What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[p1t1o]

15 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

It is entirey possible that today's fighters or bombers could be equipped with drone underwing stores to extend the reach of sensors and network weapons systems.

Well what is a cruise missile if not an especially offensive drone? Some modern cruise missiles even have data uplinks to report information from multiple onboard sensors - for example, the latest tomahawks have all of the usual radar scene-matching, GPS/INS navigation, but also include an imaging IR sensor in the nose for positive target ID and also for possible re-targetting during flight with a 2-way datalink.

And on top of that, certain models contain bomblets instead of a unitary warhead and can visit multiple target sites, dropping a portion each time before ramming a final target.

Further, one fighter-size cruise missile comes to mind, the RAF's Storm Shadow, which does most of the above, but autonomously, ie: its imaging IR camera can recognise its target on its own and decide whether to attack or to abort (if the target cannot be found) to a safe location - conforming to the "classic" meaning of drone referring to an essentially "robotic" craft.

So in conclusion, I would say that we are already arming our bombers (and today, even our fighters) with complements of drones, and quite capable ones too.

[todofwar]

3 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Well what is a cruise missile if not an especially offensive drone? Some modern cruise missiles even have data uplinks to report information from multiple onboard sensors - for example, the latest tomahawks have all of the usual radar scene-matching, GPS/INS navigation, but also include an imaging IR sensor in the nose for positive target ID and also for possible re-targetting during flight with a 2-way datalink.

And on top of that, certain models contain bomblets instead of a unitary warhead and can visit multiple target sites, dropping a portion each time before ramming a final target.

Further, one fighter-size cruise missile comes to mind, the RAF's Storm Shadow, which does most of the above, but autonomously, ie: its imaging IR camera can recognise its target on its own and decide whether to attack or to abort (if the target cannot be found) to a safe location - conforming to the "classic" meaning of drone referring to an essentially "robotic" craft.

So in conclusion, I would say that we are already arming our bombers (and today, even our fighters) with complements of drones, and quite capable ones too.

Never thought of it that way. At the risk of this getting too political, in a war with robots, what qualifies as a suicide bomber?

[p1t1o]

12 minutes ago, todofwar said:

Never thought of it that way. At the risk of this getting too political, in a war with robots, what qualifies as a suicide bomber?

Once cruise missiles start passing the turing test, I'll let you know

On that note, in Alaistar Reynolds "Revelation Space" series (awesome dark sci-fi btw) there exists several autonomous "hell-class" (read: planet-killer-scale) weapons which are described as having "gamma-level" intelligences (with the next level, alpha, being equivalent to, and sometimes literally, a full upload of a human mind). Some of those are one-shot devices. At one point a character has to "convince" a weapon to be fired.

http://revelationspace.wikia.com/wiki/Cache_Weapons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Revelation_Space

Also fun to think about: the robots (terminators) that skynet produces to battle mankind - more or less lethal than todays drones? Pretty sure which one would win in a shoot out

Edited December 9, 2016 by p1t1o

[TheKorbinjer]

In The Martian when Matt Damon says 

"If the hab pops, i'll just kind of .. implode"

On Mars, the lack of air pressure, if anything would make you EXplode.

Not to mention, Watney says 'explode' in the book.

 

 

 

Made me cringe. >.>

Edited December 9, 2016 by TheKorbinger

[cantab]

With a moment's thought, it would do neither. It can only explode if a small to medium sized breach would grow rapidly, and I feel confident speculating the hab would be designed to not do that. You can do a simple experiment. Stab a balloon with a pin, and you know it pops. But stick some sellotape on the balloon and stab the pin through where the tape is, and the balloon will be pierced but it won't explode. So it's not hard to make an inflatable structure that doesn't pop. And it wouldn't exactly implode either. If breached the hab would just deflate and collapse under its own weight. The aftermath would kind of look like it had "imploded" but the process would have been slower.

[todofwar]

3 minutes ago, cantab said:

With a moment's thought, it would do neither. It can only explode if a small to medium sized breach would grow rapidly, and I feel confident speculating the hab would be designed to not do that. You can do a simple experiment. Stab a balloon with a pin, and you know it pops. But stick some sellotape on the balloon and stab the pin through where the tape is, and the balloon will be pierced but it won't explode. So it's not hard to make an inflatable structure that doesn't pop. And it wouldn't exactly implode either. If breached the hab would just deflate and collapse under its own weight. The aftermath would kind of look like it had "imploded" but the process would have been slower.

Well I guess it depends. I think the idea in the book was the entire airlock became detached very quickly, because of a flaw in the design that didn't become apparent until it had been used much longer than was planned for. So it wasn't a puncture but a large piece all tearing away at once. 

But all in all, being exposed to vacuum is never as dangerous as people make it seem, and dying is never as dramatic either. Mission to mars was the worst, just sort of instafroze. In reality, your eyes may go bloodshot and you may have dramatic redness in patches, but overall not a drastic change visibly at first. As your body begins to dry out it will freeze from evaporative cooling over time, but that will take a little while. 

[W. Kerman]

On 12/6/2016 at 11:26 AM, DarkOwl57 said:

Another pet peeve of mine (Also about star wars. Well... Any movie actually.): Whenever an extra (Non-important character) Gets hurt by something, they die instantaneously. But whenever a main character is hurt, they live on through the injury and end up being just peachy. Example: In Star Wars (Episode 6 (VI) I think) Leia is hit with one of those lasers. Now if she weren't an important character, that hit to her stomach would have killed her. Heck, if it hit her pinky toe it would have killed her. But because she was important, she just has to live. In what way is that even possible?!?!?

Humph. Rant over.

My personal pet peeve, villains and their goons all have "Storm Trooper Aiming" in almost all movies! If you shoot that much, you should hit something, right? 

 

These are the same storm troopers who took that ship over so well in the first movie. But when they go after the protagonists, they instalose their aiming talents.

 

Grrrrrr.....  

[Hary R]

Speaking of gun, I have one about body armor, if any of you know a little about guns, then you shhould know that civilian kevlar body armor are not as effective as hollywood try to make them be. In many movie (Back to the future got it very wrong) a  civilian grade kevlar body armor will stop an assault rifle bullet, while in reality, only a military grade body armor can do that.

Another one of mine is the hero's inhuman stamina, he can run throughout the intire movie, fight thousands of goons, get injured so badly that a normal human should have black out and still have enougth stamina to fight the big overpowerd vilan that was just waiting for him. (80 action movies, you were the best) or another exemple of this is the every day dad that suddunly become as well trained as a sepcial force soldiers in any catastrophe movie.

Edited December 10, 2016 by Hary R
spelling

[Codraroll]

19 hours ago, todofwar said:

But all in all, being exposed to vacuum is never as dangerous as people make it seem, and dying is never as dramatic either. Mission to mars was the worst, just sort of instafroze. In reality, your eyes may go bloodshot and you may have dramatic redness in patches, but overall not a drastic change visibly at first. As your body begins to dry out it will freeze from evaporative cooling over time, but that will take a little while. 

Don't forget Sunshine, where a character is exposed to vacuum, dies instantly, floats gently away from the airlock and into an antenna over a few seconds, and shatters like glass. Even if the character did freeze that quickly, how fragile do the film makers think frozen meat is? He wasn't even going that fast.

And then the pieces float out of the shadow of the spacecraft, and instantly combust and burn away to nothing. Perhaps justified, since they were really close to the Sun at that point.

[cantab]

What do you expect from a movie that thinks that the Sun could plausibly be "dying" in 50 years, that said "dying" would result in its output declining not increasing, and that if that was happening that a nuclear bomb barely larger than a decent comet would make a blind bit of difference.

[todofwar]

9 hours ago, cantab said:

What do you expect from a movie that thinks that the Sun could plausibly be "dying" in 50 years, that said "dying" would result in its output declining not increasing, and that if that was happening that a nuclear bomb barely larger than a decent comet would make a blind bit of difference.

To be fair, it wasn't a nuke. They gave plenty of techno babble involving it accelerating to relativistic velocities and bending space time I'm pretty sure. They even said it was like a 10% chance of working, it was sort of a "were all gonna die and this might work so screw it" from what I remember. Granted I only saw it once and that was a while ago. I think the bigger problem was the whole bathing in light thing, they must have had all lower wavelengths blocked or something. 

Edited December 11, 2016 by todofwar

[NSEP]

Another peeve i have is that most spacecraft are cool and all, but how about assembly and construction?

Im looking at the huge massive starships from star trek and star wars

Edited December 11, 2016 by NSEP

[Andem]

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

Another peeve i have is that most spacecraft are cool and all, but how about assembly and construction?

Im looking at the huge massive starships from star trek and star wars

Well, in Star Trek they're built in Spacedocks, they start with the frames and build from there like any other ship on earth.

As for Star Wars, the ships built by Kuat Drive Yards are built like any plane or naval vessel on earth.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Andem said:

Well, in Star Trek they're built in Spacedocks, they start with the frames and build from there like any other ship on earth.

As for Star Wars, the ships built by Kuat Drive Yards are built like any plane or naval vessel on earth.

Ships tend to be build in modules who is welded together, this speeds up construction time and reduce time in drydock. 
It also let you pipeline the process more, you are still cutting plates for the front then you are finishing the rear. 
Large planes tend to have wings and probably tails build separate for the same reason. 

[razark]

8 hours ago, NSEP said:

Im looking at the huge massive starships from star trek and star wars

You're willing to accept things like faster-than-light travel, time travel, magic sensors, mater-energy conversion, single-biome planets, physics that changes on a weekly basis, and so on, but orbital construction is where you draw the line?

Even though we've built two space stations on orbit?

 

Seriously, though, I'm not sure what you mean.  Can you elaborate?

While the Star Wars canon never revealed much, the Star Trek canon discussed construction/refit of starships in orbital facilities.

[NSEP]

53 minutes ago, razark said:

You're willing to accept things like faster-than-light travel, time travel, magic sensors, mater-energy conversion, single-biome planets, physics that changes on a weekly basis, and so on, but orbital construction is where you draw the line?

Even though we've built two space stations on orbit?

 

Seriously, though, I'm not sure what you mean.  Can you elaborate?

While the Star Wars canon never revealed much, the Star Trek canon discussed construction/refit of starships in orbital facilities.

They look way to smooth and they are way too big, they dont look like they are modulair too. 

I cant stand looking at things with the construction process hidden. It makes me either curious or annoyed.

[razark]

13 minutes ago, NSEP said:

They look way to smooth and they are way too big, they dont look like they are modulair too.

Ah.  I can see that.

(Going with ST, since SW never addressed it, and I haven't gotten that deep into the extended universe.)

Federation ship designs are pretty standard.  You have a saucer section + engines, and maybe a secondary hull.  Those are pretty standard parts assembled into a starship.

 

Now, for example, let's take a saucer section.  It's simply a series of layers, stacked one on top of the other.  The bottom layer is small, the next is slightly larger, continuing up to the mid-deck, and the getting smaller again until the bridge level, which is a single "room".  If you look at a "standard" deck, it's made up of concentric rings, surrounding a central core (which if memory is not corrupted, contains the main computer).  Each corridor is identical.  The rooms are identical, with certain special rooms (sickbay, transporter room, etc.), since most of the rooms are going to be crew berthing.  It's easy to see how each section could be copied and extended, making extensions for each concentric ring of corridor.

Once you have the internals blocked out, you can run plumbing/cabling/whatever they use in the spaces outside the inhabited areas, and then cover over the whole with a (for some reason) streamlined hull plating, much like a submarine's outer hull covers the pressure hull.

 

You ever seen construction of a submarine?

Spoiler

Amazingly modular, for something that has to act as an whole vessel.

 

[NSEP]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

Ah.  I can see that.

(Going with ST, since SW never addressed it, and I haven't gotten that deep into the extended universe.)

Federation ship designs are pretty standard.  You have a saucer section + engines, and maybe a secondary hull.  Those are pretty standard parts assembled into a starship.

 

Now, for example, let's take a saucer section.  It's simply a series of layers, stacked one on top of the other.  The bottom layer is small, the next is slightly larger, continuing up to the mid-deck, and the getting smaller again until the bridge level, which is a single "room".  If you look at a "standard" deck, it's made up of concentric rings, surrounding a central core (which if memory is not corrupted, contains the main computer).  Each corridor is identical.  The rooms are identical, with certain special rooms (sickbay, transporter room, etc.), since most of the rooms are going to be crew berthing.  It's easy to see how each section could be copied and extended, making extensions for each concentric ring of corridor.

Once you have the internals blocked out, you can run plumbing/cabling/whatever they use in the spaces outside the inhabited areas, and then cover over the whole with a (for some reason) streamlined hull plating, much like a submarine's outer hull covers the pressure hull.

 

You ever seen construction of a submarine?

  Hide contents

Amazingly modular, for something that has to act as an whole vessel.

 

Ah nice! Thanks for showing me.

Dont get me started on the death star and how they get all their resources up into space XD.

[razark]

1 minute ago, NSEP said:

Dont get me started on the death star and how they get all their resources up into space XD.

You don't get to claim that engineering is weird when you have established that actual space wizards exist.

That's like complaining about magic in Harry Potter. 

 

In short, at some point, you have to take the brain off the hook and just say "ok, groovy", or it's not going to make any sense.  I have a problem getting into any super-hero/comic book type of fiction because my mind just can't accept such nonsense.  Even something like Batman, that involves no super-powers at all, but ignores how the world works.  How does Batman ever get anyone arrested?  Does the concept of chain of custody of evidence ever enter the minds of anyone? 

"Well, normally, we'd need a warrant, or at least probable cause.  But in this case, that crazy guy that dresses like wildlife told us these guys committed a crime.  I guess we should lock them up." 

Seriously, how has a federal investigation not taken down the entire political machine in Gotham?

 

[Codraroll]

Speaking of constructions, this time buildings: Building collapses in movies are usually so many levels of wrong.

In a movie, the structural integrity of a building is roughly comparable to that of a cardboard box. When a skyscraper collapses, a section will neatly topple over, retaining its shape all the while. Like a cardboard box falling off a stack of boxes. Or you can punch a hole right through the middle of a building, or a corner, over several floors, without affecting anything beyond the borders of the hole (worst example I can think of: New York's MetLife building in Godzilla).

In reality, a skyscraper has a structural integrity comparable to a house of cards. The cards may be glued together somewhat, but their stiffness is rather small relative to their size. If you destroy one section of a skyscraper, the structure around it will come tumbling down, and the falling debris will probably destroy the rest of the building. 7 World Trade Center fell because one structural column buckled. Without that column, floor beams and plates across 40 floors lacked support, and they all fell into other building elements, which brought them down in turn, creating more debris that would fall and destroy more building elements. It's a cascade effect that's impossible to stop without an unrealistic amount of structural redundancy.

Toppling a skyscraper is also impossible. If you try to "chop it down" like a tree, you won't get a neat hinge point where the two sections cleanly fall apart. Take out half of the columns of a building, and the other half will promptly fold in on themselves since they now have to carry twice the load. Besides, it would take a lot of force to tip over the top section of the building, above the impact. Gravity accelerates everything straight down, rather fast at that, and structural failures are near-instantaneous. Even if some horizontal force is present to push on the top of the building, the top section won't have time to topple over before it hits the ground and disintegrates after falling straight down.

Then there's the dust. After Man of Steel, Metropolis would have been blanketed by smog for months. Half of the action in 2012 would have been invisible in reality, since dust and smoke will billow forth in large volumes whenever something collapses. Independence Day would have been all about people stumbling around in the dark, dying from lung cancer or obstructive lung diseases because they inhaled pulverized gypsum and concrete. The cloud from the collapsed stadium in The Dark knight rises would have been around until the end of the movie and then some, even though it takes place over a span of months.

 

It's a minor nit to pick, perhaps, but the CGI required to portray large building collapses has only been existing for 15 years or so. And 15 years ago, the world had a very traumatic real-life example of what collapsing skyscrapers look like. Structural failure cascades, large building elements crumpling under overwhelming force, everything falling straight down, and thick dust clouds that stay around for months. So it's a little strange that film makers remain insistent of making large building collapses look like scaled-up versions of what happens if you knock a LEGO tower over.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, Codraroll said:

<snip>

To be honest, if I was making a movie, I would think long and hard before putting in any strong visual call-backs to 9/11.

These are all valid inaccuracies though, I doubt the powers that be went so far as to think about the above and just wanted something generically spectacular. Cloverfield comes to mind as a particular offender (though I realllly like the movie), I recall a skyscraper with a hole though it and one skyscraper leaning on another one that is a major plot point, I also recall a fair bit of dust too, but probably not necessarily a realistic amount.

[cantab]

9 hours ago, NSEP said:

Dont get me started on the death star and how they get all their resources up into space XD.

If resources come from small asteroids and moons, then they're already practically as good as in space. In any case, since we never see *anything* in Star Wars running out of fuel, it can be assumed that they have crazy efficient power and propulsion that would make lofting even a Death Star's worth of material off an Earth-like world and into space pretty trivial.

EDIT: Regarding building collapses, it depends a lot on the details of how the building is built and how it was damaged. Look at some of the examples in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHcCbY2wY38

or at this famous example from China, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-09-27/the-cracks-in-chinas-shiny-buildings

While those aren't exactly 'skyscrapers', they're not small either, and show that a variety of failure modes are possible.

Edited December 12, 2016 by cantab

[mikegarrison]

On 12/9/2016 at 10:55 PM, Hary R said:

Speaking of gun, I have one about body armor, if any of you know a little about guns, then you shhould know that civilian kevlar body armor are not as effective as hollywood try to make them be. In many movie (Back to the future got it very wrong) a  civilian grade kevlar body armor will stop an assault rifle bullet, while in reality, only a military grade body armor can do that.

It's a movie about a time machine, and you're worried about body armor? If it matters, Doc Brown had 30 years to make sure he got some that would be effective.

[DarkOwl57]

Just now, mikegarrison said:

It's a movie about a time machine, and you're worried about body armor? If it matters, Doc Brown had 30 years to make sure he got some that would be effective.

Exactly! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course it could be because the plot called for it...

[Jonfliesgoats]

When you think about it, scientific method itself is sort of misrepresented in the movies and television.  There are many scenes in many movies with laboratories full of people faffing about with beakers full of smoking liquid, computers that beep unnecessarily, and malevolent supervisors.

Few movies really describe testing of hypotheses, designing experiments, etc.  One of the great wrongs done in the media is making science seem inaccessible to the masses.