What's the most nonsense you've read in a 'space' article?

[caecilliusinhorto]

Inspired by this horrible article, which includes such atrocities as "Also, the moon is what's called "tidally locked." Meaning, it doesn't spin around. This is why the same features of the moon face...", what's the worst space related article you've read?

[SunlitZelkova]

A CNN expert once said that the Long March 5B’s core stage weighs 22,000 tons.

Also, it wasn’t in the article itself, but in a blog post about space history, I recall one commenter desperately trying to denigrate Soviet space achievements.

”Sputnik wasn’t the first artificial satellite because it was just a ball in orbit”

“Yuri Gagarin wasn’t really the first person in space because Vostok was dangerous”

[kerbiloid]

On 5/27/2022 at 4:47 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

”Sputnik wasn’t the first artificial satellite because it was just a ball in orbit”

Even if forget about the twin radio beacons onboard and ballistic measurements, and while it was ten times heavier than the first American ball,
by a strange coincidence it had size (58 cm), weight (85 kg), and shape close to the fission primer of then-mainstream RDS-4 bomb, which was sharing the warhead with then-mainstream R-5M IRBM.

And the next one, with Laika, had a pressurized compartment matching this ball size and position in the shroud, and with an additional equipment in the nose, making it look like a completed RDS-4-based (RDS-37) fusion warhead, with the dog chamber behind, where the control equipment is normally placed in reentry vehicle, making it weight ~500 kg in total.

As the satellites were being developed as a payload version of the R-7 ICBM, so big balls are not necessary bad.

Spoiler

 

The DPRK design of similar tech level (look at the poster on the wall).

https://nonproliferation.org/evidence-about-north-koreas-nuclear-weapon-designs/

 

Upd.
Corrected some textual ambiguity.
The fusionuke warhead of RDS-37 was using the fissionuke from RDS-4 as primer and RDS-6s's alarm clock as secondary.
R-5 used RDS-4's as is.

Edited May 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[wumpus]

Oh, come on.  Anyone around  for articles on  Immanuel Velikovsky's  "World's in Collision"* or Erich Von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods" (presumably taking them seriously)?  Granted, this is more amazingly bad astronomy and not space tech.

My guess is most articles on the emdrive would be pretty bad.  Few writers would know what was fundamentally wrong with the idea, and fewer would be able to explain the issue to the lay public correctly.

* I think Carl Sagan remarked that he originally thought Velikovsky's linguistic arguments were interesting but his astronomy was laughable.  Then he met some anthropologists who thought the opposite.  He used it to explain how the human brain has blindspots to balderdash.  If you see nonsense in space articles, just how accurate are the stories you can't check up on?  News typically gets the sports right: they have to.  Tens of thousands of people saw the event in person, and millions saw it on TV.  But everything else?  Legendary reporter/editor H. L. Mencken described in his memoirs that he did most of his "research" in bars.  Getting the gist of rumors and making up the rest.  If he passed along his notes to "rivals" (also sitting in the bar), the other paper would confirm his "facts".

Of course, now the internet not only makes it easier to check up on the real facts, it also lets anyone (especially in large groups) fling misinformation to counter inconvenient truths.  Unfortunately people can often believe the disinformation much like Velikovsky's arguments when you don't have the background to judge them.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

My guess is most articles on the emdrive would be pretty bad.

Most of the articles I read were actually pretty good.   Not because they espoused the "Magic Propulsion system found!" that most of the mainstream media talked about, but more of the "This shouldn't work, but hey we noticed something, can somebody check our math" style of article.  

I think that most science based topics will have this dichotomy of writing.  The science journalists will write most of their articles to explain to non specialists in that field what is happening, and maybe they'll jump to a few conclusions, but the good ones do their best to not get over excited in their interpretations of a paper or experiment.   Then there's the mainstream media who only take that single snippet from a paper and hyperbolize it for the clicks and ratings.

I don't think that's the type of article @caecilliusinhorto is referring to though.   I think they're asking about articles that are just plain wrong.  Like the one they linked in the OP, it's not an article written to describe breaking news, it's one written to be a factual educational read.  But it's just so, so wrong.  

[DDE]

20 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

A CNN expert once said that the Long March 5B’s core stage weighs 22,000 tons.

"The Tsirkon missile will be armed with Russian surface warships and submarines"

Less related to the OP, more related to spellchecking errors.

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Most of the articles I read were actually pretty good.   Not because they espoused the "Magic Propulsion system found!" that most of the mainstream media talked about, but more of the "This shouldn't work, but hey we noticed something, can somebody check our math" style of article.  

I think that most science based topics will have this dichotomy of writing.  The science journalists will write most of their articles to explain to non specialists in that field what is happening, and maybe they'll jump to a few conclusions, but the good ones do their best to not get over excited in their interpretations of a paper or experiment.   Then there's the mainstream media who only take that single snippet from a paper and hyperbolize it for the clicks and ratings.

I don't think that's the type of article @caecilliusinhorto is referring to though.   I think they're asking about articles that are just plain wrong.  Like the one they linked in the OP, it's not an article written to describe breaking news, it's one written to be a factual educational read.  But it's just so, so wrong.  

Yes, the real problem with the EM drive was that if if worked as described it would break physic. 
How, simply put two of them on each side of an say 20 meter rotating beam inside an vacuum chamber, fire them up and spin up the beam. 
As trust and therefore acceleration is constant at some velocity that will add more kinetic energy to the system because its M*V^2 then the fixed power to run the engines. 
Keep going but you can now draw energy from the axis and use part of it to power the drives  

It took most including me some time to realize this. 
As you accelerate an powerful car up to its maximum speed the acceleration fall off, no its not just because of drag or engine. Its because the engine has to add to the kinetic energy of the car, same is true for planes and guns. Only exception I think of is rockets as they carry the reaction mass with them. 
Now I'm not sure how this work out for an true reaction less system like an solar sail, obviously if you start getting relativistic you get less energy from the photons.
For stuff like an coil gun you would need to increase power to keep acceleration constant down the track. 

[SunlitZelkova]

This isn’t space but…

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nuclear-fusion-climate-intl-cnnphotos/

“The world has been trying to master this limitless clean energy source since the 1930s. Now we’re closer than ever.” [Emphasis added]

[kerbiloid]

Almost every early-XX article on genetics, cybernetics, and continent drift topics.

***

(And other astrobiology books of same author, a professional astronomer in civilian life.)

https://www-nkj-ru.translate.goog/archive/articles/40252/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru

(Can't bring the direct links for copyright-copywrong reasons.)

[benzman]

I have a book called 'Life on Mars' published in 1965 and one called 'There Is life on Mars' published in 1955.  I get childish amusement by having them side by side on my bookshelf.