KSP Has Spoiled My Enjoyment Of Hollywood Space Movies

[cantab]

Since we seem to be stuck-ish on the topic, I'll expand: I didn't dislike Gravity because of the dubious science. I disliked Gravity because of Sandra Bullock's damsel-in-distress character. Plain old film matters like characterisation and plotline remain as important if not more so than accurate science.

[tater]

"Broad public" means "dumb people."

I think we al understand that they aim for the lowest common denominator. I don't try to be picky, I cannot help but notice certain things. Watching 2010 in the theater, I counted the rate of the spun section of the Leanov, guesstimated the radius to see what kind of false g it was making. While I watched, I couldn't help it. If the movie is fantasy (trek or Star Wars) I don't bother... But if they use their fantasy tech inconsistently, then I have issues---that's just bad story telling, and would be in a non-SF context.

[Tw1]

16 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

What's Interstellar's equivalent of "Those things aren't on the same orbit" and "The MMU doesn't have that much Δv" and "What the heck orbit is that debris cloud on anyway"? I thought they got gravitational time dilation at least sort of right, and that's something KSP doesn't teach you about (much like wormholes or crop biology).

There was that strange maneuver past the black hole.  Somethings they can get away with in my book,-for example,  they could have gone back into hibernation for those transfers, but that was odd. How did they get to that speed? So quickly? What's to gain by dropping of the pod for little acceleration gain, when force of gravity is proportional to mass, and the amount of mass on your ship won't change that acceleration? Though it might have just been a suicide attempt. 

That said, I loved interstellar. That black hole effect has me wishing other shows would at least imitate it.

 

12 hours ago, spacebrick3 said:

Doctor Who is susceptible too. [Spoilers if you are watching this]If you watch the season 3 Christmas special (Voyage of the Damned) [Spoilers if you are watching this], you notice that they are in orbit above Earth. Yet as soon as the engines fail (read: sabotaged), they begin plummeting towards the ground. And no mention whatsoever of the G-forces they would have to pull out of a dive like that as they are reentering.

14 hours ago, SSgt Baloo said:

Going to see Disney's Black Hole is something I'm glad to have remained in denial about since I saw it in the theaters in 1979. If someone is going to write Science Fiction, I would appreciate there being some kind of science involved somewhere, and not just made-up horse exhaust, using words the author must have seen in a science magazine.

So much this.  Kill the Moon, where were the tidal forces's impact? That shuttle landing was horrid, nevermind the fact that they chose to use the b*-+dy shuttle in the first place. Rings of Akhaten, what was the scale, how far away was that thing? Sleep No More was pretty rubbish anyway, but the nonsensical behaviour of the station antigrav pushed it over the end. They do tend to put in an effort when it comes to getting key history things right, so why not space? Most of these issues could have been resolved with non plot crucial edits, they need a space and science consultant. 

I wanted to pose a request to that they get one,  disguised as a question when the Doctor who festival came to my town, but didn't get picked. Though to be fair, I was volunteering as ground crew, and hadn't paid the expensive ticket prices most of the people in that audience had. 

Members at the Doctor Who club I'm part of are probably used  to my ranting on these subjects by now. 

 

[Hary R]

I always watch a movie knowing that it will never be accurate, so i never get a movie to be spoiled by bad science 'I even laugh at it) hard si-fi or not.

The only time I screamed at the screen was in Elyseum (yeah watch it recently) when the mercenary use a puny little rocket launcher with it's puny little RPG's to shout down a spaceship that was already in ORBIT!!!!! That was to far, even for someone like me.

6 hours ago, cantab said:

Plain old film matters like characterisation and plotline remain as important if not more so than accurate science

This, I watch a movie for the plot not the science in it.

[MaxxQ]

12 hours ago, tater said:

"Broad public" means "dumb people."

I think we al understand that they aim for the lowest common denominator. I don't try to be picky, I cannot help but notice certain things. Watching 2010 in the theater, I counted the rate of the spun section of the Leanov, guesstimated the radius to see what kind of false g it was making. While I watched, I couldn't help it. If the movie is fantasy (trek or Star Wars) I don't bother... But if they use their fantasy tech inconsistently, then I have issues---that's just bad story telling, and would be in a non-SF context.

I actually have a bit of real-world experience in dealing with what you refer to as "fantasy", as far as making a movie based on science fiction.  If you've ever read David Weber's Honorverse (military science fiction/space opera) series, there was going to be a movie made based on the second book of the series (The Honor of the Queen).  At first, fans were pretty excited, but after Evergreen (the production company) started releasing concept art and so forth, it descended into arguments about the fact that they were changing the basic design of the ships depicted in the books.  

The problem with it was that the ships are supposed to look the way they do as described in the series due to the physics of the drive system.*  There's very little room for designs to look vastly different, even between the opposing factions.**  The drives require these particular shapes, as well as what most would refer to as "shields", which are also the drive systems.  When the movie people started releasing their concept art, each faction had their own ship designs that looked completely different from each other, and fans of the series were... not happy... due to the inconsistency in the tech as described in the books.

There was also discussion about the ranges of battles.  Most figured the movie would depict battles as they are in Star Trek/Wars - distances of a few hundred meters, or at best, a few kilometers.  In the books, battles take place at ranges of 500,000km for energy range, and millions of kilometers for missile combat, with several minutes of flight time before contact.***  Of course, that sort of battle would be unfilmable, and most accepted that we would get scenes where both sides' ships would be onscreen at the same time, but again, it would be inconsistent with the internal tech.

My involvement with this is that I work with a fan group (BuNine) that answers only to David Weber (and sometimes we tell him he's wrong, and he makes changes accordingly)****, and we do background on the politics, tech, organization, and other stuff based on the series.  This is considered canon by David, after his overall approval.  We've even published the first of three "companions" (House of Steel) to flesh out the Manticoran and Grayson factions in the series.  Lots of stuff not included in the main books, but everything is canon as far as internal consistency.  My job for BuNine is being a 3D modeler for the warships in the series.  This is where I butted heads (indirectly, as I never talked to them personally) with the movie people.

Anyway, it was a mess, but Evergreen went under and the movie isn't being made now.  Maybe when the movie rights revert back to David, he can get someone else to do it.

tl;dr - Agree with the bolded section quoted above.

*David was trying for the feel of "Horatio Hornblower"-style, wet navy/age of sail battles, and wanted broadsides, where the top and bottom of ships were not very vulnerable.  There's a rather unfortunate side-effect of what his final ideas for the look of the ships turned out.  Rather double-phallic, in fact, as can be seen here in my work for BuNine: http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/

**Think of it like cars.  Basic design/engineering is the same and the only differences are aesthetic, no matter which country built them.  Or, in military terms, tanks, warships, aircraft.  The point is that when someone discovers something that works better, it's only a matter of time before the other guy copies it, maybe with minor improvement, but the basic stuff is the same.

***Bit too much to explain here, but missile accelerations are measured in 10's of thousands of G's

****His original dimensions and masses for the ships gave them the density of cigar smoke.  BuNine told him he was going to have to change either his masses or the dimensions.  Dimensions were easier for him to fix, and so The Great Resizing™ came into being.

Edited April 4, 2016 by MaxxQ

[tater]

Interesting (I know I read at least one of his books, many years ago).

Regarding movies and accuracy/realism (both scientific and historical in the case of historical stories), We frequently see people saying that the story MUST be unrealistic to be interesting, and those of us who cannot suspend disbelief need to realize that. The reality is that the authors/producers of the movies in fact lack the imagination to make the story work without breaking physics or history in many (most?) cases.

Babylon 5, filmed engagements at huge ranges, for example. Narn ship showing firing, cut to the Centauri ship in orbit (1000s of km away) being cut in half. Later they dumbed it down and had the Star Trek style of huge ships engaging at a range where current small arms would be effective (ugh). This is SF that's fully in the "fantasy" side of SF, but harder than SW, for example. I pointed out that Interstellar could have dumped the black hole, and used the artifact (stargate thing near saturn) and a binary system and still had the whole "time limit" thing (regarding leaving his daughter) as a device if they wanted. The craft could have not been SSTOs, making their use more limited as well (they only have 2, or whatever). You could avoid, many of the obvious problems that I could not ignore. The same is true for many films. 

History is usually filled with real stories that seem fake they are so bizarre, it's not like you need to alter history to make a movie interesting about virtually any period (a pet peeve of mine is round shot exploding on impact in most all movies, grrr). 

A space example that was pointless, and stupid. The countdown in Apollo 13. I watched every Apollo flight, live. My mom pointed me at every Gemini flight I was alive for as well. They altered the Apollo countdown. They have ignition at 0 (stated, out loud, too), instead of the engines spooling up from ignition sequence start... Howard stated it was because it would "confuse people." Confuse who, exactly? An idiotic choice on his part to alter history/reality because he _thinks_ people are too stupid to deal with the real countdown. Grrrr.

[NeoMorph]

Does anyone remember the Val Kilmer movie "Red Planet". I'm talking about the bit where he uses an old Russian space probe to get to orbit and meet up with Carrie Ann Moss in the main spaceship?

Anyone else think the relative velocity of the main ship to the probe (which is weighed down by Val sitting in it) is going to be frickin HUGE. Plus what are the odds that the thing would be on the wrong plane of orbit too. So getting a rendezvous would be pretty damned hard to say the least.

Yup... this movie is the closest to a Kerbal version of a mission to Mars/Duna than any other that I can think of. Val could have made a GREAT Jebediah.

[legoclone09]

Or Val could have made a GREAT Valentina. And it was even a Russian probe!

[NeoMorph]

On 03/04/2016 at 5:58 PM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

The only thing I can't stand is other space games where as soon as you stop accelerating you just drift to a stop, like you're driving a boat.

Oh and space ships with asymmetrical engine mounting that obviously would never work, and would just send the ship flying in silly circles.

Movies usually don't bother me, most of them are close enough to the truth. I don't like to be "that guy" and poke holes in all the niggly details.

Elite Dangerous is like this... BUT... it does say the ship has something called "Flight Assist" which automatically does the braking AND you can turn it off and you keep drifting like real. So you can turn it off, thrust one way, spin your ship around and shoot at enemies behind you. So yeah, even though it's got weird flight mechanics the game explains them away and yet still allows you to fly with real world physics.

But there was one game (well two if you include the sequel) that did ENTIRELY without flight assist of any kind. Does anyone remember I-WAR? God I loved that game because you had to work with relative velocities all over the place and you had to learn to burn in the right direction to match up for combat...

The whole point about games/movies/whatever being ruined is that KSP has educated us now. I'm not complaining... I'm just saying that watching space movies makes me think "Dammit, Jeb could do better than this" at times.

Still hoping someone does a Kerbal Gravity movie...

Edited April 4, 2016 by NeoMorph

[Wjolcz]

On 4/3/2016 at 4:19 PM, dangerhamster said:

Common sense ruins more movies than knowledge..... have you seen Red Tails?

Don't even mention that movie! I have nothing aganst any race or paying respect to brave people, but that movie was HORRIBLE to watch.

Apart from that one movie I have nothing against breaking the physics a bit. I got Interstellar on DVD, watched it three times and still enjoyed it. Maybe that's because I enjoy Nolan's work. Maybe because the music was amazing. It was a well directed movie even though I would love the plot to be a bit more complicated and developed.

I enjoy things I like. It may sound dumb, but that's the way it is. Everyone has their own taste.

[Kaiser82]

It doesnt take KSP to know that Kowalski's end was laughable.

[Vanamonde]

It's not just space shows and movies that get stuff wrong. Doctors laugh at doctor shows, lawyers scoff at lawyer shows, etc. Whatever subject you know something about, it bugs you when a show gets it wrong. 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

It's not just space shows and movies that get stuff wrong. Doctors laugh at doctor shows, lawyers scoff at lawyer shows, etc. Whatever subject you know something about, it bugs you when a show gets it wrong. 

This same thing happens when you read (or watch) the news. The people reporting pretty much have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.The problem I see with some of the commentary here is that it assumes that without the mistakes, the movies would not be interesting, and that in preferring them to get things right, we'd be having them make boring movies. I think in many cases they are doing what they _think_ is right (with no knowledge of what actually is), combined with what they know how to shoot. Honestly, in most of the cases that really bug me, the movie could easily be fixed.

[KerbonautInTraining]

On 4/3/2016 at 10:09 AM, tater said:

PH was irredeemably awful. Watch Tora, Tora, Tora, instead.

Off topic: My local airport houses one of the planes used in that movie 

On topic: I think it's fun to pick apart Sci Fi and figure out how it could have worked. 

Like, the lander in interstallar might have used it's rear VTOL engines as well as its main engines to push the Endurance without flipping it over. 

Also, the ranger was probably launched on a rocket because it takes more fuel to launch into LEO than it does to escape the solar system from LEO. Srs. 

[linuxgurugamer]

On 4/4/2016 at 9:33 AM, MaxxQ said:

I actually have a bit of real-world experience in dealing with what you refer to as "fantasy", as far as making a movie based on science fiction.  If you've ever read David Weber's Honorverse (military science fiction/space opera) series, there was going to be a movie made based on the second book of the series (The Honor of the Queen).  At first, fans were pretty excited, but after Evergreen (the production company) started releasing concept art and so forth, it descended into arguments about the fact that they were changing the basic design of the ships depicted in the books.  

The problem with it was that the ships are supposed to look the way they do as described in the series due to the physics of the drive system.*  There's very little room for designs to look vastly different, even between the opposing factions.**  The drives require these particular shapes, as well as what most would refer to as "shields", which are also the drive systems.  When the movie people started releasing their concept art, each faction had their own ship designs that looked completely different from each other, and fans of the series were... not happy... due to the inconsistency in the tech as described in the books.

There was also discussion about the ranges of battles.  Most figured the movie would depict battles as they are in Star Trek/Wars - distances of a few hundred meters, or at best, a few kilometers.  In the books, battles take place at ranges of 500,000km for energy range, and millions of kilometers for missile combat, with several minutes of flight time before contact.***  Of course, that sort of battle would be unfilmable, and most accepted that we would get scenes where both sides' ships would be onscreen at the same time, but again, it would be inconsistent with the internal tech.

My involvement with this is that I work with a fan group (BuNine) that answers only to David Weber (and sometimes we tell him he's wrong, and he makes changes accordingly)****, and we do background on the politics, tech, organization, and other stuff based on the series.  This is considered canon by David, after his overall approval.  We've even published the first of three "companions" (House of Steel) to flesh out the Manticoran and Grayson factions in the series.  Lots of stuff not included in the main books, but everything is canon as far as internal consistency.  My job for BuNine is being a 3D modeler for the warships in the series.  This is where I butted heads (indirectly, as I never talked to them personally) with the movie people.

Anyway, it was a mess, but Evergreen went under and the movie isn't being made now.  Maybe when the movie rights revert back to David, he can get someone else to do it.

tl;dr - Agree with the bolded section quoted above.

*David was trying for the feel of "Horatio Hornblower"-style, wet navy/age of sail battles, and wanted broadsides, where the top and bottom of ships were not very vulnerable.  There's a rather unfortunate side-effect of what his final ideas for the look of the ships turned out.  Rather double-phallic, in fact, as can be seen here in my work for BuNine: http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/

**Think of it like cars.  Basic design/engineering is the same and the only differences are aesthetic, no matter which country built them.  Or, in military terms, tanks, warships, aircraft.  The point is that when someone discovers something that works better, it's only a matter of time before the other guy copies it, maybe with minor improvement, but the basic stuff is the same.

***Bit too much to explain here, but missile accelerations are measured in 10's of thousands of G's

****His original dimensions and masses for the ships gave them the density of cigar smoke.  BuNine told him he was going to have to change either his masses or the dimensions.  Dimensions were easier for him to fix, and so The Great Resizing™ came into being.

One of my most favorite series.  Wish I could be part of BuNine, but recognize that I can't.  Keep up the good work

[MaxxQ]

9 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

One of my most favorite series.  Wish I could be part of BuNine, but recognize that I can't.  Keep up the good work

I wouldn't say that you could never be a part of BuNine.  The thing is, we're made up of people from different walks of life that have something to contribute to the lore of the Honorverse.  One is a retired New York lawyer that covers the legal stuff that we wrote up for House of Steel.  We have a guy in Australia who is an expert on heraldry and designed all the military award ribbons (but rendered for the book by Thomas Marrone, who is a 3D artist for Star Trek Online) and other heraldry used in the books.  He's also our royal protocol (line of succession, whether a baron outranks a duke, etc.) and military organization expert.  We have a currently active-duty Army guy who weighs in on ground ops in the Honorverse.  We have a nuclear sub commander, a former Naval analyst, IT experts, and a couple of lowly artists such as myself.  My current boss is also in BuNine, and she started out as a nanny for Weber's kids, then became his personal assistant before starting her own jewelry-making business (what I do now for work).

Edit: We even have a guy from the Czech Republic who was around when they were under the thumb of the Soviets and gives us some insight into totalitarian regimes, as well as a couple folks from Germany to help out with info on the Andermani, and figuring out what German-style words might work for David when writing about the Andies.

Then again, if you've read all the books, including House of Steel, and read the bios of everybody who contributed, you already know most of that.  I'm the one who alludes to working for Netflix, although I haven't worked there since October 2013 (the book was published a few months before I left there).  

I wasn't even aware of BuNine, but someone saw some early work of Honorverse ships I posted on a 3D modeling site, and pointed them out to our leader, Tom Pope (who incidentally, is co-writing - alongside Timothy Zahn - three novels set a few hundred years before the current timeline), who then contacted me about doing 3D modeling for the group.  There are literally tens of thousands of modelers better than I am, and yet he liked what he saw of my stuff (something about thinking outside the box and having interesting takes on a few things he hadn't considered), and asked me to join.  Took me a week of trying to decide if this was for real or not, but it wasn't costing me anything except some ink on an NDA, so I figured what the heck.  The other thing that sold him on me was my previous experience in the USAF, especially since I was a weapons loader.  Since there are some aircraft in the books, he wanted a bit more info from the zoomie side to offset all the squids he was surrounded by <grin>

The point is that if you think you have something to contribute, it would be considered, but it's not something one applies for like you would a job.  It's an invite-only organization, based on recommendations from other members.

Getting back to the topic of the thread... while this isn't a Hollywood production, I'd like to think I got *something* right when I made this video two years ago.  Just imagine the pinnace is using RCS, as I didn't then, and still don't know Blender well enough to add little puffs from the RCS ports*:

*Edit #2: Okay, I admit, I took *some* artistic licence with the approach, but still...

Edited April 7, 2016 by MaxxQ

[tater]

I used to play the Starfire games, actually. The animation above reminds me a bit of traveller (another game I used to play).