Star wars, Star Trek, the Expanse.. they're all our cultural wild guesses into the future. Sometimes they can even morph into real technology (automatic doors, cell phones). Interestingly though, they seem to be getting more scientifically accurate with time. We went from laser swords to actually conceptualizing warp drive (yt "Alcubierre") to making basic *completely doable* momentum look absolutely terrifying.. I mean we've come pretty far👍

It's really not that uncommon. I know a few Marines that own bat'leth's.

Actually, it's also mentioned that the 5:1 ratio, which was thought to be enough to still start a war over, has gradually lowered to 3:1, indicating that the MCRN either has the production power to keep up with UNN kills or, more likely, that the MCRN fields far more advanced technology than the UNN,

Despite that, the Martians are ultimately doomed in a long-term war. They are straining all their industrial capacity to keep up, but Earth simply has too much reserve production that hasn't been mobilized yet, and when they bring that fully online Mars will be swamped. Mars has been on near-wartime production ever since they declared independence, with their only two goals being terraforming and expanding the MCRN. They've got nothing else to commit to shipbuilding except the terraforming project, and if they stop that the population will lose their will to fight. Earth has been at peacetime production for basically all of it's history. Errinwright thought they could win on just that, but with the 5:1 becoming 3:1, that's just not going to happen. The UN will be forced to reduce production to civilian goods and go onto wartime production of ships, which will significantly increase their rate of buildup when Mars is at it's complete maximum.

It will live on thanks to Netflix!

Uh... Amazon, not Netflix, picked up the show

lovely brain toaster the ratio was revived only because the UN was stalling instead of outright attacking Mars. And even if UNN ships get destroyed at the same rate, the MCRN's last ship will still be destroyed much earlier than the UN's

I think Mars is also supposed to have man power issues. It's canonical that they conscript almost everyone.

The fact remains that Mars has focused on literally nothing but building up the MCRN and terraforming, while Earth has built ships at a casual rate, so if they truly wanted to, they could build ships much much faster than Mars

I'm pretty sure they were talking about this where a navy pilot drew a penis in the sky with his contrails. nypost.com/2017/11/17/navy-fails-to-see-humor-in-pilots-penis-in-the-sky-prank/

Powdered Toast Man Thanks, I couldn’t hear what They were saying.

A lot of this is addressed in the original Thrawn Trilogy, when it comes to Star Wars. The problem with the Empire, which Thrawn saw, was the focus on large ships and the devotion of resources towards the Death Star program, rather than the construction and maintinence of a versatile fleet. In that book we see the Empire's small ships performing constabulary duties, we see Star Destroyers performing ground and marine assaults, deploying troops and armored vehicles. But we also see a commander who recognizes the need for mixed unit tactics and role-specific vessels, and one who recognizes the weaknesses of the Imperial-I and Imperial-II class star destroyers and utilizes a variety of small support vessels to compensate for them in battlegroups. This is a pretty interesting lecture, actually. Taking a look at how Science Fiction is a reflection of historical naval strategy.

Evan Schultheis The Thrawn trilogy was written for an audience that was historically, economically, militarily, and scientifically unsophisticated by an author that was probably the same in accordance with the standards for franchise books in the era. Having no sense of scale practically goes without saying. Even relatively hard SF author's frequently lack a sense of scale, much less neo-pulp adventure writers. It was never more canonical than the films and is no longer canon at all. Lucas himself wasn't any better, but the Empire's procurement as seen in the films makes sense in spite of this. The resource strapped empire Thrawn assumes couldn't control a significant fraction of any galaxy metal rich enough to support life.

Well I mean we're not talking hard sci-fi here, it's Star Wars. I'm just saying that some Star Wars tried to create an empire that was more competent in its Fleet doctrine.

This presentation is only addressing what they’ve seen in the movies, the original trilogy it seems. In the movies, the ISD (and any other class of Star Destroyer) was used as a general purpose (and not clearly defined) role of command carrier battleship interdictor. The Death Star was meant to be more of a symbol of terror than a WMD as weapon itself and the components related to that represented only a fraction of the station’s overall size, mass and functions. The development, construction and location of it would’ve realistically been hidden by sub projects, code names and dark funding (skimming funds from other programs, fake programs, bonds/grants for semi-related things and from anonymous financiers), bureaucracy and by the fact that the galaxy is a large place. While material resources would be virtually unlimited for their war machine, the Imperial’s military development, construction, deployment and operations are limited by the same factors of real world contemporaries. Tax dollars, politics, diplomacy and the total area of military operations where they wish to control or exert influence in are the biggest considerations. Design and components change over time, which may or may not lead to or be necessitated by needed changes in role. Vader had power, influence and authority to acquire and use whatever units that he needed for his task force. He choose to overwhelm his opponents by strength in numbers and hardware, by the number and caliber of rounds fired down range. Using a hammer and anvil as opposed to a net and poker, and full head on quick decisive strikes. Although that seems to be a problem with most fictional bad guys. Unknowns like the Emperor’s ego, the father-son relationship and the Ewoks had more to do to the Empire’s defeat at the Battle of Endor in Episode 6 and short falls in their military strategy. The mass media (EU) material fleshes out and adds to or fixes the movies short comings. While a good deal of the books used to belong to sub-cannon (B cannon) and the Thrawn trilogy (1991-93) had Lucas’s approval AS cannon (equal to the movies A cannon) for episodes 7-9, until he sold the franchise over to Disney in 2012/13, at which point all of the EU was downgraded to Legacy cannon (C cannon) and is used as a resource bin for the new A and B cannons (A=on screen, B=book material, the games and comics have always been debatable in terms of which cannon they belong to). Lucas himself, only considered the Christmas Special (1978) to be non-cannon. The movies were meant for a less sophisticated audience than the books. Timothy Zahn, the author of the Thrawn trilogy (and is still doing stuff for the franchise), has a doctorate in physics. Hard scifi rests on the same scale of science/fantasy that Star Wars and Star Trek does, as liberties are always taken with the science in order to fit a fictional plot. Star Wars does lean more towards the fantasy side of the genre, though.

No. This is just some fun analogy and analysis. There is nothing wrong with it.

SDI fanboys be like...

Falconius Azurius it has become so much more

Maybe, but The Expanse isn't. The Expanse is closer to being Game of Thrones in space rather than Star Wars, only much more realistic and gritty. I could actually believe The Expanse could be real in a hundred years or so.

Ehh, more like a few hundred years imo, but yeah. Large aspects of it have reasonable feasibility compared to the sheer fantasy that is most sci-fi media (which isn't even to begin to think of something like Star Wars, which isn't sci-fi at all, but rather science-fantasy).

It's easier to explain tactics and comparisons with something people already know and enjoy. How the small rebel ships and fighters can outrun huge ships like the Star Destroyer can be related to our world with small boats being able to be more elusive against some bigger ships.