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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

valhovey.github.io

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#151

Post by redbluething »

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 awesome!! I made a map of the events in the Martian many years ago (https://www.cannonade.net/mars.php) and when I read Hail Mary I wondered if something could be created for the new book.

You completely nailed it!! :)

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#152

Post by lazide »

pmontra wrote: post #110
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,…

> 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…

Hitting debris at these velocities would be instant death. Debris comes from other vehicles (generally). You’d never want to be going where other people are, for safety.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#153

Post by lazide »

api wrote: post #82
loeg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. It's not "rock-hard sci-fi." It's "medium-hard sci-fi." The background world building was pretty good from a hard SF point of view. Fusion rockets are possible and the high performance ones in the series are at the edge of physical plausibility but possible. Some of the details, like spinning up asteroids, don't work, but the basic physics of humanity's solar system build-out is mostly sound. The rest of it g…

The biggest issue is that with the energy economy of the drives as shown, none of the actual conflicts would ever happen.

Earth, the belt, etc. would have infinite clean water, for example, and plenty of energy to grow food via hydroponics.

No one would have any issues refining metals or other materals, due to all the available energy. Etc. etc.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#154

Post by markcerqueira »

estetlinus wrote: post #71
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…

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

There is also one in Palo Alto, California! https://www.paloaltozoo.org/Exhibits/Solar-System-Model

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#156

Post by taikon »

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…

How many 3D bodies are there? I'm curious because it renders really fast even on a relatively old mobile phone.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#158

Post by rpmisms »

mr_toad wrote: post #137
rpmisms wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White people doing anything good is actually bad. Duh. /s, but I think I'm accurately describing the viewpoint you're responding to.

There is a strain of science fiction where the human protagonist (usually a white male) (possibly a boy from backwoods moisture farm) saves the universe, (including all the other dumb luckless species). A notorious example is Battlefield Earth. However in this example the contribution of the alien, not just to the whole saving the universe business, but to the actual story, the book, was huge.

Fantasizing about saving the universe is a good thing, actually.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#159

Post by db48x »

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…

That’s quite true. But even leaving that aside, most space battles are poorly written too. One of the best that I know of is the battle for Proxima from Babylon 5 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE7lZv6LmrM>). This one is really good because we know why the battle is important, why the battle is going to happen here and not somewhere else, but most importantly we learn who the _people_ are (or at least the captains). They become characters, not just anonymous chits on a map.

Although the Expanse did well in some areas, it had no battles that were as well written or as memorable as this one.

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