Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[Guest]

On 11/12/2020 at 1:03 PM, ARS said:

Stealth:

3. Diving vertically at 2070 knots (roughly mach 3.1,  for comparison MiG-31 is mach 2.83) before opening the bomb bay doors would certainly mess up the aerodynamic, and at that speed, the Talon should've disintegrated from the sheer sudden drag induced by such action

I don't think opening the internal bays would be that much of a problem in this regime, the real joke in that scene is the mind-boggling g-force that would be required to pull out of the dive without crashing. Even considering that there's some fantastic technology that lets him pull 20G:

a = V²/R

R = V²/a

V = 1065 m/s

R = (1065²)/(20*9.8067)

R = 5782 m or about 19000 ft turn radius

And by eye, you can tell he's nowhere high enough for the maneuver.

I've watched the movie a few years back, there's also the generic dogfight problems that every action movie seems to struggle with getting right. Had some laughs when I first saw EDI's wing geometry also

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

T-800 did an eye self-surgery, so probably his actuators arer enough precise to need no additional torque limiter, but hee tried to be a human.

So, first smiling, then using the torque wrench.

Next step would be putting toilet seats vertically, even when it doesn't need them at all.

Why is it that I die a little every time you post?

Edited November 16, 2020 by Guest

[starcaptain]

In the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Adolf Hitler has a secret base on the surface of Venus. Not only  are there routine missions to and from this base, but it is possible to navigate on the surface using a fabric spacesuit that has zippers.

[snip]

Edited November 19, 2020 by Vanamonde

[AngrybobH]

On 11/14/2020 at 9:18 AM, Kerbart said:

I never thought that. The moment the T-800 is fixing the car together with John Conner and is asking for a torque wrench, all credibility went out of the window.

Credibility went out the window, for me, when he was tightening a starter on a Ford truck from underneath like you would a Chevrolet starter. Ford starter bolts are parallel to the crankshaft.

[ARS]

6 hours ago, starcaptain said:

In the game Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Adolf Hitler has a secret base on the surface of Venus. Not only  are there routine missions to and from this base, but it is possible to navigate on the surface using a fabric spacesuit that has zippers.

The real joke here is, WHAT IN THE HELL (pun intended) YOU'RE BUILDING A BASE ON VENUS!? I get it with the moonbase on the previous game because moon is Earth's closest neighbor and it's low gravity is at least useful for assisting further space mission in terms of logistic and launch infrastructure, but a freakin' Venus!!? There's nothing to mine there, no resources except corrossive sulphuric acid, building infrastructure is a nightmare, and it has no strategic importance at all since the 3rd reich is pretty much controlling the space. It's just a huge money sink with no actual benefit. I get it that ODIN codes are certainly at the same level of importance as nuclear missile codes, but to build a base in Venus just for that!?

[Spacescifi]

12 minutes ago, ARS said:

The real joke here is, WHAT IN THE HELL (pun intended) YOU'RE BUILDING A BASE ON VENUS!? I get it with the moonbase on the previous game because moon is Earth's closest neighbor and it's low gravity is at least useful for assisting further space mission in terms of logistic and launch infrastructure, but a freakin' Venus!!? There's nothing to mine there, no resources except corrossive sulphuric acid, building infrastructure is a nightmare, and it has no strategic importance at all since the 3rd reich is pretty much controlling the space. It's just a huge money sink with no actual benefit. I get it that ODIN codes are certainly at the same level of importance as nuclear missile codes, but to build a base in Venus just for that!?

 

This is so absurd that this is obligatory:

 

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

WHAT IN THE HELL (pun intended) YOU'RE BUILDING A BASE ON VENUS!? I

It's the only place where neighbors, colleagues, and relatives can't get you.

[Spacescifi]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It's the only place where neighbors, colleagues, and relatives can't get you.

 

Um...true that.

Unless they nuke it.

Given the atmospheric pressure....the shockwave would be EPIC.

[wumpus]

15 hours ago, ARS said:

The real joke here is, WHAT IN THE HELL (pun intended) YOU'RE BUILDING A BASE ON VENUS!? I get it with the moonbase on the previous game because moon is Earth's closest neighbor and it's low gravity is at least useful for assisting further space mission in terms of logistic and launch infrastructure, but a freakin' Venus!!? There's nothing to mine there, no resources except corrossive sulphuric acid, building infrastructure is a nightmare, and it has no strategic importance at all since the 3rd reich is pretty much controlling the space. It's just a huge money sink with no actual benefit. I get it that ODIN codes are certainly at the same level of importance as nuclear missile codes, but to build a base in Venus just for that!?

To train your dinosaur cavalry!  If we are going back to pre-1960s  understanding of Venus, you have to include the dinosaurs popularly expected.  It was covered in clouds and believed to be jungle, and assumed more primitive than Earth, so they must have dinosaurs!

[derega16]

Well, the whole Wolfenstein frenshire is living, breathing on stupid jetpack hitler trope. Just venus base is very tame.

Edited November 17, 2020 by derega16

[YNM]

16 hours ago, ARS said:

The real joke here is, WHAT IN THE HELL (pun intended) YOU'RE BUILDING A BASE ON VENUS!?

It's the perfect place for the advanced human society to live beyond other mere unworthy mortals !


(yes, the urge to put more 'proper' terms in here is really strong, but I bet all corks would've been off then.)

Edited November 17, 2020 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

To train your dinosaur cavalry!  If we are going back to pre-1960s  understanding of Venus, you have to include the dinosaurs popularly expected. 

And amazons.

Spoiler

They couldn't even expect that instead of these trivial things, a lot of sulfic acid for free.

[The_Stinky_Broccoli]

contact.

the fact that aliens got the first radio signals from humans is stupid. they did not travel anywhere near that far.

[RealKerbal3x]

17 minutes ago, epicfailure2020 said:

contact.

the fact that aliens got the first radio signals from humans is stupid. they did not travel anywhere near that far.

If you think about it, the Germans in the 1930s probably produced the first signals strong enough to continue into space. That's almost 90 years ago, which means that radio signals travelling at the speed of light would have reached almost 90 light years away in that time.

That's a sphere 180 light years in diameter centring on Earth, which would have a volume of 3.05x10⁶ cubic light years (and that's not factoring in how the sphere is getting bigger all the time as the signals spread out from Earth at the speed of light). Obviously the story has to assume that there's an intelligent civilisation somewhere in that sphere, but since we've never received a transmission whose source is unambiguously an intelligent civilisation we have no way of knowing if there is a system within that distance that hosts intelligent life. Contact only guesses - that's the only thing we can do when talking about alien life - and as far as I can tell it makes a pretty good guess.

[The_Stinky_Broccoli]

it is possible assuming that the aliens have radio equipment and happened to have it on and be in the right place when the signal reached them. and that's excluding space anomalies that could have dampened the signal or stopped it entirely.

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by epicfailure2020

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, epicfailure2020 said:

it is possible assuming that the aliens have radio equipment and happened to have it on and be in the right place when the signal reached them. and that's excluding space anomalies that could have dampened the signal or stopped it entirely.

 

Its an limit on how weak an signal can be picked up because signal to noise level, an planetary sized radio telescope would not help you at this level. 
Main issue with earlier radio was that it was designed to bounce off the atmosphere for longer reach. 
TV signals had to be on an higher frequency and would pass trough, however the transmission was just some kW who would be hard to pick up over light years. 
Now directed signals like radar will travel very far as they are an narrow beam so we generated lots of wow signals  
 

[kerbiloid]

They anyway have a wrong PAL/SECAM decoder.

[DAL59]

Veritasium's recent video on asteroids was bad, and even worse he's a trusted science communicator.  We absolutely could deflect a 10 km asteroid with 5 years warning, and have had the capacity to do so for many years.  He points out that because asteroids are so massive, it would take "a century" to move them.  However, what he fails to realize is that in space distances you only need a 1m/s change to divert the trajectory by 30,000 km a year.  He also just brushes over the proposed solar sail solution because we've supposedly never made them before... except we have.  Many groups of astronomers and engineers do not at all share the guy he interviewed views.  As for the nuke solution, he correctly points out that blowing up an asteroid would merely cause it to reform- except that in real life nukes would be deployed near an asteroid or on a hard part of its surface to propel it with the explosion project orion style, not to blow it up directly.

[kerbiloid]

Orion propulsion is not a moving a thing with a close boom. It's a pushing it with a specially shaped charge producing a narrow jet of tungsten plasma.

Edited December 5, 2020 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

3 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Veritasium's recent video on asteroids was bad, and even worse he's a trusted science communicator. 

Sounds like he went full fearmongerer instead. I'm wondering on whose behalf he did this.

[kerbiloid]

Depends on the asteroid velocity.

If it's a NEO, no problem, they're slow and sleepy.

But if it's a burnt-out comet, unlikely it's possible to intercept on opposition pass at tens km/s velocity.

Even with a nuke the appropriate distance of explosion would be not greater kilometer, so the detonation time accuracy should be in milliseconds.

[cubinator]

A lot of asteroids we could also paint white, and allow solar photon pressure to move the asteroid out of the danger zone (which is usually a hoop only a few tens or hundreds of kilometers across)

[kerbiloid]

Not just one exact movie, but a common case.

A damaged abandoned ship drifts in space in a cloud of debris.
And the debris are motionless relative to the ship.
(See Expanse s05e02, the very beginning. _{I hope, a destroyed ship drifting in space is not a spoiler in this series, lol.}).

How can it be? They were thrown away, and keep together only due to orbiting the same barycenter (which is inside the ship as the heaviest among them).
Nothing has stopped them.

So they should not just be motionlessly hanging.  They should be quickly flying by close to the ship in perishipsis (perishipion?) and almost freeze  at the aposhipsis (aposhipion?).
And their orbital planes should be more or less uniform, as they were thrown away by a radially symmetrical explosion.

So, approaching to that ship should not be that calm and simple. Actually it would be like a passing through a cloud of artillery shell debris.

[cubinator]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

Not just one exact movie, but a common case.

A damaged abandoned ship drifts in space in a cloud of debris.
And the debris are motionless relative to the ship.
(See Expanse s05e02, the very beginning. _{I hope, a destroyed ship drifting in space is not a spoiler in this series, lol.}).

How can it be? They were thrown away, and keep together only due to orbiting the same barycenter (which is inside the ship as the heaviest among them).
Nothing has stopped them.

So they should not just be motionlessly hanging.  They should be quickly flying by close to the ship in perishipsis (perishipion?) and almost freeze  at the aposhipsis (aposhipion?).
And their orbital planes should be more or less uniform, as they were thrown away by a radially symmetrical explosion.

So, approaching to that ship should not be that calm and simple. Actually it would be like a passing through a cloud of artillery shell debris.

I imagine that any ship which has stuff orbiting it is small enough that orbital speed is low, and objects moving at centimeters or meters per second would be orbital. Unless we're talking moon-sized battle stations...Just a little mention of 'bringing the shields up' for the smaller pieces would be the most that's needed plot-wise.

Probably a ship that was destroyed a long time ago should not have any debris around it at all, because all of it should have drifted thousands or millions of kilometers apart under negligible influence from ship's own gravity.

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, cubinator said:

I imagine that any ship which has stuff orbiting it is small enough that orbital speed is low, and objects moving at centimeters or meters per second would be orbital. Unless we're talking moon-sized battle stations..

Well, probably yes, the speeds would be low.

But  anyway they should drift around the ship in chaotic planes.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Not just one exact movie, but a common case.

A damaged abandoned ship drifts in space in a cloud of debris.
And the debris are motionless relative to the ship.
(See Expanse s05e02, the very beginning. _{I hope, a destroyed ship drifting in space is not a spoiler in this series, lol.}).

How can it be? They were thrown away, and keep together only due to orbiting the same barycenter (which is inside the ship as the heaviest among them).
Nothing has stopped them.

So they should not just be motionlessly hanging.  They should be quickly flying by close to the ship in perishipsis (perishipion?) and almost freeze  at the aposhipsis (aposhipion?).
And their orbital planes should be more or less uniform, as they were thrown away by a radially symmetrical explosion.

So, approaching to that ship should not be that calm and simple. Actually it would be like a passing through a cloud of artillery shell debris.

I say its more an issue that even if speed difference was just 10 cm/s distance will be close to an km after a day in interplanetary space, in LEO it would stay more or less in the same orbit but would spread out. 
If the energy was higher say an explosion derbies would be too far away after an day to be much of an danger