Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Has it been brought up yet?

It was too obscene even for this thread...

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Oh where to begin with this one...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(2017_film)

Has it been brought up yet?

I think its mostly covered by the generic complaints, eg:

Definitely dont wear protective equipment, or discard it as soon as you get an opportunity

ALWAYS enter extreme biohazard areas

Try and do both of the above

Always touch the alien, if possible poke it with electricity

If alone, never seek any kind of help. Screaming is allowed.

When staffing a multi-multi-billion dollar bleeding edge, world-saving mission: choose panicky, undisciplined people with lots of academic experience. Reformed criminals are a bonus. Foreign spies are a must.

If you're going to build humanities most extreme biohazard containment area in the history of mankind, surround it with living quarters and pipes.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

Oh where to begin with this one...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(2017_film)

Has it been brought up yet?

Even the timeline of "natural events" (ie. orbital drag etc.) is badly flawed, at least from what I can glimpse through the summary.

The tech is also wrong (soyuz on the sea ? they'd be drown immediately !)

The biological pretense also sucks (why would it not grow in the first place if it can survive in vacuum ? though it could be remotely justified, ie. egg wrt heat).

[kerbiloid]

A single nuke onboard would save the humanity. Just for case.

15 minutes ago, YNM said:

(soyuz on the sea ? they'd be drown immediately !)

Spoiler

 

[mikegarrison]

Low Earth Orbit is simply a terrible place for a biohazard lab. Everything there is eventually going to come back down.

[p1t1o]

56 minutes ago, YNM said:

The biological pretense also sucks (why would it not grow in the first place if it can survive in vacuum ? though it could be remotely justified, ie. egg wrt heat).

IIRC, it cant survive in vacuum, it just isnt immediately killed.

My big problem with the alien - and this is a common trope - it grows at an astounding rate, where is it getting just the sheer mass (not even talking about metabolic energy yet) from? it goes from a mouse-sized thing to a dog-sized thing in hours and gets progressively faster and stronger.

But as an action-thriller, its a decent movie. Same with Cloverfield Paradox. No science, just action.

***

Speaking of Cloverfield Paradox - my biggest gripe:

Spoiler

Water doesnt freeze (immediately) in vacuum, it boils. And to freeze several metric tons of water in a bout 0.5 seconds is just ridiculous.

Its worse than "humans explode violently and immediately on exposure to vacuum".

(Im looking at you Saturn3. I couldnt find a screenshot, but trust me, "kaboom!")

The rest of the stuff in the movie is fantasy and therefore Im fine with it.

 

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Low Earth Orbit is simply a terrible place for a biohazard lab. Everything there is eventually going to come back down.

If place the biolab between the radiation belts, it will be sterilized while slowly getting down for centuries.

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

(Im looking at you Saturn3. I couldnt find a screenshot, but trust me, "kaboom!")

Somebody remembers that movie

[KerikBalm]

As for life, it goes beyond the generic complaints... a while back there was a thread about it and I commented on the bad biological aspect of having a cell be a muscle/neuron/photoreceptor all at the same time... being able to see without any sort of eye to form an image, etc.

Then there was the single cell/multicellular aspect... it started as a  free living single celled organism, but then becomes a multicellular organism (because a biohazard thats a bunch of microscopic organisms is going to be much harder contain, I guess for story purposes they want a "big bad")

Then (and I'm not going to watch it again to get the exact words, but I remember it made no sense)... when they "revived" it, they said they were adding an atmosphere corresponding to what they thought Mars' ancient atmosphere was like - presumably this contained NO FREE OXYGEN, so why is this an oxygen consuming organism? I guess in the movie's science, its widely believed that there was a GOE on Mars, and there actually was one?

Biomolecules degrade fast on the geological time scale, so for the spore to be viable, it would have to be living within the past ~100,000 years. So... lets assume some hardy microbe managed to stay alive somehow as Mars' conditions worsened, laying dormant and reviving to repair and reproduce periodically when conditions allow... already a stretch... but throughout this, apparently evolution never happened, and it still retains genes to form a macroscopic multicellular organism with all the plethora of features that it had...

People hear that tardigrades survive exposure to outerspace, and then easily accept monsters like this going around in the vacuum, but tardigrades go into cryptobiosis, they can dry out completely and revive... they won't keep living in a vacuum, they can basically do suspended animation. That's what bacterial spores do too. Its quite a leap to have this thing (which seems to have a permeable, maybe even moist and slimy exterior) running around the outside of the ISS, only worrying about its oxygen supply.

And then when it gets in the station... through the RCS ports? what the only thing going into the nozzle of an RCS thruster is going to get you into, is into a tank of hydrazine... its not going to get you into the habitable space of the ISS

And of course, the ISS was completely inaccurate too, but whatever.

And... the "f'd up thrusting" made the ISS deorbit? they didn't show the thrusting differ by more than 20 degrees from what it supposedly should have been. Assiming it was thrusting prograde (because that's what you'd do to push it into deep space like they said), they'd have to rotate past 90 degrees to turn that into something that lowers the orbit (I suppose a radial burn could drop the PE while raisign AP, but nothing they showed implied the thrust angle would differ by enough).

And then the end.... *spoilers* if anyone cares, but if you havent watched the movie, you shouldnt.

somehow the pod that was supposed to do a programmed reentry ends up going off into deep space, and the pod that was supposed to be manually piloted out into deep space does a safe reentry because the creature was fighting with the guys hand on the joystick.... Umm.... all he had to do is point prograde-ish, fire the engines, and not touch the joystick anymore...

But somehow this creature learned orbital mechanics and human numbers/language in 24 hours and understood what it needed to do to safely reenter...

I wish the stupidity of the humans was the only problem with this steaming pile of excrement...

[mikegarrison]

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If place the biolab between the radiation belts, it will be sterilized while slowly getting down for centuries.

So would anybody working in it.

[ARS]

Might not been related to physics, but I've read a book with quite interesting premise, but can anyone clarify is this plausible?

"It's set within current day timeline and technological level. Basically, after WW3, whole earth is united into one single global superpower. In order to combat the insurgents, separatist and those who didn't support the alliance, a network of 48 defense satellite was built on geostationary orbit, complete coverage of total surveillance. The satellites are equipped with laser intended to shoot down any ballistic missiles, rendering ICBM useless. However, the system proved costly to maintain, and after all satellites has coming online, there's a dispute about who should be given control of the satellite. The internal conflict rages and eventually, the earth alliance is breaking up from inside. The control codes for the satellite itself was lost in the ensuing conflict. With the earth alliance being disbanded, surviving nations bands up into 2 factions and fight against each other in order to gain total domination on earth. At some point, the programming protocol of the satellites got corrupted, and instead of shooting ballistic missiles, it shoot all satellites on earth orbit, and anything that leaves stratosphere.

Now here's the main premise: with no satellites, humanity has no GPS, orbital surveillance or remote communications anymore. The only thing that's still active out there is just that laser satellites, which also prevents most high altitude bombing, ICBM and missile strike. Humanity has no BVR combat capabilities anymore, and combat was done in visual range (with current day weapons). With this limitation, it gives rise to the armored infantry division, troopers who wear heavily armored exoskeleton outfitted with heavy weapons comparable to a main battle tank. The suit has an operational duration of 8 hours with internal battery. It gives the trooper the firepower and protection of a tank, but with agility of humans"

Assuming we lose all satellites on earth orbit, how the warfare will change?

Note: with no satellites, there's no global communication. It's like WW2 communication there

Edited February 14, 2018 by ARS

[p1t1o]

 

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Might not been related to physics, but I've read a book with quite interesting premise, but can anyone clarify is this plausible?

"It's set within current day timeline and technological level. Basically, after WW3, whole earth is united into one single global superpower. In order to combat the insurgents, separatist and those who didn't support the alliance, a network of 48 defense satellite was built on geostationary orbit, complete coverage of total surveillance. The satellites are equipped with laser intended to shoot down any ballistic missiles, rendering ICBM useless. However, the system proved costly to maintain, and after all satellites has coming online, there's a dispute about who should be given control of the satellite. The internal conflict rages and eventually, the earth alliance is breaking up from inside. The control codes for the satellite itself was lost in the ensuing conflict. With the earth alliance being disbanded, surviving nations bands up into 2 factions and fight against each other in order to gain total domination on earth. At some point, the programming protocol of the satellites got corrupted, and instead of shooting ballistic missiles, it shoot all satellites on earth orbit, and anything that leaves stratosphere.

Now here's the main premise: with no satellites, humanity has no GPS, orbital surveillance or remote communications anymore. The only thing that's still active out there is just that laser satellites, which also prevents most high altitude bombing, ICBM and missile strike. Humanity has no BVR combat capabilities anymore, and combat was done in visual range (with current day weapons). With this limitation, it gives rise to the armored infantry division, troopers who wear heavily armored exoskeleton outfitted with heavy weapons comparable to a main battle tank. The suit has an operational duration of 8 hours with internal battery. It gives the trooper the firepower and protection of a tank, but with agility of humans"

Assuming we lose all satellites on earth orbit, how the warfare will change?

Well GPS guided weapons did not really come into vogue until the 90s, and even so, the idea that GPS would not necessarily be available in wartime is a doctrine that permeates pretty much completely. There are other ways that are almost as good, to determine location or guide weapons. Inertial systems are very good nowadays and there are things like TERCOM and more advanced imaging-radar versions. So there is no weaponry that is entirely eliminated by knocking out satellites.

The given premise also has a very limited idea of modern long range warfare. For one thing, high altitude bombing has not been the state of the art for decades, we only use it these days because the majority of modern wars are horrifically one-sided which makes things very easy. So tactical and strategic airstrikes are still in, as long as your cruise phases are not too high. And for another, the Stratosphere boundary is around the 60,000feet mark which gives plenty of room for high-altitude bombing. Heck it leaves enough room for some creative uses of ballistic missiles - there is a technique called "depressed trajectory" that is believed to be an option to modern nuclear forces, a technique which sends the weapon on a very inefficient, but much lower and much quicker trajectory, enabling so-called "decapitation" strikes and more effective counter-force strikes. Air warfare pretty much takes place entirely below 60k feet, and usually much lower. The one thing I would say is that modern air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles may have their upper range curtailed, as most long range weapons have high altitude cruise phases, often in excess of 100k feet. But this is not to say that long range air combat would not be possible.

Also, cruise missiles, a huge part of modern arsenals would be unaffected.

In my opinion then, the machines and mechanisms of war would be largely unaffected, but by far the biggest effect would be intelligence and communications.

Without satellite relays, communicating with forces on the other side of the globe becomes much more problematic. Not impossible by a long chalk, by using ground-based relays in combination with, or alongside very long range radio stations. It is possible for a single radio station to communicate with another on the other side of the globe, there are several methods. There are disadvantages however, reliability and resistance to electronic countermeasures for example. But the point is communications would be difficult but not impossible.

I consider it very likely that the major militaries already know how they would deal with global coordination without satellites.

So still not exactly a paradigm-shift in general warfare.

 

The big cheese I think is reconnaissance and intelligence - knowing what the enemy is doing, where your targets are.

Satellite reconnaissance revolutionised planning and fighting wars and I think that there would be some gaps that would take time to fill. For example, high-speed air recon was the state of the art for a long time until satellites rendered it almost obsolete.

Back in the day, aircraft used to be able to fly high and fast enough to make a very difficult shot for air defences. However, air defences have come an extremely long way since the advent of space based recon, especially if the target is limited to 60k feet. There is little capability to fill the gap of strategic recon.

There has been a minor recent surge in the popularity of high-speed, high-altitude air recon, but with an artificial cap on altitude, it is questionable that anything could fly fast enough to escape modern air defences.

It is not like forces would be blind, low altitude recon, ground based recon, stealth drones etc all fit into the picture, but there is a large scale impact on recon capability.

This impact on strategic intelligence would have another effect - it would affect political stability. For better or worse perhaps, one one side, enemies get very nervous when they cant see what their opponent is up to, and on another - its harder to plan aggression with impaired long-range recon. What the result of that would be, is definitely a difficult question.

On the political side again, quite apart from the loss of satellites is the now apparently impenetrable missile shield. This may well have a stabilising effect in a nuclear context - although all-out global nuclear war is still well within our means, it would certainly be harder, and slower. This may not have a similar effect on conventional warfare though, as nuclear deterrence prevents conventional aggression too, as the powers fear any conflict triggering escalation closer to a nuclear exchange, even today. Again the exact effect of this is a very difficult question.

 

 

In conclusion, then, whilst it would have a significant impact on many aspects of warfighting, I do not believe that essentially putting a 60k feet "lid" on it would result in such huge changes to military doctrine. Long range warfare would still be more than possible.

All this has little to do with the rise of an the "armoured infantry", as described they are far beyond todays technological level. Neither do they fill any niche which suddenly appears due to the aforementioned conditions.

I judge the book to be: fantasy grade "war-opera"

Thats only a take on its real-world plausibility, not to say it wont be a good read.

 

 

Edited February 14, 2018 by p1t1o

[YNM]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Assuming we lose all satellites on earth orbit, how the warfare will change?

Not much. There wasn't a satellite when WW2 happens and they manage to kill and destroy a lot of stuff. We'd just revert to long-range bombing, as was before ICBM. Positioning can rely on LORAN and such (I think the latest ones had an accuracy of at least a few hundred metres at worst ?). Guided bombs won't be affected as it's more on the electronics side. Intelligence would be entirely done by long-wave radios, detection could be by ELF and such, human spies will be common.

If there's any change, it's the sudden change. That could trigger an attack based off the sudden opportunity or it could cancel stuff if they can't "convert back" fast enough. You never know.

Edited February 14, 2018 by YNM
edited to conform to what it is.

[Gargamel]

19 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Sounds promising...

Great actors, great script, different viewpoints than have been explored before.  Oh, and Tom hanks is the driving force behind it, just like he was with Band Of brothers after Saving private ryan.   He did Apollo 13, and wanted to do a more in depth view of the Apollo program.  They do cover Apollo 13, but from a journalists point of view, as the movie covered the space flight side of it.    My favorite episode is about the head engineer for Grumman(?) when trying to design the lander. 

It's hard to find, but I did find a DVD copy on amazon about a year ago.

7 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Same with Cloverfield Paradox.

I just watched this within the past week, and I can't even remember the plot, nor the actors.  I might be old, but I do remember not enjoying it.   I'm booting up netflix right now to rewatch a few seconds to try and remember.   I was that bad/boring.  ...... Oh yeah.... I remember it now.   Nowhere as good as the other two films, and it very poorly explains the events of the other two.    A third movie, or even a series was needed for that storyline, but this was not it. 

-------

So has anybody read SevenEves yet?   I found it a hard pill to swallow, and I never finished the second part, it got... boring I guess. 

[Gargamel]

22 minutes ago, YNM said:

Not much. There wasn't a satellite when WW2 happens and they manage to kill and destroy a lot of stuff. We'd just revert to long-range bombing, as was before ICBM. Positioning can rely on LORAN and such (I think the latest ones had an accuracy of at least a few metres at worst ?). Guided bombs won't be affected as it's more on the electronics side. Intelligence would be entirely done by long-wave radios, detection could be by ELF and such, human spies will be common.

If there's any change, it's the sudden change. That could trigger an attack based off the sudden opportunity or it could cancel stuff if they can't "convert back" fast enough. You never know

ICBM's were around before satellite navigation was a thing, they just used ballistic profiles and inertial guidance systems.  Modern Submarines also use inertial guidance to navigate.  The Navies would just have to revert to sextant and celestial navigation,  it's something they still train on (as of recently, may have changed).   The vast majority of bombs dropped in the Gulf War were dumb bombs, and of the 'few' smart bombs that were dropped, very few, if any, had GPS guidance.  Most of them were laser or optically guided.    The big thing that would change would be communications.   

[mikegarrison]

Sometimes I don't care, but sometimes I just can't get past when the setup is so blatantly contrived to justify what the author wants to write. This laser sat thing is one of those. String at least half a dozen extremely improbable or outright impossible things together all so you can set up a scenario where people wear exosuits to battle.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

... Navies would just have to revert to sextant and celestial navigation ...

Need not to be that far, LORAN existed. I wonder whether TACAN/VOR/DME could be used for ships ?

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

So would anybody working in it.

Between the belts (the lower one is at~4000 km, the upper one is at ~17000 km).
A short trip from the Earth would not kill the crew (unless the lunar conspiracy is the true, lol).
But slowly sinking from there for centuries the station would be slowly sterilized. ^*

Spoiler

* _{I hope}

Edited February 14, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Gargamel]

49 minutes ago, YNM said:

Need not to be that far, LORAN existed. I wonder whether TACAN/VOR/DME could be used for ships ?

EMP's would knock out LORAN too, and I don't think the other's have the range in a lot of areas.

[kerbiloid]

46 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

extremely improbable or outright impossible things together all so you can set up a scenario where people wear exosuits to battle.

 

Spoiler

vs

Fail.

Spoiler

Win.

Conclusions.

Spoiler

1. Ripley is tougher than Quaritch.
2. Neytiri is deadlier than Alien.

 

[magnemoe]

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

 

  Hide contents

vs

Fail.

  Hide contents

Win.

Conclusions.

  Hide contents

1. Ripley is tougher than Quaritch.
2. Neytiri is deadlier than Alien.

 

note that both setting used the suits as makeshift weapons, Ripley is using an exosuit designed for lifting and handling heavy stuff. 
The suits in Avatar served the same purpose but worked a bit better as they are enclosed and they had made weapons to go with them.
None was purpose build for combat, the avatar suits came closest but was not really armored, it was not seen as needed as the bullet proof glass was hard to penetrate with arrows. 

In an real war no they would be pretty useless, note that powered armor is pretty likely however it will probably be smaller than the fallout 4 suits, you will want to use your hands for one. 

[YNM]

41 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

EMP's would knock out LORAN too, and I don't think the other's have the range in a lot of areas.

If there was a "worldwide" EMP involved I question any such device would work. I also question you can still have the bombs, the planes, even the ships and the vehicles.

[Gargamel]

Just now, YNM said:

If there was a "worldwide" EMP involved I question any such device would work. I also question you can still have the bombs, the planes, even the ships and the vehicles.

True true.... I was referring more to more local events that took out large sections of the infrastructure....   

If you haven't read On the Beach, you might like it, part of the plot is a US nuclear sub that has to take refuge in Southern Australia after WW3, and the trials they have to go through to stay functional.  Dunno why I thought of that, but I did. 

[YNM]

3 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

I was referring more to more local events that took out large sections of the infrastructure ...

You can always land in and repair stuff I guess. But, given that a single EMP of certain size were predicted to be able to take out mainland US, guess those who's going to repair are the rider-ins from the other side.

[KerikBalm]

@ARSAs far as the idea of warfare in a contrived situation where laser sats have taken out GPS and shoot down anything leaving the lower atmosphere...

Most long range communication does not go through sats anyway, are fiber optic cables not a thing? are cell phones not a thing? We had systems that worked on the same principle as GPS before satellites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decca_Navigator_System

While satellites can cover the globe easily and give easy "line of site", all you really need are 3 transmitters of a known location, and you can triangulate your position relative to theirs. Many cell phones now do this with cellphone towers instead of GPS satellites. It won't work out in the jungle (if there is a jungle left in this future setting), but accurate guidance within industrial and post-industrial areas would work fine.

Also, most BVR weapons don't travel along a ballistic trajectory anyway. Cruise missiles could still be a thing, Ram-rocket long range missiles like the MBDA Meteor would still be a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile)

So nope, not even this scenario would make mech combat plausible. Even if we ignore that aircraft could still work and engage at long ranges without triggering any plausible WMD defense system, tanks would still be superior. A bipedal armored system would have a very high profile, and due to physics could not be as heavy as a very squat design, so it would have much less armor than a tank. Tanks in hull down positions would "snipe" these mech suits before the mech suit even saw the tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull-down

Good luck making a walking design that can mount a 120mm cannon, can withstand hits from a 120mm cannon (from the front armor), and would be able to see and shoot the tank first.

[DDE]

@KerikBalm The two only tiny niches are elevated DEW platforms - thus presuming DEWs are worth such contrivances - and the few types of terrain where legs are the superior if not only means of locomotion.

On the issue of the latter, I know of more prospective methods of locomotion than legs.