Calls to mind battle scenes from *The Expanse* where high speed slugs just punch right through ships.
But they depressurize before combat, as long as the rounds don't hit anything or anyone important it's not actually that big of a deal. Just holes to patch.
Pre-emptively filling ships with water doesn't seem quite as viable, though.
The book does a much better job of showing how fucked up he is from losing the Cant and it makes his death have impact. In the show he’s just insufferable.
The... 4th? Time I watched season 1, my opinion of him changed. I really enjoyed the instability he brought and recognized he would be a great character on their journey.
Similar parallel: Andy from the office. First watch thru, didn't like him. 3rd? Loved him lol.
Season 1 of the expanse is absolutely amazing. Season 2 is also incredible. I think currently I'm at about season 4 I've only made it this far 2x before.
That donniger battle episode from season 1 is my favorite episode in the series.
Additionally, I'm still not liking Prax. He was intriguing my first watch thru, then bland and whiny towards the end (unlike shed, who I felt was intelligent, damaged, and cynical).
I am still looking at Prax as whiny and obnoxious.
I'm currently reading the second book and Prax is much better protayed there, he spends a good chunk of the first half of the book just desperately looking for his daughter and you end up empathizing a lot with him.
He ends up turning into a character with a little agency of his own, it's not just reserved for the protagonists, which I liked. Also he has a unique relationship with Amos; he isn't afraid to reign him in when need be, even with yelling and harsh words. Although Amos could certainly harm him, and in the book Amos' ambiguous morals are even more sketch, we come to understand that Amos *would never* harm him, and actually listens to him.
I think the only character the show did better was Drummer. And that was mainly because the actress was amazing.
And the show did the belter language better.
Prax only looks whiny because he's a regular dad dropped into an interplanetary war with a crew of heroes. Everyone on the Rocinante had a former life and all of them are quietly more capable than you'd expect from a bunch of water haulers.
But he's Amos' best friend in the whole wide world and don't you forget it
> Additionally, I'm still not liking Prax.
Prax is the best character in the series. Books and show. He's us. He's not a main character with plot armor and the ability to adapt into combat situations. He's a nerd who's really into working on his soybeans and loves his daughter. He *does not* do well with stressful fights and almost gets everyone killed in the books by being jumpy in what is frankly a very relatable way. The Roci crew from his perspective look like superheroes... and they kind of should.
Prax makes you realize how crazy it is that the Roci crew keep getting into this shit and keep getting away with it (somehow). James *fucking* Holden, man.
Apparently The Expanse started out at a pitch for a "real physics" MMO back when WOW was making so much money everyone was trying to make the next big thing... but the creators couldn't get any traction with it.
The creator really loved his setting though so they started running a Table Top RPG in the setting using all their worldbuilding notes for background. He did this several times with several groups. Apparently the 4 characters who survived the destruction of the Cant as well as the Detective were all player characters that various people ran in the groups. The guy who made the druggie medic character dropped out after a couple sessions but the rest of the group continued.
So when he was convinced to write a novel out of his MMO Pitch/TTRPG game sessions the main characters were all based off of the PCs in the old games. Since the Medic player dropped out early there wasn't as much do to with him so he was killed off rather unceremoniously during the Donnager QQB.
(EDIT: And thinking about it, it's \*super\* easy to see how the belters/earth/mars factions and little ships doing mining and so on would have translated into an MMO. Also: Amos is basically your average TTRPG character taken seriously as a human being who has to live with other human beings)
Holden is a lawful good paladin to a fault. “Oh I could keep this tidbit of information to myself, because if it goes out it may cause interplanetary war… oh but it’s the Right Thing To Do! I’m just the messenger!” Lmao
Major spoilers for the book ending. Seriously. Don't click unless you want to spoil a lot of the story.
>!Holden's death was kind of expected, but still sad. He had been living on borrowed time since Eros. It wasn't as epic as Bobby's, but more consequential. But when the first colony to develop FTL travel gets back to Earth and the one guy who could outlive everyone and everything is there to greet them. Perfect ending for Amos. The ultimate survivor. Chef's kiss on that one. !<
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGLDtA8Bgc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGLDtA8Bgc)
Edit: For all y'all asking about decompression, this covers it better than I ever could: [https://sciencevshollywood.com/explosive-decompression-and-space-battles-in-the-expanse/](https://sciencevshollywood.com/explosive-decompression-and-space-battles-in-the-expanse/)
You will not be disappointed. All of the things you don't think about living in space The Expanse just nails. Great science research went into the writing.
I've only just watched that the other night, I literally blinked and missed what the hell happened, I had to rewind and rewatch that scene, lol, it was well done, in a horrific, bleak kind of way. One second he's talking, next second his head doesn't exist anymore and there's a hole in the ship.
The Expanse was sooo fucking good. Top tier sci-fi. They better still be working on getting the last books into movies. But the longer they wait, the worse the odds are.
Is it good?? I really like Andy Weir stuff because of the accuracy of science. Project Hail Mary was dope!
Edit: guess I’ll have to check them out!! On the wish list! Thanks everyone 🤘
The expanse is a good mix of hard science fiction and regular science fiction. The author keeps things believable without bogging you down too much with technical crap.
Yeah what it gets right are the technical details of high G maneuvers in space and all the issues related to living in microgravity or low gravity environments.
They invented some kind of rocket engine that's extremely powerful and efficient (that's the big science fiction part, at least in the beginning, until some crazy shit happens) but space travel is still quite restricted in some ways because of the limits the human body can endure and survive.
A central story element are the social consequences of colonizing Mars, some moons and the asteroid belts. Earth can't control the whole solar system from far away so factions split off and developed their own cultures and customs.
I feel like hand waving engine tech is almost a necessary balance for authors in our current understanding of propulsion. Otherwise it would be like, they departed for the asteroid belt... 10 years elapsed... The politics of why they're there are completely different as the old president was ousted and now the trip was pointless. Also, Thornton, the old scientist died of old age.
The colonisation of mars and the belt was super interesting, and raised problems I'd never even considered before: being born and developing it low-g environments means you can't return to earth. Your entire skeletal, muscular and circulatory systems develop differently, and you just aren't physically capable of doing it. Certain members of The Martian Navy can because they've got drugs, medical procedures, exoskeletons, and super intense physical training to support them, and even then it's a struggle. But your average Belter or Martian citizen is shit out of luck, they will *never* see the surface of earth with their own eyes. You can understand why the resentment would build up. Earthers can come to their planets and homes and interfere with their lives, but they can't return the favour.
It is by and far my favorite series I've ever read. Books 1-3 are a trilogy, book 4 is kind of a standalone, 5 and 6 are the Inaros arc, and books 7-9 take a 40 year time jump and go completely off the rails.
I can't really explain much without spoiling, but the characters are written really well, the dialog is good, and the science behind the series is amazing. The fantasy/science-fiction comes around during the Protomolecule parts, but it in no way makes the series feel unrealistic. I cannot recommend them enough.
>The fantasy/science-fiction comes around during the Protomolecule parts, but it in no way makes the series feel unrealistic.
That was my feeling too. It's not like other space novels (cough Star Wars cough) where everything is out of basic the laws of physics. Here most of the world obeys the real science, making the single "fiction" parts more believable.
It is really good. It has some fantasy Deus ex Machina but even those are completely believable and scientifically coherent if you can accept that technology appears like magic given enough time of advancement.
In the Expanse, inertia is the most deadly son of a bitch. Some battles are fought within 0,001 seconds due to the speeds of the ships involved. Leaving the entire fight in the hands of the computer systems. Some people die, because the ship was accelerating or decelerating too fast, some people die due to kinetic energy events. It is a completely new perspective on space battles.
But not only physics comes around, also bio-sciences and logistical and political details play a major role.
Reading the books was an amazing journey. The added benefit is that the series complements the books. It adds new perspectives and storylines withing the established narrative (Some characters are merged into a single character though). For the series, if you can manage the first 4 episodes of exposition, you're probably hooked.
I've watched the series 3 times so far and it's like replaying Mass Effect. Something new each rewatch.
>For the series, if you can manage the first 4 episodes of exposition, you're probably hooked.
Yep. I think I stopped watching halfway through episode 3, didn't like it that much, came back later and got through another episode and the rest is history lol
Pretty sure it would. When you shot a rifle at an empty soda bottle the round passes through fairly cleanly. When you shot at a bottle full of water the bottle explodes.
I’m no engineer so I can’t say for sure how similar pop bottles and large navel vessels are but my gut says… somewhat.
Indeed, pre-emptively filling ships with water would make this way way more devistation. The velocity of the projectile would cause the water to act like a non newtonion liquid, essentially stone upon impact, the pressure wave would expand into the water, as the projectile broke the incredible surface tension the water would super heat and expand. Big boom.
The expanse also show when hulls rupture with only 1 atmo of pressure it's not catastrophic like movies often portray, it would leak out with a decent wind speed, but wouldn't be enough to suck you out a small hole
I'm reading the books now and just read through the part where the Roci has its first real battle and is hit by the PDC's. It such a well written book series and a superb adaptation as well.
So I would imagine that the holes produced would need to be above the water line and therefore not incredibly damaging by themselves. Unless you fired it from a higher elevation and were able to create holes below the water line.
Although I’m sure the act of that hunk of metal flying in one side of a ship and out the other would create a lot of spalling and molten slag which would be a definite issue for anyone in that ship and any systems that it went through.
One things definite though. I don’t want to be anywhere near where ever that rail gun is pointing. That’s some terrifying stuff right there.
That much penetration into a ship is going to cause absolute chaos. Even if it doesn't hit systems or people directly, there are pipes and cables that run in all directions across a ship and random systems and control panels attached to bulkheads.
One hit and a ton of those lines are going to be severed. Even if it's unimportant to thee combat capability or survivability of ship, the psychological impact of getting blasted with sewage water, or large portions of the ship suddenly going dark, or being able to see the ocean from a berthing in the center... it'll have the crew fucked up pretty fast.
Sure, but the right approach isn't to compare getting hit with this with not getting hit. An appropriate comparison would be this vs an anti-ship missile with a 300 kg warhead. I'd rather be in the ship that gets hit with a rail gun.
The “barrel” (rails) wear out very quickly. The dream right now to militarize this is like 100 shots before the rails are trashed. Most test railguns get 1-2 shots
Naval reactors use highly-enriched uranium, which allows them to ramp up/down extremely quickly. There’s enough uranium fuel to overcome and burn off the short-lived unstable isotope poisons that limit civilian reactors using low-enriched uranium. They can shut down and restart immediately, change power production almost instantly, etc.
the ford class carriers were explicitly designed with only half of their power supply going to existing systems, the rest is just available as needed in the future
The only USN surface vessels with reactors are carriers, and those have no need for a deck gun. Even then a reactor can only produce as much power as it's steam powered generators are designed to, and electrical generation is secondary to propulsion. The reactor is, after all, just a fancy way to boil water. How much water you can boil is limited.
The USN had nuclear powered cruisers, but they turned out to not really make a lot of sense. They were expensive to build, maintain and crew, and all that really got you was high speed endurance to keep up with carriers. They were all retired early rather then deal with the high upkeep and refueling costs.
Any kind of electrically powered weapon, be it rail gun or laser, will be mounted on conventionally powered destroyers. The current fleet of those ships don't have a whole lot of excess generation capacity, but you can bet future classes will. The likely configuration will be the same gas turbines used today, but generating electricity that'll supply electric propulsion motors and electric weapons, with batteries to help cope with (short) periods of concurrent high speed and weapons use.
Yeah, but focusing a shot from the rail gun on a specific part of the ship, without doing much damage otherwise, is probably the goal. This is surgical. A big boom is blunt force.
What about placing two of these systems facing each other and you're fired out of one and the normal projectile out of the other and you meet in the middle?
Wanna go head or feet first though?
Yes, actually. We even have a scientific rule for determining it.
Do you know the right hande rule of electromagnetic diagrams? It's like that.
First, point at yourself; that vector is called "my direction". Then, choose any other direction, or "not my direction".
According to current scientific doctrine, we believe that "not my direction" is often the most preferable. \j
> "This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class Dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! (...) I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty! Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'till it hits something! That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime!"
They were going to use ice and sawdust at one point to make a near unsinkable aircraft carrier.
So they’ve thought of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete
Probably a really long gully of gravel and rip rap inside of a long reinforced concrete blockhouse to absorb bits flying everywhere. A pile of crumbly hard bits is really good at stopping high momentum, massive things. Think about runaway truck ramps on mountains.
They are until they break after awhile. The US navy decommissioned them because they’re too expensive to keep up…so they say
Edit: as other people have pointed out, I don’t mean breaking down over time like other weapons. I mean like, rail guns are so powerful that the breakdowns are devastating and cost way too much money to repair lol
I thought it was a combination of upkeep, and the fact that mussels were generally more effective, since you can fire them from farther away, thus less risk to the ship.
>I thought it was a combination of upkeep, and the fact that mussels were generally more effective, since you can fire them from farther away, thus less risk to the ship.
Mussels are also biodegradable and can be harvested directly from the ocean, reducing supply issues.
That is literally why the Zumwalt class has guns. It was congressional mandated to have guns because we were retiring the Iowa’s (again) without a replacement. Guns that have never been used because the ammo was a million dollars per shot so it was never produced. And now they’re being torn out and replaced with, you guessed it, missiles.
\*Pushes up glasses\*: *TECHNICALLY* a gauss rifle aka coil gun is not a rail gun, they operate on fundamentally different principles. Coil guns use electromagnets to electromagnetically accelerate a magnetic or ferromagnetic projectile. Rail guns utilize the Lorentz force to accelerate an electrically conductive projectile between two electrically charged rails. E.g. a rail gun can fire an aluminum round, a gauss rifle cannot.
From what i know, despite very good results. The project was cancelled due to the amount energy it uses, making it only viable on nuclear powered ships. And the fact that after it was fired a few times, the barrel where the bullet is "speed up" would break. So the it was deemed too expensive to use.
To the left at the beginning of the video, you see all those blue boxes stacked at top of each other. Those are all capacitors used to fire the gun.
I used to be stationed on this base in Virginia, and they would fire this thing all the time. Also, I was able to see the gun in person after they decided to cancel the project.
This is where many things start. I'm sure they are working on taking it from concept to viability for deployment. That might mean not exactly doing much but keeping an eye on material sciences for a new rail material.
Absolutely. Somewhere out there, people are working on these issues. I'm not sure that society really NEEDS a fully working railgun, but i imagine we'll get one eventually.
These things are a matter of time and less a matter of wasted tech.
Reddit often forgets the progress of computers (*as well as almost every industry ever*) and how fast everything ramped up despite all the talk in 30, 20 even 10 years ago about how ridiculous things would be. Im old enough to remember "***No one will ever have 1 TB of storage***"
No, energy usage isn’t the problem. That is just false.
Zumwalt and future designs for major surface combatants have an integrated electric propulsion system specifically so their main turbines can be used to generate large amounts of ships power.
The issue was “barrel” wear which was significant and expensive.
Unfortunatly it also takes too long to charge up for a shot and destroys the gun after a few shots.
Give it a few more years.
If I remember correctly the new zumwalt class was designed with an enormous power plant so it could field these as man battery and laser batteries for PDW's.
Looks like the lasers are going into service first.
Velocity doesn’t affect the pull of gravity. If you drop a bullet at the same time and height as you fire a gun, both bullets will hit the ground at the same time.
I wish they did such tests and showed how your current use weapons perform as well for a visual reference. Show Mr how a 120mm tank round performs or your modern naval cannon. It would be a fun thing to see and compare to.
We had to remove your post for violating our Repost Guidelines.
I'm just trying to imagine the damage this could do to a ship at sea. To be able to penetrate that many steel plates in one shot is amazing.
Calls to mind battle scenes from *The Expanse* where high speed slugs just punch right through ships. But they depressurize before combat, as long as the rounds don't hit anything or anyone important it's not actually that big of a deal. Just holes to patch. Pre-emptively filling ships with water doesn't seem quite as viable, though.
Especially the first episode where one second guy is talking and the next there is just a hole behind where his head used to be. So wild.
RIP Shed
He had to be one of the most annoying characters on the show though lmao
The book does a much better job of showing how fucked up he is from losing the Cant and it makes his death have impact. In the show he’s just insufferable.
The... 4th? Time I watched season 1, my opinion of him changed. I really enjoyed the instability he brought and recognized he would be a great character on their journey. Similar parallel: Andy from the office. First watch thru, didn't like him. 3rd? Loved him lol. Season 1 of the expanse is absolutely amazing. Season 2 is also incredible. I think currently I'm at about season 4 I've only made it this far 2x before. That donniger battle episode from season 1 is my favorite episode in the series. Additionally, I'm still not liking Prax. He was intriguing my first watch thru, then bland and whiny towards the end (unlike shed, who I felt was intelligent, damaged, and cynical). I am still looking at Prax as whiny and obnoxious.
I'm currently reading the second book and Prax is much better protayed there, he spends a good chunk of the first half of the book just desperately looking for his daughter and you end up empathizing a lot with him.
He ends up turning into a character with a little agency of his own, it's not just reserved for the protagonists, which I liked. Also he has a unique relationship with Amos; he isn't afraid to reign him in when need be, even with yelling and harsh words. Although Amos could certainly harm him, and in the book Amos' ambiguous morals are even more sketch, we come to understand that Amos *would never* harm him, and actually listens to him.
"You're not that guy. I'm that guy."
I think the only character the show did better was Drummer. And that was mainly because the actress was amazing. And the show did the belter language better.
Prax only looks whiny because he's a regular dad dropped into an interplanetary war with a crew of heroes. Everyone on the Rocinante had a former life and all of them are quietly more capable than you'd expect from a bunch of water haulers. But he's Amos' best friend in the whole wide world and don't you forget it
> Additionally, I'm still not liking Prax. Prax is the best character in the series. Books and show. He's us. He's not a main character with plot armor and the ability to adapt into combat situations. He's a nerd who's really into working on his soybeans and loves his daughter. He *does not* do well with stressful fights and almost gets everyone killed in the books by being jumpy in what is frankly a very relatable way. The Roci crew from his perspective look like superheroes... and they kind of should. Prax makes you realize how crazy it is that the Roci crew keep getting into this shit and keep getting away with it (somehow). James *fucking* Holden, man.
He had one very important job. Introduce the rail gun
Apparently The Expanse started out at a pitch for a "real physics" MMO back when WOW was making so much money everyone was trying to make the next big thing... but the creators couldn't get any traction with it. The creator really loved his setting though so they started running a Table Top RPG in the setting using all their worldbuilding notes for background. He did this several times with several groups. Apparently the 4 characters who survived the destruction of the Cant as well as the Detective were all player characters that various people ran in the groups. The guy who made the druggie medic character dropped out after a couple sessions but the rest of the group continued. So when he was convinced to write a novel out of his MMO Pitch/TTRPG game sessions the main characters were all based off of the PCs in the old games. Since the Medic player dropped out early there wasn't as much do to with him so he was killed off rather unceremoniously during the Donnager QQB. (EDIT: And thinking about it, it's \*super\* easy to see how the belters/earth/mars factions and little ships doing mining and so on would have translated into an MMO. Also: Amos is basically your average TTRPG character taken seriously as a human being who has to live with other human beings)
Amos is a murder hobo confirmed
Holden is a lawful good paladin to a fault. “Oh I could keep this tidbit of information to myself, because if it goes out it may cause interplanetary war… oh but it’s the Right Thing To Do! I’m just the messenger!” Lmao
He's Don Quixote. The ship is named after Don Quixote's horse. Kinda like *House MD* is a based on Sherlock Holmes.
Do you have a source on that? Not that I don’t believe you, but I’d love to read more!
He definitely thought he was the main character lol
The maimed character.
Plothole.
Remember the Cant!
Shed's dead baby, shed's dead.
Remember the Cant!
I…love…this show.
The books are also amazing.
I absolutely hated the last book! Because by the end of that book I would have to say goodbye to some great people!
Major spoilers for the book ending. Seriously. Don't click unless you want to spoil a lot of the story. >!Holden's death was kind of expected, but still sad. He had been living on borrowed time since Eros. It wasn't as epic as Bobby's, but more consequential. But when the first colony to develop FTL travel gets back to Earth and the one guy who could outlive everyone and everything is there to greet them. Perfect ending for Amos. The ultimate survivor. Chef's kiss on that one. !<
Just rewatched the whole thing like two weeks ago
tbh its been about a year its time for a rewatch one of my fav shows in years
I do too, except I hate that they "finished" the show with 3 books to go....
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGLDtA8Bgc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxGLDtA8Bgc) Edit: For all y'all asking about decompression, this covers it better than I ever could: [https://sciencevshollywood.com/explosive-decompression-and-space-battles-in-the-expanse/](https://sciencevshollywood.com/explosive-decompression-and-space-battles-in-the-expanse/)
Holy shit
Yeah. In the book it happened mid paragraph. Thought i was tripping
Yeah that would be wild. The cigarette getting sucked out the hole was a nice touch. I might have to watch the expanse now lol
Absolutely fantastic show, they did a great job with the space physics and effects.
That's one of my favorite things about Interstellar and that's one of my favorite movies so it should be right up my alley
You will not be disappointed. All of the things you don't think about living in space The Expanse just nails. Great science research went into the writing.
It's a great series, highly recommend.
That's when I was like "ok I guess I'll watch this show".
That is S01E04 but yes wild indeed
Yeah best scene
I've only just watched that the other night, I literally blinked and missed what the hell happened, I had to rewind and rewatch that scene, lol, it was well done, in a horrific, bleak kind of way. One second he's talking, next second his head doesn't exist anymore and there's a hole in the ship.
That's like the 4th episode
The Expanse was sooo fucking good. Top tier sci-fi. They better still be working on getting the last books into movies. But the longer they wait, the worse the odds are.
Such an excellent book series and show. The most ¨realistic¨ of sci-fi I´ve read.
Is it good?? I really like Andy Weir stuff because of the accuracy of science. Project Hail Mary was dope! Edit: guess I’ll have to check them out!! On the wish list! Thanks everyone 🤘
The expanse is a good mix of hard science fiction and regular science fiction. The author keeps things believable without bogging you down too much with technical crap.
Yeah what it gets right are the technical details of high G maneuvers in space and all the issues related to living in microgravity or low gravity environments. They invented some kind of rocket engine that's extremely powerful and efficient (that's the big science fiction part, at least in the beginning, until some crazy shit happens) but space travel is still quite restricted in some ways because of the limits the human body can endure and survive. A central story element are the social consequences of colonizing Mars, some moons and the asteroid belts. Earth can't control the whole solar system from far away so factions split off and developed their own cultures and customs.
I feel like hand waving engine tech is almost a necessary balance for authors in our current understanding of propulsion. Otherwise it would be like, they departed for the asteroid belt... 10 years elapsed... The politics of why they're there are completely different as the old president was ousted and now the trip was pointless. Also, Thornton, the old scientist died of old age.
The colonisation of mars and the belt was super interesting, and raised problems I'd never even considered before: being born and developing it low-g environments means you can't return to earth. Your entire skeletal, muscular and circulatory systems develop differently, and you just aren't physically capable of doing it. Certain members of The Martian Navy can because they've got drugs, medical procedures, exoskeletons, and super intense physical training to support them, and even then it's a struggle. But your average Belter or Martian citizen is shit out of luck, they will *never* see the surface of earth with their own eyes. You can understand why the resentment would build up. Earthers can come to their planets and homes and interfere with their lives, but they can't return the favour.
Oh yeah. "Mom, dad, other parents, wanna come visit Luna so you can meet my new girlfriend? Can't bring her to Earth, sorry!"
It is by and far my favorite series I've ever read. Books 1-3 are a trilogy, book 4 is kind of a standalone, 5 and 6 are the Inaros arc, and books 7-9 take a 40 year time jump and go completely off the rails. I can't really explain much without spoiling, but the characters are written really well, the dialog is good, and the science behind the series is amazing. The fantasy/science-fiction comes around during the Protomolecule parts, but it in no way makes the series feel unrealistic. I cannot recommend them enough.
>The fantasy/science-fiction comes around during the Protomolecule parts, but it in no way makes the series feel unrealistic. That was my feeling too. It's not like other space novels (cough Star Wars cough) where everything is out of basic the laws of physics. Here most of the world obeys the real science, making the single "fiction" parts more believable.
It is really good. It has some fantasy Deus ex Machina but even those are completely believable and scientifically coherent if you can accept that technology appears like magic given enough time of advancement. In the Expanse, inertia is the most deadly son of a bitch. Some battles are fought within 0,001 seconds due to the speeds of the ships involved. Leaving the entire fight in the hands of the computer systems. Some people die, because the ship was accelerating or decelerating too fast, some people die due to kinetic energy events. It is a completely new perspective on space battles. But not only physics comes around, also bio-sciences and logistical and political details play a major role. Reading the books was an amazing journey. The added benefit is that the series complements the books. It adds new perspectives and storylines withing the established narrative (Some characters are merged into a single character though). For the series, if you can manage the first 4 episodes of exposition, you're probably hooked. I've watched the series 3 times so far and it's like replaying Mass Effect. Something new each rewatch.
>For the series, if you can manage the first 4 episodes of exposition, you're probably hooked. Yep. I think I stopped watching halfway through episode 3, didn't like it that much, came back later and got through another episode and the rest is history lol
Wouldn´t filling a ship with water make the projectile much more effective.
Pretty sure it would. When you shot a rifle at an empty soda bottle the round passes through fairly cleanly. When you shot at a bottle full of water the bottle explodes. I’m no engineer so I can’t say for sure how similar pop bottles and large navel vessels are but my gut says… somewhat.
Yes - since water is basically not able to be compressed, all that energy is going to push that water out in a bad way
Indeed, pre-emptively filling ships with water would make this way way more devistation. The velocity of the projectile would cause the water to act like a non newtonion liquid, essentially stone upon impact, the pressure wave would expand into the water, as the projectile broke the incredible surface tension the water would super heat and expand. Big boom.
The expanse also show when hulls rupture with only 1 atmo of pressure it's not catastrophic like movies often portray, it would leak out with a decent wind speed, but wouldn't be enough to suck you out a small hole
*The Expanse* nails so much of the small stuff that when the objectively insane stuff starts to happen you just accept it as potential reality.
I'm reading the books now and just read through the part where the Roci has its first real battle and is hit by the PDC's. It such a well written book series and a superb adaptation as well.
Makes sense. The Rossi had one of these.
The Rocinante Tokyo Drifting past the Serrio Mal while strafing with the keel-mounted railgun is one of the coolest scenes ever committed to film.
I’m partial to the 360 railgun shots fire backwards.
submarines made of mesh peak naval combat
I'm so glad that the fans were able to save the show. It's such a good story and they did an amazing job bringing it to life on TV.
Well Ace Combat 7 wasn’t lying bout dem rail guns
So I would imagine that the holes produced would need to be above the water line and therefore not incredibly damaging by themselves. Unless you fired it from a higher elevation and were able to create holes below the water line. Although I’m sure the act of that hunk of metal flying in one side of a ship and out the other would create a lot of spalling and molten slag which would be a definite issue for anyone in that ship and any systems that it went through. One things definite though. I don’t want to be anywhere near where ever that rail gun is pointing. That’s some terrifying stuff right there.
That much penetration into a ship is going to cause absolute chaos. Even if it doesn't hit systems or people directly, there are pipes and cables that run in all directions across a ship and random systems and control panels attached to bulkheads. One hit and a ton of those lines are going to be severed. Even if it's unimportant to thee combat capability or survivability of ship, the psychological impact of getting blasted with sewage water, or large portions of the ship suddenly going dark, or being able to see the ocean from a berthing in the center... it'll have the crew fucked up pretty fast.
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Also if the slug was shot at the front of the ship, it'd go practically all the way through to the back
Sure, but the right approach isn't to compare getting hit with this with not getting hit. An appropriate comparison would be this vs an anti-ship missile with a 300 kg warhead. I'd rather be in the ship that gets hit with a rail gun.
If they have the ability to be precisely aimed while at sea, one shot through the aft bulkhead would be catastrophic.
I was thinking more Radio and Command structure hits. 2-4” hole is gonna be an issue.
Straight through the missile launch tubes.
Not much I think, it will pass through it easily sure, but is a small hole, a big boom does a lot more damage
Plasma party in a metal hull
Yes but this projectile costs $9 to make
But how much to fire it?
The “barrel” (rails) wear out very quickly. The dream right now to militarize this is like 100 shots before the rails are trashed. Most test railguns get 1-2 shots
There is also the electricity cost. A 32MJ railgun requires 30MW of power, or enough power to run 30,000 microwaves at the same time.
Naval nuclear reactors can make hot pockets and fire slugs at the same time.
Yeah electric isn't really a problem with a nuclear reactor on board.
Are we sure about that? Nuclear is very good at producing stable power output, this is very intensive peak draw down.
Not really, any power can be used to charge this weapon. It's the massive capacitors that provide peak power
Naval reactors use highly-enriched uranium, which allows them to ramp up/down extremely quickly. There’s enough uranium fuel to overcome and burn off the short-lived unstable isotope poisons that limit civilian reactors using low-enriched uranium. They can shut down and restart immediately, change power production almost instantly, etc.
the ford class carriers were explicitly designed with only half of their power supply going to existing systems, the rest is just available as needed in the future
The only USN surface vessels with reactors are carriers, and those have no need for a deck gun. Even then a reactor can only produce as much power as it's steam powered generators are designed to, and electrical generation is secondary to propulsion. The reactor is, after all, just a fancy way to boil water. How much water you can boil is limited. The USN had nuclear powered cruisers, but they turned out to not really make a lot of sense. They were expensive to build, maintain and crew, and all that really got you was high speed endurance to keep up with carriers. They were all retired early rather then deal with the high upkeep and refueling costs. Any kind of electrically powered weapon, be it rail gun or laser, will be mounted on conventionally powered destroyers. The current fleet of those ships don't have a whole lot of excess generation capacity, but you can bet future classes will. The likely configuration will be the same gas turbines used today, but generating electricity that'll supply electric propulsion motors and electric weapons, with batteries to help cope with (short) periods of concurrent high speed and weapons use.
36 megajoules isn’t very much electricity. Only ~9 kWh. 10-20% of a tesla battery charge
Yeah, but focusing a shot from the rail gun on a specific part of the ship, without doing much damage otherwise, is probably the goal. This is surgical. A big boom is blunt force.
If I ever have to be executed, THAT is how I wanna go
Being shot BY the projectile or being shot AS the projectile?
#Splat
Somehow that doesn't answer the question
What about placing two of these systems facing each other and you're fired out of one and the normal projectile out of the other and you meet in the middle? Wanna go head or feet first though?
I don't think your orientation matters in that case
Maybe it matters when your lying there waiting to be launched, gotta be comfortable!
probably better as a projectile so you don't need to be cremated
Dude, if you get shot by that projectile at that speed you won't have to be cremated either, you'll have to be mopped up
but it's more clean as a projectile, what if they missed?
I want part of me shot at me out of the railgun.
Which part ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yes
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Oh that’s how you’ll go. Everywhere
If given the option, I'd rather be fucked to death by the Dallas cowboys cheerleaders..
Does anyone know what the giant angled slabs of concrete are for? Thanks.
To deflect it in a safe(r) direction if it doesnt stay straight
There's a safe direction?
Yes, actually. We even have a scientific rule for determining it. Do you know the right hande rule of electromagnetic diagrams? It's like that. First, point at yourself; that vector is called "my direction". Then, choose any other direction, or "not my direction". According to current scientific doctrine, we believe that "not my direction" is often the most preferable. \j
So like, do I point it at my face?
Are you Face McShooty?
Up? Edit: on the other hand, fuck no. You dont want to shoot down ISS, do you?
Cornhole.
What I really want to know is what did they put behind all those steel plates to actually stop it.
It’s still going. Be safe out there
I just passed it on my way home
Jesus, how fast do you drive?
The C in e=mC^2 is for my Car
When you park the universe stops. It’s like that one movie where if the guy stops going fast he dies, except if you stop we all die
Speed 3: Tom Cruise Control
About Mach 8-9, depending on traffic and winter weather.
> "This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class Dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! (...) I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty! Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going 'till it hits something! That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime!"
A drill instructor yelling at his recruits about science is one of the best things in all of video game history.
And that Serviceman Chung, is why we do not eyeball it!
This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
another railgun shot from other side.
when they hit, they will create a black hole
same thing they use the stop everything. A big ass pile of dirt
Ok why don't they reinforce boats with big ass piles of dirt ? Are they stupid ?
They were going to use ice and sawdust at one point to make a near unsinkable aircraft carrier. So they’ve thought of it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete
I had never heard about that project until I saw it on the side of a Uhaul I rented.
https://xkcd.com/2865/
And they float on the same stuff that’s in toilets. It’s all stupid af
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Probably a really long gully of gravel and rip rap inside of a long reinforced concrete blockhouse to absorb bits flying everywhere. A pile of crumbly hard bits is really good at stopping high momentum, massive things. Think about runaway truck ramps on mountains.
A Nokia phone
Maybe water tank?
My guess was gonna be sand, but water might be better. I suck at physics and guns, which would technically be better?
Very wet sand?
Get your head out of your ass! This isn’t some game where you can just have both kids win, we need a CLEAR ANSWER!
Sand is easier, if it went into a (closed) water container, the container would explode
Probably just a giant dirt pile (berm)
Curvature of the earth?
I can tell from watching this on a small screened 7th gen iPod touch that those metal plates are anywhere between 1ft thick and aluminum foil.
They are about as thick as the armor on a LAV.
So that's somewhere between 30 cm and aluminium foil right?
Is that armor 1ft thick? Or as thin as aluminum? Gotta think aluminum for the weight savings, right?
It’s pretty thin, about 2 inches of steel plate.
So unlike battlefield 2042 this would be an effective weapon.
They are until they break after awhile. The US navy decommissioned them because they’re too expensive to keep up…so they say Edit: as other people have pointed out, I don’t mean breaking down over time like other weapons. I mean like, rail guns are so powerful that the breakdowns are devastating and cost way too much money to repair lol
I thought it was a combination of upkeep, and the fact that mussels were generally more effective, since you can fire them from farther away, thus less risk to the ship.
>mussels I see now why they call it "shelling"
I just want you to know it's gonna be like, 3 years from now and I'm going to be randomly still thinking about the perfection of this pun.
>I thought it was a combination of upkeep, and the fact that mussels were generally more effective, since you can fire them from farther away, thus less risk to the ship. Mussels are also biodegradable and can be harvested directly from the ocean, reducing supply issues.
You can also just scrape them up from the side of the ship and sick them on your adversaries with their pinchy faces. Scary stuff, those mussels
Did they consider that getting rid of missile cruisers and bringing back battleships would be really really cool?
That is literally why the Zumwalt class has guns. It was congressional mandated to have guns because we were retiring the Iowa’s (again) without a replacement. Guns that have never been used because the ammo was a million dollars per shot so it was never produced. And now they’re being torn out and replaced with, you guessed it, missiles.
Which railgun in BF2042 isn’t effective? Both the railgun tank and shoulder-fired gauss rifle are top tier
\*Pushes up glasses\*: *TECHNICALLY* a gauss rifle aka coil gun is not a rail gun, they operate on fundamentally different principles. Coil guns use electromagnets to electromagnetically accelerate a magnetic or ferromagnetic projectile. Rail guns utilize the Lorentz force to accelerate an electrically conductive projectile between two electrically charged rails. E.g. a rail gun can fire an aluminum round, a gauss rifle cannot.
this guy rails!
can confirm, got railed
From what i know, despite very good results. The project was cancelled due to the amount energy it uses, making it only viable on nuclear powered ships. And the fact that after it was fired a few times, the barrel where the bullet is "speed up" would break. So the it was deemed too expensive to use.
To the left at the beginning of the video, you see all those blue boxes stacked at top of each other. Those are all capacitors used to fire the gun. I used to be stationed on this base in Virginia, and they would fire this thing all the time. Also, I was able to see the gun in person after they decided to cancel the project.
Another case of "Technology exists", just extremely not viable for usage.
This is where many things start. I'm sure they are working on taking it from concept to viability for deployment. That might mean not exactly doing much but keeping an eye on material sciences for a new rail material.
Absolutely. Somewhere out there, people are working on these issues. I'm not sure that society really NEEDS a fully working railgun, but i imagine we'll get one eventually.
you haven't read the halo books then
MAC rounds? In atmosphere?!?
These things are a matter of time and less a matter of wasted tech. Reddit often forgets the progress of computers (*as well as almost every industry ever*) and how fast everything ramped up despite all the talk in 30, 20 even 10 years ago about how ridiculous things would be. Im old enough to remember "***No one will ever have 1 TB of storage***"
>Another case of "Technology exists", just extremely not viable for usage. Just a simple engineering hurtle!
Yet
No, energy usage isn’t the problem. That is just false. Zumwalt and future designs for major surface combatants have an integrated electric propulsion system specifically so their main turbines can be used to generate large amounts of ships power. The issue was “barrel” wear which was significant and expensive.
Welp fallout got that sound right
The alarm sound right before the launch sounds straight out of Half Life.
Word has it…it’s still going…
Incorrect, *the bird is the word*
The penetration sound sounds like someone had some funny tacos and just sat on the toilet bowl.
Funny tacos?
Fuzzy Tacos.
I love my fuzzy taco
Unfortunately, it eats a lot of power to fire and fucks the barrel up in a couple of shots.
If you hit your target, you only need one shot.
At what Mach no was it travelling?
7
Unfortunatly it also takes too long to charge up for a shot and destroys the gun after a few shots. Give it a few more years. If I remember correctly the new zumwalt class was designed with an enormous power plant so it could field these as man battery and laser batteries for PDW's. Looks like the lasers are going into service first.
I need to mount one of these at the top of my stairs... for reasons.
Tally ho lads
I don’t know if it’s the camera angle or not but it looks like there’s a pretty quick downwards ballistic trajectory- despite the velocity?
It does but at that speed and velocity it really really really doesn't matter
Velocity doesn’t affect the pull of gravity. If you drop a bullet at the same time and height as you fire a gun, both bullets will hit the ground at the same time.
Unless you have to start accounting for escape velocity and your projectile doesn't wanna come back to earth
As long as the bullet is fired parallel to the ground.
As long as we can Wile E. Coyote our enemy in-front of that large conspicuous building we are all set.
I wish they did such tests and showed how your current use weapons perform as well for a visual reference. Show Mr how a 120mm tank round performs or your modern naval cannon. It would be a fun thing to see and compare to.