The Science of The Expanse

[Music] hey guys Tyler here the expanse is one of the seminal sci-fi shows of the past decade based on the books by James S.A Corey the expanse TV show just ended its Sixth and reportedly final season it's been praised not only for its gripping narrative compelling characters top-notch visual effects fantastic score and more but it's also been called the most scientifically accurate Sci-Fi show on television set hundreds of years in the future when humans have colonized the solar system the expanse follows various protagonists as they navigate the biggest conspiracy in human history in this video I'd like to examine the Science and Technology of the expanse and answer the question could what we see in the show resemble our potential real future let's find out [Music] [Applause] before we begin there will obviously be some spoilers for the expanse TV show in this video at least for some of the big Revelations maybe not so much for individual character States and the like let's start with some background in the world of the expanse humans have spread beyond the confines of Earth to inhabit our moon as well as Mars various objects in the asteroid belt and several moons of the gas giants in response to unmitigated environmental catastrophe Earth's governments have ceded sovereignty to the United Nations and the un's Secretary General rules as the executive leader of both Earth and Luna Earth's population has swelled to 30 billion people half of whom are unemployed and live on basic assistance in crowded run-down government housing Mars became independent from Earth long ago after becoming largely self-sufficient banks in large part to the invention of these so-called Epstein Drive named after its creator Solomon Epstein the Epstein Drive allowed humans to travel faster and further while using less fuel allowing for the colonization of the outer solar system people who live in the asteroid belt or around the outer planets are called belters and they have a distinct culture language and even biology having grown up in Low Gravity they're generally tall skinny and have weak Bones the belters are often treated as second-class Citizens their homeworlds and space stations largely controlled by Earth and Martian governments and corporations in the series The Private company protogen has been studying and experimenting with an alien technology called the proto-molecule discovered on a moon of Saturn called Phoebe the protomolecule has the ability to radically alter the Genome of anything it encounters and utilize its biomass to construct new weird biological forms protogen plans to unleash the protomolecule on Eros station which houses a population of over one hundred thousand in a Twisted experiment they take a stealth frigate called the Anubis and attempt to deliver a sample to arrows an asteroid is situated in an eccentric orbit between Earth and Mars on the way the Anubis is intercepted by a light freighter called the scapuli dispatched by the outer planet's Alliance or Opa to seize the weapon from the Anubis the OPA is a loose organization that fights for the interests of belters and depending on who you ask it's regarded either as a human rights advocacy group or a terrorist Network given its decentralized nature it's honestly a little bit of both but assisting the OPA in their activities is Julie Mao daughter of Jules Pierre Mao part owner of protogen's parent company Mao quakowski Mercantile Julie wants nothing to do with her billionaire father's corporate agenda and wants to help the OPA secure her father's weapon to defend the belt against Earth and Mars but the Anubis captures the crew of the scapuli including Julie who is detained in a storage locker the Anubis plants a martian distress beacon in the scapuli which lures the ice hauler Canterbury to investigate unbeknownst at the time the anubis's protomolecule sample had leaked meaning the crew is now infected the Canterbury is destroyed by the Anubis leaving only five survivors who are rescued by the Martian Congressional Republic navy or mcrn Flagship donager still thinking that Mars has destroyed the cant the cants now former EXO James Holden sends out a broadcast blaming Mars for the incident aggravating the already tense relationship between Earth and Mars the doninger's captain tries to convince Holden to retract his claim but he refuses four of the Canterbury survivors ultimately escaped the donager in an escort as the donager is destroyed by protogen the crew of the legitimately salvaged escort which they later renamed the rosinante follows a trail of clues that lead them to find Julie and Eros Julie had escaped the Anubis after its crew died she parked it near another asteroid and sent out a distress call to the OPA she checked herself into a motel room on Eros and waited to be rescued but she succumbed to the protomolecule infection herself before she could be saved as a result protogen's plan ended up working after all the Eros experiment was an accidental success and the rosinante crew came just too late to save the hundred thousand lives that had been lost from here the Rossi crew tries to get to the bottom of the conspiracy to distract the solar system from the Eros incident leading to some of the most profound revelations in human history foreign so that's the story of the expanse season one for the most part anyway but what about the Science and Tech that's what a lot of you came here to see me talk about right well in my view there's no better place to start than with the Epstein Drive the Epstein Drive is a type of fusion drive that quote utilizes magnetic coil exhaust acceleration to increase Drive efficiency in other words the Epstein Drive allows spaceships to sustain thrust throughout their entire Voyage this has major implications a ship fitted with an Epstein Drive is able to continually accelerate in the direction of its destination and at the halfway point it flips around 180 degrees and constantly decelerates until it reaches said destination real spaceships are too fuel inefficient to do this before the invention of the Epstein Drive spaceships could not run their engines long enough to reach the high velocities that the drive permits thus they would take longer to reach their destinations and they could not generate artificial gravity in this manner more detailed performance statistics can be found at various sources I'm not a rocket scientist so I'm not even going to attempt to explain each of these you can look for yourself but what I can tell you is that Fusion Rockets while still purely theoretical in real life are indeed a realistic achievable goal with future technology Fusion Rockets high specific impulse or propulsion efficiency means that they produce less radiation and thus need less shielding than a fission or other kind of Rocket but their main disadvantage is that you need a lot of propellant Mass the most straightforward way to build a fusion rocket is with hydrogen bombs a method known as nuclear pulse propulsion such a proposal was explored as part of project Orion a joint study by the United States Air Force DARPA and NASA in the 1950s and 60s to produce a nuclear-powered Starship proposals included rockets that could take off from the ground as well as ones that could purely function in Space the project was ultimately scrapped due to the partial nuclear Test Ban Treaty which prohibits the use of such bombs in the atmosphere as well as concerns over cost the high mass of the rockets and oh yeah the damn nuclear fallout but an alternate approach would be ion propulsion generated by Fusion rather than direct thrust ion thrusters have been around for years and have been used on some smaller spacecraft like NASA's deep space one probe they generally work by bombarding a neutral gas like ammonia argon or Xenon with electrons inside a discharge chamber electricity is pumped through a hollow cathode filament towards an anode the electrons impact atoms to create a positively charged ionized gas cloud that's directed by electromagnets through a grid system the ions are accelerated by the potential difference between a positively charged screen grid and a negatively charged accelerator grid with an energy of one to two kiloelectron volts thus generating thrust a second cathode is placed near the engine to pump more electrons into the ion beam to re-neutralize it otherwise the thrust would be canceled as the ions would remain attracted to the spacecraft this isn't the only way that ion thrusters work but it's a commonly used method developed in the 1960s and still used by commercial satellites and scientific missions to this day the main problem with existing ion engines is that their thrust is limited by the amount of power that can be generated but an electric generator that runs on fusion power could drive a ship for extended periods of time direct conversion of kinetic energy from Fusion products also mitigates another issue that conventional energy production runs into which is that it requires a low temperature energy sink something that is difficult that is expensive in a spacecraft to sustain a fusion reaction plasma must be confined various theoretical configurations exist that serve as confinement Alternatives such as the takamak a device that uses magnetic fields to confine Plasma in the shape of a Taurus as of 2016 the takamak is the leading candidate for a practical terrestrial Fusion reactor but because of the takamax weight it's considered impractical for space flight the main alternative to Magnetic confinement is called inertial confinement Fusion or ice CF not to be confused with the comedy channel IFC that's beautiful ICF involves a small pellet of Fusion fuel with a diameter of just a couple millimeters which is ignited by an electron beam or laser the isotope helium-3 with two protons and one Neutron is one of the most commonly cited propellants for a hypothetical Fusion craft as scientists estimate that one million tons of helium-3 may be accessible on the moon helium-3 propulsion would involve the fusion of the isotope with deuterium an isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one Neutron to create tritium but ICF could also take advantage of a neutronic fusion reactions or Reactions where less energy is released in the form of neutrons which are harder to direct towards thrust and can be a safety hazard indeed up to 80 percent of deuterium tritium reaction energy is released as neutrons but a neutron chronic reactions are considered less technically feasible a newer approach called magnetized Target Fusion or MTF combines the best of talkmacked based magnetic confinement fusion and ICF using plasma guns instead of lasers to ignite fuel thus producing cost and weight inertial electrostatic confinement or IEC alternatively uses electric Fields rather than magnets to confine plasma so whether it's with magnets electricity lasers plasma guns or a combination of all of the above the Epstein Drive is in my opinion a foreseeable evolution of current experiments with both ion and fusion technology of course it should be noted that ion propulsion is only practical in the vacuum of space ion engines do not work in the presence of ions outside the engine and there thrust cannot overcome air resistance or appreciable surface gravity and we do see the rosinante interplanetary atmospheres and take back off but it's stated in the show and elsewhere that ships in the expanse use chemical Rockets to land and Achieve liftoff nice as I mentioned earlier the main gimmick to put it a certain way with the Epstein Drive is that it allows ships to generate Earth Gravity by accelerating at 9.8 meters per second squared for half of their Journey before flipping around and decelerating until they reach their destination but sometimes a ship needs to perform high G Maneuvers such as to dodge an object crash couches are devices used on board to keep occupants safe during these Maneuvers as well as during burns when a ship switches from acceleration to deceleration the couches padded with gel align themselves with the axis of the ship's thrust these couches also incorporate systems that inject sitting occupants with accelerating drugs after the occupant presses a button a dozen needles sticking to their back through membranes in their suit this delivery process is called called juicing and the juice is a cocktail of drugs that combines to form a white liquid to some this might seem like Overkill but on the contrary it's Extreme Measures like these that will likely have to be taken in real life if we want to travel it such high speeds and still be able to turn the ship for reference the record for experimental horizontal G-Force tolerance was set by U.S Air Force pilot John Stapp in late 1954. Stapp survived a peak of 46.2 G known colloquially as eyeballs out and more than 25 G for 1.1 seconds he lived for another 45 years to the age of 89 without any ill effects of course this is the highest voluntary G-Force ever experienced by a human the highest G-Force someone has survived is a whopping 214 G by Kenny Brack a Swedish race car driver who survived one of the Sport's biggest crashes at Texas Motor Speedway in 2003 but most of the time a typical person can handle about 5G acceleration often experienced while writing a a roller coaster before passing out and modern Pilots with specialized suits can handle a sustained 9g part of so-called hygiene training and indeed we do see that in the expanse members of The Martian Marine Corps train not only in their native Martian gravity but in 1G Earth gravity as well this is why when Bobby Draper visits Earth for the first time she initially stumbles a little bit and one of her comrades throws up as soon as they get off the drop ship she can with a little practice get the hang of it rather quickly foreign I couldn't make this video without talking about the Nauvoo the Nauvoo is a massive Generation ship constructed at Taiko station in the belt cylindrical in shape the Nauvoo is over two kilometers long and half a kilometer in diameter four doninger class battleships could fit inside it and not touch the walls it was originally built to house thousands of Mormons on a journey to the Tau seti system you see in the show Earth's massive population has prompted the government to impose heavy taxes and Licensing fees on those who wish to have children in the eyes of many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this is a form of government mandated birth control because it kind of is and it conflicts with their religious Doctrine the name Nauvoo is an allusion to Nauvoo Illinois one of the early settlements of followers of the Mormon faith after they were kicked out of Missouri the davu's destination tau seti is believed to Harbor at least one terrestrial world with conditions suitable for human colonization except in season 2 the Nauvoo is commandeered by the OPA in an attempt to divert the asteroid arrows which is on a collision course with Earth the reason Eros is on a collision course with Earth is something I'll get into later friends are gonna be pissed after this the Nauvoo is commandeered by Kamina drummer former head of security at Tycho station and the ship is re-christened the opas Behemoth it undergoes refurbishment to become a functional Battleship on par with the U.N Navy and mcrn at the top of the ship is the command and control center with engineering and the main engines located at the bottom almost everything about the ship is designed to spin in order to generate artificial gravity something I'll explore more deeply later on in this video 10 levels of environmental engineering crew quarters schools temples wastewater treatment machine shops and forges lie within the vast interior indeed it's the biggest ship ever constructed by Humanity the journey to tau seti is mentioned to be about a hundred years so considering the distance of the star system is about 12 light years this puts the nauvoo's cruising velocity at Point 12 C with a max speed of 0.24 C in real life obviously the fastest ship that we've built is astronomically slower yeah I thought that was a good one the Parker solar probe launched by NASA in 2018 set a speed record in November 2021 of 163 kilometers per second or 586 000 kilometers per hour and by 2025 at closest approach it's expected to travel at 690 000 kilometers per hour or 0.064 percent the speed of light the Nauvoo built two or three centuries in the future can go 375 times as fast it's also unclear how soon Interstellar travel will become feasible on the scale of a human lifetime some estimates range from 100 years from now to like in the expanse many centuries from now the more optimistic time frame for Interstellar travel by the mid-22nd century is based on an initiative outlined by The 100 your Starship project a Joint Nasa and DARPA program that offered grants to private entities with the goal of creating an r d plan for Interstellar travel within a century symposia were held between 2011 and 2015 and the grant was awarded to a Research Foundation run by former astronaut Mae Jemison Harold G white a physicist whose work includes research on faster than light travel is also a member of The Icarus Foundation dedicated to achieving Interstellar flight by 2100. of course these foundations have published several papers about Interstellar space flight but it's still unclear how soon our theoretical models can be made practical we have to spend the money first and it's also unclear whether Society will be able to afford some of the more far out Technologies we can imagine hence why there's very little art official intelligence in the expanse and even centuries in the future they're still just on the cusp of interstellar travel [Music] in addition to various Technologies to keep passengers safe during space flight ships in the expanse are armed to the heel with some of the most advanced Weaponry imaginable one of the most common weapons used in the expanse is the railgun a powerful Mass driver for ship to ship combat used by the UN Navy mcrn Opa and protogen railguns are effectively giant cannons that use Electro conductive rails to accelerate a dense Metal Slug usually made of tungsten at very high speeds they rely on sheer mass and speed to punch clean through ships making them more effective than Warheads like with torpedoes railguns require significant power presumably supplied by the same Fusion reactions that power the Epstein drive to Fire and they must briefly charge before firing they range from light fast firing railguns with small calibers of around 40 millimeters to ultra heavy types that fire more slowly railguns typically require a ship to turn and face the target to aim the weapon such as with protogens almond raw class stealth frigate the rosinante after her upgrade and the unn railgun platforms larger ships however such as the mcrn's donager class battleships the unn's Leonidas class battleships and their trimming class dreadnoughts can carry turreted railguns allowing them to engage targets more easily without having to rotate the ship another rapid fire projectile weapon used by All military-grade Ships against missiles is the point defense Cannon or PDC with a range of approximately one to five kilometers pdcs are computer controlled as opposed to the unguided railgun slugs pdcs can also fit inside retractable turrets and they're based on the real world close and weapon system or ciws for detecting and destroying incoming short-range missiles and enemy aircraft regular missiles which can be equipped with nuclear warheads are also deployed from a tube or Silo on a ship in order for these to be effective their kinetic energy must be less and then their detonation energy missiles in the expanse probably register in the multi-dozen Megaton range on par with the most powerful bomb ever designed the Soviet Union's Zar bomba railguns operate in the kiloton or even Megaton range with battleships able to obliterate smaller targets with a single hit smaller railguns are also capable of crippling bigger ships with shots of sufficient accuracy and inflict severe damage on smaller units however if a round does not strike any critical components it will simply perforate the ship being attacked leaving a small hole that can be plugged relatively easily though technically possessing almost unlimited range and space because of Newton's first law an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force railguns are limited in their effective range when it comes to moving targets because a round is quite fast but unguided it can be comfortably dodged at longer ranges though slower ships like the Leonidas class or the OPA Behemoth are more vulnerable because of this use of railguns requires a sure lock in order to prevent misfires they are therefore used almost exclusively in close quarters combat making it suicidal to attack a donager-class battleship at close range unless you're protogen so how do railguns actually work in like real physics talk I've talked about them before in my videos about the phaser from Star Trek and the lightsaber from Star Wars particularly in the context of power generation and heat management broadly speaking railguns use what is called the lorentz force an accelerating projectile will move perpendicularly to the direction of the electric current in magnetic field inside a firing chamber the chemical properties of electroconductive materials like tungsten and uranium initiate the effect as ammo is bridged with a pair of oppositely charged rails in the 21st century the U.S Navy has conducted extensive testing with railguns employing similar tungsten projectiles the most powerful of these weapons can fire with 32 megajoules of force and easily reach speeds of two kilometers per second this is equivalent to 200 000 22 caliber shots being fired simultaneously but as impressive as these numbers are they still pale in comparison to the 16 kilometers per second or 0.005 percent the speed of light of the Rossi's railguns which themselves are much less powerful than the donagers indeed even with current railguns each time they fire their internal Machinery suffers serious damage that requires extensive repair because of this as well as the cost it's unclear how long it will be until railguns are practical for field use even though there are plenty of railguns in existence today the technology as a whole has been considered still at the r d stage for decades decades man I'm sorry I spit a little bit but hundreds of years in the future with further advances in heat Management in other areas it's entirely plausible in my view that railguns would be practical for Space Battles foreign the expanse also has what many including myself consider to be the most plausible grip on stealth technology while no true stealth exists with anything able to be detected if focused on ships can utilize panels of certain materials positioned at unusual angles with special Coatings to deflect radar and lidar active cooling systems are also required to help any stealth ship hide or reduce their heat signature for ships this only works when they're running silent with a fusion Drive deactivated and only using passive systems and the UN employs so-called Watchtower spy satellites to penetrate Martian Stealth Tech in real life the development of modern Stealth Tech began in the United States in the late 1950s earlier attempts to prevent radar tracking of U2 spy planes by the Soviet Union during the Cold War had been unsuccessful designers then turned to developing a specific shape for the planes combined with radiation absorbent material to reduce detection by electromagnetic waves from Radars such changes to shape and surface composition are currently employed on the Northrop Grumman B2 Spirit stealth bomber [Music] in addition to ship mounted and handheld weapons there's a really cool piece of technology in the show used by the MMC that has stood out to me as one of the downright coolest things ever I I said cool like twice in this sentence that's how cool it is the Goliath powered armor worn by MMC Force Recon Marines for combat scenarios these suits are resistant to most Small Arms early variants of the vacuum rated Goliath armor have a solid metal chest plate but the Mark III and Beyond have a redesigned chest piece and sleeker shoulder armor the armor utilizes an inbuilt multi-barrel minigun that fires armor-piercing high explosive and 6.25 millimeter incendiary tipped caseless ammunition inbuilt rocket-propelled grenades or RPGs can also be stored in the back of the armor or on its exterior and remotely targeted all the inbuilt weapons on board the Goliath armor are DNA coded and cannot be used by anyone except the assigned Marine a similar feature is employed by many small arms and light weapons which in the show appear to be evolutions of familiar 21st century handguns rifles and grenade launchers the Goliath are which is two and a half meters tall and 400 kilograms before the user even steps inside has titanium and ceramic composite exterior shielding typically painted with camouflage patterns and a heads-up display controlled through blinks and eye movements allows soldiers to identify and track infrared targeting lasers and parse through enemy weapons to match them against an internal database inbuilt cameras monitor in all directions sending feeds back to Squad officers and military command centers which can monitor vital signs of both soldiers and opponents Earth's got some power armor too but it's not as advanced if the Goliath armor sounds a lot like the Iron Man suit to you well that's what I was thinking as well but powered exoskeletons a type of wearable technology exist in real life they're powered by a system of electric motors pneumatics levers actuators Hydro Alex and or a combination of cybernetic Technologies to provide ergonomic structural support including sufficient limb movement with increased strength and endurance they're designed to provide better mechanical load tolerance with the control system aiming to sense and synchronize with the user's intended motion and relay the signal to Motors that manage the gears the exoskeleton also protects the user's shoulders waist back and thigh from overload stabilizing movements when lifting and holding heavy items at this point multiple Engineers including Adam Savage have built actual functioning Iron Man suits that can fly so the Goliath armor being an evolution of that is in my opinion very plausible but speaking of Mars what about the plan to make it more suitable for human colonization according to the expanse Wiki the Mars terraforming project is a world spanning project to terraform Mars to give it a habitable atmosphere in which humans can live and breath yeah they left off the E okay but seriously terraforming Mars and the methods by which that could be achieved are things scientists have been pondering for decades it's believed that billions of years ago Mars may have been habitable Martian Rovers like curiosity and opportunity have uncovered evidence of ancient lakes and groundwater systems in various locales on the red planet dating back between 4 and 3.7 billion years ago and a 2022 nasa-funded study set more precise parameters for the period that Mars may have harbored an Earth-like climate from 4.1 billion years ago to 3 billion years ago millions of years longer than previously thought microbial life may have flourished in this prehistoric biosphere and some have suggested that such life may have survived being injected into space and traveled to Earth in a process called pansperm meaning all of us descended from the first living microbe 4.1 billion years ago may all be martians because of Mars's much lower Mass and alternative composition if it ever possessed a global magnetic field it was probably incredibly weak thus the planet's atmosphere would have been Stripped Away billions of years ago by the Stellar Wind ending any chances of harboring Life as we know it in order for us to return Mars to its supposed earlier state to turn a Barren Dusty rock into a garden however we do it it would likely take centuries and in the show we see that this is absolutely the case the Martian terraforming project considered the greatest most ambitious engineering project in human history is the driving force of Martian Society involving nearly every Martian citizen either directly or indirectly in the original colonists of Mars would not live long enough to see it through but what little if any progress has been made has been stalled by the Martian Congressional Republic's need to maintain a large military against Earth thus diverting resources away from the project and pushing it back for generations and another reason the project is in Decline is because younger generations of martians who are called spoiled and ungrateful by the Martian 24th century equivalent of baby boomers have gotten accustomed to living in domed settlements but if this were to actually go forward how exactly would that work well terraform Mars is likely to be a matter of balancing three interlaced systems creating an artificial magnetosphere raising the temperature and changing the composition and thickness of the atmosphere now that first one sounds like it would probably be the hardest right well there is some research to indicate that creating an artificial magnetosphere around Mars could be achievable with modern day technology by building a system of refrigerated latitudinal superconducting Rings enough direct current could be built up to do the job other research has proposed placing a giant magnetic Shield at one of Mars's LaGrange points or a point of gravitational equilibrium between Mars and the sun which could block the Stellar Wind enough to encourage Mars to retain even more of an atmosphere other methods for in particular increasing Mars's atmospheric pressure include directing asteroids to collide with ice caps at Mars poles to release trapped CO2 inducing a greenhouse effect to warm up the pla planet of course this could also be achieved with the use of nuclear weapons though both options while untested have drawn criticism for being well kind of Reckless but orbital mirrors to direct sunlight to melt the ice caps while difficult could be a more viable path and we do see orbital mirrors around Ganymede to direct sunlight to greenhouses in the expanse raising Mars's oxygen concentration would also be difficult but could be helped long by introducing oxygen-producing cyanobacteria into Martian soil overall there's likely solutions to this problem that we haven't even thought of yet and while the discovery of thousands of habitable planets in season 4 has made the terraforming project less important in our world the best and brightest Minds developing these Solutions will undoubtedly result in spin-off technologies that help us address climate change on Earth Beyond Mars though there's a whole wealth of resources in the outer solar system the vast resources of the asteroid belt including water and minerals were highly attractive to the inner worlds indeed this is even the case today as asteroid mining is expected to be one of the fastest growing Industries in the near future once Transportation costs reach a reasonable level in the expanse mining operations established by Earth and Mars and their corporations represented a new Gold Rush the four biggest bodies in the belt which sits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are Ceres Vesta Palace and hygeia they contain half of the belt's overall Mass the brightest Minds in the solar system figured out how to speed up the rotation of several asteroids and dwarf planets in order to increase their gravitational pull this was likely accomplished with a series of precisely timed nuclear explosions because this kind of spin gravity similar in concept to the circular space station in 2001 A Space Odyssey pulls inwards extensive cities were built underground to house thousands of citizens the gravity on Ceres was accelerated from less than three percent Earth gravity to up to 30 percent Earth gravity a seemingly consistent level for lots of populated worlds and ships throughout the belt this spin gravity isn't perfect though in certain areas of series for example the Coriolis effect can take over this is a phenomenon in which falling objects appear to follow a curve rather than the expected straight line This is demonstrated in the TV series when the character Miller pours himself some whiskey getting used to the Coriolis effect can well take some getting used to and as I mentioned earlier humans who grow up in this low gravity environment have physiological traits that distinguish them from earthers namely they're taller thinner frames and weaker muscles and Bones this is consistent with what happens when astronauts including aboard the International Space Station spend extended periods of time in low G they require frequent physical exercise to keep their muscles from atrophying and the pressure differential on the fluid in their inner ear can make them disoriented for weeks at after they returned to Earth even though the Epstein Drive still allows for artificial gravity it is to be expected that various medical issues will need to constantly be minded as we venture out further into deep space naturally asteroid mining forms the backbone of the belter economy and by extension the economy of the solar system prior to the settlement of the belt the aten asteroids a population of near-earth asteroids that spend most of their time sunward of our planet's orbit were accessible since the first days of Humanity's forays into space thus they were some of the first to be mined with the mining of metals like titanium platinum and nickel iron making large fortunes with the Advent of the Epstein drive though came the push into the main belt and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter leaving the atons behind for the most part asteroids in the solar system generally come in three varieties c-type asteroids have high concentrations of water as well as inorganic carbon phosphorus and other key ingredients used in fertilizer S-Type asteroids carry little water but contain metals like nickel Cobalt and valuables like gold platinum and rhodium and finally m-type asteroids which are rare contain up to 10 times more metal than s-types but the process of mining an asteroid is a lot like deep sea fishing as depicted in the expanse concept art asteroids are captured with giant Nets and charges are placed to reduce the asteroid to Rubble the cracked asteroid pieces then conform to the Net's shape oh wait that's uh that's not like fishing at all huh just as the Epstein drive has enabled colonization of the asteroid belt one of the other most vital Technologies in the world of the expanse is the recycler a machine for breaking down wastes into their constituent materials for reuse recyclers support Humanity's space-faring Civilization by nearly eliminating waste itself this dramatically reduces the need for new materials and finished goods to be delivered to inhabited locations recyclers work alongside Advanced fabrication technology likely an evolution of 3D printing to allow people to live on what is available in their immediate area for example the rosinantes Machine Shop is capable of fabricating replacement parts for materials gathered from the ship's recyclers which would otherwise require extensive industrial infrastructure as in the early 21st century these recyclers are especially critical for ships to function on Long Journeys over vast distances as well as for remote stations like Ceres and Ganymede it's also stated in one of the expanse novels caliban's war that Earth spends roughly 30 percent of its GDP on recyclers to handle the waste generated by 30 billion people and in the season 2 episode The Weeping somnambulist mcrn Captain Martens says Earth's ocean is dirty and smells like a recycling vat apparently we still haven't cleaned up the oceans in the expanse's future we already have forms of recycling today I mean obviously recycling is a thing that exists but when it comes to applications for space travel certain technologies have been adapted that could also have benefits on earth water recyclers to process Wastewater into potable water air recyclers to filter air and remove CO2 to keep areas more habitable and solid recyclers to break down Solid Waste ranging from food to clothing glass plastic and lots of other things things into reusable materials the kind of water recycling I just mentioned is not only related to the desalination process that converts sea water into drinking water but it's also used aboard the International Space Station the station's life support systems allow for the recycling of urine to reclaim water for drinking food preparation and oxygen generation the system which costs 250 million dollars has been installed since 2009 and has reduced the need for the station to be resupplied is often lest you think that this is well unsanitary the truth is water reclaimed from urine is actually cleaner than what you'd get with a regular water filter as far as 3D printing that's a technology that's been around for decades also known as additive manufacturing typically 3D printing involves material such as Plastics liquids or powder grains being fused and added together in Lay players all Guided by a computer in the 1980s 3D printing was only considered suitable for the printing of functional and aesthetic prototypes with a more appropriate name for the process being rapid prototyping today the Precision repeatability and range of 3D printing has made it viable as an industrial production technology one of the key advantages of course is that 3D printing allows for the creation of incredibly complex geometries that would be almost impossible to construct by hand including with hollow parts and parts with internal trusses to provide structural support and reduce weight in the expanse it's clear that by the 24th century somewhat akin to the replicators and Star Trek the Next Generation this process has been expanded to include a wide variety of materials that allow ships to recycle and manufacture Parts on the spot at the individual level the most common personal Computing device in the expanse is the hand terminal a universal personal smart device the hand terminal is used for person-to-person recorded video messages and live video calls it also operates as a personal data manager as well as a remote control device and access control key among other purposes it is depicted in the show as a solid clear rectangular device that resembles the dimensions of an early 21st century smartphone unlike traditional smartphones however the hand to terminal is made entirely of a glass silicate or transparent hard glossy plastic or polycarbonate material the display user experience and operating system include touch and gesture detection an evolution of similar sensor Technologies we have today and potentially holographic projection though this may be from nearby devices that communicate in real time with the hand terminal the device can operate wirelessly on a cloud or private local com Network and its functionality is seemingly limited without network connectivity the future of computing power is going to be dependent on a lot of factors the chief metric that has measured advances in computing power over the past few decades is called Moore's Law developed in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore Moore's Law estimated that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year he later revised this prediction to doubling every two years which has largely held true since 1975. in the past half century the standard amount of memory on a computer has risen from Mere kilobytes to dozens of gigabytes literally millions of times more powerful before the dawn of the personal computer Age Two megabytes was considered state-of-the-art top of the line memory capacity used by NASA for the Apollo missions now you've got thousands of times more memory in your smartphone lately there have been a lot of articles about how Moore's Law is slowing down even coming to a stop and that the future of computing is going to be more software based than Hardware based and that's at least partly true but what's more accurate is that we're reaching the physical limits of semiconductor manufacturing there are only so many transistors that you can pack into a space that's mere nanometers wide nevertheless many expect Moore's Law or some form of it to continue why well for decades scientists have been innovating new ways to increase computing power that go beyond the standard two-dimensional integrated circuit layout computers in the future will take advantage of new developments like three-dimensional circuits as well as Quantum computing which itself will probably be used to strengthen digital security the point is yes the future of computing is going to be more software based than Hardware based but that doesn't mean that Hardware advancement is going to just stop in the 2020s or even Beyond it's just going to take a different course what's also interesting to consider is the future of communication itself the expanse takes into account the light delay between different parts of our solar system even between Earth and the Moon hence why video calls just like today can get out of sync pretty quickly oh and by the way in the expanse when characters use the phrase wide Beam for comms what they're really saying is radio and for type beam they mean messages encoded on laser according to James sa Cory tight beam isn't necessarily faster just more private [Music] foreign thing that I've kind of glossed over in this video is the protomolecule I won't spend too long on it since I've more so wanted to focus on the human derived Technologies rather than well alien magic but the protomolecules history and properties have fascinating implications for the universe of the expanse broadly speaking the protomolecule is an infectious agent not explicitly a life form it's described by protagon scientist Anthony Dresden as a set of free-floating instructions designed to adapt and guide other replicating systems it is incredibly versatile able to maintain and adapt its structure in a wide variety of environments and it has an affinity for carbon and silicon structures carbon and silicon being the most suitable elements for biology both real and theoretical the proto-molecule is believed to be anaerobic a mode of respiration employed by various types of microorganisms a purely molecular Machinery the protomolecule feeds on ionizing radiation as an energy source and its growth accelerates in the presence of high doses the protomolecule came from outside the solar system it was created by extraterrestrials about 2 billion years in the past and launched at various star systems believed to Harbor potential for life in its primordial form the protomolecule is idle and dormant only activated when a replication mechanism is encountered like a virus it then uses this replicator to grow alter and adapt itself in accordance with a hard-coded prime directive the protomolecules creators intended for it to impact Earth on its journey into the soul system but instead its vehicle the small ice Moon Phoebe was captured by Saturn's gravity where it remained for 2 billion years in real life it's believed Phoebe may have originally come from the Kuiper belt due to its irregular orbit but in the expanse it's an alien artifact basically eight years before the show begins Mar made the first manned landing on Phoebe and retrieved core samples that it approached protogen to research which led to the creation of labs in the outer solar system the Eros incident experiments on children the whole nine yards in season 2 Eros possessed by a hybrid intelligence of the proto-molecule and the deceased Julie Mao crashes into Venus where it metastasizes and forms the basis of what becomes the soul ring a Gateway into the ring Network a system of over one thousand artificial wormholes connecting habitable systems across the Milky Way the emergence of the Rings changes everything about the politics society and economy of the Soul system Paving the way for Galactic colonization something that's explored more deeply starting in season four of the expanse Humanity encounters numerous phenomena that they never expected to witness in their time space stations that grow spaceships ancient mining factories strange dogs and they derive other Technologies from the proto-molecule like carbon silicate lace plating a strong armor that protects Starships during the battle with the free Navy we don't get all the answers about the true nature of the protomolecules creators now also known as the ring builders in the TV series though more is fleshed out in the books we do know that in the ancient past they fought a conflict with the so-called dark Gods inhabitants of an older larger universe whose space the ring Builders have intruded upon with their Wormhole technology this conflict led to the ring Builders demise but the Legacy they have left behind is immense [Music] holy I have been talking about the expanse for like over an hour so do I think that the expanse is a plausible future well yes and no hopefully this video has demonstrated just how realistic much of the Science and Technology of the expanse truly is obviously the proto-molecule is entirely speculative in its nature but the colonization of the solar system the mechanics of the expanses starships and so much more just feels right just so in line with what we expect we'll be able to achieve two to three centuries from now of course as a Star Trek fan it does make me sad that even two to three centuries from now the expanse predicts that we'll just be getting around to Interstellar travel but the fact that Earth's first Interstellar ship was contracted by Mormons is quite amusing in my opinion given mormonisms space-centric theology I will say that Earth's population ballooning to over 30 billion even with with extra resources from the asteroid belt does strike me as being unrealistic Earth's population is expected to Plateau at around 9 or 10 billion by the middle of this Century according to U.N estimates as more countries become developed and birth rates decline most serious estimates for Earth's carrying capacity also land at a figure under 14 billion but Earth's crowded CD megalopolises along with the belter's effective status for much of the show as second-class Citizens among other things helps make the expanses dystopia quite well-rounded with that thank you all so much for watching if you enjoyed this video be sure to leave a thumbs up down below and don't forget to share it that stuff really helps me out if you haven't subscribed yet be sure to do that as well so you won't miss feature uploads and click the Bell icon to receive all notifications if you want to support my work even further becoming a patron or a member is a great way to do so links to those as well as my social media and merch store are in the description and I just want to take a moment to thank all the members of my audience who donated to this project that's all I have for this week I'll see you next time [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: OrangeRiver

Views: 181,825

Keywords: orange river, orange river productions, anim8orkid, tyler pilkinton, orangeriver, the expanse, science, tech, lore

Id: pGyGmPCyDFk

Length: 57min 58sec (3478 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022