Fun Space Opera, but terribly incorrect science
This is a fun space opera, but someone needs to hire this author a science advisor and proofreader.
So much of the science is incorrect, or hung up on the wrong concept, while missing what’s the salient limit.
In the first 100 pages:
1. Gets the concept of the vacuum of space incorrect repeatedly. Book talks about “sonic shields” repeatedly. Um, in the vacuum of space? Sound doesn’t have a medium in which to travel, so “sonic shields” which are talked about repeatedly, can’t work. And the ship travels at “2 million kph” which is many many times the speed of sound, so a “sonic shield” would propagate much slower than the ships travel speed. So any sonic shield would be impossible in front of the ship.
2. Gets the speed of light wrong
3. Gets the scientific nature of constants wrong
4. Gets the theory of evolution wrong
5. Propulsion and g forces are all wrong: the specs for the ship are in 2M kph, when instead the relevant measure is delta-V
6. Acceleration on the ship is un-cancelled by any kind of counter-grab or structural integrity field
7. Yet the ship decelerates “by half” from 2M kph to 1M kph over 6 hours, which by my back-of-the-envelope sketch, would be 6 hours at a 13G retrograde acceleration, and should have killed everyone on the ship from strokes, collapsed lungs, and every bone in their bodies broken. But there’s no mention of this: everyone is all just happily strolling around with their coffee cups in their hands. No mention of how this happens, not even the slightest bit of hand-waviium science words to explain it away. It just happens, unremarked upon.
8. Orbital mechanics are mis-understood entirely. Basic facts-checks on the distance from Jupiter to Saturns closest approach aren’t checked.
9. Radar is presumed to be instantaneous, instead of having speed-of-light constraints at interplanetary distances.
9. A “complete visual inspection” of a space artifact is described, when the ship is approaching from a stationary object from one side. How is the back side imaged for the “complete visual inspection” when the object has been repeatedly described as “stationary”?
10. On a six month voyage, no comms between the spaceship and any other outpost are described. Nobody receives a letter, birthday photo of the family they left behind, there’s no mail delivery, and no orders updates from HQ? Really?
Just so MANY fact checks and science fails, that it was too immersion-breaking for me. I had to put the book down after the first 150 pages. I won’t be finishing the series.