Solar System’s biggest asteroid is an ancient ocean world | Hacker News Reader

Solar System’s biggest asteroid is an ancient ocean world

nature.com

71 pointsmooseburger25 comments

In "The Expanse" TV show, Ceres is the birth place of the main character, police detective Josephus Miller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)

This show should be more popular than it is. It's relatively hard scifi that posits a realistic future of solar system colonization.

>hard scifi

It's not, but it takes some inspiration

It certainly starts out fairly hard scifi (with the only exception being Epstein drives) but takes a pretty sharp turn away from that as soon as the proto-molecule is out and about. It was hard for me not to put the book away and stop reading the series when the zombies showed up because I was so engrossed in the realism behind the story that those parts just felt like a betrayal.

What's wrong with Epstein drives? I haven't read the book, but what is impossible about them? Is it the amount of energy needed?

They are more fuel efficient than anything physics predicts is possible because they effectively have the max thrust of chemical rockets, combined with a nearly infinite ISP from using no reaction mass. They mention refueling the fusion reactors and the steam thrusters, but they never mention reaction mass for the Epstein drives.

I did some searching and found this:

https://m.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/4frz1k/epstein_dr...

Ignore the original story and the top level comments. Seems there is some evidence of reaction mass. There is some interesting analysis and basic math in the comments. I didn't see anything that confirmed or precluded the epstein drive from being possible. I should get out a pen and paper and work it out myself.

The show is reasonable (as are the novels) but the SyFy channel has a bad reputation for some truly awful television that they are only just starting to recover from.

Having said that, it is the only current sci-fi show that gets the physics of spaceflight more or less correct. ie: No 'gravity' without thrust or spin on board vessels or habitats.

I read the books first and then tried to watch the show and couldn't be behind it because in the books, you can physically tell where a person is from from their looks. Earthers are short and stout, Martians are a bit taller and Belters look like ETs with unnatural gangly limbs. It really brings home the racism themes in the books. Unfortunately the TV series couldn't do anything like that (understandably) and it just felt like so much was left out.

I watched the first episode and it was OK. Quit the second episode a few minutes in because it was a bit cheesy. Should I stick with it? Always wary of committing to a series and throwing away a dozen hours unless it's a really strong show.

These things are highly subjective. I think it started to go downhill during the last episode.

I then read the book, and my suspicions were confirmed. But that's just me... I don't like space-monsters.

The space-monsters angle doesn't last terribly long, basically just the first two books. The bulk of the series ends up being more of a political thriller. It reminds me a lot of Ben Bova's Grand Tour series, with some sprinklings of Frederick Pohl's Gateway series.

Two books is pretty long! ;)

I really did enjoy the political angle of the show, which I thought was much more present than in the first book. I have the second book on my kindle, and I read the first couple of chapters... maybe I'll pick it up again.

Haha, well, it didn't seem like that long... I ended up binge-reading the latest one over the course of two days after it came out

It's settled. I'm on vacation, and I'll give it another whirl ;)

Can we add this to the list of possibilities for human colonies? Moon, Mars, Ceres. It has less gravity so bones would be harder to maintain but less of a gravity well to get out of after landing. All that water is pretty darn appealing for refueling. It is farther away so solar insolation is less but sounds like it still would be worth it.

Well Ceres only has a diameter of 589mi (a little over 1/4 the size of our moon). It might be a good launchpad for refueling though, given the near in-significant gravity and apparently plentiful water.

Escape velocity of ~ 500 m/s, that's slower than most rifle bullets travel!

I'm looking at all the hydrogen laying around in the system in various forms, including water, and all I can think of is - energy. It's the stuff that powers the stars.

If only we could master that damn fusion now.

Hydrogen is not really what powers the stars, it's the immense gravity that collapses the hydrogen nuclei to allow fusion.

If you need gravity, you could build rotating habitats.

Maybe we could crash it into Mars and drink it there. It probably wouldn't burn up when entering Mars' thin atmosphere.

Disclaimer: I've played a lot of Kerbal Space Program.

Pardon me, but were you born of evil in a fiery volcano?

Titan. It actually has a significant atmosphere, actually a bit thicker than Earth's. Abundant ice as well.

Its 1/3 of the asteroid belt by mass. So the asteroid belt is what, 1/6 water by mass?

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