Live-Blogging The First Season Of The Expanse

Video is The Expanse | Trailer [HD] | Netflix via Netflix UK & Ireland and YouTube

The following is a record of my liveblogging of the first season of The Expanse, a science fiction drama set in our own Solar System. It not only records my real-time reactions to this entertaining show, but it is also a riff on my hopes for the real future of Man in Space.

2018/6/23

I have the first series of The Expanse on disk, but I haven’t got around to watching it yet. Maybe soon. It seemed an obvious science fiction story for me to try. I understand SyFy channel has cancelled it after the third season, but Amazon has picked it up.

2018/6/24 – am

So I watched the first disk of The Expanse. That means I’ve seen the first 5 episodes of Season One, so far. There’s a few things I can comment on at this point:

I love the physics realism of it. Many reviews focused on that, and I think it is very well realized. Zero gravity is depicted really well, the actual effects of acceleration, some kind of high performance, nuclear rocket propulsion.

Life on Ceres has a gritty look. It’s almost like film noir, with the detective hunting down his cases. IRL Ceres has <3% of Earth’s gravity; so folks would be hopping further than kangaroos as they walk. But I’ll forgive this for the sake of the story.

The shortage of resources also seems strange to me. There are moons that have huge amounts of ice, like Ganymede and Callisto – Even if you took all the ice from Ceres. And oxygen can be obtained from any rock, since they are mostly silicates and metal oxides. As long as you have cheap energy, nuclear or solar, you can have oxygen on any rocky body. For example, oxygen is the most-common element in the Earth’s crust. The Moon would be a great source of solar oxygen to supply the space program.

But then, that is why I have never been a fan of Mars. For the amount of resources it would take to terraform Mars, you could build a vast number of Space Habitats, and house colossal populations, in independent orbits around the Sun. In other words the Dyson Swarm approach is vastly more resource-efficient than terraforming planets.

I have a long-form article that deals with the problems of Mars, and why I actually favor the Moon as a first target for Space Industrialization.

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids – In fact it’s cold as Hell – Elton John.

Yep. Elton had it right.

As far as pure science fiction adventure though – Space Opera really – it is still well above-average believability. Star Trek is total fantasy by comparison. The stories are well written. It’s intriguing enough to keep me hooked. Yes, I’ll keep watching it.

2018/6/24 – pm

Hah. Just to amuse myself I ran some data through a spreadsheet. Without trying very hard, or practicing, I can jump about 25 cm vertically from a standing start. On Ceres, I would reach nearly 9 meters altitude, and it would take me almost 16 seconds to return to ground. A young athlete might do 70 cm on Earth. On Ceres he’d reach 25 meters altitude, and take over 26 seconds to return to ground. So leap 8-story buildings with a single bound. No one would walk on Ceres. Too much fun just bouncing and leaping. Ceilings would have to be really high. LOL.

Looking at chemical data: It’s hard to imagine, but almost half the weight of the average crustal rock on Earth is oxygen (47%). Lunar regolith is about 45% oxygen. This is mostly because the silicate ion is .SiO4. Even quartz is silica or SiO2.

An electrically-powered, hydrogen-plasma arc furnace could reduce the rock to elemental silicon and metals, producing H20 – water, as a byproduct. The condensed water could then be electrolyzed, releasing the oxygen, and recycling the hydrogen for reuse in the plasma furnace. Atomic hydrogen is a very powerful reducing agent.

The metals and silicon produced as a by-product from the oxygen plant could be used for construction, or solar panels, in the case of silicon (also electronic chips). On the Moon, useful metals would include aluminum, iron and titanium. Blocks of elemental silicon would make excellent radiation shields, to keep out cosmic radiation. All the buildings would be shiny black semimetal – The coolest-looking architecture in the solar system.

2018/6/29

The ever-falling price of solar power is another reason why Dyson clouds are a much better model of space colonization than terraforming Mars.

If you terraform Mars, you are only gaining a small planet. It is smaller than the Earth so it intercepts less solar energy. Worse, it is even further from the Sun than the Earth is. So sunlight is less intense there – more expensive.

With a Dyson swarm, you are maximizing your access to solar energy, because each habitat can have its own large solar collector. And if you are in a free orbit around the Sun, then you can access solar power 24/7, so you don’t even need storage, except for emergencies.

Furthermore, a Dyson swarm is scalable. There is no limit to how many habitats you build, up until you intercept the entire radiance of the Sun. At that point you have achieved a Type II Kardashev civilization.

Also at that point, you have access to enough raw energy, to power starships to sub-relativistic speeds. And if you have by then, a long-enough lifespan to make it, you can expand through the entire Galaxy – Turning every solar system into a Dyson cloud.

If nothing stops you – like possible alien civilizations – then one day you will build a Type III Kardashev civilization. The entire energy of the Galaxy will be yours. Star system by star system, Dyson cloud by Dyson cloud.

Here is Isaac Arthur’s wonderful video about the Kardashev scale:

Video is The Kardashev Scale (Narration Only) via Isaac Arthur and YouTube

2018/7/1

OK so I finally binge-watched my way through the whole of Season One of The Expanse. It’s really rather good, as a dramatic story. Perhaps a bit dark and grim for my ideal taste, but still interesting enough.

A few more thoughts about the technology. I see frequent references to the consequences of growing up in low gravity and how it leaves you with weak bones, etc.

But this is the huge advantage of Space Habitats. If they are rotating for artificial gravity then you can spin at whatever rate you need to create whatever level of artificial gravity is required to maintain human health. Presumably 1g would be optimal for human existence, since it’s what we evolved for.

Even Mars, with a natural gravity of 0.38 g, would not be so ideal for human life and development, as a 1 g rotating Space Habitat.

As for mining asteroids or minor planets, like Ceres or Eros; The optimal solution would be to house any human population in rotating 1 g habitats, in orbit around the asteroid or minor planet. Then you send robots down to the surface, to actually carry out the mining operations. In a few centuries time you might expect robots to be more advanced, and autonomous, than any we might build today. Also they could be designed for low gravity or operation in a vacuum. Or in a high radiation environments, like around Jupiter. Or in extreme temperatures, like Mercury or Pluto.

There is no need to actually expose humans to dangerous environments. They can live comfortably in orbiting Earth-like Space Habitats, and just direct the operation of the machines remotely. You’d want to be fairly close, to avoid light-travel time-delay; but a few thousand km would be barely noticable. If necessarily, you could even operate robotic avatars, using VR headsets and body suits, for full-immersion VR. Even if you did need occasional human presence on-the-spot, you could keep it short-term and still live most of your life on the Habitat. Especially you would want to raise children in Earth-normal conditions, so that they developed normally.

In fact now that I think about it, the lack of either rotating Space Habitats, or advanced robotics, are the two weirdest, and most-unrealistic things about The Expanse.

Of course, it’s not hard to see why. With rotating habitats for living in, and robotic labor for the mines, most of the conflict dynamics in the entire First Season would disappear.

It would be a boring story about people living quiet lives, operating teams of robotic labor for mining on Ceres or whatever, while working 9 to 5 in luxurious, high-tech conditions on the nearby, rotating Space Habitat. Maybe a few scientists would actually go down to the asteroid from time-to-time, to do actual personal research. And even then, maybe they would prefer to use robotic avatars – To minimize lifetime cosmic-radiation exposure?

The Expanse is a curious mix of the really-advanced, like extremely high-performance nuclear(?) propulsion, with extremely low-tech, low-gravity-everywhere, habitat-technology.

But even 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) had a rotating habitat, and Star Wars is full of droids. So maybe it’s all about being different, and gritty, and dark – A somewhat dystopian science fiction.

Check out Australia’s robotic mines.

Video is Driverless Trucks And Mining via YouTube

I love Komatsu designs for Front Runner autonomous haulage vehicle. No driver cabin, so can go equally in both directions, without maneuvering. Otherwise remote operation.

Video is Komatsu Technology Vision via Komatsu America Corp. and YouTube

2018/7/2

I’ve been having a deeper introspective think about The Expanse. Now I’ve seen the entire first season.

Yes it’s entertaining as a space-opera – a science fiction drama. But I don’t think I would want it as an actual, potential future for our species.

The whole point about the “space future” is that it massively increases human possibilities. Space is the natural habitat for science-based industrial and post-industrial civilizations for a number of important reasons:

1. Space allows you to have unlimited energy, up to the limit of the entire solar luminance, 382.8 x 10^24 Watts.
2. Space allows you to have unlimited resources, up to the limit of at least, the low-gravity bodies of the Solar System; the moons, asteroids, comets and minor planets. Beyond that, you could harness the major planets – at least the 4 outer gas giants could be used as a source of propellant mass for electrical and nuclear powered rockets. In the final analysis, there is even a vast amount of mass available by “star lifting”, that allows you to extract mass from the Sun itself. This has many other advantages, including prolonging the life of the Sun. See Isaac Arthur on Star Lifting.
3. Space allows you to build on a colossal scale, up to a Dyson cloud, using cheap robotic labor, adapted to working in space. In the longest-term, we could even imagine leaving the Solar System and colonizing the wider Galaxy.
4. In space we are free to let our imaginations run wild. We can fulfill all the dreams implicit in the creativity of our human imaginations, supported by our increasingly informed and enlightened rational scientific minds. We would be relatively unconstrained by environmental fears and limitations.
5. In space Man can begin the task of exploring transhuman futures, including living “forever” in open environments. Even if actual eternity is still beyond our understanding, we can at least conceive existence on a naturalistic cosmological scale. Which is to say, trillions of years or more.

-Coming into this, The Expanse offers us a far-more limited future. At least for those of us, Belters, etc, not benefiting from the very limited technology of terraforming. But terraforming is far from being the most-expansive technology that scientific Man is capable of. Even in the early 21st Century, we can imagine so much more.

Conclusion

I would prefer a Dyson Cloud future – in real life – but I welcome the broad physics realism of The Expanse – even if I feel it is somewhat imperfect. I will continue to watch the series, because I still find it interesting as fiction and narrative. I consider it to be well-above-average science fiction.