Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[DDE]

Just now, tater said:

the SSTO thing

...which for some reason needs a Saturn booster in the opening scene.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

...which for some reason needs a Saturn booster in the opening scene.

But it can make multiple flights to and from some worlds with higher gravity than Earth. For reasons.

But hey, LOVE!

(looked for a barfing kerbal emoji, but no dice)

[intelliCom]

3 minutes ago, tater said:

I want my 2 hours back. I hated all of it except the O'Neill cylinder. Starting with the initial premise, the SSTO thing, the idiotic water world garbage, pretty much everything.

Oh, and the writing, characters, and story.

Also the soundtrack.

Okay, writing, characters, and story is fair criticism.

But the soundtrack? That's a new one, go ahead and explain.

[tater]

1 minute ago, intelliCom said:

But the soundtrack? That's a new one, go ahead and explain.

Glad I was at home, else probably blood would have come from my ears. Was just loud, and louder still, even at home.

[intelliCom]

Just now, tater said:

Glad I was at home, else probably blood would have come from my ears. Was just loud, and louder still, even at home.

I guess the volume on the soundtrack is too loud relative to voices? That doesn't exactly subtract from how the soundtrack is though.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I guess the volume on the soundtrack is too loud relative to voices? That doesn't exactly subtract from how the soundtrack is though.

I didn't pay attention to it as music, maybe it's fine. It just seemed LOUD to me, and I was already annoyed at, well, everything about it. I missed it in the theater, and bought the DVD (bluray, apparently, per page 1) at target for like $10... and felt like it was $10 too much given the time wasted watching it.

 

My initial take is literally on page 1 of this thread, lol

Edited January 12, 2023 by tater

[intelliCom]

11 minutes ago, tater said:

I didn't pay attention to it as music, maybe it's fine. It just seemed LOUD to me, and I was already annoyed at, well, everything about it. I missed it in the theater, and bought the DVD (bluray, apparently, per page 1) at target for like $10... and felt like it was $10 too much given the time wasted watching it.

 

My initial take is literally on page 1 of this thread, lol

Yeah probably poor volume mixing for the film I guess, maybe your speaker system rendered it poorly? Not sure.

To each their own. I like it. There's worse sci fi out there.

[kerbiloid]

On 12/14/2022 at 4:51 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

These pieces look strangely familiar.

Spoiler

This makes to ask:

Spoiler

 

***

33 minutes ago, tater said:

34 minutes ago, Abel Military Services said:

Worst sci-fi I've ever seen. 

Worse than Interstellar? Cool, will not watch.

Old dwellers, who remember the Dwemers, are recalling this forum 8 years ago and the local hype about the outstanding scientific accuracy of Interstellar, especially its mathematical model of black hole image...

Sic transit gloria mundi!

36 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

Okay, remind me how bad of a movie Interstellar is.

It's a good catastrophe thriller in space suits.

For reasons they called it sci-fi.

50% of its success is Gargantua, other 50% is Hans Zimmer.

23 minutes ago, tater said:

31 minutes ago, DDE said:

...which for some reason needs a Saturn booster in the opening scene.

But it can make multiple flights to and from some worlds with higher gravity than Earth. For reasons.

For reason.

The main hero is an old-shool American astronaut, and he can't believe that this bucket with windows can fly without the rocket.

So, they had to take Saturn V from museum to persuade him to fly.

Also, it's a symbol of the Old America made great again after that technical collapse.

27 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

But the soundtrack?

It's a two-hour long videio clip for the soundtrack, yes. With blackjackhole and hook...s.

Spoiler

See, the hooks.

 

26 minutes ago, intelliCom said:

I guess the volume on the soundtrack is too loud relative to voices?

Who needs those wimps screaming?  Zimmer forevah! Especially the "Coward" theme. Can listen it for hours.

[tater]

Closer to when I watched it I thought the rocket was SLS.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Closer to when I watched it I thought the rocket was SLS.

Spoiler

 

 

[tater]

Saturn V, indeed.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Saturn V, indeed.

The things are even worse than seemed.

[Codraroll]

3 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Okay, remind me how bad of a movie Interstellar is.

It has some scientific accuracy problems, but it's miles better than what Star Wars/Trek does.

To repeat a post of mine from a few years ago:

On 8/1/2020 at 7:29 PM, Codraroll said:

My biggest problem with Interstellar was when they went down to that planet deep in the gravity well. To paraphrase the scene:

"This planet is deep within the black hole's gravity field, so an hour on the surface is like 25 years up here in orbit."

"Yes, when we go there for an hour, 25 years will have passed on the ship."

"25 years on the ship, that will be lonely for me, the pilot who has to stay behind in orbit. But you, who go to the surface, will only feel like you've been away for an hour."

"I've also got a Master's degree in physics like the rest of you, and we've been preparing for this mission together for months now, but want to make it clear if we're on the same page here: when an hour passes on this planet's surface, 25 years will have passed elsewhere, right?"

"That's right. One hour on surface, 25 years in space. Anyway, let's go down to the surface and check that beacon that has been sending signals to us for 25 years. I'm sure that means the planet is habitable, otherwise it wouldn't have sent signals for 25 years. It would have stopped broadcasting after, ah, an hour or so."

(They go to the surface)

"Wait, the ship is destroyed, and it happened only recently! I'd say about an hour or so ago! Wow, the astronaut was waiting for us for 25 years, and then disaster happened only right before we arrived!"

"Wait a second ... I just realized! One hour on the surface of this planet is like 25 years outside! The ship has only been here for an hour, even though the signals it broadcasts have been reaching us for 25 years! It was destroyed almost immediately upon landing!"

"Wow, that's quite a revelation! Good thinking! Sadly, it was impossible for us to foresee this. None of us could ever know that when 25 years had passed on the outside, only an hour had passed on this planet. I only ever thought of it, like, the other way around. Anyway, there's a giant tsunami coming, we better go."

(They go back up to the ship)

"Wow, pilot, you look a lot older! What has happened, we have only been away for an hour!"

"For you, it was only an hour. For me it was 25 years."

"Wow, that's crazy. I didn't know! I'm completely surprised!"

[derega16]

5 hours ago, Abel Military Services said:

A Chinese film "Moon Alone"

NEVER LET A KSP PLAYER WATCH THIS

 

Can you elaborate us how? So we don't have to go watch it out of the curiosity. Like Armageddon level bad or worse? Thank you in advance.

Edited January 12, 2023 by derega16

[Nazalassa]

Nobody seems to have noticed that we reached 100 pages of pure bad science in fiction. 100 pages!

That's one big hall of shame.

[kerbiloid]

Bad science is bad in 'rithmetics, too.

[Nuke]

12 hours ago, tater said:

I want my 2 hours back. I hated all of it except the O'Neill cylinder. Starting with the initial premise, the SSTO thing, the idiotic water world garbage, pretty much everything.

Oh, and the writing, characters, and story.

Also the soundtrack.

i admit the plot was a little bit contrived. i feel like they could have solved their food shortage by growing it hydroponically under environmentally controlled conditions. they could have solved their problems without leaving the planet. i also have problems with taking the same soil the same air and the same seed stock, stick it in a concrete centrifuge and get it into space off screen with gravity magic. how do you make that work and not a terrestrial biosphere. and their space ships were op, wonder why they hadnt bothered colonizing mars or the moon. still it was worth watching. 

[Nuke]

12 hours ago, tater said:

But it can make multiple flights to and from some worlds with higher gravity than Earth. For reasons.

But hey, LOVE!

(looked for a barfing kerbal emoji, but no dice)

ive always postulated that it would be better off in the long term to use hydrolox launch vehicles, big ones, potentially big reusable ones. you have a fusion or fission plant powering the electrolysis to crack sea water, you load your rocket, it burns to water, falls back to earth and you have a totally renewable fuel cycle.  launch cadence need only be limited to rocket turnaround and the number of power stations you have to make fuel. so that kind of makes sense, at least until you see what the rangers can do. that is land and take off on multiple planets without refueling. 

12 hours ago, intelliCom said:

Yeah probably poor volume mixing for the film I guess, maybe your speaker system rendered it poorly? Not sure.

To each their own. I like it. There's worse sci fi out there.

im seeing a lot of that in movies these days. whispering actors in one scene and super loud effects or music in the next. i mean its fine in the theater but i wish they would normalize it for the dvd release so i don't have to ride the remote to both parse the dialog and not wake the neighbors at 3am. 

Edited January 12, 2023 by Nuke

[tater]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

For reason.

The main hero is an old-shool American astronaut, and he can't believe that this bucket with windows can fly without the rocket.

So, they had to take Saturn V from museum to persuade him to fly.

Also, it's a symbol of the Old America made great again after that technical collapse.

Somehow I missed that piece of stupid among the rest of the stupid. Still stupid.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Somehow I missed that piece of stupid among the rest of the stupid. Still stupid.

It's not absolutely stupid. In some manner it's wise.

They use Saturn to fly to Saturn. A sympathetic space magic.

(Or they were thinking that Saturn was made to fly to Saturn).

[sgt_flyer]

My own take about interstellar's ranger saturn V takeoff is that while it's engines are very efficient, allowing for several takeoffs and landings, it still has finite expensive & hard to manufacture fuel for it's main engines,  that they won't be able to refuel / renew once launched.

Then the saturn V launch makes much more sense, as it allows them to use poorly efficient kerolox / hydrolox fuel, but very cheap compared to ranger fuel, allowing the ranger to get into orbit with a full fuel tank

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, sgt_flyer said:

My own take about interstellar's ranger saturn V takeoff is that while it's engines are very efficient, allowing for several takeoffs and landings, it still has finite expensive & hard to manufacture fuel for it's main engines,  that they won't be able to refuel / renew once launched.

Then the saturn V launch makes much more sense, as it allows them to use poorly efficient kerolox / hydrolox fuel, but very cheap compared to ranger fuel, allowing the ranger to get into orbit with a full fuel tank

They had enough delta-V for maneuvering and landing/launching at the planet very close to the supermassive black hole.
So, it unlikely was worth of their long-term trip from Earth to Saturn.

[DDE]

16 hours ago, Nuke said:

wonder why they hadnt bothered colonizing mars or the moon

But muh Earth-like atmospheres!

[Spacescifi]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They had enough delta-V for maneuvering and landing/launching at the planet very close to the supermassive black hole.
So, it unlikely was worth of their long-term trip from Earth to Saturn.

I a gonna gang ona limb here and randomly try to support Interstellar by suggesting that maybe.... the rover exhaust was too radioactive to use on Earth?

But that argument falls flat since the astronauts did not bother waiting inside after landing.

[Bej Kerman]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They had enough delta-V for maneuvering and landing/launching at the planet very close to the supermassive black hole.
So, it unlikely was worth of their long-term trip from Earth to Saturn.

The Science of Interstellar explains that the Ranger would have performed gravity assists around numerous neutron stars, and this is evident in the early scripts. Of course, this just padded the runtime that could better be spent on looking at the characters, the real meat of any story.