That’s a Stephenson literary device common to his novels. In ‘Cryptonomicon’ there’s an extended explanation for the inner workings of a WW2 British-made machine gun and how it is similar to an even older sawmill. You get a couple pages of this geekery and then its back to the story. Seveneves was great. You can tell he is really tied in to the space industry start-ups around the Seattle area by his detailed descriptions of orbital mechanics and lasso-ing asteroids. The jump-cut to the future is like Kubrick’s 2001!
I chickened out of meeting Neil at a local book signing when it first came out.