Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[ARS]

36 minutes ago, KG3 said:

  One science fiction question I have is about doors.  The use of sliding doors in spaceships seems rather ubiquitous both on TV and in movies.  I've seen them slide horizontally, vertically, diagonally, both for interior doors and air locks.   It seems to me that the only sliding doors I've ever seen in real life have been at the supermarket or in houses going out to the patio.  Does anybody know if a sliding door has ever been used in or proposed for an actual spacecraft?  I'm sure it looks cool on screen and it must make things easier for the set designers and such but could/would they work in a pressurized vessel?   

Sliding doors is not very good at locking/ pressurizing/ sealing the room, especially since the it's far more prone in getting jammed or damaged. The submarine-style airlock door allows you to build a very strong door that can withstand depressurization. It also doesn't require power, so you can open/ close the door when there's no power (imagine your ship is getting hit by EMP, disabling all electronics, then the enemy fired a missile that hit the main reactor. You ordered to abandon ship, but you can't get to the escape pod because sliding door on the bridge cannot be opened) and no, no sliding doors ever used or proposed for real life spaceflight

Edited February 6, 2018 by ARS

[mikegarrison]

40 minutes ago, ARS said:

Sliding doors is not very good at locking/ pressurizing/ sealing the room, especially since the it's far more prone in getting jammed or damaged. The submarine-style airlock door allows you to build a very strong door that can withstand depressurization. It also doesn't require power, so you can open/ close the door when there's no power (imagine your ship is getting hit by EMP, disabling all electronics, then the enemy fired a missile that hit the main reactor. You ordered to abandon ship, but you can't get to the escape pod because sliding door on the bridge cannot be opened) and no, no sliding doors ever used or proposed for real life spaceflight

Submarines are a bad example, because they are designed to keep pressure out. Airplane cabin doors are designed to keep pressure in. They form a plug, and the bigger the pressure differential, the harder they are to open.

If you did want some kind of door that you could open to space and you didn't care about your air escaping, a sliding door might actually be a good choice because it would work the same way if there was a pressure differential versus if there was not. If you do want to make sure your air does not escape, however, a plug door would passively ensure that the door could only be opened when the pressure was nearly equalized.

From what I can tell, the ISS Quest airlock has a plug door that opens inward for the inner door, but a door that opens outward for the outer door.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Unsure why you felt the need to spoiler that, but no that's not how it went.

Just because it was a joke, rather than an assertion.

8 hours ago, monstah said:

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Shoot a timered lasgun inside a force field dome of your opponent's enemy/creditor/lender

So, do the equivalent of a nuke on an unsuspecting bystander, who might have sided up with you?

Not necessary that one would side up with us.
Though, if so, this proves our non-involvement in this dramatic incident. That's obviously your opponent who has attacked your potential ally and his creditor/enemy.

Next step: shoot inside a dome one more timered lasgun somewhere in your opponent's useless boondocks (what definitely won;t cause a serious loss for him) .
Let everybody laugh at your opponent's pathetic provocation, as he is obviously did this himself to look like a victim.

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Best tool would probably be an sharped charge on an stick, think war axe but an charge, head penetrate shield as pretty slow you hit armor and this trigger the charge, this kills or disables the enemy, unless he block. In that chase the charge will not trigger. 

Also smoke grenades, blinding flash/sound shocking grenades. To make the knives usage easier.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Submarines are a bad example, because they are designed to keep pressure out. Airplane cabin doors are designed to keep pressure in.

Airplanes are reverse submarine.

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, ARS said:

2. Would someone please explain how the hell The Pandora, being literally covered by jungle, rainforest, full of green vegetation has so little oxygen in the atmosphere that it's mandatory for humans to wear a mask to breathe?

Maybe because in jungle a dead vegetation gets rotten and eaten in several weeks and thus returns all carbon back to the atmosphere as methane and carbon dioxide.
On the Earth cold boggy forests of Northern hemisphere extract the carbon and bury it as turf, letting the oxygen return back to the air.

Also the Earth ocean contains 140 times more CO2 than the atmosphere. And it also keeps a CO2 balance converting carbonates <-> hydrocarbonates, releasing/extracting the CO2.

Probably Pandora has no such effective oceanic carbonate buffer, and it's covered with jungles rather than cold forests.
So, it has a lot of CO2.
Probably it has a lot of oxygen, too (as the animals are big and fast), but its CO2 level is toxic for humans.

5 hours ago, ARS said:

Unobtainium! The same term (but not the same stuff) used in The Core!

un-obtain-ium

I.e. "something hard to obtain"

Quote

4... 5... 8...

This makes to think that unobtainium is just a legend, and the operation has another objective.

5 hours ago, ARS said:

9. Although they were visually stunning the floating mountains were arguably the most ridiculous features in the entire movie. They were gigantic chunks of real-estate floating in the sky apparently suspended  by some form of magnetic field

... or maybe Pandora in fact is a place of former ET activity causing the unexplained physical phenomena like floating rocks.
So, "magnetic fields" are mentioned just as "nothing to look at here, move on" and "unobtanium" means "something whatever we'll find there".

5 hours ago, ARS said:

high speed counter-rotating propellers contained in large circular shaped pods

Fenestrons.

5 hours ago, wumpus said:

*Ecology* is pretty critical in Dune

What do the worms eat? Where is any kind of vegetation?
Who eats the dead worms? Where are the critters?

4 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Pandora is too hazardous to truly colonize.

Compared to Mars? Full of water, oxygen, trees and animals, warm and sunny?

5 hours ago, ARS said:

8. What's the point of linking a human into a body of Navi? The movie claimed they created that to learn/ observe/ communicate with Navi in order to gain information or negotiate. Why would you communicate with them if you gonna get rid of them entirely anyway? Using drones to spy on them is much more cheaper and cost-effective than creating a Navi body and controlling it wirelessly from afar.

One more idea (an btw why, I think, Avatar is a bright victory of humans rather than Na'Vi).
Sully+Neytiri children will be biologically Na'Vi but culturally halflings. Pa will tell them about the Earth (and I doubt if he will be still liking all this exotics all his life), Ma will be a wife of an alien goblin, so the children will be culturally splitted/mixed.
And as both their parents are authorities, they will probably define further Na'Vi politics, negotiate with humans and so on, even if Na'Vi and humans will keep fighting.
Na'Vi children will be playing "Sully and pterodactyl" and so on.
So, Sully's marriage is a seed of further administration loyal to the Earth.

Edited February 6, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

15 hours ago, monstah said:

... going from 11km to "the size of Texas" is kinda like the jump in size from mother ships in Independence Day and the sequel (which, again, no one mentioned yet. What the hell is up with gravity in that movie? It even forms... vortices??)

I haven't seen the new one (the old one gets on local TV every holiday or so), but how in the hell are they going from city-size to continent size ? Is that the ship that's previously stays in orbit ? (there was the scene where they get into the fallen alien fighter and gets back to the main mothership you know)

5 hours ago, ARS said:

2. Would someone please explain how the hell The Pandora, being literally covered by jungle, rainforest, full of green vegetation has so little oxygen in the atmosphere that it's mandatory for humans to wear a mask to breathe ?

Maybe it's too many oxygen instead ? They're lethal as well.

Or too many CO2.

Whatever, Avatar doesn't scream Sci-Fi to me (maybe I'm always a bit backlashed to the other Avatar everytime I hear it). It doesn't concentrate on the science. I can get why Interstellar get us upset for their rating, but they do scream Sci-Fi up front - hence the claim. Armageddon is an action ripoff of a sci-fi. Haven't seen any other stuff mentioned here so far...

Yeah, I think the most upfront disappointing film I saw was Interstellar. Though I do value the "rare" kind of romance it had taken up.

[Shpaget]

What about George actually holding on to tethered Sandra for several seconds before flying away, but Sandra having no problem getting back to safety?

[kerbiloid]

35 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

What about George actually holding on to tethered Sandra for several seconds before flying away, but Sandra having no problem getting back to safety?

Sandra is stronger than George.

P.S.
Cloverfield Paradox...

Well, at least at last they have shown that cutie from the real original Cloverfield.

But again, gravity and rotation. 07:15, right after title, when a girl wakes up from bed, we can see in the window stars and structures moving from left to right. So the girl should fly from the bed into the window rather than stay on the floor.

Some light point moves from right to left near the down side of the window.

And when a minute later the girl types on keyboard, lights are moving from right to left. Do they reverse rotation every minute?
Also horizontally, i.e. gravity direction points to the window.

And why the whole station rotates when several rings rotate as well?
Does its artificial gravity at all have any definite direction?

And again huge rooms inside a space station.

Those huge lattice fins on the station end. What do they symbolize? Solar panels? Radiators? Drag stabilizers?

Why does the docked reentry capsule has bare heatshield? Have they decoupled its service module?

_{(I like first two Cloverfields much better)}

Edited February 6, 2018 by kerbiloid

[radonek]

6 hours ago, KG3 said:

  One science fiction question I have is about doors.  The use of sliding doors in spaceships seems rather ubiquitous both on TV and in movies.  I've seen them slide horizontally, vertically, diagonally, both for interior doors and air locks.   It seems to me that the only sliding doors I've ever seen in real life have been at the supermarket or in houses going out to the patio.  Does anybody know if a sliding door has ever been used in or proposed for an actual spacecraft?  I'm sure it looks cool on screen and it must make things easier for the set designers and such but could/would they work in a pressurized vessel?   

Space is at premium inside a spacecraft and swinging door need a lot clearance. They are used, but do not look as neat as in movies.
 

Spoiler

 

[YNM]

6 hours ago, KG3 said:

One science fiction question I have is about doors.  The use of sliding doors in spaceships seems rather ubiquitous both on TV and in movies.  I've seen them slide horizontally, vertically, diagonally, both for interior doors and air locks.

 

10 minutes ago, radonek said:

Space is at premium inside a spacecraft and swinging door need a lot clearance.

Yeah, I think only fixed connections will use slide doors or something. Docking ports would use some bulkhead... But what does APAS use ?

[pizzaoverhead]

7 hours ago, KG3 said:

  One science fiction question I have is about doors.  The use of sliding doors in spaceships seems rather ubiquitous both on TV and in movies.  I've seen them slide horizontally, vertically, diagonally, both for interior doors and air locks.   It seems to me that the only sliding doors I've ever seen in real life have been at the supermarket or in houses going out to the patio.  Does anybody know if a sliding door has ever been used in or proposed for an actual spacecraft?  I'm sure it looks cool on screen and it must make things easier for the set designers and such but could/would they work in a pressurized vessel?   

Most hatches tend to be swinging plug doors that lock against the wall when open, but some are removable. The closest thing to a sliding door is the common hatch in the ISS that runs on rails:

 

45 minutes ago, YNM said:

 

Yeah, I think only fixed connections will use slide doors or something. Docking ports would use some bulkhead... But what does APAS use ?

The hatches behnd APAS on Mir and the ISS seem to all be inward-swinging plug-style doors. Inside Kristall on Mir has a lot of inward-opening hatches:

You can see the same in the Zvezda and Zarya modules:

 

[monstah]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

I like first two Cloverfields much better)

There's another one? Didn't know that.

1 hour ago, radonek said:

They are used, but do not look as neat as in movies.

Looks pretty damn sci-fi to me!

[DDE]

On ‎04‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 10:55 PM, NSEP said:

I just realized Star Wars is just fantasy with a space theme to it. I can easily replace all the "Sci-Fi" assets of Star Wars with Fantasy/Medieval assets without destroying the plot. You can't do this with actual Sci-Fi Sci-Fi. The whole plot of Interstellar, Gravity, The Martian, and many other movies revolves around the isolation/dangers/weirdness/unknowns that can only occur in space. Star Wars' plot(s) mainly revolves around the Star Wars universe itself.

To be fair, i haven't watched anything Star Wars yet. But from all the information that has been spoiled i have a rough example of what Star Wars is like.

No, you have to add something else.

On ‎05‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 1:54 AM, IncongruousGoat said:

Well, this thread has already griped a lot about the movie adaptation of The Martian... but what about Weir's other work, Artemis?

There's one specific thing that's bothering me. At one point, a character has to do some oxyacetylene welding in a hard vacuum. Now, (unless I'm mistaken), that would necessitate a welding torch... which shouldn't work in vacuum because the flame would diffuse (think vacuum engine exhaust). No flame means no heat transfer, which means no weld.

Unless I'm mistaken, of course.

Weir, Weir, you were doing so well, and then suddenly, you failed basic research on space welding.

That, my dear Internet friends, is an electron beam welder/cutter on Soyuz-T-12.

[YNM]

41 minutes ago, pizzaoverhead said:

The hatches behnd APAS on Mir and the ISS seem to all be inward-swinging plug-style doors.

Well, I thought the lack of probe-drogue would enable a swing / rolling door... Apparently not it is !

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, monstah said:

There's another one? Didn't know that.

They named it Cloverfield Paradox, but probably Cloverfield: Halflife would be better.

[Bill Phil]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Compared to Mars? Full of water, oxygen, trees and animals, warm and sunny?

Mars is dangerous to colonize as well. Not really any more dangerous, though. Both will kill you in a matter of seconds to minutes if unprotected. Pandora is actually slightly worse due to dangerous wildlife... of which Mars has none.

Also, just because it has water, oxygen, trees, and animals doesn't make it a good place to colonize. For one thing, there's distance. It takes a starship to get there. Another issue is the huge CO2 percentage in the atmosphere. Pandora would require moderate terraforming (even then, still a gargantuan effort for little gain) to be a decent target for colonization.   Mars would require more terraforming, but at least it's in this solar system.

It'd be far better to just build orbital colonies and ignore planets (at least for housing purposes), but that's a discussion for another time.

[mikegarrison]

Thinking about it, I assume the reason that the Quest airlock outer door opens outward is that same reason that many airplane cargo doors open outward. They want the space inside the doorway to be usable for something other than the door. In order to keep the size and weight of the Quest down, then put an outward opening door on the outer lock. But they still retain the positivity of an inner-opening plug door on the inner lock.

Several times the latch has failed on an airplane cargo door and the pressure differential blew the door open. That failure mode is not possible in a plug door.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981

Edited February 6, 2018 by mikegarrison

[radonek]

16 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Mars is dangerous to colonize as well. Not really any more dangerous, though. Both will kill you in a matter of seconds to minutes if unprotected. Pandora is actually slightly worse due to dangerous wildlife... of which Mars has none.

Let's see - does one require pressure suit? No. No prebreathing, no fear of the bends, no troubles with breathing mix toxicity… Gravity? Close to 1G it seems. Temperature? Just fine, no need for thermal control garment, heaters or radiators and all that. Pathogens, microbes? No dangerous chemicals in soil? I mean, come on, even our dear Luna have that. No ionizing radiation? Light spectrum suited for human eye? Seriously,  if you can stick out naked skin, that makes it more welcoming than any body in solar system except our own dirtball. Yes, wild animals are a bit inconvenient before they orderly turn into endangered species, but if outside gear comes down to a breathing mask (and  yes, a gun if you go outside base perimeter), Pandora is no more dangerous then hard depress drill.

Suited Mars walk can probably kill you in more ways then there are dangerous species on whole Pandora. And Mars is a piece of cake compared to, well, any place except the Earth and  a thin layer of Venusian clouds.

17 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Several times the latch has failed on an airplane cargo door and the pressure differential blew the door open. That failure mode is not possible in a plug door.

But that only makes it  different failure mode. Apollo originally had inward opening hatch, but it was changed after the fire.

[p1t1o]

22 hours ago, DDE said:

Weir, Weir, you were doing so well, and then suddenly, you failed basic research on space welding.

That, my dear Internet friends, is an electron beam welder/cutter on Soyuz-T-12.

You google one thing and suddenly all the ads on every site are advertising electron beam welding services...

Does anyone need any electron welding because I can now recommend several places.

[kerbiloid]

Back to Cloverfield Paradox.

Spacesuits look not like pressurized... spacesuits. But there are front and back plates hanging on shoulder strips, like a bulletproof jacket.
... probably, they are these jackets.

A mass of water wouldn't freeze like an ice rock once the lock gets opened.
It would splash out. With everything inside the swimming pool.

Upd.
Cloverfield Paradox would be not just Cloverfield: Halflife, but Cloverfield: Halflife Spore or Halflife: Spore of Cloverfield
See the very end of the movie.

Star Wars.
According to this, Star Wars are going to get a solid scientific background, right from The Citadel.
Archmaester Yoda guarantees this.

Edited February 7, 2018 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Star Wars.
According to this, Star Wars are going to get a solid scientific background, right from The Citadel.
Archmaester Yoda guarantees this.

Is this going to be like a "gritty reboot" a-la batman begins? I can see that happening. 

Im guessing they're just gonna handwave away FTL though, I mean, cos they'd have to.

or TWIST - the "Empire" spans only a single solar system.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea, even if it might start a literal civil war in some places.

[sevenperforce]

Oh, how did I forget Passengers?

The movie itself was a huge let-down, because what was billed in trailers as an exciting "us against the world" drama turned out to be a RIDICULOUSLY creepy stalkerfest in which...

Spoiler

...the lead LITERALLY SENTENCES A WOMAN TO DIE because he becomes obsessed with her and desires to force her to be his companion! And then, through obvious Stockholm Syndrome, she ends up falling in love with him and giving up her chance at life.

Scientifically, there are some positive elements. The whole idea is that it's a big ship where everyone goes into cryosleep for 60 years, or somesuch, on their way to a new terraformed world. A good start. Artificial gravity is provided by rotating the ship, which is this massive double-helix shape...again, a bit showy, but still not bad. There are continuously-firing engines, but I suppose that's some sort of ultra-high-isp-but-low-thrust thing. 

However, when the ship suddenly looses its main power core (due to some sort of thermal overload on the generator), the ship instantly stops rotating. Gravity is switched off like a lightswitch, and everything in the ship starts floating. Including Jennifer Lawrence, inside a big bubble of water. Then, the ship regains power, and gravity snaps back on, and the bubble falls back into the swimming pool (she's in one of the luxury suites) with a massive splash and she swims up to safety.

Two problems -- first, losing power isn't suddenly going to arrest the rotation of the ship. Once it's rotating, it's going to continue rotating. Second, if you were in an olympic-swimming-pool-sized bubble of water that suddenly dropped to the ground from a few meters in the air, you would be dead.

On the flip side, the "hanging on in space" scene is done well.

[p1t1o]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Oh, how did I forget Passengers?

The movie itself was a huge let-down, because what was billed in trailers as an exciting "us against the world" drama turned out to be a RIDICULOUSLY creepy stalkerfest in which...

  Reveal hidden contents

...the lead LITERALLY SENTENCES A WOMAN TO DIE because he becomes obsessed with her and desires to force her to be his companion! And then, through obvious Stockholm Syndrome, she ends up falling in love with him and giving up her chance at life.

Scientifically, there are some positive elements. The whole idea is that it's a big ship where everyone goes into cryosleep for 60 years, or somesuch, on their way to a new terraformed world. A good start. Artificial gravity is provided by rotating the ship, which is this massive double-helix shape...again, a bit showy, but still not bad. There are continuously-firing engines, but I suppose that's some sort of ultra-high-isp-but-low-thrust thing. 

However, when the ship suddenly looses its main power core (due to some sort of thermal overload on the generator), the ship instantly stops rotating. Gravity is switched off like a lightswitch, and everything in the ship starts floating. Including Jennifer Lawrence, inside a big bubble of water. Then, the ship regains power, and gravity snaps back on, and the bubble falls back into the swimming pool (she's in one of the luxury suites) with a massive splash and she swims up to safety.

Two problems -- first, losing power isn't suddenly going to arrest the rotation of the ship. Once it's rotating, it's going to continue rotating. Second, if you were in an olympic-swimming-pool-sized bubble of water that suddenly dropped to the ground from a few meters in the air, you would be dead.

On the flip side, the "hanging on in space" scene is done well.

Another film I actually enjoyed. You just have to treat movies like these as "fantasy" rather than "sci-fi". Same genre as Lord of the Rings or TRON.

My favorite inaccuracy though was when the gravity turns off, what makes all the water leave the pool in the first place?

[kerbiloid]

45 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

However, when the ship suddenly looses its main power core (due to some sort of thermal overload on the generator), the ship instantly stops rotating.

Of course it does. It was screwing into the space aether like a drill (that's why it looks like a spiral).
When they pulled the plug from the outlet, the ship stopped screwing.

Once the electricity appeared, the space drill started rotating again.

49 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

starts floating. Including Jennifer Lawrence, inside a big bubble of water.

Happily they didn't break the hull. They could.

51 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

On the flip side, the "hanging on in space" scene is done well.

Big bubbles in zero-G always look nice.

[DDE]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

You google one thing and suddenly all the ads on every site are advertising electron beam welding services...

Everyone deserves a small particle cannon in their life.