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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

valhovey.github.io

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#111
post #48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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,…

There was one particularly egregious scene in The Mandalorian. The protagonist had to fly from Planet A to Planet B without hyperspace for reasons, and he was waylaid by some kind of space patrol, and then he just "turns the steering wheel sideways," and bam, he's landing on a different planet!

Even by Star Wars standard that was absurd. What is this, a highway chase scene?

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#112
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,…

> Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars (ok, space opera), where engagements take place at absurdly short ranges. I think that is we could maneuver spaceships like cars and get from place to place in seconds then we would engage at close distance. The only reason for keeping far away would be to have time to react to missile launches and attempt to intercept them. But that's not different than what ships do a…

>The only reason for keeping far away would be to have time to react to missile launches and attempt to intercept them. But that's not different than what ships do at sea.

Yes, that's why you would do it in space, too. The only reason sci-fi media doesn't do it is that it would look boring onscreen. You're just sitting there in the dark then all of a sudden a tungsten rod moving at some fraction of c vaporizes your hull, or a cloud of goo attaches to your hull and you bake to death slowly because you can't evaporate heat well enough. And of course actual lasers in a vaccuum are invisible.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#113

I had sudden memories of playing Frontier: Elite 2. I wanted to go to Sol, buy luxury goods...and take them to Barnards Star

I have a dim memory that one of my A-Level physics teachers (David Massey) was credited as a consultant on the Newtonian physics in F:E2.

The game came out at the start of my upper-sixth year so it often came up during his classes.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#114
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I'd say it's the OG way. Both HJKL and numpad predate WASD, I think.

Are you comparing game bindings to vim bindings? Isn't that an apples/oranges thing?

Not if you play roguelikes.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#116
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I'd say it's the OG way. Both HJKL and numpad predate WASD, I think.

Are you comparing game bindings to vim bindings? Isn't that an apples/oranges thing?

Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:

  Examples of games that use HJKL are the text-based "graphic" adventures like NetHack, the Rogue series, and Linley's Dungeon Crawl. It is also used by some players of the Dance Dance Revolution clone StepMania, where HJKL corresponds directly to the order of the arrows. Gmail, Google Labs' keyboard shortcuts, and other websites use J and K for "next" and "previous".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_keys#HJKL_keys

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#117
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…

Since you built it, I am curious about the scientific accuracy of the movie, book and while taking the information GAIA DR3. I wanted to assume at least the stars part is science, but I think, there is a lot of fiction in that setting. Is this map the reality of what we know as science, since it came from GAIA DR3 dataset?

And, thank you very much. This is super cool and exciting. I wish such a one exists for Asimov's foundation universe (fiction).

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#119
post #49
post #10

It can be summed up as "Ken Meets Jesus", "Ken Goes to Space", "Ken is a bumbling moron", "Ken's first friend". "Ken's White Savior moment" This appears to be the norm for US based scifi now. Glad I'm watching movies like The Wandering Earth and Alienoid instead. It had a good premise. But it also fell apart immediately. Like, they only sent 3 people, 2 whom died on this UBER CRITICAL SAVE THE PLANET idea? And Ryan G…

> But it also fell apart immediately. Like, they only sent 3 people, 2 whom died on this UBER CRITICAL SAVE THE PLANET idea? (I didn't downvote, you have a right to dislike a popular movie or book) They explain why only 3 people (it's a bit contrived, but there's genetics involved), and why no more ships. It's an emergency, a resource and time-constrained mission on which a few things go wrong even before they depart…

I think OP only watched the movie. The book is a bit better at showing the main character actually being competent at times. In the movie they (for obvious reasons, but they could have done perhaps once) skip him going down science rabbit holes.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#120
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…

FYI we have a up to scale model of the solar system in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System Come visit!

That looks really cool! I've visited scale models of the solar system in Eugene, Oregon[1] and Norwich, Vermont[2], but neither one is anywhere near that size.

[1] https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system...

[2] https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-tra...

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