THE EXPANSE
GO WATCH IT!
No stupid gimmicky "artificial gravity" horseshit, the "gravity" is caused by acceleration and deceleration.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
342 points (97.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
41372 readers
1426 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Which is fucking cool because it's one of the few space travel things that really does work. Like if we can figure out the fuel/propulsion thing and some kind of equivalent to deflector shields (not for space battles but for all the random shit in space that could destory your ship in a collision, especially if we get up to relativistic speeds), we could have space travel where you can walk around normally on the ship.
Also the gravity increasing ships like Goku used in DBZ, so we could actually have someone doing extreme gravity training while en route to a big fight.
And it works for both acceleration and deceleration, only difference is you're either travelling up or down.
Also loved the special seats they used when doing combat maneuvers. ST didn't just make up artificial gravity (since their ships moved forwards rather than up), they had inertial dampeners, because the evasive maneuvers would have been much more dangerous than the shocks from getting hit.
ST is more rooted in science than SW, but parts of it are just as much fantasy as the force, which was depressing to realize when you're hoping for humanity to eventually go in that direction. The biggest human tech fantasy in the Expanse is an engine upgrade that gives improved thrust and efficiency. Not to light speed, but just by like an order of magnitude. And they've even got a brutally realistic scene about the discovery that was great world building imo.
the expanse is the only universe where Epstein actually killed himself
I mean, gravity is just acceleration anyway.
Weird fucking acceleration due to the curvature of spacetime and how shit moves through time. But still, just acceleration.
To be fair; if you could build a fusion torch and fully direct the flow; aneutronic fusion fits the bill; the thrust numbers they are using are not crazy.
You would use stupid amount of fuel to get that much delta-v; but with advanced reactors using readily available fuel sources....maybe not an issue.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Up until the space magic bullshit, anyway.
So disappointing when the hand waving started.
Well the show didn't finish the story.
E: though, it didn't get less "magical", just more explained in a soft-scifi sense.
I wouldn't know, it got stupid well before the end
Spin up the drum.
I am a big fan of sci-fi and understand how expensive weightlessness is to film, so combine that with the amount of shows that have been canceled and I completely accept the fact that they try to keep this more fictional than science.
Well... Star Trek The Undiscovered Country.
Yep! One of the more rememberable parts... Floating pink Klingon blood droplets everywhere!
What you’re really saying is there aren’t enough big budget sci fi things to watch.
Simple. All the floors are made from a special exotic material, that is a lot like a magnet, but attracts everything. And just like magnets, they are not powered by any external source and don't need any external systems to control.
It would make sweeping really hard.
Why? It's adjusted (thickness of the material) to exactly match earth's gravity, so everything is exactly the same.
I always thought of mini black holes in the floors.
Titan AE
"Just think of it as floaty time!"
I like the movie and atmosphere but damn the villains are whack
I wish there were some spinoff or something similar.
In Star Trek IV, The Undiscovered Country, exactly that happened. It is kind of a unique scene, because it had to be a bitch to film.
The Undiscovered Country is VI. Star Trek IV is The Voyage Home. Both are great, anyways.
One is a great Star Trek movie. The other is a beloved comedy starring Star Trek people.
Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales
A go to for sick days in bed for years.
I never know the number, but I know the whales!
That's why I prefer hard SciFi like The Expanse books, where science is a main driver to life and motivations to drive the story.
Ive sen some of the show ad liked it a lot. Are the books even better??
Yes, and continue on about 30 years after the show, giving an actual conclusion to the story.
Bet, thank you
Strap in and wait for the juice, the show never really leaves our solar system
starships have redundancies most likely, much like the life support systems. its like artificial gravity isnt coming from an actual generator, but the whole ship itself in some unknown mechanism, most scifi genre dont explain how its being created, it looks more like an energy field throughout the whole ship generated from every "system" in the internally.
I find not many things are destroyed unless integral to the plot but there are times where it does because the story wanted it to. I think its more incommon with video games though as it makes a nice alternate gameplay thing to have in.
Adrian Tchaikovsky has some sci-fi books that make use of this idea.
view more: next ›