Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I believe you mean The Aeronauts.

Yeah that's another thing that bothers me in general when people talk about balloons. "X team sends research to the edge of space on a balloon!" "X person sends garlic bread to the edge of space on a balloon!" Sure it's a black sky and the horizon is curved, but if you can use a balloon, it's not the edge of space. The highest balloons get to something like 30% or 40% of the way to space. The only kind of vehicle that's going to get 80% or 90% is a rocket.

[benzman]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I believe you mean The Aeronauts.

Sorry.  Bit of a Freudian slip.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

Yeah that's another thing that bothers me in general when people talk about balloons. "X team sends research to the edge of space on a balloon!" "X person sends garlic bread to the edge of space on a balloon!" Sure it's a black sky and the horizon is curved, but if you can use a balloon, it's not the edge of space. The highest balloons get to something like 30% or 40% of the way to space. The only kind of vehicle that's going to get 80% or 90% is a rocket.

100 000 years ago the space starts at the tree tops, so it's a progress.

[Superfluous J]

On 8/8/2020 at 12:05 AM, mrfox said:

He decided crop blight to be the reason to abadon the planet not because it made sense, but because he had a thing for the depression era dust bowl imagery.

Yeah like how the Dust Bowl made everybody move out of the American farmland to Antarctica.

Sorry personal pet peeve about the movie. Not one thing they did to get people to a space station orbiting Saturn couldn't have been done cheaper, easier, and on a massively larger scale by just staying on Earth.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Sorry personal pet peeve about the movie. Not one thing they did to get people to a space station orbiting Saturn couldn't have been done cheaper, easier, and on a massively larger scale by just staying on Earth.

Yeah, the entire plot was awful.

[DDE]

For All Mankind, you had one job!

 

[adsii1970]

Okay, its time for full disclosure about my tastes in sci-fi. Just like everyone else, I really enjoy movies like The Martian, Interstellar, and any of the Star Wars and Star Trek movies. It's also no surprise to my family when I crank up Amazon Prime, Hulu, and BritBox to watch sci-fi television shows (Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, etc). But one of my guilty pleasures is watching really, really bad sci-fi that's either Mystery Science 3000 or Svengoolie worthy. Movies such as The Robot versus the Aztec Mummy. Sure, it's so bad it's laughable. And people once paid money to go see this monstrosity of a movie which contains very bad special effects, horrible character dialogue, and a lot of over-acting. But, then again, it's campy and fun...

 

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

people once paid money to go see this monstrosity of a movie which contains very bad special effects, horrible character dialogue, and a lot of over-acting. But, then again, it's campy and fun...

I suspect it's more likely that they paid to go make out in their car at the drive-in, and it really didn't matter too much which movie was playing.

[tater]

7 hours ago, DDE said:

For All Mankind, you had one job!

Yeah, they jumped the shark in S2 apparently. I was hoping it was headed towards a sensible alternate history. Seeing the real Shuttle even exist in that timeline means it's pretty useless to bother with going forward—they had a production line for Saturn LVs, and they ended with Sea Dragon, Shuttle as designed in RL should not make sense. There were other designs predicated on rapid flight rates that they could have done, instead.

[DDE]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Yeah, they jumped the shark in S2 apparently.

Didn't watch, but came across an interesting essay.

https://thespacereview.com/article/3895/1

Quote

But what are the downsides of continuing the space race? The show hasn’t really depicted any. However, if Apollo had continued and spent even more money, that money would have had to come from somewhere. Did it come out of domestic programs? Did a more progressive America get the ERA and female astronauts and even a black woman on the Moon but then see Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs gutted to pay for it? Instead of the Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space we get a superpower standoff on the Moon. Would continuing the space race and extending superpower competition to the lunar surface have also made the Cold War hotter? Maybe Vietnam ended, but Central America boiled over even sooner than it happened in reality.

So far, the show has not explored this issue in any depth, perhaps because it is a murky one little studied or understood in our reality. The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz handshake in space did not prevent the Soviets from invading Afghanistan four years later. It is unclear that twenty years of US-Russian cooperation on the International Space Station has had any effect on how the two countries relate to each other in foreign policy. If the space race had continued as shown in For All Mankind, is there any reason to believe that international relations would have changed in any significant way?

This leads to a more direct question: what would this continued space race have done to the space program itself? Would it have cost anything? Anything we would have regretted?

In 1996, Stephen Baxter published Voyage, a novel depicting an alternative history where John F. Kennedy survives assassination and the Apollo program continues and transforms, with NASA eventually sending astronauts to Mars. But unlike For All Mankind, in Voyage the space agency pays a price. Its space science program is wiped out. There is no Viking program, no Pioneer Venus, no Pioneers 10 and 11 or Voyagers 1 and 2 to the outer solar system, and no Hubble Space Telescope. Humans walk on Mars, but they know far less about their own solar system, or the mind-boggling universe around them. Would space enthusiasts have found that price acceptable? Considering that for many enthusiasts their excitement and interest primarily extend to human spaceflight, if not outright astronaut worship, and nothing more, the answer is probably yes. But we would have had no Carl Sagan, no Pillars of Creation, no volcanoes on Io, geysers on Enceladus and Triton, or oceans under the surface of Europa. The sheer wonder of the universe would have been, well, less wondrous.

For All Mankind is the romanticized counterfactual myth, whereas Baxter’s Voyage is the realist counterfactual myth. The danger of the romanticized counterfactual myth is that it perpetuates belief in things that just aren’t true. Facing the reality head-on has more value, because it forces us to do so when we think about current events and current choices. But the romanticized myth can still be enlightening, because it can show that we’re not prisoners of our biases and our prejudices and we can rise above them. Consider again the situation involving women astronauts in the space program by the early 1970s. By arguing that it was impossible, that it could not happen, we are conceding that American society was too sexist to allow it to happen. By showing a set of events that could allow it to happen, the show is making a case that America can make social progress.

To me this means the series is the other kind of soft science fiction - the one inclined towards softer sciences. This is rather dull for a materialist like myself.

Quote

By the halfway mark of the first season, the focus of the show shifted to the first lunar outpost, a “settlement” called Jamestown on the edge of a crater at the Moon’s south pole where water ice has been found. The Soviet Union has also set up their own outpost, and the two groups eye each other from a distance—or so the Americans think at first. The purpose of these two rudimentary bases is unclear even to the participants. An American general is keenly concerned that the Soviets may be seeking military advantage, although nobody has figured out what the military advantage of a moonbase is even after it has been there for a year. What is clear is that countries are spending a lot of money to support their fragile facilities on the lunar surface, without really understanding why.

What the show also demonstrates is that even achieving the dream of an expanded human space exploration program is not necessarily all that great—and the path from there to Star Trek may be a lot more impossible than we can imagine. By the end of the first season, America has launched Apollo 25, and a post-credits scene jumps to 1983 when the United States is building even bigger rockets in pursuit of bigger ambitions.

The farther away the show gets in time from what actually happened in real life, the less value it will have as a counterfactual thought experiment. But so far, the show has depicted living on the Moon as lonely, boring, psychologically damaging, dangerous, and just plain hard—with no apparent upside, unless the coolness factor of a moonbase is its own reward. For All Mankind may have embraced the utopian space enthusiast ideal of continuing human space exploration beyond low Earth orbit, but it also illustrates a sobering reality, that if you ask the question “what if?” any answer may be unsatisfying.

So it skirts around the really big questions.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

Didn't watch, but came across an interesting essay.

https://thespacereview.com/article/3895/1

To me this means the series is the other kind of soft science fiction - the one inclined towards softer sciences. This is rather dull for a materialist like myself.

So it skirts around the really big questions.

Now you could have two drives, one would be to push the front line into space there it would be mush less costly in lives and civilian damage. Battle of Jutland, one of the largest naval battle in modern times resulted in 8500 dead and no civilian killed. 
It was still an turning point in the war, Germany wanted to get it surface fleet out into the Atlantic to cut off UK supply lines and try to open the German supply lines. 
Second is resources, yes its an thing now and its kind of an race for staking Shackleton crater 
But back in the 70s it was an real fear of running out out resources so solution was to grab more. 
And the T-rex in the room is ABM, now 1970 is a bit early but it would been an major driver later on. 

Now this bring me back to my earlier topic, build Starship in 1970, yes its RP1 first stage and probably hydrogen second forget close cycle. 
I want 20 ton to leo and rapid reuse, 18 meter is an option. 

Now orion battleships is also an option. yes then you jump Reagan firing an machine gun with riding on an raptor riding an shark with an laser gun. 
So delay until season 3  

[kerbiloid]

Depends on which one of the Orions all of you mean.

[DDE]

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

forget close cycle

*laughs in Glushko*

*wheezes in Kuznetsov*

[kerbiloid]

38 minutes ago, DDE said:

*laughs in Glushko*

*wheezes in Kuznetsov*

Makeev bets on both colors, just in case.

Edited August 12, 2020 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Makeev bets on both colors, just in case.

Yeah, I forgot about Isayev.

[Codraroll]

On 8/10/2020 at 11:35 PM, kerbiloid said:

Away.
Hillary Swank is great herself, but almost always is starring in dull dramas, so it was clear from trailer.

Isn't she a bit of a walking spoiler, like Sean Bean? She is the sort of actor called in when the main character does something dramatic and heartwarming and then dies. Three guesses as to how Away will end.

[kerbiloid]

Exactly.

Another one is Michael Biehn. His characters (Terminator, Aliens, etc) will either die or be hardly wounded and nearly alive.

[derega16]

On 8/11/2020 at 1:13 PM, adsii1970 said:

 

 

Stroheiem VS The Pillar men (decolourised)

 

and Honestly apperantly the writer never go to Althernatehistory.com as they already have these two gem of alternate space race
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/eyes-turned-skywards.208954/
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/2001-a-space-time-odyssey-version-2.347087/

And worse the second one do much better in the very same job as the show that is how soviet win moon race and what's next

Edited August 12, 2020 by derega16

[kerbiloid]

Of course somebody should mention the greatest space sci-fi of all times.

Spoiler

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Robot Riot (2020)

When bipedal mecha's walk, they should tilt to prevent falling.

(A B-category cheap heroic mecha combat movie around several cottages. Nothing to watch (imho), just as a background.)

Upd.
One of mechas looks like the Critter Crawler from BD crossed with the upper body of ED209.

Edited August 12, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Gargamel]

On 8/11/2020 at 3:15 AM, DDE said:

For All Mankind, you had one job!

I've been watching season one, enjoying it, but with some unease.   I think I lost it when they had to

Spoiler

take apart the rover wheel, and the hub was a standard car wheel hub, wide and short, not narrow and tallish like the rover wheel.    And how do you even get one of those wheels apart that quickly!?!?  

 

[Bej Kerman]

On 8/11/2020 at 5:58 AM, kerbiloid said:

On 8/11/2020 at 12:00 AM, cubinator said:

Yeah that's another thing that bothers me in general when people talk about balloons. "X team sends research to the edge of space on a balloon!" "X person sends garlic bread to the edge of space on a balloon!" Sure it's a black sky and the horizon is curved, but if you can use a balloon, it's not the edge of space. The highest balloons get to something like 30% or 40% of the way to space. The only kind of vehicle that's going to get 80% or 90% is a rocket.

100 000 years ago the space starts at the tree tops, so it's a progress.

Well, no, not exactly, it doesn't matter how high the apes lob their rocks, space doesn't start at the treetops.

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Well, no, not exactly, it doesn't matter how high the apes lob their rocks, space doesn't start at the treetops.

If define the "space" as "the place where you can't grab something to keep climbing", then the tree tops are the only mark keeping you from the space.

P.S.
-100k aren't really apes, they are sapienses (unless in wide sense)

Edited August 16, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Bej Kerman]

23 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If define the "space" as "the place where you can't grab something to keep climbing"

Which it isn't, but ok

[kerbiloid]

Biohackers (2020, series).

Not that its science is actually bad...
... because there is no science there at all.

Absolutely empty nothing about nobody.
Kinda, what happens in the pavilion when the film crew and actors finished their day and have left the studio, while the extras keep playing instead of them, unaware that the cameraman forgot to switch off the camera.

Edited August 21, 2020 by kerbiloid