FALLACIES, FALLACIES, FALLACIES...

[RainDreamer]

18 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

What is the speed of the helicopter rotors?

From transcript under the video here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1355

Quote

So how fast do these blades have to spin to produce lift?

They have to spin at about 2400 rpm to provide lift.

Could you tell us a little bit about this helicopter's capabilities when it's on Mars?

So the system is designed to fly for 2-3 minutes every day. There's a solar panel on the top and that provides us with enough energy for that short flight, as well as to keep us warm through the night. So in those 2-3 minutes, we expect to have daily flights of about half a kilometer or so.

 

[Tex Mechs Robot]

15 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

What is the speed of the helicopter rotors?

Depends on where you measure...

They have a higher angular velocity at the tips than they do at the rotational center. It also matters whether or not you measure in flight (lateral velocity) or at rest (hover). the forward sweeping rotor will have a greater linear speed than the rear sweeping rotor due to the added effect of the linear velocity of the entire body. This will also produce more lift on that side.

[Stargate525]

One of my favorites is 'the space shuttle/rocket isn't actually going sideways. It's going straight up, we're just rotating on the earth beneath it.'

[magnemoe]

On 23.1.2016 at 3:46 AM, Camacha said:

Please do not make this another 'KSP players are superior and normal people are stoopid' thread.

Car mechanics are superior as they know more about cars, its also more practical.  

Issue is not so much people don't knowing than people who pretend they know and then create scenes then they are proven wrong. 
Teachers has an hard time here as its an decent chance some students have knowledge in various areas, google increases this a lot and is easier for the students to use. 
As teachers also need to have an role of authority they are very prone to causing scenes. And yes google make this worse as its easy to prove them wrong.
Note that the school books often contain dated knowledge and might have other issues, (schoolbooks the school borrows to pupils tend to be far older and have more issues with this)

[Matuchkin]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

(schoolbooks the school borrows to pupils tend to be far older and have more issues with this)

My textbook literally says "when Huygens will land on Titan.."

[RizzoTheRat]

14 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Issue is not so much people don't knowing than people who pretend they know and then create scenes then they are proven wrong. 

See also the Dunning-Kruger effect, which in short form is the inability of the unskilled to recognise their own ineptitude

[NeoMorph]

On 24/01/2016 at 6:24 PM, Matuchkin said:

So I'll just sit here and pretend I understood the relationship of that to this thread...

Maybe because you haven't watched The Expanse on SyFi? The guy I quoted was being annoyed at the inaccuracies in the series and I was pointing out that using a gaming Joystick in supposedly space rated spaceships is a bit weird... and that they hadn't even removed the assembly sticker (ie how the joystick mounts on the base as they are held together by that big aluminium connector thing).

Hell, I had a laugh in last night's episode when they used a 3dConnexion Space Mouse Pro to fly a spaceship. Quite apt I suppose. I looked down at mine and said "OMG, I have all the tools to make a KSP/Expanse crossover".

Edit: Here is another fallacy in spaceflight for you... said Space Mouse Pro... you can even see the usb port on the front heh.

Edited January 27, 2016 by NeoMorph

[Stargate525]

Those aren't fallacies... Those are prop shortcuts in a science fiction television show. That's nothing to do with the thrust of this thread, and has zero bearing on the realism or passing as fact of the stuff in the show or in real life.

Might as well complain that the lightsaber in star wars was actually a flashbulb handle.

[livefree75]

Whenever someone gets confused about spaceflight, I really enjoy teaching them about it.

For example:

Recently I did a project on Johannes Kepler for school. I mentioned his three laws and had a computer set up with a gravity simulator. A teacher came up to me and started asking me a whole bunch of questions about orbital mechanics. I was thrilled when I found I was able to answer them all because of KSP. A while later, I found out that the teacher actually knew a lot about that kind of stuff and was just testing me to see how much I knew.

Also, one time I spent the whole homeroom period discussing the science of "The Martian" with my homeroom teacher.

(Off topic: If you guys haven't seen The Martian, you definitely should. Mark Watney is totally a Kerbal.)

[RizzoTheRat]

My favourite for space mistakes in movies was a NASA astronaut talking about the film Gravity.  He reckoned the majority of it was reasonably realistic but the biggest problem was that he doesn't know a single female NASA astronaut who would let go of George Clooney

Not seen The Martian yet but read the book a while back and it was very good, the science didn't seem bad either.  I'd also recommend reading Chris Hadfield's "an Astronaut's guide to life on earth".

 

 

[Matuchkin]

1 hour ago, RizzoTheRat said:

My favourite for space mistakes in movies was a NASA astronaut talking about the film Gravity.  He reckoned the majority of it was reasonably realistic but the biggest problem was that he doesn't know a single female NASA astronaut who would let go of George Clooney

Not seen The Martian yet but read the book a while back and it was very good, the science didn't seem bad either.  I'd also recommend reading Chris Hadfield's "an Astronaut's guide to life on earth".

 

 

About the film Gravity, I just need to say that space-stations usually don't tend to end up mere kilometers from one another. The George Clooney one is scientifically proven, via multi-million dollar experiments and studies, and serves as a more preferable grounds for argument. The science in The Martian (especially the chemistry) is almost spot-on. I think.

I'll start reading Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth some time soon. 

1 hour ago, livefree75 said:

Whenever someone gets confused about spaceflight, I really enjoy teaching them about it.

For example:

Recently I did a project on Johannes Kepler for school. I mentioned his three laws and had a computer set up with a gravity simulator. A teacher came up to me and started asking me a whole bunch of questions about orbital mechanics. I was thrilled when I found I was able to answer them all because of KSP. A while later, I found out that the teacher actually knew a lot about that kind of stuff and was just testing me to see how much I knew.

Also, one time I spent the whole homeroom period discussing the science of "The Martian" with my homeroom teacher.

(Off topic: If you guys haven't seen The Martian, you definitely should. Mark Watney is totally a Kerbal.)

I wish I was in your school. With the YRDSB, you just spend your whole science periods repeating that producers and consumers exist (and occasionally listing the objects in the solar system, out of which everyone else knows nine). It's ridiculous.

[Guest]

In my geometry class, we needed to find the needed location a space station would need to be to be equidistant from three planets.  I proceeded to write a simple lesson on orbital mechanics.

[Matuchkin]

3 hours ago, CliftonM said:

In my geometry class, we needed to find the needed location a space station would need to be to be equidistant from three planets.  I proceeded to write a simple lesson on orbital mechanics.

You can do that? I'd start writing, then forget what orbital mechanics is, then forget my name, then remember KSP, then, by the end of the lesson, realize how much of an idiot I was.

[Stargate525]

13 hours ago, CliftonM said:

In my geometry class, we needed to find the needed location a space station would need to be to be equidistant from three planets.  I proceeded to write a simple lesson on orbital mechanics.

With unlimited dV, you should be able to make an orbital path that will constantly keep the station equidistant from the three planets (within margin of error). It would be complicated as hell, though.

[KerbonautInTraining]

The other day I heard some people in my class (including the science teacher) talking about space elevators... need I say more?

[pTrevTrevs]

Yesterday I had an incredibly stupid argument with some people who claimed that the moon was a planet. Their logic for this was that the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun, so the Moon orbits the sun, and is therefore a planet.

When I tried to say something else, one of these people interrupted me and said the argument was over, I "got rekt", and was not allowed to speak anymore.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Edited January 30, 2016 by pTrevTrevs
Fixin' typos

[hugix]

2 hours ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Yesterday I had an incredibly stupid argument with some people who claimed that the moon was a planet. Their logic for this was that the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun, so the Moon orbits the sun, and is therefore a planet.

When I tried to say something else, one of these people interrupted me and said the argument was over, I "got rekt", and was not allowed to speak anymore.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

 

Actually defining what a moon is can be pretty hard. See these fragments from QI

 

 

[Bill Phil]

2 hours ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Yesterday I had an incredibly stupid argument with some people who claimed that the moon was a planet. Their logic for this was that the Moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun, so the Moon orbits the sun, and is therefore a planet.

When I tried to say something else, one of these people interrupted me and said the argument was over, I "got rekt", and was not allowed to speak anymore.

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Technically the moon does orbit the sun. It's path is disturbed by the Earth, making a flower petal shaped orbit around the sun. 

But that doesn't make it a planet.

And I think the "get rekt" stuff is the dumbest part of modern culture.

3 hours ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

The other day I heard some people in my class (including the science teacher) talking about space elevators... need I say more?

Careful, someone may disagree.

[pTrevTrevs]

15 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Technically the moon does orbit the sun. It's path is disturbed by the Earth, making a flower petal shaped orbit around the sun. 

But that doesn't make it a planet.

And I think the "get rekt" stuff is the dumbest part of modern culture.

Really? Well, you learn something new each day...

Either way though, these people's reasoning was flawed, both in thinking the Moon is a planet and that a body orbiting another body orbiting a star is also orbiting the star, right? 

If we were able to define a planet by this logic, why even have a difference between planets and moons? We would have to classify every spherical body in the Solar System whose orbit does not cross that of another body as a planet, leading to us having several hundred planets to keep track of...

[Delfinus]

I..... When I read this I just stared at the screen trying to process the massive stupidity of what I just read while any hope for humanity I had left drained out of me... then I just face-desked....

I'm beginning to wonder if the people who write textbooks actually know a single thing about what they're talking about, because from my experience (and apparently yours aswell) they don't.

 

When will NASA start hiring astronauts for missions to Mars? Because I want off this planet.

Edited January 30, 2016 by DolphinDude3

[Bill Phil]

38 minutes ago, pTrevTrevs said:

Really? Well, you learn something new each day...

Either way though, these people's reasoning was flawed, both in thinking the Moon is a planet and that a body orbiting another body orbiting a star is also orbiting the star, right? 

If we were able to define a planet by this logic, why even have a difference between planets and moons? We would have to classify every spherical body in the Solar System whose orbit does not cross that of another body as a planet, leading to us having several hundred planets to keep track of...

Yeah but you could also say that the moon orbits the Galaxy, which isn't true, but also isn't false.

[pTrevTrevs]

29 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Yeah but you could also say that the moon orbits the Galaxy, which isn't true, but also isn't false.

You know, this has me thinking now... Can I use this idea to prove that the universe really does revolve around me?

I guess at the end of the day it all boils down to your point of reference...

[Hcube]

We obviously can't expect everyone to know about everything !  but i think that science books (and people who write them) should know about the branch of science they are talking about, right ?

Here's the kind of stuff my *physics* textbook had : 

1)capsules during re-entry are slowed down by the friction of the air 

2)bicycles are very stable because of the gyroscopic effect of the spinning wheels (wich is totally not possible since the wheels are like 1.5kg each...)

3)airplanes fly because of the Venturi effect...

 

My genetics teacher used to think that the space shuttle landed on the moon, but he is a genetician, so i guess it's prefectly normal... On the other hand, having a science teacher telling me that red blood cells are prokaryotes kills me. Strangely, the amount of fallacies is particularly high in highschool biology classes... I never understood why.

[KerbonautInTraining]

2 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Careful, someone may disagree.

Looking back at it, I should probably say more.

I'm all for space elevators if we can build one, being able to put stuff in GEO for damn near free would open up tons of new opportunities.

They were talking about how you'd go about building it, saying stuff like "oh just start at the top and hang it from the space station" and all throughout they were implying that rockets simply lift their payload straight up, but I don't blame them for that at all. I had no idea what rockets did after going above the clouds until I played KSP, less than a year ago

Edited January 30, 2016 by KerbonautInTraining

[SSgt Baloo]

On 1/22/2016 at 0:03 PM, Matuchkin said:

I want to ask at this point- does anyone here have to deal with this ignorance?

When I was first learning about space travel in elementary school, we still had textbooks that asserted that Mercury was tidally-locked with the Sun and that Venus was very likely covered in water, as evidenced by all the "clouds" visible in its upper atmosphere. These things had already been proved wrong by recent science, but until they could afford new, accurate textbooks, they insisted on teaching the old, outdated, wrong stuff.