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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

valhovey.github.io

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#63

Post by QuercusMax »

manmal wrote: post #58
the_af wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close. This is noteworthy because The Expanse tried to get this better than other scifi, say Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica,…

The Expanse also was (for me) the first to introduce the concept of a braking burn. Star Wars ships just stop without turning around - can’t unsee it. I think the way X-wing fighters “fly” also wouldn’t work at all, I don’t see any reaction mass coming out the sides.

Babylon 5 was the only show in the 90s that actually had any sort of physics based space combat (as opposed to Star Wars-style "they're really just airplanes but we're pretending it's space").

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#64

Post by asabla »

speleo wrote: post #56

Hi there! This is Val, I made the star chart. There's a little "about" blurb you can open in a modal on the site, but I wanted to mention that this demo uses the amazing GAIA DR3 dataset from ESA. I have a Python script that renders all 1.8+ billion stars into custom images, which is what I used for the skybox. The star positions and colors all use the GAIA data (save for a few bright stars not in the set). The data…

Super cool! how long did it take to generate all those custom images?

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#65

Post by QuercusMax »

api wrote: post #41
ggreer wrote: post #9

Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and 63,239 astronomical units in a light-year. So if you scaled everything down such that Earth was 1 inch from the Sun, Neptune would be 30 inches away and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away. If you were using a 4k display and had the Sun and Alpha Centauri vi…

Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. "It's called space for a reason." When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That i…

I recently read The Mote in God's Eye and its (much later) sequel The Gripping Hand, which had very interesting long-distance space combat scenes with high powered lasers - which only move at the speed of light. There's a very real "fog of war" element where you might be VERY out of date with what's happening just due to radio transmission speeds / direct observation.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#66

Post by hotsalad »

Looks nice, but is it finished? I don't see a skybox or any of the more detailed information mentioned in the "about" dialog, and I don't see any effect from clicking the buttons along the top.

I allowed WebGL and disabled Enhanced Tracking Protection and my adblocker, and still only the star labels appear.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#68

Post by pavel_lishin »

cheschire wrote: post #45

Glad to see it includes Wolf 359. Edit: oh interesting. Apparently it was mentioned in the book as being affected by the astrophage. I forgot that tidbit and thought it was just a Star Trek reference.

Yeah, and it's one of the nearby stars in reality.

It's also sort of the subject - and title! - of this great short story: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/macleod_12_17_reprint/

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#69

Post by loeg »

api wrote: post #41
ggreer wrote: post #9

Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and 63,239 astronomical units in a light-year. So if you scaled everything down such that Earth was 1 inch from the Sun, Neptune would be 30 inches away and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away. If you were using a 4k display and had the Sun and Alpha Centauri vi…

Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. "It's called space for a reason." When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That i…

I don't think the Expanse authors were going for "hard sci-fi." There's, you know, fiction elements -- gates, aliens, magic. And the TV series is itself an adaptation of the books for a visual medium. Showing almost nothing would make for kind of boring TV combat.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#70

Post by speleo »

asabla wrote: post #64
speleo wrote: post #56

Hi there! This is Val, I made the star chart. There's a little "about" blurb you can open in a modal on the site, but I wanted to mention that this demo uses the amazing GAIA DR3 dataset from ESA. I have a Python script that renders all 1.8+ billion stars into custom images, which is what I used for the skybox. The star positions and colors all use the GAIA data (save for a few bright stars not in the set). The data…

Super cool! how long did it take to generate all those custom images?

Thanks! On my desktop it takes around 20 minutes to generate a full sky render with 1.8 billion stars (down to around 22 magnitude).
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