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Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

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Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#41

Post by api »

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 is close.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#42

Post by lstodd »

ge96 wrote: post #17
lstodd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's like an inverse gas bubble underwater, or a liquid blob in gas in microgravity, but without phase border. see, it's not that easy to explain or visualise.

Yeah I watched this video recently about slingshotting I can see how it works but yeah https://youtu.be/-CqBP-CtM0c?si=BdCiZwWgpAp07mgs&t=15 It's not like there is a "down" it's just you're looking at it from a top view?

There is no down, yes. There is no looking at it from a top view either, since there is no bottom. 3d models like this video are helpful, but one must keep in mind that they are but a slice.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#44

Post by ge96 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #37
ge96 wrote: post #2

I am so happy this movie did great, the book was great Similar to me books: Bobiverse, Long Way To A Small Angry Planet I'm not a heavy reader This site is cool, I want to get to know stellar navigation stuff for astrophotography watching a video like this where they pull up star charts to point the telescope at it pretty cool https://www.youtube.com/live/TexqPMQMyZg?si=oEnvrxW21-D0VXGV... Tangent I'll throw in here,…

In the vein of popcorn scifi, expeditionary force books are fun.

Added to my kindle list, funny I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow as I heard it in a song, I did not get far, on the topic of reading, it is related to rockets but yeah

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#47

Post by celsoazevedo »

nekusar wrote: 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…

> Edit: lol -4 , like seriously, its a pretty bad show. [...]

I don't think the downvotes are because you expressed the view that the film is bad.

It's mainstream science fiction using tech we don't have. It will never make a lot of sense. And then you decide to bring skin colour/race into the discussion. What do you expect?

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#48

Post by the_af »

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…

> 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, or Star Wars (ok, space opera), where engagements take place at absurdly short ranges. In The Expanse you see the spaceships are really far apart, mostly dots to each other, and the engagements are (mostly) at really long torpedo ranges, with the exception of those cool scenes using PDCs. You get all those awesome shots where one spaceship sees the other as a tiny dot, then the camera zooms in dramatically to the other point of view. Cool!

And still, engagements are far too close range. But they "feel" long range in The Expanse, I think they got that visually right. I cannot blame them because I haven't seen anything any space combat in shows or movies that is even half as exciting and well done.

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#49

Post by the_af »

nekusar wrote: 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. The world is on full emergency mode, rushing things and getting things wrong. The crew isn't even the initial pick, but there's an accident involved. The lead director believes she'll probably end up in prison after the mission launches. I don't know, it makes sense to me.

> And Ryan Gosling's character is a fucking moron. You're supposed to be a molecular biologist, and you're basically a reddit-gag line?

I think the meme-speak, which I also found a bit jarring, is simply Andy Weir's less-than-good writing style. I think Weir isn't a particularly good writer, but he managed to write an engrossing adventure which I enjoyed.

In-universe, molecular biologists and scientists in general do have sense of humor, enjoy memes, and are generally capable of doing and saying the dumbest things. So it also kind of works!

Re: Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

#50

Post by dylan604 »

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…

Sure, but why does this need to be to scale. Isn't the point more to get the humans a way of understanding where things are relatively? Navigating the map makes it interesting in being able to interactively see where some of the stars are relative to each other. Seeing Regulus and Castor/Pollux from this perspective is much different than on terra firma.
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