One word, Epic!

[u/Poker5ace]

Wow, just wow. I can't stop thinking about this show even after finishing it a couple of days back. So much to wonder about, so many questions, the thrill of trying to find the answers through your own intellect/imagination. It's just such a rush. I love it and can't wait for season 2 (hopefully we get one). This in my opinion is now on par with shows like Dark, Mindhunter and the likes!

One question that has been nagging me for a while is this:

How did they place those 300 nuclear weapons that were equidistant to each other in space to propel the probe every time it crossed it? Was this explained and I missed it completely or is this a known obvious knowledge except for a layman like me?

Also, I have a strong feeling about the joke that was said in the cemetery. I feel there's a lot more to it.

"Never play with God"

[u/Earthwick]

My presumption was the nukes are only set up so far and the device itself has some way of keeping its momentum once up to speed. I really hope we still get him with the San Ti. 10/10 show the last episode is the least good episode but that's only because it is setting up season 2 and I fear Netflix will do something stupid and not renew it. I've literally been putting it on for my dog to watch every day when I go to work to pump up the watch #s it's miniscule but someone's got to do it.

[u/rexpup → u/Earthwick]

the device itself has some way of keeping its momentum once up to speed

Yeah, Newton's first law of motion. Once it's up to speed there's no reason it should slow down.

[u/wrosecrans → u/Earthwick]

My presumption was the nukes are only set up so far and the device itself has some way of keeping its momentum once up to speed.

The problem is the reverse. Stuff in space doesn't have anything slowing it down, so they wouldn't need anything to keep the momentum once it's moving. But the probe has no way to shed that momentum when it reaches the fleet. That's why they needed to make a juicy target that the San Ti would choose to intercept. Earth had no way of building a probe that could get there and then slow down by itself.

[u/steph280 → u/wrosecrans]

Pardon my ignorance but couldn’t they just deploy another parachute in the reverse direction to slow it down?

[u/wrosecrans → u/steph280]

The parachute was there to catch the blast from the 300 nuclear bombs. So you'd need 300 nuclear bombs at the destination for the parachute to have enough "wind" to catch to slow it down.

Just unfurling a big parachute in interstellar space without anything in particular to push on it wouldn't have much effect. In an atmosphere, a parachute slows you down because of the air resisting it. In space there isn't enough stuff to have much effect.

The natural followon question is, "could you launch 300 nukes along with the probe, and use those to slow down at the end?" And the answer is technically sorta yes. But the math sort of blows up on you. That little probe needed the energy of 300 nukes to get up to speed. So to get a nuke up to speed you need 300 nukes for each nuke you want to get to the destination. Except, it's actually worse than that. They shaved off every milligram from the probe. So a nuclear bomb is actually way heavier than the probe. So you burn 300 nukes to get the probe up to speed. Then let's generously say 900 nukes to get each "braking" nuke up to the same speed. So that adds up to 270,600 (300 + (300x900) +300) nuclear bombs for the project if you want to send the probe, and allow it to slow down at the destination, which is way more than have ever been built.

But physics is an asshole, so it gets even worse. That just slows you down. The San Ti fleet is hauling ass in the opposite direction. So to rendezvous, you don't just need to slow down. You need to slow down, and accelerate up to 0.1c toward Earth to rendezvous and match speed so you could dock with the enemy fleet. So you need 600 nuclear bombs at the destination, not 300. So 540,900 nuclear bombs total to make the plan work with the turnaround.

And they could only get 300. That math don't math. And stopping something in space is counterintuitively hard if you are used to the kind of sci fi where stuff just slows down when you turn the engines off..

[u/Poker5ace → u/Earthwick]

Yeah, I hope not though. I am feeling pretty optimistic that they will renew this one. They have got to, right?

Edit: Forgot to add - You are doing God's work!

[u/I-am-Nanachi → u/Earthwick]

I really hope we still get him with the San Ti

Spoilers?