"Rokkit Syense" in CW's "The 100"

[sevenperforce]

Partner and I started watching The CW's The 100 on Netflix a couple of weeks ago. Now finished with the first season, and.......oye.

The concept is nifty enough. The only (presumed) survivors of a global nuclear holocaust are those able to relocate from Earth to a handful of space stations in LEO. As the mushroom clouds dissipate, the space stations come together, dock, and form one giant super-station within which humanity is preserved. There are roughly 2,000 inhabitants of "The Ark" at the start of the series:

Because resources are so tight on board, all crimes are punished by execution via airlocking. Juveniles, on the other hand, are permitted to live, but on reduced rations. The titular "100" are a hundred such delinquents sent on a dropship a century afterward to see if Earth is inhabitable, since the station is running out of consumables. And from this, the show is born.

I do think this show had a science consultant. However, either the science consultant was a biologist, or was drunk the entire time, because the attempts at rocket science are entertaining and yet so, so wrong.

First, the good.

The concept of space stations assembling into a ginormous "ark of humanity" isn't that much of a stretch. Assuming this is set in a few hundred years in the future, it's not inconceivable that we could have substantial zero-gee manufacturing industry operating in orbit with thousands of tonnes of raw material (sourced from captured LEO asteroids, probably), so building an Ark in orbit isn't entirely out of the question. 

2,000 people isn't nearly enough to reconstitute the human race, but that's not really a question addressed within the series; they're just trying to survive. So that's not an issue either.

Artificial gravity is generated by rotation of the Ark, which is reasonable enough.

Atmospheric re-entry is depicted as being "hot". So hey, at least they got that right.

And then the not.

Artificial gravity by rotation? Sure, great. The ship rotates noticeably. However, despite numerous shots on the ship looking out of windows, none show any actual rotation from inside, even though it would be readily apparent. Virtually every corridor on the ship has curvature, but it's all 90 degrees off from where it should be (i.e., you're walking around corners, rather than the floor sloping "up" behind and in front of you).

Even when the ship breaks apart and stops rotating (see below), artificial gravity persists.

A "Soviet-era" capsule (which looks nothing like any actual capsule) is hijacked to get down to Earth. Descent ends up being prone, not supine, and while the thrusters used to initiate descent are accurately labeled "retrorockets", they have a thrust of about 3 gees, fire radially, and produce an IMMEDIATE entry into the atmosphere, with fire instantly starting to erupt around the heat shield, which is pointed directly toward the ground rather than prograde.

At one point, they need to signal the space station that they are alive and well, so they build rockets to use as flares. The rockets are built from the thrusters on board the capsule/pod, each one boasting two nozzles and measuring about 3 feet long:

They are explicitly stated to be fueled by hydrazine.

And of course this is what they look like when they are fired up rails:

Somehow there were, like, 40 of these rocket pod things on a single capsule.

Yet they travel under power for hundreds of miles and produce bright pink light the entire way, easily visible from the space station.

Any rocket with nozzles of that size, or capable of making it out of the atmosphere, or fueled by hydrazine at all, would kill everyone anywhere close to that distance from the ignition site.

Oh, and hydrazine in the show is a viscous, reddish liquid which is toxic enough to cause immediate wooziness to anyone who comes close to it, yet is not toxic enough to have any long-term ill effects. It's as sensitive as nitroglycerine and detonates readily if heated, with an energy density that makes C4 look like baking soda.

The original dropship lands in what is clearly the Pacific Northwest, which means the Ark needs to have a pretty substantial inclination. And yet they see it pass overhead literally every few hours, and everything dropped from the Ark automatically is visible (and, if it survives entry, lands within a few miles of their location at most).

Finally, in the first season finale, they concoct a hairbrained scheme to "ride the Ark" down to the ground:

"We'll use one set of thrusters, the ones that keep us spinning so we stay in orbit, to send us down toward the atmosphere. When we hit the air, the station will break apart into its original component stations. Some of those...and there's no way to predict which ones...will EXPLODE. The ones that survive can then use the other set of thrusters on the other side to slow down. We will hit the ground at around 70 mph."

SMH.

Edited August 12, 2018 by sevenperforce

[tater]

Excellent review. Won't waste my time. (unless I want to have a rare experience like watching Interstellar or Pearl Harbor).

[Confused Scientist]

12 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

"We'll use one set of thrusters, the ones that keep us spinning so we stay in orbit, to send us down toward the atmosphere. When we hit the air, the station will break apart into its original component stations. Some of those...and there's no way to predict which ones...will EXPLODE. The ones that survive can then use the other set of thrusters on the other side to slow down. We will hit the ground at around 70 mph."

I'd almost be willing to forgive everything else for the sake of the plot, but under no circumstances will I accept a rescue plan that ends with a 70 mph crash. I would expect a collision with a stationary object at these speeds to be fatal in a car with advanced safety belts, airbags, and crumple zones, so I don't want to know what happens when the first module hits the ground at highway speeds with an entire space station about to crush it.

20 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

However, either the science consultant was a biologist, or was drunk the entire time, because the attempts at rocket science are entertaining and yet so, so wrong.

Physicist: "Is there even a difference?"

[sevenperforce]

5 minutes ago, Confused Scientist said:

I'd almost be willing to forgive everything else for the sake of the plot, but under no circumstances will I accept a rescue plan that ends with a 70 mph crash. I would expect a collision with a stationary object at these speeds to be fatal in a car with advanced safety belts, airbags, and crumple zones, so I don't want to know what happens when the first module hits the ground at highway speeds with an entire space station about to crush it.

It was so stupid, because there was literally nothing requiring that line. The dude could have said "40 mph" or "30 mph" or "50 mph" just as easily. 

5 minutes ago, Confused Scientist said:

Physicist: "Is there even a difference?"

I wasn't going to come right out and say it........

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Shpaget]

I tried watching it but had to abort.

I though it was going to be a nice little space themed sfi fi series, but turned out to be a silly teen drama show that fails at science at every step.

@sevenperforce The space station does not get gravity from spinning. Sure it does spin, but gravity comes from air pressure (S02E08, Raven's spacewalk).

[tater]

17 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Sure it does spin, but gravity comes from air pressure (S02E08, Raven's spacewalk). 

Sigh.

[NSEP]

They can actually make this show work using realistic rocket science, but they decide not to. I don't know why, but apparently people who have even a little knowledge about real spaceflight always ruin the fun.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Artificial gravity is generated by rotation of the Ark, which is reasonable enough.

And as always we should better not think about the rotation direction, gravity direction, and in-wall windows. Let this be magic, at least they tried.

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Even when the ship breaks apart and stops rotating (see below), artificial gravity persists.

Probably their reality has residual gravitation..,

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

A "Soviet-era" capsule (which looks nothing like any actual capsule) is hijacked to get down to Earth. Descent ends up being prone, not supine, and while the thrusters used to initiate descent are accurately labeled "retrorockets", they have a thrust of about 3 gees, fire radially, and produce an IMMEDIATE entry into the atmosphere, with fire instantly starting to erupt around the heat shield, which is pointed directly toward the ground rather than prograde.

... and non-linearsquare pattern of it.

Kinda their gravitation is like magnetism. Its follows weird force lines, so rotation and engine exhaust point in very different directions.

(Just wait for s4 and watch the Praimfaya

Spoiler

Caution! Spoiler ahead.

Spoiler

 

)

Spoiler.

Spoiler

Also a little bit later they several times happily aerolithobrake crafts not protected at all.
Though, rarely with a success.

 

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Any rocket with nozzles of that size, or capable of making it out of the atmosphere, or fueled by hydrazine at all, would kill everyone anywhere close to that distance from the ignition site.

Spoiler.

Spoiler

You won't believe. A little bit later they will do this with some guys.
 

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

A "Soviet-era" capsule

In Soviet Russia nozzles follow the thrust.

 

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Oh, and hydrazine in the show is a viscous, reddish liquid which is toxic enough to cause immediate wooziness to anyone who comes close to it, yet is not toxic enough to have any long-term ill effects. It's as sensitive as nitroglycerine and detonates readily if heated, with an energy density that makes C4 look like baking soda.

Purplish. Maybe because they have fueled the prisoner ship with hydrazine wastes polluted with something.
As iirc they never mention any oxidizer, and later a glass of purple hydrazine explodes like a hell, probably they have mixed it with some futuristic compound.

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

"We'll use one set of thrusters, the ones that keep us spinning so we stay in orbit, to send us down toward the atmosphere. When we hit the air, the station will break apart into its original component stations. Some of those...and there's no way to predict which ones...will EXPLODE. The ones that survive can then use the other set of thrusters on the other side to slow down. We will hit the ground at around 70 mph."

Thick hulls, thick skulls, thick nerves.

Otherwise how could they get powerplant and greenhouse for future conflicts.

1 hour ago, Confused Scientist said:

I'd almost be willing to forgive everything else for the sake of the plot, but under no circumstances will I accept a rescue plan that ends with a 70 mph crash.

The module is huge, so while its lower part gets smashed, its upper part (as they hope) survives.
A car has just about meter between the front side and the passenger.
Average overload = n=V²/(2gL) = (70*1852/3600)² / (2 * 9.81* 30) = 2.
Also they hope that the bottom side will ablate and protected the upper side.

1 hour ago, Confused Scientist said:

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

However, either the science consultant was a biologist, or was drunk the entire time, because the attempts at rocket science are entertaining and yet so, so wrong.

Physicist: "Is there even a difference?"

So, a physician.

P.S.
I enjoy this semi-space opera very much, just first 6 series of season 1 should be rewinded.
(They are devoted to the Natural Selection cleaning out several tens of morons (starting with those two smashed on landing). Darwin endorses this. )

P.P.S.
This movie is not about physics, but about (let me self-quote a little) High Art of Betrayal.
If the characters haven't betrayed each other in various combinations at least 3-4 times per episode, that episode lost.

Edited August 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I wonder why you would punish all crimes by death if there's only 2000 people. It seems like people, rather than supplies, are the most limiting factor.

Also, if they have the technology to capture asteroids to LEO and survive in space for long periods of time, why not just grow crops with water from icy asteroids? Or try to colonize mars? Mars seems like it would by more forgiving than (effectively) deep space, since you can't get supplies (or even raw materials) from earth.

About the hydrazine thrusters: Maybe they're RTG powered NTRs that use hydrazine as a propellant. For reasons. 

Edited August 12, 2018 by Mad Rocket Scientist

[tater]

10 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I wonder you would punish all crimes by death if there's only 2000 people. It seems like people, rather than supplies, are the most limiting factor.

Harvest eggs/sperm, then execute them.

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

I tried watching it but had to abort.

I though it was going to be a nice little space themed sfi fi series, but turned out to be a silly teen drama show that fails at science at every step.

The teen drama aspect is a bit ridiculous. Also, apparently everyone on the space station had children which EXACTLY resemble SoCal natives. Everyone has the exact same "b-movie-model" bone structure and appearance.

Would be so easy to make shows like this accurate.

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

@sevenperforce The space station does not get gravity from spinning. Sure it does spin, but gravity comes from air pressure (S02E08, Raven's spacewalk).

Only finished with season 1 so far.

I saw one "floating", as they call it when they toss someone out of the airlock, and I also think they commit the "pressure is weight" fallacy. As soon as they blow the airlock, the person starts floating off into the void. If the station was spinning, then either their "floor" would drop away and they would fall like a rock, or the airflow would pull them off what would essentially be a cliff and they would drop out of sight.

Oh, and orbital mechanics fail...midway through the first season, they sacrifice 300 people to help conserve air. Originally they were just going to murder 300 people and make it look like an accident, but then the protagonist's mom tells everyone the plot, and so like 400 people just volunteer to die. Anyway, they suffocate them all in a small chamber, then open it up and toss them all out of the airlock. The bodies are visible from the ground, re-entering as a cloud of shooting stars just minutes later. How did they get the dV to re-enter??!!

Also, if you have the kind of manufacturing capabilities to stitch together space stations in orbit, surely you could rig up an electrolysis system to get more oxygen flowing.

 

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Maybe because they have fueled the prisoner ship with hydrazine wastes polluted with something.
As iirc they never mention any oxidizer, and later a glass of purple hydrazine explodes like a hell, probably they have mixed it with some futuristic compound.

Maybe they just call it hydrazine, but it's actually mixed with some sort of metastable fluorine compound. Though I doubt even that would make it pinkish-purple.

That ridiculous mushroom cloud could be realistic if Raven was actually rigging up a fuel-air bomb, with the gunpowder used for dispersal of the hydrazine followed by spontaneous ignition once the fuel/air mixture reached the LEL.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

The module is huge, so while its lower part gets smashed, its upper part (as they hope) survives.
A car has just about meter between the front side and the passenger.
Average overload = n=V²/(2gL) = (70*1852/3600)² / (2 * 9.81* 30) = 2.
Also they hope that the bottom side will ablate and protected the upper side.

Something like that.

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

So, a physician.

Four atoms?!

[sevenperforce]

52 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Also, if they have the technology to capture asteroids to LEO and survive in space for long periods of time, why not just grow crops with water from icy asteroids? Or try to colonize mars? Mars seems like it would by more forgiving than (effectively) deep space, since you can't get supplies (or even raw materials) from earth.

Maybe their ability to retrieve near-earth asteroids got tanked shortly after the nuclear holocaust and so they had to make do with what was already in LEO.

52 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

About the hydrazine thrusters: Maybe they're RTG powered NTRs that use hydrazine as a propellant. For reasons. 

Oh, yeah, definitely.

[Gargamel]

52 minutes ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I wonder why you would punish all crimes by death if there's only 2000 people. It seems like people, rather than supplies, are the most limiting factor.

I have read somewhere, and I forget where, that an entire population can be restored from 23 individuals.  Something like 7 male and 16 females, with very precise planning of who mates with whom, and who their offspring mate with for many generations down the line.   It does require specific offspring to be of a certain sex, but additional individuals in the starting population add margins of error.  So 2,000 people, with proper oversight of mating habits, will allow for the repopulation of earth. 

[sevenperforce]

4 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

I have read somewhere, and I forget where, that an entire population can be restored from 23 individuals.  Something like 7 male and 16 females, with very precise planning of who mates with whom, and who their offspring mate with for many generations down the line.   It does require specific offspring to be of a certain sex, but additional individuals in the starting population add margins of error.  So 2,000 people, with proper oversight of mating habits, will allow for the repopulation of earth. 

You'd have to select the mating population beforehand.

The point is that if you wanted to preserve the genetic variation currently present in 7 billion people, you'd need individuals with completely different genomes in regions of intraspecies variation. Theoretically, the variation present in 7 billion people could fit into just 23 people, if you selected from the right regions and ethnicities. 

But 2,000 people selected at random from the world would have less than 1% of the genetic variation of the overall population.

[Shpaget]

You don't need variation present in 7 billion. The lowest amount of variation that still leads to a healthy population is much lower.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Oh, and orbital mechanics fail...midway through the first season, they sacrifice 300 people to help conserve air. Originally they were just going to murder 300 people and make it look like an accident, but then the protagonist's mom tells everyone the plot, and so like 400 people just volunteer to die. Anywa

A hundred is a minimal number in this movie.
They spend hundreds of survivors every season and still have more. Probably they respawn.

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

the protagonist's mom

This character makes others' brains throughout all the series.
Once somebody is going to do something, she always stops them. Probably, a hate-factor. Unhappily, resilient like a tardigrade.  

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

The bodies are visible from the ground, re-entering as a cloud of shooting stars just minutes later. How did they get the dV to re-enter??!!

That's why they are out of air.
Every time they when throw out somebody, they lose air. And they do this constantly.
And probably some pipe has a hole and when they open the airlock blows with such pressure that even things deorbit.

Also, this is how they deorbited the station.

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Though I doubt even that would make it pinkish-purple.

Maybe something manganese. Solved in hydrazine, Postapocalyptic hardcore.

P.S.
Afaik ~10000 specimens are required to restore humanity happily, and ~100 - hardly.
Happily, they are radioresistive due to long living in LEO.

Edited August 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

53 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

You'd have to select the mating population beforehand.

The point is that if you wanted to preserve the genetic variation currently present in 7 billion people, you'd need individuals with completely different genomes in regions of intraspecies variation. Theoretically, the variation present in 7 billion people could fit into just 23 people, if you selected from the right regions and ethnicities. 

But 2,000 people selected at random from the world would have less than 1% of the genetic variation of the overall population.

The actual gene pool could be much larger than 2000 individuals, though. Male sperm and female eggs can be stored.

Worst case we can store sperm. Apparently there was a successful pregnancy from sperm that was cryogenically preserved for 21 years, so it isn't too much of a stretch...

Similar case for embryos, maybe.

Of course, this strategy is highly dependent on how much you can prepare.

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

is highly dependent on how much you can prepare.

They send 100 juniors to check if the Earth is still radioactive.

[StrandedonEarth]

Ah yes, The 100. There was science involved in that show?

I didn't mind watching it, but I realized pretty quickly not to think about the science involved. Orbital mechanics, radiation resistance humans, etc... Nothing really made a lot of sense from a scientific perspective.

They appeared to land in the Pacific NW, sure, but they didn't seem to be all that far from "Ton DC." The main problem on the Ark appeared to be running out of oxygen, which should have been relatively easy to regenerate, especially if they could manage orbit-to-surface-to-orbit (but I don't recall them specifically having that capability). As for asteroid resources, I think that was pure conjecture from the OP; I don't recall that ever being mentioned in the show.

Fun, if gory, to watch, but realism? May as well watch Star Wars.

[HebaruSan]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

A "Soviet-era" capsule (which looks nothing like any actual capsule)

... with a crew capacity of 100?

[TheSaint]

More of Hollywood being Hollywood....

2 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

... with a crew capacity of 100?

[sh1pman]

How do these stations even dock? Are they designed specifically to do it? It’s kinda unrealistic unless they were initially placed into almost the same orbit with precisely equal inclination and longitude of ascending node. Otherwise we’re in the territory of OP thrusters and fuels, and I don’t buy it.

[kerbiloid]

And later they have a Dragon.

Spoiler

Another wonderful craft (Bekka Pramheda has landed in it).
Yes, it's prograde.

Spoiler

 

20 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

How do these stations even dock?

They were obviously floating aside each other.
Haven't you watched Gravity?

Spoiler

So, probably just ropes with hooks.

Edited August 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

They send 100 juniors to check if the Earth is still radioactive.

Yeah. But the bad decisions of the descendents isn't necessarily related to how prepared their ancestors were.

[Superfluous J]

I checked my brain at the door when wandering radiation storms obliterated all life on a regular basis, except the trees, and then just enjoyed it for what it was, "Pretty people causing their own problems in an post apocalyptic situation"

That kept me going until I think season 3 and I just couldn't watch anymore.