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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

valhovey.github.io

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#251

Post by jz391 »

noir_lord wrote: post #212
p-e-w wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just boggles the mind how you can simply write a 3D program with a ready-made library today, instantiate tens of thousands of objects in 3D space, and the whole thing will render in real time on a phone without you ever having to worry about how that incredible performance is possible. The power of computers comes at least partly from the fact that for many practical problems, they let you effectively pretend that…

It does, it helps to stop and smell the roses occasionally and remember how far we’ve come. My first proper computer (defined by programming on it) was a 3.5MHz single core processor with 48KB of RAM. My current one is 16C/32T that can boost to 5.7GHz and has 64GB of RAM. Considerably more than a million times the RAM and about a million times the processing power (if you factor clock speeds, core count, OOE, branch…

Definitely agree with the sentiment (also a Speccy 48K guy), but at the risk of being pedantic, I think you're double-counting: "million times faster" is for one Spectrum, the "0.000625% price" is for a million...

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#252

Post by nunez »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #239
nunez wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book does a significantly better job explaining the science behind the mission than the movie (which I found insulting, but I'm clearly in the minority of holding that opinion).

The book was certainly better than the movie, but I'll take every damned example of 'humans working collectively to solve an existential crisis' I can get. As 'on the nose' as 'Don't look up' was, we clearly need more content that inspires action than pits us to despair.

This was exactly one of the reasons why I hated the movie.

Andy did a fantastic job describing how nation-states might put aside their differences and work together to solve an existential crisis. Some of the events he imagined were just as awesome as they were unlikely in today's political climate.

ALL of that was distilled away in the movie. Like, LITERALLY ALL of it.

Lord Miller reduced the book to "Hot Homer in space and telepathic rock alien thing work together to save their planets." It was a beautifully crafted movie, but SO much dumber than it had to be.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#253

Post by IAmBroom »

mcswell wrote: post #250
orsenthil wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Not about the stars part or the map, but xenonite struck me as rather odd from a scientific standpoint. Apparently it's some organic chemical bonded--somehow--to xenon. But the mystery depended on the mass spectrometer Grace uses to analyze xenonite not being able to detect nuclei of atoms smaller than some atomic number (something like 20?). So he couldn't tell what it was made of, except for xenon. My initial assum…

The movie makes it clear that it is both an unknown, and unexpected, xenon-based material. Plus, the scientist analyzing it has (presumably) no real background in materials science.

IOW: it's intended to seem odd.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#255

Post by redbluething »

simgt wrote: post #201
redbluething wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!! :)

That's an awesome website! I had never heard of Patrick O'Brian before looking at your maps, I'll give The Mauritius Command a read.

Thanks very much :) Glad you like it. These books are awesome I really recommend starting at Master and Commander and working your way through all 20 :P
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