MovieChat Forums > The Expanse (2015) Discussion > Let's Fudge Speeds Again

Let's Fudge Speeds Again

posted 7 years ago by Naldoman (23)
5 replies | jump to latest

I'll say it - my biggest peeve in this entire series is lack of consistency on how the ships move around. Season One they are lumbering clunkers that can barely manuever without crushing the crews with the forces of inertia when turns are made.

Season Two everyone has warp drive and can zip from Saturn to Earth in a breezy afternoon. And self-propelled asteroids that barely miss Earth slam into Venus a moment later - crossing at least 30 million miles in a few moments.

But we are not done! Let's use a low-thruster burn and gravity assists to slip around a dozen moons of Jupiter. Sure....that should only take about half an hour. WHAT?!?! It took Apollo 3 days to get to the moon after a gentle nudge...only 240,000 miles. Distance from Cyllene to zig-zag across a dozen of Jupiter's moons, and end at Ganymede (at least 13.8 million miles as the crow files with no detours)

... and this is done AGAIN in what seems be less than an hour only using thrusters. I guess if simple manuevering thrusters can move a ship THAT fast, they MUST have warp drive for the main engines!

[–] Apis (1624) 7 years ago

That used to get on my nerves as well, but I decided to just accept it. It's not such a big deal after all.

[–] NukeDude (581) 7 years ago

It's a science *fiction* series... ;-)

[–] TandyMan (10364) 7 years ago

I was flippin SHOCKED when they rolled out that scene of him slipping around them moons at a billion miles an hour doing thruster and gravity maneuvers. The whole idea was so cool and then they just ruined it.

[–] brux (14666) 6 years ago

That is valid. no science fiction show aside from maybe the movie of 2001 actually shows the long term slowness of space travel.

Where do they have a warp drive capability? But to make the whole colonization of the system believable they really do need a fast way to travel and communicate. I would love to see an intelligent writer spin a good story about some of the problems with space travel.

However, I do like how they do the acceleration thing. Not the chairs and those weird injections, but the idea of dividing a trip into an acceleration phase and a deceleration phase. That is probably how it will be done. So the limit will be how much acceleration a human being can take for how long. You can get to some very high velocities with a low constant acceleration ... and I wish the show would be consistent in that. I doubt anyone of the producers of writers would really understand or care about it.

[–] Naldoman (23) 6 years ago

It's nice that they mention many of these concerns, and do attempt to show some consequences of messing up - so that it's clear that getting from here to there isn't "easy".

But often they let it all fall to the wayside and plot overrules everything. Asteroids are ALWAYS right where they need to be to make pit stops or intercept missiles or whatever - they seem to ignore that planets and asteroids MOVE and what's close last month isn't close this month.