Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[NSEP]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

OMG! THAT IS HILARIOUS!

Can I take that as my new signature!?

Do it! 

[Superfluous J]

50 minutes ago, ARS said:

I don't know whether the mistake is in my screen or what? 

No it's the forum. It's been a while since I saw it last but I think it's that the forum times out after accepting the post but before telling you it accepted the post, so either you or your browser automatically resubmits. Then the fourm sees you posted 5 times in a row and splices them into the same post.

[Gargamel]

3 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

No it's the forum. It's been a while since I saw it last but I think it's that the forum times out after accepting the post but before telling you it accepted the post, so either you or your browser automatically resubmits. Then the fourm sees you posted 5 times in a row and splices them into the same post.

Also @ARS

I think @DAL59 did have a glitch, but is now running with the gag that the story is about time loops.....

*golf clap* kudos sir, success. 

[DAL59]

9 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

think @DAL59 did have a glitch, but is now running with the gag that the story is about time loops.....

Yup, my wifi glitched.  

[Gargamel]

Just now, DAL59 said:

Yup, my wifi glitched.  

Well, with the other thread, and now this little pun, I'm gonna go buy that book now.   Once I finish the Johannes Cabal book I'm reading (which is a series I am truly enjoying reading again), I'll take a shot at this one. 

[kerbiloid]

Btw, does anybody know something extremely realistic (even if confusing) and providing a good story?
(As 2012 looks not very good.)

7 hours ago, ARS said:

No such barriers or terrain exist in space, and so such a barrier may be easily circumnavigated.

1. Lagrange points.

Just for fun.
To prevent somebody's passing.
You don't use Europa and don't like if somebody would.

2a. Geostationary orbits.
2b. Any round orbit.

Quasi-satellites of your important satellite (say, a combat orbital station).
To forbid a killer''s approaching.

Or close proximities of an opponent's satellite in such orbit. To take it off when required.

So, you can permanently have 1-2 mine in prograde direction and 1-2 in retrograde one.
And a large cassette with them to spread them around the combat station when the combat begins.
(Of course they will run away several days later and should be self-destroyed, but for several hours while your station is under attack and keeps firing, they can follow it.
Also you can make them reusable and return to the station to refuel and repair).

7 hours ago, ARS said:

Everything with mass has gravity. In space, little things that are relatively close to each other tend to clump up — this is how planets and stars are born, and why there are no movie-level asteroid field density. The mines would need some way to fight or negate the effects of gravity on each other that also wouldn't run out of fuel.

Sphere of influence of a mine is not very large in the Earth gravity field.

P.S.
If press Ctrl-Enter while the post is submitting (i.e. Submit/Save button is grayed), it sends the post again, and you get a clone.

Edited June 11, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Gargamel]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Sphere of influence of a mine is not very large in the Earth gravity field.

But, as I know you know, there is no such thing as a SOI in n-body physics, ie the real world.   Small things tend to clump together. 

But given the small masses of the mines, and the amount of force the tiny gravity the would have, then something like a simple laser might have enough force to repel them from each other.   Solar panels to power them (missed the OP on this, so I'm not totally sure where we're talking), and if you put up enough of them, they would act like a net, with the laser acting as triggers. 

[NSEP]

I occasionally see space soldiers in Sci-Fi have normal glass helmets, but isn't glass heavy and hazardous, especially in warfare? Wouldn't they use something that resembles a gas mask with smaller windows to look at? Good thing not many people make that mistake, and go for little glowing slits in the helmet, wich don't make much sense neither.

Another thing that slightly bothers me is the metal plating on these suits. Not only does it make the thing look gross, ugly and cluttered, but it also adds to the complexity and immobility of the spacesuit. I don't want to tinker with a bazillion different parts to save my wounded buddy in combat and in space.

Speaking of space warfare, wouldn't you want to capture and take over/scrap a spaceship rather than destroy it in battle? Not only will destroying a spaceship cause space debris issues, but in space, almost everything is valuable. Manufacturing stuff in space is alot harder than here on Earth, because everything has to be imported from other places in the solar system. Earth and Mars are in a lucky position, but you aren't going to find much Hydrogen on Venus and you aren't going to find much Iron (on the surface) on Europa.

Why blow up a spacecraft with a nuclear reactor when you can use it to power a military outpost? Who knows, maybe there is valuable Helium-3, Uranium-235, or Computer Hardware on that ship!

Edited June 12, 2018 by NSEP

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Wouldn't they use something that resembles a gas mask with smaller windows to look at?

Spoiler

 

The best: drapersuit + planetes helmet
 

Spoiler

+

 

24 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Not only does it make the thing look gross, ugly and cluttered, but it also adds to the complexity and immobility of the spacesuit.

Most part of a human surface is not joints, so is immobile in any case.
The joint can be covered with scales like on the drapersuit.

[StrandedonEarth]

2 hours ago, NSEP said:

 

Speaking of space warfare, wouldn't you want to capture and take over/scrap a spaceship rather than destroy it in battle? Not only will destroying a spaceship cause space debris issues, but in space, almost everything is valuable. Manufacturing stuff in space is alot harder than here on Earth, because everything has to be imported from other places in the solar system. Earth and Mars are in a lucky position, but you aren't going to find much Hydrogen on Venus and you aren't going to find much Iron (on the surface) on Europa.

Why blow up a spacecraft with a nuclear reactor when you can use it to power a military outpost? Who knows, maybe there is valuable Helium-3, Uranium-235, or Computer Hardware on that ship!

Mostly because catching a spaceship is hard, unless you handwave up some magic tractor beams. Then comes the very difficult part of eliminating the crew on their own turf, unless you can do that without boarding the ship. So without fantasy tech, capturing a ship without getting yourself killed in the process is pretty tough. Easier and safer to just slag it, collect the scrap, and move on. 

If you’re engaged in space warfare, you should be able to deal with some space debris. If you can’t, that’s a great reason not to engage in space warfare. 

But that being up another irksome thing: since ocean-going ships started carrying cannons, the classic killshot was to set off the enemy’s powder or munitions magazine, blowing the ship apart. The sci-fantasy equivalent has almost always been to blow the reactor. Star Wars is especially guilty of this. But what sort of reactor releases such a massive explosion when hit? A fission reactor would melt down, while a fusion reactor would simply fizzle. An antimatter reactor would be most dangerous, as whatever antimatter in it will annihilate, but there probably wouldn’t be much inside. Far better to set off the fuel, if you can, but even then realistic fuels wouldn’t cause a huge explosion on their own. Again, the exception would be breaching a large antimatter container. 

Edited June 12, 2018 by StrandedonEarth

[NSEP]

8 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

If you’re engaged in space warfare, you should be able to deal with some space debris. If you can’t, that’s a great reason not to engage in space warfare. 

Space debris isn't going to go away very easily and civilian ships are going to have problems with it later.

[NSEP]

14 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

unless you can do that without boarding the ship.

You don't need men at all to take down the crew. Instead of having men board the ship, let toxic/flammable gasses, temperature and pressure changes, or even the vacuum of space do the job, to either knock the crew of the ship out or force them to shut down the engines and evacuate. May not be extremely effective when the crew has spacesuits, but destroying the pressurized environment will sure annoy the crew on board.

Not entirely sure how you would catch up to a spaceship in orbit, but im pretty a spacecraft wouldn't spend all of its fuel on going ridicilously fast to escape a parasite craft in order to stay in orbit, and even if they were to do that, i would imagine a parasite craft to be lighter in mass and have a higher wet-dry mass ratio than say a full on battleship, so it would be faster than the battleship and, thus easier to capture.

[roboslacker]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Which anime is that from?

[cyberKerb]

59 minutes ago, roboslacker said:

Which anime is that from?

Planetes

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, NSEP said:

Speaking of space warfare, wouldn't you want to capture and take over/scrap a spaceship rather than destroy it in battle? Not only will destroying a spaceship cause space debris issues, but in space, almost everything is valuable. Manufacturing stuff in space is alot harder than here on Earth, because everything has to be imported from other places in the solar system. Earth and Mars are in a lucky position, but you aren't going to find much Hydrogen on Venus and you aren't going to find much Iron (on the surface) on Europa.

So, you have to irradiate its crew and electronics with mass flow of gamma/X-ray, then capture the derelict ship.
Unless they mine or self-destroy it.

But most part of its equipment will be just a metal scrap not compatible with your electric inlets and program code, and with diffeing size standards.
Unlikely you can melt the scrap far from the homeworld to make something useful.
A special kind of headache would be its nuclear reactors containing partially spent fuel.

But you can try to infiltrate a sabouteur capsule through a hole in the ship hull, and try to capture the electrical stand of their air pumps, switch it off and make them sleep. In zero-G they need it.

5 hours ago, NSEP said:

and civilian ships are going to have problems with it later.

If somebody did care a lot about this far perspective.

Edited June 13, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, you have to irradiate its crew and electronics with mass flow of gamma/X-ray, then capture the derelict ship.
Unless they mine or self-destroy it.

But most part of its equipment will be just a metal scrap not compatible with your electric inlets and program code, and with diffeing size standards.
Unlikely you can melt the scrap far from the homeworld to make something useful.
A special kind of headache would be its nuclear reactors containing partially spent fuel.

But you can try to infiltrate a sabouteur capsule through a hole in the ship hull, and try to capture the electrical stand of their air pumps, switch it off and make them sleep. In zero-G they need it.

If somebody did care a lot about this far perspective.

This is a battleship, it will be hardened against biocidal levels of radiation. Anything that kills the crew, has killed the ship first, wouldnt be much of a spacebattleship otherwise.

I think physically capturing a spacewarship would be exceptionally difficult, this is not naval warfare. Combat may start at 100,000km range, thats a heck of a long gauntlet to run to board a ship which will probably not be alone.

However, hacking it from afar...that may well be an option. Defences against those types of attacks are not proportional to battleship size or lethality or numbers.

Edited June 13, 2018 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

53 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

This is a battleship, it will be hardened against biocidal levels of radiation. Anything that kills the crew, has killed the ship first, wouldnt be much of a spacebattleship otherwise.

But this is a space battleship. It's hard to armor it totally.
So, any explosion deadly for its citadel will first scratch off everything from outside, and either vaporize the citadel, or throw it away with high acceleration.

Let's check.

Spoiler

Say, we want to take the crew out asap, before somebody activates a self-destruction sequence.
This means a dose >100 Sv. 
Say, 150 Sv.
For electromagnetic radiation it's equal to 150 Gr, i.e. 150 J/kg.

Say, a crewman masses 80 kg.
So, total energy to be absorbed by a crewman = 150 * 80 = 12000 J.

Crewman's density is ~1 g/cm3.
So, estimated crewman's half-dose thickness = 23/1 = 23 cm.
Thickness of the crewman = 20..170 cm, 1..8 half-dose layers.
So, up to a half of the energy will pass through the body not unabsorbed.

So, let's presume the requred energy is 20000 J per body.

Say, we irradiate the citadel from top, from the most ineffective projection.
Cross-section area of a crewman from top ~= 0.1 m2.

So, required energy density inside the citadel = 20000 / 0.1 = 2*10⁵ J/m2.

Say, the citadel armor is 40 cm thick (from wiki about Iowa), half-value thickness 2 cm.
So, the radiation gets decreased 2^40/2 ~= 10⁶ times.

Then the required energy density outside the armor is 2*10¹¹ J/m2.

Let's presume, we use an omnidirectional source of radiation.
I.e. just a charge, not a gamma-laser or so.
Say, it explodes at the outer structures of a 40 m wide ship, and the citadel is deep inside, coaxial with the ship.
So, distance is ~20 m.

Total area of the sphere = 4 * pi * 20² = 5000 m2.
Total gamma-rays energy required = 5*10³ * 2*10¹¹ = 10¹⁵ J.

Say, gamma-rays are ~10% of total energy (can't find real-world ratio for vacuum).
So, total energy of the charge is ~10¹⁶ J.
Yield = 10¹⁶ / 4.2*10¹⁵ ~= 2.5 Mt.

***

The hull will also receive ~10 times more energy with X-ray.
It will be ~ 2*10¹² J/m2 in total.
Iron requires ~ 7 MJ/kg to vaporize.
So, this is enough to vaporize ~ 2*10¹² / (7*10⁶ * 7800) ~= 36 m of steel.
(Irl less, but anyway many times more than the citadel thickness).

That means, that there is just no sense in making the spaceship citadel armor Iowa-thick, because a spaceship is much more fragile than Iowa's everything-but-citadel.
Once the spaceship fragile outer structures get crashed, its crew is anyway disabled or dead.

And a common "anti-nature" radiation vault, several centimeters of steel thick, would be anyway stronger than other structures.

So, it's unlikely if a space battleship would be significantly tougher against radiation than a civil spaceship. 
It probably would give to the irradiated crew several minutes to launch the rockets before they get unconscious, so the radprotection could be easily overcome even by a tactical charge.

1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

However, hacking it from afar...that may well be an option.

"Send a text to this short code and unlock undocumented features of your ship."

[p1t1o]

44 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

<snikt>

Didnt you just prove that a warhead capable of irradiating the crew will certainly destroy the ship?

Having said that, according to project rho (and the US military), you may only need as little as 80Gy to rapidly incapacitate crew.

Either way, you also have to worry about incapacitating the rest of their fleet if you want to get close enough to board with humans. Getting a warhead within 40m is one thing but a boarding craft needs to stop (relatively) and will have its acceleration severely limited by skwishy human payload.

I dont think it would be impossible to capture an enemy ship during combat, but I also think that it would only very, very rarely be a tactical option (eg: last ship standing, damaged/surrendered)

 

Edited June 13, 2018 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

Just now, p1t1o said:

Didnt you just prove that a warhead capable of irradiating the crew will certainly destroy the ship?

I just proved that no space ship could be saved with an armor enough thick to stop the radiation from a megaton-range warhead.
So, the hypothesis about well-protected space battleships looks not viable.
Looks like any combat spaceship will be as protected as a scientific one. Against solar wind and GCR, plus several inches of steel against bullets.
So, kiloton-range warheads would irradiate the crews from kilometers. And a gamma-laser - even from greater distances.

Also, just to lethally irradiate the crew 10 Sv is enough.
So, 250 kt would be still lethal, just not immediately. 
This additionaly ensures us that no hull makes sense for a maneuvering craft.

(A huge orbital station is a different thing, it can be as thick as possible, it doesn't need external thin structures).

9 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

you may only need as little as 80Gy to rapidly incapacitate crew.

120 afaik, ">10000 rad" iirc from 1980s books.
But this two times difference doesn't matter.

11 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Either way, you also have to worry about incapacitating the rest of their fleet if you want to get close enough to board with humans.

The other fleet will be under attack and maneuvering, while the incapacitated one probably wouldn't.

22 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Getting a warhead within 40m is one thing but a boarding craft needs to stop (relatively) and will have its acceleration severely limited by skwishy human payload.

A small craft can rotate faster. Because centrifugal force is proportional to the raduis of rotation.
So, it is more maneuverable than the prize.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Didnt you just prove that a warhead capable of irradiating the crew will certainly destroy the ship?

Having said that, according to project rho (and the US military), you may only need as little as 80Gy to rapidly incapacitate crew.

Either way, you also have to worry about incapacitating the rest of their fleet if you want to get close enough to board with humans. Getting a warhead within 40m is one thing but a boarding craft needs to stop (relatively) and will have its acceleration severely limited by skwishy human payload.

I dont think it would be impossible to capture an enemy ship during combat, but I also think that it would only very, very rarely be a tactical option (eg: last ship standing, damaged/surrendered)

 

You can not board an armed ship at sea anyway, an unarmed yes but not anything remotely like an warship, this would require helicopters who is over 10 times faster than the ship. from the sea it only work if crew is unarmed like the ones taken by Somali pirates.
Now try to hover an helicopter over a ship with AAA guns. 
This would obviously be far harder in space for one the engine is an effective close range weapon and if you blow up the engine the ship will not be able to brake at destination. 

You can get an ship to surrender and this is much easier, they enemy just has to know that you can both outgun and overtake them and if they surrender they become prisoners of war or better while if they refuse they would be blown up, would work well if both parts was rational. 

But as you say this is unlikely to be an option as relative speed will be high and this is an huge advantage during the fight, an missile speed will get your speed added so it will spend an shorter time in the kill zone, you could even use low speed and hard to detect stuff and it will still come in fast. Kinetic weapons get more efficient. 
 

[DAL59]

Dinosaurs would not be useful to the military.  There is a reason we don't use lions and crocodiles in the military.  

[mikegarrison]

8 hours ago, DAL59 said:

There is a reason we don't use lions and crocodiles in the military.  

(As far as you know, anyway....)

[Bill Phil]

9 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Dinosaurs would not be useful to the military.  There is a reason we don't use lions and crocodiles in the military.  

Morale. Or psychogical warfare.

I mean, if I was fighting a T-Rex, or even something worse, appeared, I would probably give up.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Morale. Or psychogical warfare.

I mean, if I was fighting a T-Rex, or even something worse, appeared, I would probably give up.

Military has weapons who can kill stuff way harder to kill than an T-Rex such as tanks, as its huge its hard to miss. 

[ARS]

The only animal that's ever useful in military is probably just dogs (and formerly, pigeons)