Season two is rapidly drawing to a close, as is Bobby Draper's career with the MCRN Marines. The Martian Powers-That-Be are furious that she spilled the beans about the man without a vac-suit, and the feeling is mutual since they used her and her fire team as live targets for a sales demo.

Errinwright's also in deep trouble. In the absence of Jules-Pierre Mao, he's going to take the fall for Eros almost wiping out life on Earth.

I don't know about you, but I loved the scenes with Alex and the Roci this week. That stellar cartography hologram was extremely cool, and I loved the slingshot. Observant viewers will remember the idea of slingshotting—flying a course around the Solar System using gravity instead of an Epstein drive—was introduced a while back with some kids betting on it in a bar on Ceres. As it happens, showrunner Naren Shankar isn't that happy with the scene, for reasons he goes into in a post over at Dan Abraham's site.

Again, the little details about the universe of The Expanse continue to delight. I love the animated backpack; it and the smart pots and pans we saw last week show us how ubiquitous and disposable some kinds of technology are by this point. But my favorite little moment—and I can't be alone here—was when Alex met up with the rest of the crew on Ganymede. It seems that in this timeline, talking about your ship like a person is not the done thing!

On this week's podcast, John Timmer interviews Amanda Hendrix and Charles Wohlforth, authors of Beyond Earth, where they talk about what we really need to do to colonize the Solar System.

I'll be analyzing, debating, and dissecting The Expanse every week with a different guest, and we'll post the podcast on Fridays throughout the season. New episodes air on Wednesdays in the US, so you have time to watch before we get into major spoilers. The Expanse season 2 will air in the UK on Netflix, although possibly not for another month or two.

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Decrypted is Ars Technica's weekly podcast about the TV that obsesses us. Currently we're dissecting The Expanse. Listen or subscribe however you please above and let us know what you think—ideas, questions, and so on—through the comments section, on iTunes, or via e-mail.