What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[todofwar]

1 hour ago, cantab said:

IIRC is that after its initial launch and departure, the Hermes stays on a cycler trajectory, which means it flies by Earth and Mars alternately never entering a closed orbit around either. That means that to catch it, the crew ship needs to escape Earth itself and in fact spend as much if not more delta-V as if it transferred to Mars directly. In fact the Delta IV Heavy is not enough to push the Orion capsule that far, but we could assume The Martian has a more efficient DIVH, a lightened capsule, or/and an extra upper stage.

In any case, I think it's a bit mean to bash the filmmakers for this. They could have just done what every other sci-fi movie would do and use CGI, and then throw realistic rockets out the window and do whatever they think looks cool. But instead they used actual, honest-to-goodness footage of a real rocket. And for their trouble they get the continuity nitpickers complaining.

Well, this is a thread explicitly for nitpicking, I do appreciate the great lengths they went to make it realistic though. But I do think the Hermes goes into parking orbits on earth and mars. They mention the mav used at the end needed to be stripped because it was designed for LMO and they needed it to intercept Hermes while it was in a flyby. And they talk about the need for it to be serviced in earth orbit in between missions (that part might have been book only). Now, I do like that they used a real rocket for the final spot regardless of whether or not it's the actual rocket they would use. I'm actually surprised they didn't use SLS, since the movie was half an advertisement for NASA after all.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, todofwar said:

I'm actually surprised they didn't use SLS

Stock footage.

[p1t1o]

On 11/25/2016 at 8:59 PM, DDE said:

@Tex_NL @p1t1o Here's something to get your blood boiling: each missile packs 518 km/s dV and a megaton-class non-nuclear warhead.

Source dead, quoted here: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Elysium_(2013)#4Sure_Ballistics_Missile_Launcher

Hard sci-fi much?

I <hurk> think I just threw up a little...

***

I can see I missed some activity over the weekend, so I'll just post my two pence here:

Stealth in space is thermodynamicall disalllowed, there is no clever trick to get around it - no matter how hard you try to keep all your heat inside your spaceship for some amount of time, there will *always* be a certain amount lost in every direction, and as long as you are hotter than the cosmic microwave background, you are detectable.

This also applies to attempting to emit all of your heat in a specific direction. There will always be leakage - for example, all of those heatpipes and refrigeration units you use to shunt heat to the back of your ship are themselves generating heat, for which you need more heatpipes and yet more refrigerators to shift that heat away, which generate their own heat etc...

***

Submarines in space - I think the most significant aspect of the comparison is the "first-detection:first-shot:first-kill" aspect, combined with the slightly contradictory "If you shoot at me:I can see you:I can kill you".

[cantab]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

first-detection:first-shot:first-kill

It's a common conception, but CoaDE casts doubt on it. I've had ships with only a few cm of armour stand up to impressive amounts of railgun fire, and in order to disable the target rounds need to both penetrate the armour and have the luck to hit a critical component. There's also the factor that you tend to open up at a range where you'll still be missing a lot, so again the 'lucky hit' factor comes in. Lasers for their part take time to ablate through a target. And then there's the need to even get to firing range in the first place - if the enemy has more delta-V than you and really doesn't want to fight, they can probably avoid it.

I know CoaDE isn't the be-all and end-all of hard sci-fi, but I feel it's insightful.

[KerbMav]

On 11/14/2016 at 11:44 AM, monstah said:

Oh, I just watched that one episode yet! I liked it, but I'm really slow on TV shows (my wife's making me watch Breaking Bad right now)

Yeah. There is simply to much material.

[Superfluous J]

On 11/25/2016 at 7:37 AM, Tex_NL said:

No missile that small, launched from the surface, should be able to reach a target that far out in space.

Yeah but it's a REALLY BIG missile. I mean, you see that warning to stand back an entire 4 meters, right?

[adsii1970]

A pet peeve would have to be seeing the movie in IMAX and have two chatty teenage young ladies constantly talking and texting (with keypad sounds turned on) as I am trying to watch the movie...

[DarkOwl57]

3 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

A pet peeve would have to be seeing the movie in IMAX and have two chatty teenage young ladies constantly talking and texting (with keypad sounds turned on) as I am trying to watch the movie...

*click click click click*

*EXPLOSION*

*click click click click*

[idamoofus]

I can usually ignore inaccuracies, because it's television and it has to look pretty; even though I occasionally find myself ranting at the screen because no that's not how ion engines work. What I can't stand, though, is when the moon is made out to be enormous in the sky, or when the Earth looks huge from the moon. Have you seen the trailer for Mass Effect: Andromeda? I understand it's about how good it looks to the people who are giving you money, but you could at least try. Coincidentally, that trailer also contains another glaring inaccuracy I hate: Leaving the LEM ascent stage on the surface attached to the descent stage.

[Tex_NL]

17 minutes ago, MrLake said:

Have you seen the trailer for Mass Effect: Andromeda? I understand it's about how good it looks to the people who are giving you money, but you could at least try. Coincidentally, that trailer also contains another glaring inaccuracy I hate: Leaving the LEM ascent stage on the surface attached to the descent stage.

I have seen many ME Andromeda trailers over the last year. But I have seen none that show the moon from earth nor one that shows the LEM on the moon. A link to that particular trailer would be appreciated.

[monstah]

1 hour ago, MrLake said:

I can usually ignore inaccuracies, because it's television and it has to look pretty; even though I occasionally find myself ranting at the screen because no that's not how ion engines work. What I can't stand, though, is when the moon is made out to be enormous in the sky, or when the Earth looks huge from the moon.

Amusingly enough, that can be actual footage and not CGI. You just have to have the camera really far from the subject, and zoomed all the way in.

Granted, that's not how we look at things with our human eyes (I have human eyes, because I'm human. Are you?). But still that's not inaccurate, merely an unusual point of view.

[Tyko]

On 11/25/2016 at 4:22 AM, DestinyPlayer said:

I've always found the whole "space battles are like naval battles" thing annoying. Come on, Submarine movies ARE popular after all! Or at least were popular... Just make a submarine movie and move it to space. That would be much closer to reality.

Except in many space movies that behave like submarine movies they go too far with the analogy. Everyone on the spaceship speaking in hushed tones, for example. I think that the Wing Commander movie was guilty of this.

4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Yeah but it's a REALLY BIG missile. I mean, you see that warning to stand back an entire 4 meters, right?

I'm usually willing to overlook sci-fi "errors" that are tied to something being too small for the job. That can be explained away with the "technology got better" excuse. Higher ISP engines, smaller/lighter components, etc.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 11/25/2016 at 0:59 PM, DDE said:

each missile packs 518 km/s dV

My reaction to that is like "518 KM/s!!!?!" in a disbelieving tone very similar to Doc Brown saying "One point twenty-one Jiggawatts!!!?!"

 

[Superfluous J]

20 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

My reaction to that is like "518 KM/s!!!?!" in a disbelieving tone very similar to Doc Brown saying "One point twenty-one Jiggawatts!!!?!"

...which implies it will be achievable in 30 years (said in 1955 and achieved in 1985) and simple some time in the future (we don't know the year the Mr Fusion was made in, obviously not 2015 so I always assumed he went forward further but never mentioned it)

[StrandedonEarth]

4 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

...which implies it will be achievable in 30 years (said in 1955 and achieved in 1985) and simple some time in the future (we don't know the year the Mr Fusion was made in, obviously not 2015 so I always assumed he went forward further but never mentioned it)

With assumed implications (or is that implied assumptions...?) like that, you should be a screenwriter!

Edited November 28, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[Codraroll]

On 25.11.2016 at 9:59 PM, DDE said:

@Tex_NL @p1t1o Here's something to get your blood boiling: each missile packs 518 km/s dV and a megaton-class non-nuclear warhead.

Source dead, quoted here: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Elysium_(2013)#4Sure_Ballistics_Missile_Launcher

Hard sci-fi much?

Hey, don't forget the cited range of these things: "15,000 kilometres". I don't know if it's even possible to burn 518 km/s of Delta-V and still end up less than 15,000 kilometres away, especially if you're firing into space. You'd have to force the missile to stand still and spin, or something like that.

To be fair, it says "in excess of 15 000 kilometres", which I guess could mean "anything above 15,000 kilometres" if you're giving them a lot of slack. Or they could be talking about the effective range of the guidance system.

[StrandedonEarth]

26 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Hey, don't forget the cited range of these things: "15,000 kilometres". I don't know if it's even possible to burn 518 km/s of Delta-V and still end up less than 15,000 kilometres away, especially if you're firing into space. You'd have to force the missile to stand still and spin, or something like that.

To be fair, it says "in excess of 15 000 kilometres", which I guess could mean "anything above 15,000 kilometres" if you're giving them a lot of slack. Or they could be talking about the effective range of the guidance system.

Equating potential energy and kinetic energy gives mgh=0.5*mv²

Solving for h gives h = (v²) / 2*9.8

Plugging in 518 km/s yields a max height if fired straight up (ignoring drag) of  13,690,000 km, almost 3 orders of magnitude more. So yeah, I'd guess they must be referring to the targeting system.

 

Edited November 29, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, Codraroll said:

Hey, don't forget the cited range of these things: "15,000 kilometres". I don't know if it's even possible to burn 518 km/s of Delta-V and still end up less than 15,000 kilometres away, especially if you're firing into space. You'd have to force the missile to stand still and spin, or something like that.

To be fair, it says "in excess of 15 000 kilometres", which I guess could mean "anything above 15,000 kilometres" if you're giving them a lot of slack. Or they could be talking about the effective range of the guidance system.

518 km/s, if fired from the right angle at the right time, is enough to escape the galaxy. Even if galactic prograde happened to be solar retrograde, you'd lose about 80 km/s (10 to orbit Earth, 10 to escape Earth, 30 to cancel orbital velocity, 30 to reverse it) and you'd still have 120 km/s to spare.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

518 km/s, if fired from the right angle at the right time, is enough to escape the galaxy.

As the Sun orbital velocity is ~220 km/s, 518 km/s is enough to leave the galaxy even retrograde.

If he missed, and self-destroy was not enabled, a million years later the rocket suddenly hits an alien star liner, causing an intergalactic war.

[Hary R]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

As the Sun orbital velocity is ~220 km/s, 518 km/s is enough to leave the galaxy even retrograde.

If he missed, and self-destroy was not enabled, a million years later the rocket suddenly hits an alien star liner, causing an intergalactic war.

In a far far away galaxy....

Those numbers are just ridiculous that's it. 

Seeing the plane scene on an early post remind me of this movie. Funny to watch but so not realistic:

 

 

Nope even a drone can't do that.

This one to have a pretty interesting law of physics defying acrobatic move to:

But the story was good enough for me to forgive that last bite.

Edited November 29, 2016 by Hary R

[RedDwarfIV]

10 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

...which implies it will be achievable in 30 years (said in 1955 and achieved in 1985) and simple some time in the future (we don't know the year the Mr Fusion was made in, obviously not 2015 so I always assumed he went forward further but never mentioned it)

Note the "Fusion Industries" logo on the left.

At least according to the Wikia, Mr Fusion Home Energy Generators were available in 2015.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, RedDwarfIV said:

Note the "Fusion Industries" logo on the left.

At least according to the Wikia, Mr Fusion Home Energy Generators were available in 2015.

I stand corrected! Though going just by the movie, the company existing does not imply the product exists.

</pedant>

[Raideur Ng]

I am glad I never saw Stealth. That dogfight was the most retarded dogfight I have ever seen. Literally everything was wrong. I can't even find something correct.

[Jonfliesgoats]

OMG air combat maneuvering in movies: physics, tactics all wrong!

Cockpits are filled with glowing, blinking lights and needless bleep and hoop noises.  With all that activity, you pay attention to none of it.  

Star Wars: Jedi can bend metal and affect people's thoughts, but they still let themselves get shot up when they are flying a spacecraft?  And what about the ethics of these monsters?  They will ,anipulate matter and space around them but they let people die of disease?  Why not have Jedi mentally seal people's wounds or eliminate tumors.  

Also, the speed of light never seems to factor into long range space guns in those movies.  

Jupiter Ascending: a roller-skating man-dog-soldier-lover survives the vacuum of space without severe cosmetic injury.

nerd rage.  NERD RAGE!!!

Edited December 2, 2016 by Jonfliesgoats

[monstah]

12 minutes ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Jupiter Ascending: a roller-skating man-dog-soldier-lover survives the vacuum of space without severe cosmetic injury.

Isn't that the movie where Sean Bean lives? Than alone disqualifies it.