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Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

Modern aviation disagrees with you. Yes, systems fail, but they fail very rarely, and usually disasters are long chains of failures, not "need to restart the engine every 5 minutes".

It's likely to assume the same will true for space travel, should it ever happen. Even in our current "duct tape and baling wire" stage of space flight, computer problems occur, but they're not regularly and frustrating, they are unique and pretty catastrophic.

Your inflight entertainment system still won't work with your headphones because you have the wrong plugs, though ;)

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What gets me is not the interfaces to control things -- that seems believable -- but rather the ease/speed with which they answer questions about reams of data. Like, I work on a system with a database and to answer any complicated question I am like, "OK let me use the shell and write a query and check some stuff ... and then make sure that I'm asking the right question, and verify that this data looks right...", and here they are in a dozen (or 30) seconds finding all the craft that could have a telemetry that would intercept with some orbit, or cross-referencing passenger/crew manifests with other data.

It bugs me but not enough not to enjoy the show. ;)

It’s just sql with intellisense /s

In a similar vein, I also get bothered by the unrealistic fact that there are never compatibility issues between any given device/technology.

Since we are talking about The Expanse, I think a great example is whatever protocol allows for characters to physically fling data from their devices to other people's devices with a simple swipe.

I'll ignore the fact that sometimes they do this in city streets where they are surrounded by many potential recipients and somehow always deliver the payload to the right person...

But how likely is it that every single device's manufacturer implements that protocol in the same, non-proprietary way?

Because somebody, somewhere, finally got their shit together and decided that it's not a protocol without two independent implementations and a continually updated conformance test suite.

It's the future. It might happen.

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