Alexander Vdolainen / Comments

Alexander Vdolainen

I’m an electrical engineer with extensive experience in transportation — automotive and heavy‑duty vehicles — and in industrial automation. I’m writing a hard sci‑fi series and, to keep the stories scientifically and technically plausible, I build simulations and run calculations as part of the process.

registered at: Dec 20, 2025

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aaa

Mar 16, 2026

To:M von Schantz

That's not a critique, no offense. It’s more like a suggestion for a possible discussion about climate thing (and that's mostly out of the book's context). I read the foreword at the very beginning, but I'm still not aware of the lore and world of the series.

Scorched Earth

Chapter:10

Mar 13, 2026

mmm, Mars ... seems you have quite a different destiny for this piece of rock.
the other point is predicted Earth's conditions -- that's debatable, but we're about a fiction, so probably those debates are better held outside of the context :)

Scorched Earth

Chapter:10

Feb 27, 2026

Fission ? As i understood that's a fission. Might be more details please :) I was calculating such approach -- IMO it's gonna be too heavy and this tech requires advances in material science.

Scorched Earth

Chapter:7

Feb 14, 2026

To:Anton Potapov

yep, Orbital Ring -- the active support structure. Math and physics for this are already well known, the only limitations are: 1. viable energy source and transmission (purely engineering task at the moment); 2. economics -- currently there is no such demand of Earth-Orbit-Earth delivery route.

Civilization

Chapter:5

Feb 14, 2026

To:Anton Potapov

why not ? there is explanation further in the book, but just a few examples: the wheel (4k years with us, but i read the latest research says it's more than that); the fork (3k at least); writing itself (5k+). also, good, well engineered technology is not only useful, but also economically viable.

Civilization

Chapter:5

Feb 08, 2026

To:M von Schantz

It's the world leader in the Orbital manufacturing -- yes. Why? there are few historical reasons, but it's all going to be explained later. Mainly it will be addressed in the Part II of the actual book.

Civilization

Chapter:8

Feb 07, 2026

To:M von Schantz

If you are interested in this specific situation -- read the next part, it explains more on that subject. Thank you for the comment!

Civilization

Chapter:4

Feb 07, 2026

To:M von Schantz

got your idea... so 'String theory' falls under not *pure* hard sci-fi :)
but seriously, dark matter is *theory*, and the last observations might be well explained by MOND. Dark matter theory is widely accepted, but it doesn't make it more eligible than MOND, so using dark matter/energy theory also should make any story lose its hard sci-fi pureness :)
But anyway I respect your style of categorisation, just want to add my two cents.

Scorched Earth

Chapter:0

Feb 07, 2026

To:M von Schantz

Thanks for this comment!
yeah, definitely you could ask, but i would recommend to read :) some concepts requires a long story to explain anyway ... cheating -- yes, shortcut -- debatable :)

Civilization

Chapter:1

Feb 07, 2026

To:M von Schantz

Coal plants, those are just for illustrative purposes. I live not far away from you -- Finland -- there are no coal plants. We have too many 'green' sources (though that comes at a price: now the spot prices for electricity are way high, meaning no wind). I'm a supporter of building more nuclear fission plants to feed the grid.

Mmm, I have a joke about sci-fi classification: "the most advanced hard sci-fi I have read is 'string theory'". IMO, hard sci-fi should rely on real foundations (physics, economics, math, etc.), but that doesn't mean you're forbidden to use some already existing feasible, but still debatable theories as a given. Personally, I'm not a fan of the dark matter/energy theory; for me, MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) looks better. So, using it in my writings doesn't make my story soft sci-fi; it's still eligible as hard sci-fi.

However, adding FTL or FTL communications using the common story about entangled particles could make the entire story fall into the soft sci-fi or fantasy category. For example: The Three-Body Problem pretends to be hard sci-fi, but it's clearly soft sci-fi.

Scorched Earth

Chapter:0

Feb 06, 2026

Hello,
EE/hobbyist sci-fi writer here.

I didn't expect to find hard sci-fi here, and although I haven't read the first chapter of your story yet, but I plan to. I agree with your words about sci-fi -- Star Wars is more of a fantasy set in space, which could be said about much of modern sci-fi or anything trying to pretend to be.

Regarding 'gas-guzzling' cars, that's a debatable topic. An even more devastating thing is the use of EVs that rely on coal for charging and the mining of rare elements using child labour to build their batteries.

Scorched Earth

Chapter:0

Dec 26, 2025

In general idea is nice (and narrative/flow is going fine) . Passages about the numbers fits well into something like a dark corporate thingy. But there is a few things to mention (and probably to fix): 1. oxygen -- that's shouldn't be so rare and should be cheap (it might be found everywhere, the only problem is a cost to extract it, but here we have a Mars economy, means to sustain it this community already has a lot of energy production). 2) fixed price -- in a real world prices are going up and down, in the future they are more volatile. Probably it's not so important in your novel, but ... that's my opinion. 3) Heluim-3 might be a good source for fusion, and again -- you have a fusion, so didn't see a problem to extract oxygen ...
no offense intended -- that's just a few technical notes. anyway the general idea is good, keep going!

The Earth Trap

Chapter:5