The Expanse season 2
- Thread starter RAMA
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They might have picked them up on Ganymede (hence the gravity-centric design) and most of the shops catering to space travelers are shut down after the attack, so they just had to take what was available.
Alex and the Rocinante did not go to Ganymede.
Ganymede's gravity is only 0.146g, even less than the Moon's gravity. Liquids under gravity that low would flow very differently than they do under Earth gravity -- probably closer to how they'd behave in free fall. So the drinking-vessel design that works in free fall would probably be best for lunar-gravity conditions as well.
That doesn't make sense, though, because "regular" cans would be pretty useless anyplace with significantly less than Earth gravity -- which means anyplace other than Earth, Venus, or a rotating habitat or ship under thrust, unless you can build cloud cities in the atmosphere of Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune. Anywhere else, the highest gravity you'd get is Martian/Mercurian gravity of 38%, which is pretty low and would cause fluids to slosh around easily and surface tension to be far more dominant in their behavior, requiring a different design for liquid containers. So low/microgravity-suitable drinking vessels would be more common everywhere except Earth because they'd have to be, and therefore they'd be less expensive too.
Long ago, in the worldbuilding for my own SF, I figured out a handy fact about the known bodies of the Solar System. The ones that have a reasonable chance of being settled by humans basically break down into five surprisingly distinct gravity classes, which I coined labels for:
1. Terran, 0.9-1.14 g (Earth, Venus, cloudtops of the 3 smaller giants)
2. Martian, 0.38 g (Mars, Mercury)
3. Lunar, 0.13-0.18 g (Luna, the Galilean moons, Titan)
4. Hadean, 0.06-0.08 g (moon Triton and dwarf planets Eris, Haumea, Pluto, Makemake)
5. Cerean, <0.04 g (other large moons, dwarfs, and asteroids)
As you can see, there's a pretty huge gap between Earthlike gravity and the next-highest thing. So one can't assume that the way things behave under Earth gravity is an exemplar for what they'd be like on most Solar bodies.
We'd have to ask an actual astronaut, but I'd imagine tipping the can up to your lips would throw the liquid toward the bottom, the point furthest from the axis of twist as you raise the can. Thus away from the opening. In any case, you're probably not going to get all of the liquid out easily.
I finally got caught up, and the last few episodes have been good. Not necessarily the best the show's been, but still pretty solid.
I was not expecting Errinwright (I checked the recap on the Syfy site and that is the correct spelling) to actually confess everything to Avaserala like that. Was this the first we heard about Mao working for Mars? I had been assuming since he was working with Errinwright they were doing all of this either for Earth, or just for themselves independently.
It will be very interesting to see what happens with Bobbi now that she's heard about the Protomolocule.
I have to admit, I was kind of wondering about cans in 0g myself.
I was not expecting Errinwright (I checked the recap on the Syfy site and that is the correct spelling) to actually confess everything to Avaserala like that. Was this the first we heard about Mao working for Mars? I had been assuming since he was working with Errinwright they were doing all of this either for Earth, or just for themselves independently.
It will be very interesting to see what happens with Bobbi now that she's heard about the Protomolocule.
I have to admit, I was kind of wondering about cans in 0g myself.
I believe so. I think the show wants us to see this as Mao being in it purely for himself. It looked like he was in it with Earth, working with Errinwright, but he's also been in it with Mars all along. He's just using whoever is handy to fund his research, making promises he doesn't care if he can keep or not.
So basically, using this...we are arguing over the shape of a container an energy drink comes in when we should be wondering how the hell Martians can come to Earth and walk around like it's normal. Ah Scifi fans....gotta love us.
They're both questions that illustrate the effects of different gravities, so they're equally worth addressing. There's so much we Earthlings take for granted about physics just because we have no experience with other gravity levels. The ways in which fluids behave differently in low gravity are very important to many aspects of design, including the design of spaceship fuel tanks and pumping systems. Everything that handled liquids would have to be designed very differently in low gravity or microgravity. Bathtubs and sinks would have to be much deeper, and maybe have inward-curving rims. Swimming pools might be a tricky proposition. And so on.
The great thing about science is that everything is connected. The same principles and processes apply universally, so understanding them in one context helps you understand them in others. So no science question is bigger or smaller than another, no matter how it may seem. That's the point of Isaac Newton's famous anecdote about figuring out the motion of the planets based on observing the fall of an apple (which has been embellished into the myth that it hit him on the head). It's all connected, regardless of scale, so a minor example can be just as enlightening as a cosmic one.
If you show someone drinking out of something, it's pretty easy for the audience to figure out it's a drinking vessel. More likely it's budgetary.
It wasn't really meant as an insult. I was kinda just poking fun at us (me included) as fans because sometimes we tend to get hung up on some little minutiae in a show whilst ignoring some much bigger improbability. I do it all the time.
I didn't take it that way. Two people can disagree about an idea without it being personal in any way; there's no reason why it should be personal when it's just about an abstract concept. I was simply expressing my point of view that there are no "minutiae" in science, that any question revealing something about physics on any level can be revealing about a much broader range of phenomena.
They did have that line about Martian military training regularly in 1g.
The guy that told Bobbie where the beach was noticed she was from Mars by the way she walked.
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