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Comment by mLuby | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised we haven't seen more hard sci-fi in the jovian or cronian systems. While constant 1g acceleration drives open the whole solar system to the ~month travel time that benefits stories, much more realistic accelerations (or limited fuel) can still manage the same within those systems. Add to that the plethora of interesting moons, rings, and gravitational points to focus people and material around and the action should flow quite naturally.

See The Expanse Season 2 (it's amazing).

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If an entire Sci-fi continuity were limited to just Sol and Alpha Centauri, this by itself would constitute an inexhaustible number of potential settings. In addition to planets, moons, asteroids, dwarf planets, Oort cloud and Kuiper belt class objects, there could also be space stations numbering in the tens of millions. Such a setting could use known physics, yet be incredibly vast. The Expanse is going in this direction, but doesn't go that far, and doesn't stick to known physics. (Though it remains closer to it than almost all Sci-fi continuities out there.)

> If an entire Sci-fi continuity were limited to just Sol and Alpha Centauri, this by itself would constitute an inexhaustible number of potential settings.

"Saturn's Children" by Charles Stross is a good one (unfortunately he had to do away with humans to keep the space opera physically realistic).

Mostly humans with radiation repair nanomachines and shielding could do just fine, I think. (Saying more would spoil Saturn's Children.) Humans commanding autonomous drones should figure more into Sci-fi. "Away teams" of drones in real life space fleets should be more prominent. Instead of a transporter shifting bodies, we could have the shifting of points of view through VR teleoperation. (Which is really what a transporter was for in the original Star Trek series: Changing locations with minimal production expense.)

The books are great and the TV series is now on Amazon Prime, with future seasons coming. Anybody on HN ought to be watching it.

... the TV series is now on Amazon Prime, with future seasons coming.

Fortunately Amazon took it. If after three seasons of slow development it ended where we start to see answers, I would have considered it a scam. Not so insulting as Gallactica, but definitely annoying.

I had no idea it had been renewed by Amazon! You have made my evening, kind internet stranger.

The radiation environment around Jupiter is a real kick in the nuts to hard sci-fi involving human exploration there.

The Red Rising series has significant plot points in jupiter and beyond. Fantastic books.

I think it is because aliens are more interesting than moons. Anyways, Expanse is amazing, I hope they improve for the last book in the series. Tiamat's Wrath was not the best.

Agreed on Tiamat's Wrath although it wasn't the worst either.

Absolutely! Persepolis Rising was amazing though. I am hoping the next book will be similar.

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