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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

valhovey.github.io

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#101

Post by dylan604 »

api wrote: post #83
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 books are more realistic than the show. The show takes liberties to look cool, I think, which is okay. Not only does it mess with scale a lot but it also adds a lot of sound and visual effects that would not be there.

> also adds a lot of sound and visual effects that would not be there.

Nah, they'll have regulations forcing them to add artificial sound generators like today's EVs

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#102

Post by joemi »

the_af wrote: post #85
QuercusMax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

I really missed on watching Babylon 5 (it was during my time, but I unfortunately dismissed it as just another Star Trek wannabe, and only learned later this was unfair). I wish I had given it a chance. I cannot watch it now because of several reasons, and I'm not sure it would stand the test of time anyway, after having watched The Expanse.

I was in a kind of similar situation. Didn't watch it when it was originally airing, though I could have. I eventually watched it decades later and absolutely loved it. That said, it was pre-The Expanse. But I still think it holds up pretty well, even if the special effects aren't as good.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#103

Post by austin-cheney »

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…

I suspect this lack of scale on the planets was intentional from a usability perspective, because otherwise the planets be bits of dark dust that would be really hard to find. Jupiter has 11x more diameter than Earth and the Sun is 109x larger. When you consider the size of the solar system (including the Oort cloud) the Sun itself is bit a spec of tiny dust.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#104

Post by pmontra »

the_af wrote: post #85
QuercusMax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

I really missed on watching Babylon 5 (it was during my time, but I unfortunately dismissed it as just another Star Trek wannabe, and only learned later this was unfair). I wish I had given it a chance. I cannot watch it now because of several reasons, and I'm not sure it would stand the test of time anyway, after having watched The Expanse.

Babylon 5 is at the beginning of the uncanny valley of computer graphics so it looks funny (I think they used Amigas) but if you pretend that those effects are of current cinema quality, everything else is good. They travel with hyperspace portals (maybe you saw Cowboy Bebop) so they don't have to perform many unphysical motions in normal space. It's still a great show. Less of a space opera compared to the Expanse, more like a Star Trek DS9 with ETs way more powerful than earthlings.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#105

Post by colechristensen »

ge96 wrote: post #27
imglorp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess it looks like it's down since it's a slice but the effect is an inward sphere? Yes, gravity is a vector field: every point in space near a heavy body has a vector pointed at the center of the body with a magnitude of the field strength. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_field Whenever someone uses fabric sheet analogy, they need to shout that the X-Y of the sheet is a 2 dimensional analog of X-Y-Z…

Other thing is I believe they say gravity is strongest at the center of the sphere/core but I would think the mass is split evenly away from the core eg. maybe 2/3 radius from the center where it's equal mass on each side. But probably doesn't make sense wouldn't be a ball.

Inside a solid uniform sphere, gravity is exactly equal to the gravity of the sphere of material under your feet, as though any mass at any "altitude" higher than you did not exist. It's a pretty standard calculus problem. (the opposite is true, inside a solid hollow shell gravity is exactly zero everywhere)

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#106

Post by pmontra »

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…

All of those authors usually have to resort to the idea of "shipping lanes" so if the heroes are stranded between two planets eventually someone else will pass close to them on the way from one of those planets to the other one. This is wrong in a number of ways (first of all, they keep going anyway) but without that and without magically powerful fuels plots would be "they launched from Mars to Neptune, forget about them for the next three seasons, they'll be there at the beginning of the fourth one".

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#108

Post by ChipopLeMoral »

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…

This is cool, can you add a focus on 40 Eridani view please?

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#109

Post by xboxnolifes »

grey-area wrote: post #81
manmal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Biggest thing they all still get wrong for reasons of drama is showing humans wrestling with controls and flying like a fighter pilot. Real spaceships do not and will not have humans in the control loop except to specify a destination or target.

That's how The Expanse generally worked, except when they needed to do things outside of normal circumstances.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#110

Post by pmontra »

the_af wrote: post #48
api wrote: 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,…

> 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 at sea.

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