This is not from knowledge but it seems to me that modern nuclear sub might clean the air well enough that smoking would be possible but WW2 diesels might not be able to.
In the TV series, they did have a nod to it with some of the casting of minor characters in Season 1 (and, as I recall, there was a mention or two of Belters’ builds in early episodes), but I agree, it’s something that they didn’t focus on much, or for long, and most of the main Belt-born characters (Naomi Ngata, Joe Miller, Camina Drummer, Anderson Dawes, etc.) are played by actors with more normal proportions.
About 15 years ago on an SSN, we had a smoking spot (in the engine room near some very powerful vent fans). During some operations the “smoking lamp” was snuffed out, meaning no smoking anywhere. Only off-watch sailors were allowed to smoke in that smoking spot.
This was used in a recent episode of Star Trek Discovery . But now that I think about it, I think that the universal translator should pick that up: somebody starts tapping, everybody hears a disembodied voice saying stuff.
On Earth, sure; there seems to be both social conservatism and strict laws (and probably a high surveillance ethic as well). But on Mars, which is future-focused and adapting all useful technologies to inhabit their planet (and apparently a high tolerance for corruption), or the anarcho-syndicalism of the Outer Planets Alliance? The Belters in particular are highly individualistic and clearly not adverse to conventional body modifications (e.g. piercings, tattoos, et cetera) so that they would not develop and use technologies that enhances survivability in their harsh environment—especially since we know they have the capabilities such as Drummer’s spinal implant, and the ability to culture tissue like Amos’ ruined hand—just seems like an oversight on the part of the writers. Again, not a huge issue, and there may be good reasons that they didn’t want to portray those technologies routinely (for one, it would make the props and effects work even more challenging) but sophisticated implanted devices with some neural connectivity and biological modifications are certainly technologies to be put into wide use on the foreseeable horizon of even the next couple of decades.
Stranger
I worked for a company that made sonar systems for submarines. We had a number of former submariners (sonarmen) as both field engineers and marketting/sales people. One of the older former sonarmen served on diesel electric boats post WWII (lots of cold war era), he used to tell the stories of how it was more important to keep your cigarette lit as the oxygen levels dwindled, than to…breathe. It was this “need nicotine to stay awake” more than “need oxygen to stay conscious” attitude. So these guys would be sucking frantically to keep the butts lit while huddled over their screens. These stories were recounted and confirmed when these old sonarmen would get together with their other brethren.
So yes, they at least allowed sonarmen to smoke on the diesel electric boats.
On the nuclear powered subs I got to go on sea trials for, they had the “designated smoking area” back somewhere toward the engine room. Knowing this was the designated smoking area, I avoided it as best I could (plus you lost hearing the closer you got to the engine room).
Nukes? Not Diesel?
That makes sense.
Correct. I was only on nuclear-powered subs. The last U.S. diesel submarine was decommissioned right around the same time that I was entering the submarine service.
Warp engines would have to be on the whole time, otherwise the warping of space would cease instantly. No “warp coasting”!
However, note that diesel subs (which are battery powered when submerged below periscope/snorkel depth), don’t stay submerged all that long (measured in hours). When they run the diesel to recharge the batteries, they ventilate and change out the air.
Nuclear submarines, on the other hand, stay submerged continuously for months.
With the ubiquity of smoking in the WWII era, I don’t suspect there was any prohibition on smoking on subs (other than for specific evolutions, like fuel transfers, when it would be announced that the “smoking lamp is out”), but I don’t know for sure. I’m just making an educated guess.
Yeah, my reason for thinking modern sub clean the air well is precisely because they stay down so much longer than the old diesel electrics. Everything else I said was guess work.
Cyber-arms and the like are trivial effects even a novice cosplayer can manage. That can’t be the reason.
Relevant spoilers for future Expanse books:
At the end of the next book after the one for this season, a dickish dictator-type escapes through a stargate with the protomolecule. The next book starts after a 20-year time-jump, where we find that said dictator has been doing experiments on prisoners to superify them using the protomolecule in a way similar to the evil superzombies from earlier in the series. He is attempting to become immortal.
That was subverted in one of the books in the 1632 series (about a West Virginia town that’s somehow transported back in time to the 30 Years War): A telecom tech (a modern one, who’s more used to working with computers than with bare copper) is stranded far from civilization, and manages to rig up something that he can use to send pulses… and so sends “SOS” repeatedly until rescue shows up. The other telecom tech (an old-school one, who got her experience on barely-functional mining equipment), who got his message, asks him why he didn’t send any more detail with his message. The modern tech admits, embarrassed, that SOS is the only Morse he knows.
Funny, the TV Tropes page mentioned Harry Harrison’s Spaceship Medic , but not Deathworld II, which basically has the same plot point you just posted. A stranded spacefairer rigs up a transmitter on a primitive planet to send out an SOS.
There is a bit of a difference between the quality and functionality needed for cosplay versus what is required for a cinematic prop, and a cosplay maker who can build a prehensile appendage that can actually function should probably quit their day job and start a prosthetics company. It is more likely the show portrays technology as it does because the role playing game the novels stemmed from didn’t have such technology available to the characters.
Stranger
‘Radium’ was already being used as a science-fiction label for a powerful material before the Curies adopted it as a name for their discovery. In 1897 Frank M. Close used ‘radium’ as the name of a material which emitted ‘apergy’, a strange kind of anti-gravity (like cavorite).
I imagine Burroughs still considered that the term ‘radium’ could be used to justify a wide range of bullshit, just like the terms ‘vibranium’ and ‘adamantium’ are used in the comics.
Ha, yeah, that would be me, except I can’t even remember which letter is three longs and which is three shorts, so my rescuer would probably show up asking “what the heck does ‘OSO’ mean?”
Protip: Morse code for SOS is not SOS, SOS, SOS, SOS. It’s SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOS…
So it doesn’t matter which one you start with.