Christopher]

If I understand you correctly, and if Christopher is correct, then they should have been able to track Dawes once they figured out which decoy ship he actually departed from? If Chris is correct, then they should already have been tracking that ship unless it went intentionally dark AND cut it's drives, correct?

Those are the same thing. Going dark is cutting the drive. Any drive as powerful as the Epstein Drive is going to emit a lot of energy that will make it easy to detect. After all, visible light is just a narrow part of the EM spectrum. Even a ship that isn't emitting visible light will still be running hot if it's generating a lot of power, and thus it'll be detectable in infrared.

Aside from that, as I keep saying, I was talking about the specific circumstances of the ship Meng was on. Yes, in general, there are ways to evade pursuit, but as I've said already at least once, they require your pursuers to be unaware of your course so that they don't know where to look. If they knew where to look, they could see your drive while it was active, so evasion requires them not to have that knowledge.

And that is my point about the ship Meng was on. It was on a known trajectory -- from Ganymede to Tycho Station within a known range of time. And since Ganymede had just been subject to a massive disaster, there was no doubt abundant media coverage, plenty of governments' and curious onlookers' telescopes pointed at Ganymede, plenty of attention on the refugee ships. That's why I'm convinced that specific ship would be easy to identify. There'd be enough coverage that it would be possible to find evidence of a ship that briefly cut off its drive for a duration consistent with Meng's account.

 

[Shawnster]

[QUOTE="Christopher, post: 11953617, member: 295"And since Ganymede had just been subject to a massive disaster, there was no doubt abundant media coverage, plenty of governments' and curious onlookers' telescopes pointed at Ganymede, plenty of attention on the refugee ships. That's why I'm convinced that specific ship would be easy to identify. There'd be enough coverage that it would be possible to find evidence of a ship that briefly cut off its drive for a duration consistent with Meng's account.[/QUOTE]

21st century major outlets have drones, helicopters... some large ones may even have access to satellites. This comment does make me wonder just what kind of tech would be available to the media outlets of the Expanse Universe. Interesting point.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If Chris is correct, then they should already have been tracking that ship unless it went intentionally dark AND cut it's drives, correct?

Correct. Which is exactly what they did. More importantly, Johnson only learned of the second ship AFTER the fact when reviewing security logs, by which point it was too late to track them. Dawes probably went on the drift for a while and then rendezvoused with another ship to take them back to Ceres station (it's not like he'd be going anywhere ELSE, but he wasn't trying to avoid tracking, just interception).

 

[Mr Awe]

That's an excessively literal reading that badly misses my point.

Nonetheless, it is what you conveyed multiple times and with emphasis at points. No worries, but I wanted you to see why several of us thought you meant something else when you referred to tracking all ships. It's just not going to be like an air traffic control system because it's much easier to go dark.

Whether it could succeed in every single case is irrelevant, because I'm not talking about every single case, I'm talking about this one specific ship and the possible ways that IT could've potentially been identified.

When you were talking about tracking for defense, you ARE talking about all ships. If you can accurately track ships, but only for a small portion, it's a security vulnerability as you were describing.

Any light-emitting object anywhere in the Solar System can be observed if there's a telescope pointed the right way. There are no horizons to be below. There are no hills or bushes to hide behind. Epstein Drives are extremely powerful, thus they would be extremely bright and extremely easy to track, and there would be an enormously strong incentive to try to track them.

No hills but there apparently is stealth technology. And, it's just harder to detect small ships in the vastness of space. Going dark in the vastness of space is easier than it is for planes on Earth. Yet, even here we had that Malaysian passenger jet successfully go dark.

And we have seen plenty of scenes of things being tracked. When Earth launched those missiles toward Eros, everyone could track them. Logically, if you were going to make anything stealthy and undetectable, it'd be nuclear missiles.

Earth tracked them yet they didn't know what happened to the ones that did not self-destruct. We know that Fred Johnson has them but Earth doesn't know this.

If you agree with me, then why the hell are you still arguing over irrelevant side points???

I agree with parts of what you're saying. I agree that Tycho Station should know more about the specific freighter in question. I disagree that the Epstein Drive implies that the various parties can track all ships. I don't think that's implied at all. And, it's a relevant point because it affects various storylines that we've seen and I think the stealth technology and even intentionally going dark without stealth technology will continue to play an important role.

Mr Awe

 

[Unicron]

So I have an oddball question, and I'm not sure if anyone else uses FIOS to keep up with some of their series as I like to do. It's generally been a pretty reliable service, but I noticed when I went to watch S2E8 (Pyre) it seems to require a buy option at the moment, even though E9 is now available for free viewing and one can still watch several earlier S2 eps free as well. It's just strange to me that FIOS would do this in the middle of a season when normally all aired current eps are free until the season ends, and some eps are not affected.

 

[IndyMac]

So I have an oddball question, and I'm not sure if anyone else uses FIOS to keep up with some of their series as I like to do. It's generally been a pretty reliable service, but I noticed when I went to watch S2E8 (Pyre) it seems to require a buy option at the moment, even though E9 is now available for free viewing and one can still watch several earlier S2 eps free as well. It's just strange to me that FIOS would do this in the middle of a season when normally all aired current eps are free until the season ends, and some eps are not affected.

It is a mistake, contact them.

 

[Forbin]

So now our heroes are hijacking innocent freighters and getting their owners killed? That's not very heroic.

Martians on Earth! Man, can you imagine just trying to move around when you weigh three times what you're used to? I'd be 600 pounds under 3Gs! Gunny deserves another purple heart just for standing through her first interview.

 

[The Wormhole]

So now our heroes are hijacking innocent freighters and getting their owners killed? That's not very heroic.

Yeah, that whole shoot-out with the co-pilot getting killed seems does not inspire confidence in Holden. Based on how relatively calm the freighter captain despite the goons waving their guns around, this seems to be normal fare. Then Holden and gang bust in, start a firefight which ends with the goons and the co-pilot dead. He basically made things much worse than they needed to be While both the novels and the show have depicted Holden as someone hopelessly noble, always needing to do the right thing even when it isn't the smart thing and could cause more trouble in the long run than it's worth, I doubt the Holden in the novels would have allowed himself to get into this sort of situation where he's made a situation many times worse than it was or had to be.

Meanwhile, Stargate fans might recognize the co-pilot as Peter Williams, who played Goa'uld System Lord Apophis on SG-1.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, that whole shoot-out with the co-pilot getting killed seems does not inspire confidence in Holden. Based on how relatively calm the freighter captain despite the goons waving their guns around, this seems to be normal fare. Then Holden and gang bust in, start a firefight which ends with the goons and the co-pilot dead. He basically made things much worse than they needed to be

I don't agree. The Somnambulist crew went in expecting the pirates to merely skim off 10 percent and let them go on their way, but these pirates made it clear that they were going to take everything and kill the crew, even before Holden and the others charged in.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yeah, that whole shoot-out with the co-pilot getting killed seems does not inspire confidence in Holden. Based on how relatively calm the freighter captain despite the goons waving their guns around, this seems to be normal fare. Then Holden and gang bust in, start a firefight which ends with the goons and the co-pilot dead. He basically made things much worse than they needed to be While both the novels and the show have depicted Holden as someone hopelessly noble, always needing to do the right thing even when it isn't the smart thing and could cause more trouble in the long run than it's worth, I doubt the Holden in the novels would have allowed himself to get into this sort of situation where he's made a situation many times worse than it was or had to be.

Meanwhile, Stargate fans might recognize the co-pilot as Peter Williams, who played Goa'uld System Lord Apophis on SG-1.

To be fair, in the novels Holden commandeered the Somnambulist right after arresting the pirates who had stolen everything of value from it (including all of their air and water). The fate of the crew is never made clear in the novels, only that Holden appropriates the ship under Fred Johnson's authority and four chapters later trades it cigarettes or something.

So far, the TV treatment seems hell bent on over-dramatizing every little detail and painting the entire storyline with a gallon of angst; if the novels spend two paragraphs on an argument about who gets the last oatmeal raisin cookie, the TV series will turn that argument into a three way mexican standoff with the entire crew pointing guns at each other and Holden saying "Get a grip, people! That's not a Belter Cookie or a Martian Cookie or even an EARTH cookie! That's a goddamn OATMEAL RAISIN cookie, which you know good and damn well is my FAVORITE cookie! And if you can't accept that that cookie is mine..."
Amos cocks his gun and Alex says, "Hold on, partner, it doesn't have to end like this... we can draw straws for the cookie! Let's do it that way! I'm allergic to raisins so I'll be the judge! No bloodshed today!"

 

[The Wormhole]

Another odd thing that stood out in this episode, the Martian chaplain seems to have a lot more authority and security clearance than a chaplain should. Why is he even part of the conference? It certainly doesn't seem to be in a religious capacity. In the novels, the character is also a qualified counselor, but he doesn't seem to be operating in that capacity at the conference either. Since the character never even left Mars in the novels, this seems an odd way to expand on him in the show.