I don't know if I'd say the get the technical details exactly right, as there are some concessions to story-telling over physics - the (probably) impossibly efficient fusion drives, and the protomolecule is kinda magic sometimes, but it get is right enough, and way more so than any other sci-fi show I've seen.
It's like Mass Effect. The mass effect phenomena is basically space magic, but most of the rest of the lore is realistic (aside from a few things like the quantum communicators in the third game).
Eh... Mass Effect is fairly soft sci-fi and more of classic space opera.
All these things happen in Mass Effect:
Sounds in space, spaceships bunched way too close together, impossibly slow projectiles for space (especially the classic "blob of light/plasma thingy" traveling at what appears to be subsonic speeds), giant 18th-century infantry-style spaceship firing lines, in general heavy reliance on "spaceships as just extensions of naval warfare" trope, all alien communication neatly glossed over with universal translation, nearly universally bipedal humanoid aliens, etc.
None of these are bad things! Mass Effect is simply much more similar in tradition to something like Star Wars or Star Trek than the Expanse.
There is one scene where Avasarala comes aboard the Roccinante and is dressed in a white textured jumpsuit straight out of Mass Effect. The camera lingers slightly too long on her, it is a clear homage imo.
Agree - I love the show but the two nits I have with it are the sounds in space (engines/guns most notably, although it makes for a better show) and the fact that they can't film in zero-G.
The weightless thing is obviously understandable but it's the kind of thing where you can't unsee the things they do to convince you there is no gravity (magnets everywhere!)
- Lights inside helmets to light up a person's face is a pretty dumb thing when you think about it, but it makes complete sense in a tv series, as you definitely want to see the actor's face.
- Transparent/Glass tablets & phones is still a complete mystery to me how this could be useful in any way... other than it "looks cool".
> Lights inside helmets to light up a person's face is a pretty dumb thing when you think about it
Only if you are doing EVA astronomy and need pitch black darkness to see stuff outside. Because you can light up someone's face enough and still not interfere with their activities.
Otherwise – it would be important to be able to see the other person's face, both to interact with them, and to gauge their well-being.
Their phones are not exactly transparent, they are "holographic". They can project images larger than their own size. Same as many screens depicted in the show.
Are lights in a helmet dumb? Being able to see companion's facial expressions while not critical would be absolutely useful in day-to-day life in space - TV production reasons aside.
On the transparent glass phones: "looks cool" is reason enough for most any consumer product. I haven't read the series, so I don't know if there is some lore explanation somewhere -- but --- if the technology is lying around as some component of a space habitat AND it looks cool, yeah, that tech is definitely going in a phone.
The actual mechanics of phones aren’t really explored in the books, which I kind of like. Going into the physical design of them would be like a novel set in 2021 going into detail about the design of an iPhone.
They’re also always referred to as hand terminals, which is so much of a better name for the devices we carry around and very rarely use as phones.
if you have lights on one side of a piece of glass and the black void of space on the other, it turns the visor into a mirror for the wearer. not very practical.
It's not just about looking cool. It's tough to make a film where characters are interacting with a screen or drawing on a whiteboard because the director usually wants to show the actor's face along with the screen so we can see their reactions. Which is why so often you see shows where actors draw on clear glass whiteboards even though no real office would ever have them. Likewise transparent phones: It's an unrealistic moviemaking concession that audiences mostly tolerate.
See through devices don't make much sense. But, the Expanse has omnipresent person tracking through their profile and camera systems. The computers of a ship or station can be queried to find a person. There seems to be a system wide registry of people and ships. Each ship and station has a copy of both. The whole system makes me think of tests of blockchain based vessel registries.
There’s a few nice touches like that. Fairly frequently there’s references to many different “feeds”, which every time makes me think of the entire solar system clustering around subreddits.
This is only a real problem with external shots. And only some of them. If you were as close to engine exhaust as some of the shots - assuming you were not incinerated - you'd definitely hear something as the exhaust impacted you.
There's also budget constraints, they can't accurately portray things every time. Although we know the producers know about the issues.
Examples: the first belter we see is more accurate to what they should look like than subsequent ones. Taller, and more frail.
Coriolis effects as Mueller was pouring his drink.
More recently, Avasarala pouring liquor while at the Moon. Even though the actors don't look like they are in the Moon (because in real life they are not), the producers will waste some CGI budget from time to time to remind us that – "hey! we know this is supposed to be the Moon. Look!"
one issue I have is that despite being on the moon or one of the planetoids in the belt - they don't have that shuffling walk due to gravity being a fraction of a 1g.
This criticism doesn't really make sense to me. We're watching through the lens of an invisible space camera with some sort of amazing lighting rig to make things look better. Why can't that space camera also have a laser microphone and sound synthesizer which makes things make noise to provide audio cues that the audience can latch on to? Alternately: the gun and engine noise comes from the same place that the background music comes from, and nobody questions that.
> Why can't that space camera also have a laser microphone and sound synthesizer which makes things make noise to provide audio cues that the audience can latch on to
That's the excuse provided by EVE Online. The lore is that they have extremely cheap "camera" drones. And that the neural interface synthesizes sounds (and other senses) to increase your awareness.
The Expanse does sounds inside ships just fine. You hear your own ship firing, you don't hear others. And whenever actors (as opposed to a disembodied camera) are in space, they don't hear anything.
Tbf, more than half the time they're either accelerating, decelerating or are in a centrifuge. Ships are designed with the floors towards the engine, so there's actual gravity in the first two cases, and stations are using centripedal force.
Wouldn't our science just be magic to our ancestors, too? I hope in 100 years there are things that seem impossible to me now and I enjoy when the fiction I consume reflects that.
