What KSP has taught me to be annoyed at

[Javster]

In the spirit of the thread, KSP has taught me to be annoyed at game developers who misuse the "paid alpha" approach (deliberately or out of incompetence) to charge people money for a half-baked game that never reaches completion and ends up *haemorrhaging their userbase out of despair. Look at Squad, folks--THERE'S how you do it!

Well, IMHO they're by no means perfect, with the testing team (in an alpha game?) and the devnotes which lack content, the "reveal" which didn't reveal much, refusing to refer to Kerbal Stuff by name...

Except for that, they're great. Porbably my most played game except for Minecraft.

RE: Apollo 13: But I hear they say "we have a problem" rather than "we've had a problem"

Edited September 14, 2014 by Javster

[Javster]

apollo 13. If you find yourself getting annoyed with movies like gravity can i recommend you watch apollo 13 - even if you've already seen it, it's worth watching again after playing ksp a lot. Great film, very accurate, wonderful to watch with the knowledge learned from ksp

edit: Sorry double post

[Daffs]

After playing KSP I now wonder how the dropship in Aliens does "drop" in the manner that it does at the start of the film.

KSP has taught me loads and enhanced my sci-fi reading (book a week) so much, I now know what they are talking about when they mention Delta V, mass, orbits, transfers, launch costs etc. A few basic things I thought I knew about space flight have been exposed by KSP and with additional reading things are much clearer now.

I surprised nobody's mentioned the best of the lot....Armaggeddon (nuff said)

[Commander Jebidiah]

Even The 100 did this: Burn straight down to de-orbit.

I don't recall which way Bullock pointed the Shenzhou though

I can answer your question.

She didn't point it anywhere the chinese space station was de-orbiting anyway so she didn't need to use the engine.

[Renegrade]

Even The 100 did this: Burn straight down to de-orbit.

That does actually push the PE down, which could result in aerocapture. It IS less efficient than burning retrograde though, and would result in a higher re-entry speed, which might make things too crispy...

[SkyRender]

KSP will ruin sci-fi for you, it's true. Unless it's intentionally campy sci-fi like Red Dwarf or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Those can get away with the inaccuracies because they poke fun at them.

[DaRocketCat]

You think gravity is bad for it's inaccuracies?

Considering they're in interstellar space, don't see anything too wrong with it.

Besides: three galaxy class ships in 1 scene = your argument is invalid.

And thanks for making me feel nostalgic about the awesomeness that is DS9!

[Red Iron Crown]

That does actually push the PE down, which could result in aerocapture. It IS less efficient than burning retrograde though, and would result in a higher re-entry speed, which might make things too crispy...

In an elliptical orbit, if you burn downward after Pe but before Ap you will actually raise the Pe. [/nitpick]

[-root]

I was watching the Thunderbirds movie the other night and I got really peeved at one of the inaccuracies. I come here and voila! This thread!

At the end of the movie, thunderbird 3 has to go from the thunderbird space station to london. The city had already passed beneath the station so to get there, they point straight at the city and wack on the afterburners! The moviemakers are deliberately being a .... to physics. I think the station was orbiting away from the city so to actually make that work, you would have to completely reverse the orbital velocity of the thunderbird. As this is earth that would require somewhere in the vicinity of ~15km/s (give or take a couple of kilometres per second).

Edited September 14, 2014 by -root

[Jesrad]

If you really want to get annoyed at Trek, consider this:

The Trek universe has FTL spaceships and astronomical sensors good enough to examine things in close detail from light years away. However, a standard plot setup is for the Enterprise to arrive at a scene moments after some disaster happened and to be puzzled as to what caused it.

Why don't they just back up a couple of light minutes and look?

And that is why I absolutely love the webcomics Schlock Mercenary. In one previous arc, the mercenaries move in to investigate the destruction of a space station. How do they do that ? By moving half of their missiles on the scene, and the other half 60 light-minutes away, so they get to see how it is now, and what happened during the previous hour.

That's how well this series is written. Orbitals is done right (there's a lunar space elevator which gets sectioned off by a bomb, we get a realistic telling of the evacuation of the elevator and the station at its end, complete with the correct timings). Relativity is done right too (like when Petey flings drones at 99% de speed of light at Tausennigans, or when the Lawyer Collective assaults the Toughs with relativistic foil cones). It's full of such nice details, the stories are action-packed and canvassed onto galaxy-spanning conspiracies. It's awesome.

No mention of Space Cowboys ? I recently rewatched it, and the physics for when

the satellite tries to boost into an evasive maneuver while the shuttle is clamped to it

is done remarkably well. The whole "get halfway to the Moon, and its gravity does the rest" thing though seems fishy.

Another good show for realism is PLANETES, an anime series made in collaboration with JAXA. No sound in vacuum, orbital realism, and the overarching story is built upon the Kessler Syndrome. In one episode

a mugger is sent flying against a bulkhead by stopping then restarting a spaceship's rotation.

And newtonian-accurate too: when the guys on the Moon

jump from the top of the inflamed building to escape the fire

they properly break their legs on impact because, even though they weigh a lot less, they still mass the same.

[Renegrade]

In an elliptical orbit, if you burn downward after Pe but before Ap you will actually raise the Pe. [/nitpick]

True! Although you'd still eventually push it below the atmosphere. What I probably should have said is that when you're burning radial in, it's pushing the prograde orbital path downwards, eventually resulting in an aerocapture (or at least aerobraking) ... assuming your fuel holds out.

they properly break their legs on impact because, even though they weigh a lot less, they still mass the same.

Err.. that would depend on the height of the building.. it would have to be six times higher than on Earth for that to happen.

Ex; if a 6m (approx two stories, for the sake of argument--dunno what an actual minimum dangerous distance would be) fall were enough to break legs, your terminal speed would be about 10.85m/sec on impact. On the moon, you'd have to fall over 36m to reach that same speed.

Note that 6m of freefall in Kerbin's gravity would most likely explode that LV-909 on the bottom as that's well above it's impact tolerance~

[Brapness]

Personally I wouldn't say sci-fi was ruined for me. I still enjoy it, though I do also have fun pointing out inaccuracies, so it's fair to say KSP annoys my flatmate. I only really get annoyed when they try to portray something that is clearly wrong as science, rather than relying on suspension of disbelief.

There are a lot of good hard sci-fi books out there that take into account real physics. One thing that does annoy me though is often when people complain about orbits when the technology is so far advanced an orbit is the equivalent of parking. If your ship can reach near the speed of light quickly, orbital maneuvering is irrelevant. Provided it's not through the planet you can burn straight for your target. If your ship is shielded sufficiently that reentry damage is irrelevant, you'll enter the atmosphere as quickly as possible, rather than a safer shallow descent. And if your ship bends space-time you do not need to be in an orbit to safely park above a planet.

[LordFjord]

Regarding the movie Gravity and realism...

The most unrealistic (among all the physics inconsistencies, orbital mechanics, the fact that everything is in the same orbit, ... ) is ....

*drumroll*

When Sandra Bullock slips out of her spacesuit... because - astronauts on several hour long spacewalks wear what? Yeah, correct: diapers ...

SCNR

[Red Iron Crown]

No one wants to see Sandra Bullock in a diaper. I'd chalk that one up to artistic license.

[EdFred]

KSP has taught me to be annoyed at people that don't RTFM!!!!!!!!!!

Hey morons, there's key bindings page that answers your questions.

There are no such things as stupid questions, just stupid people that ask them. Can we go one week without a "How do I rescue..." thread?

- - - Updated - - -

No one wants to see Sandra Bullock in a diaper. I'd chalk that one up to artistic license.

Speak for yourself.

[Jovus]

I dunno. I think the most egregious part of Gravity was,

"We're coming up on the ISS, so I'm going to use the last of my EVA pack to go faster and smash us into it." It's not like they couldn't have found an excuse to make that work - like mentioning that they're slightly inclined so they'll miss it if he doesn't do a correction - but no.

[KerikBalm]

Gravity:

* The orbital mechanics with the debris field don't work

* The MMU maneuvering by George clooney, especially in the beginning

* That's not how you do an orbital rendevous

* The chinese station was de-orbiting why?

"Last days on mars"

*craft climbs vertically, engines cut, craft's climb rate slows/ the craft decelerates, reaches apoapsis and.... "I'm in a stable orbit"

This sort of vertical climb thing is portrayed over and over in movies

[cantab]

Wow, I play A TON of EA games

An unfortunate initialism-clash there.

And yeah, having played so much KSP I found Star Wars ships with glowing engines all the time jarring.

As for Gravity, I found Sandra Bullock's damsel-in-distress character more annoying than the iffy orbital mechanics.

[Kerbart]

With my knowledge of motion in space all she had to do was give a slight tug on the cable between them and he would have drifted towards her thus saving himself. It drove me nuts watching this.

Sjors weighs at least 75kg if not more. The space suit itself with life support probably something similar. The jetpack would double that at least, i'd think. So in total 300kg. Gravity might have been neutralized in orbit, Newton's laws of motion do not. It would require more than "a slight tug on the cable" to make him reverse direction. Could she still have done it? Maybe.

Any "realistic" movie on any subject is riddled with inaccuracies. They have to or the movie becomes unwatchable. The ability of a director to make choices that give a reasonable balance between "gripping story" and "not completely BS" is what makes great directors great (ie. "Jaws" vs "Sharknado").

[GreeningGalaxy]

Sjors weighs at least 75kg if not more. The space suit itself with life support probably something similar. The jetpack would double that at least, i'd think. So in total 300kg. Gravity might have been neutralized in orbit, Newton's laws of motion do not. It would require more than "a slight tug on the cable" to make him reverse direction. Could she still have done it? Maybe.

Any "realistic" movie on any subject is riddled with inaccuracies. They have to or the movie becomes unwatchable. The ability of a director to make choices that give a reasonable balance between "gripping story" and "not completely BS" is what makes great directors great (ie. "Jaws" vs "Sharknado").

This particular part of Gravity was the most annoying to me. Not only was it completely bogus (He was nearly stationary relative to her, so he pretty much should have already been moving back towards her, even if his pack weighed two tons. A slight tug might not have done it, but she was giving him a good 15 seconds of focused yank, which should have been enough to shift a very considerable weight in space), but it could have been fixed very easily- just make the station have gained some spin from the debris strikes. It probably would have, too, especially if a module depressurized asymmetrically. If they'd done that, not only would they have made it realistic for him to experience a force (centrifugal force) pulling him away from the station, but it would have added to the dizzying and disorientating mood of the film to have her trying to board the station while it was spinning (and deal with the forces while trying to get around inside) while probably keeping it easy enough to keep track of what was happening.

It's not just an example of movies forgetting about how physics works for creative license, its an example where the correct physics would actually have made a better movie.

[Red Iron Crown]

As for Gravity, I found Sandra Bullock's damsel-in-distress character more annoying than the iffy orbital mechanics.

It's funny, it was a very similar role to Sigourney Weaver in Alien, the damsel in distress who finds the inner strength to survive her difficult situation. I found Weaver very compelling yet Bullock just came off as hollow.

[djnattyd]

It's funny, it was a very similar role to Sigourney Weaver in Alien, the damsel in distress who finds the inner strength to survive her difficult situation. I found Weaver very compelling yet Bullock just came off as hollow.

The worst part with her portrayal was that whilst I accept that it was the characters first time in space and that NASA can't train for all scenarios, the entire movie was played as though she was told "hey so... You're going to space" and then NASA stuck her on a shuttle and that was the start and finish of her training.

It was basically a whole movie of "OMG WHAT DO I DO WHAT DO I DO?!?!" when in reality, she would've had "What to do if you go off structure" training as well as "How not to panic and use all your O2" training.

What bothered me the most was the moment when she cannoned out of the Soyuz and into the Chinese station. I was sat there thinking "It doesn't work like that!".

In reality she would have jettisoned out of the capsule and watched as the station blasted past her at a few 100m/s.

[Mandelbrot]

If you really want to get annoyed at Trek, consider this:

The Trek universe has FTL spaceships and astronomical sensors good enough to examine things in close detail from light years away. However, a standard plot setup is for the Enterprise to arrive at a scene moments after some disaster happened and to be puzzled as to what caused it.

Why don't they just back up a couple of light minutes and look?

In the Mass Effect universe, this technique is actually mentioned, although not used nearly as often as it would be for recon/info purposes.

Anyway, to the OP, I was playing Mass Effect the other night and noticed that in a given star-system, the planet's orbital periods are wildly random. Like, innermost planet's listed orbital period is .4 Earth-years, next is 46, then the next after that? .4 years again. Maybe because I like the series so much, but I experienced a physical pang of irritation.

[EnderSpace]

Yeah if you play ksp for sure you get intelligence , that why this game is recommended for anyone know space , math and not just going straight then little right then do what tutorials do , try when you see tutorial to see the Navball and don't use maneuver every time , I'm now reading and learning about delta v and every minute I learn something new.

its truly amazing game don't miss it

[einsteiner]

Not the game itself, but the forums have taught me to be even more annoyed at people who don't know your from you're.