Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I don't recall the specific coffee thing

s01e01 22:22
Holden crushes the head of a match with a token and pours the powder into coffee.
Lack of sulfur? Chlorates? Grated glass?

(Btw ten minutes earlier he asks the doctor if he has some (Zed Pro or so), but he offers him a packet with some white powder instead, but Holden rejects. Addicred to Zed Pro (?) and matches.)

Why at all do they smoke onboard? Why a captain doesn't open airlocks to vent away the smoke with the smokers? It's a spaceship, btw, couldn't they use gums, patches or so, to indulge their vice?

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

In terms of medicine

I mean if a poor mover gets an arm prosthesis for free and claims for a better one, why beltaloda don't get even that bone-strengthening drink which they blame the detective for ?
(Something like "when he was a child, he was getting that syrup to make the bones denser", s01e01 09:09).
 

22:47 A big brazen rat right on a workstation. Eaten wires? Accurate control of the spaceship mass? Sanitary? No, they haven't heard about that.
(Though I'm not surprised looking at those herds of pigs in space uniform littering everywhere with food and ash.)

Edited February 9, 2018 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

s01e01 22:22
Holden crushes the head of a match with a token and pours the powder into coffee.
Lack of sulfur? Chlorates? Grated glass?

(Btw ten minutes earlier he asks the doctor if he has some (Zed Pro or so), but he offers him a packet with some white powder instead, but Holden rejects. Addicred to Zed Pro (?) and matches.)

Why at all do they smoke onboard? Why a captain doesn't open airlocks to vent away the smoke with the smokers? It's a spaceship, btw, couldn't they use gums, patches or so, to indulge their vice?

I mean if a poor mover gets an arm prosthesis for free and claims for a better one, why beltaloda don't get even that bone-strengthening drink which they blame the detective for ?
(Something like "when he was a child, he was getting that syrup to make the bones denser", s01e01 09:09).
 

22:47 A big brazen rat right on a workstation. Eaten wires? Accurate control of the spaceship mass? Sanitary? No, they haven't heard about that.
(Though I'm not surprised looking at those herds of pigs in space uniform littering everywhere with food and ash.)

I already answered about the coffee. It was about the taste. That wasn't really coffee, it was a substitute. Somewhere along the line he found out he could make it taste more like coffee by crushing matches into it.

As for smoking, if they can take a lethal dose of radiation and still control the resulting cancer, then I guess a little smoking won't kill them either.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

As for smoking, if they can take a lethal dose of radiation and still control the resulting cancer, then I guess a little smoking won't kill them either.

I don't care about their health more than they do themselves. I'm about the fire and ash.

Btw and about the liquids in the control room of a spaceship where zero-G can happen any time.

Edited February 9, 2018 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

2 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

I don't care about their health more than they do themselves. I'm about the fire and ash.

Btw and about the liquids in the control room of a spaceship where zero-G can happen any time.

Send them an email and tell them they are doing it wrong. I'm sure they will appreciate the advice.

[kerbiloid]

Just now, mikegarrison said:

Send them an email and tell them they are doing it wrong. I'm sure they will appreciate the advice.

Done.

[mrfox]

How about the movie Sunshine?

Like interstellar - such an interesting premise, if they could've only come up with a slightly more plausible plot device, and a little more care and attention on the science and physics...

Like interstellar - so much story potential presented in the first half - but all wasted at the second half by sterotypical hollywood tropes.

What really grinds me about these two movies was that I was really excited about seeing them when they came out - what a shame.

[YNM]

2 hours ago, mrfox said:

Like interstellar - such an interesting premise, if they could've only come up with a slightly more plausible plot device, and a little more care and attention on the science and physics...

More like The Core mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

The Sun will brighten as it ages, not going dimmer.

Restarting fusion in a star core (that's 700,000 km from the surface for the Sun) with fission/fusion bomb ? Ha, haha, ha...

 

Interstellar is bad through the lack of justifiable engineering - the astrophysics is near solid, and while there's a plot device it's done at a place/point where current ones give up anyway, so goof placement. It also has an uncommon kind of romance for the story. It's also bad for being praised as "entirely good" while it's not really.

[Green Baron]

On 2.2.2018 at 11:28 AM, kerbiloid said:

This is Love, and it really does. What's wrong with it?

Everything.

Doesn't even work over the room. She thinks you love her but you are thinking about how to contact the new pretty neighbour girl/boy. Or, you feel deeply in love and the one beside you misinterpretes the pheromones and starts to flirt.

Nay, just hollywood style stereotypes, in the movie as well as above :-) Life doesn't work that way.

[kerbiloid]

25 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Doesn't even work over the room. She thinks you love her but you are thinking about how to contact the new pretty neighbour girl/boy. Or, you feel deeply in love and the one beside you misinterpretes the pheromones and starts to flirt.

Did you even see the movie? Coopers are father and daughter, what "flirt", what "girl/boy"?

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Did you even see the movie? Coopers are father and daughter, what "flirt", what "girl/boy"?

2 times. No need to get annoyed :-)

What i want to say is that (independently of the relationship) love is a chemical reaction in a single individual and is limited to that individual. The subject of that feeling doesn't necessarily feel the same or even answer that feeling. And there is no spooky distance effect. The daughter might have totally forgotten about her father once he was gone, or the other way round. Some misguided individuals (including me) even fall in love with things like cars, computers, ships, .... do these things respond to that affection ? The "love" thing in the movie is just for the story.

Also, "thinking as a species" does not work. Evolution has taken care of it, individuals choose the easier way to get to by, except for a few martyrs or terrorists. Archaeology has told us that no generation ever felt responsible for their children. The whole climate change today thing fits perfectly in the picture of evolutionary selfishness.

But i don't want to stray too far, in my opinion "love" has no effect beyond the body of the so affected. But it is good for a moving movie story line :-)

Edited February 12, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

24 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

love is a chemical reaction

Love to chess as well?

Do not confuse abstract mental activities (including love) with corresponding hormonal activities in your body. There is no special hormone for love. Mechanicism was in trend in early 1920s.

Here (in  Interstellar) love means a personal predictability.

28 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

The daughter might have totally forgotten about her father once he was gone, or the other way round. Some misguided individuals (including me) even fall in love with things like cars, computers, ships, .... do these things respond to that affection ? The "love" thing in the movie is just for the story.

So, a police should wait a criminal not at his lover's home, but somewhere on beach because it's more comfortable?
So, a criminal should not take a relative as a hostage because who cares about them?
They do all wrong.

30 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Evolution has taken care of it,

Evolution takes care of nothing. It's a statistical process.

32 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Also, "thinking as a species" does not work. Evolution has taken care of it, individuals choose the easier way to get to by, except for a few martyrs or terrorists. Archaeology has told us that no generation ever felt responsible for their children. The whole climate change today thing fits perfectly in the picture of evolutionary selfishness.

I have to remark here that using archaeology-old habits and models in modern life is not a very good idea and can cause archaeological reactions like imprisonment (i.e. official temporary enslavement).

The story here is about two persons: father and daughter Cooper.
There is also "nostalgy" word. When a human visits the town of his/her childhood, he/she often visits the known places, not for practical reasons. Just like here.
It's strange to really explain this.

[ARS]

I found this sentence, in a background material for a sci-fi story, can anyone say is this making any sense?

"The immense spherical object is a massive self-sustaining space city/ colony ship, intended to carry a whole generation of colonist to a distant planet. Due to the bulk of the ship's mass, it's engine is not powerful enough to give it any appreciable thrust, even though it's very fuel-efficient and reliable. It takes roughly hundreds of years to travel a distance comparable to earth-saturn mission. When arriving on a habitable planet, the engine is used for planetary landing and terraforming landing site terrain to fit for habitation and conversion of ship into a permanent city"

An engine that's very poor in thrust is good enough for planetary landing? We're talking about an object the size-weight of 1/4 of death star here

[p1t1o]

 

14 minutes ago, ARS said:

I found this sentence, in a background material for a sci-fi story, can anyone say is this making any sense?

"The immense spherical object is a massive self-sustaining space city/ colony ship, intended to carry a whole generation of colonist to a distant planet. Due to the bulk of the ship's mass, it's engine is not powerful enough to give it any appreciable thrust, even though it's very fuel-efficient and reliable. It takes roughly hundreds of years to travel a distance comparable to earth-saturn mission. When arriving on a habitable planet, the engine is used for planetary landing and terraforming landing site terrain to fit for habitation and conversion of ship into a permanent city"

An engine that's very poor in thrust is good enough for planetary landing? We're talking about an object the size-weight of 1/4 of death star here

It only makes sense if their definition of "habitable" includes milli-gee surface gravity.

If I assume that the passengers are not necessarily human and they are travelling to the outer planets to find "habitable" worlds, where the smaller of the gas-giants moons might have very light surface gravity, then it could make sense.

If the context is significantly different from that, then yeah its garbage.

Edited February 12, 2018 by p1t1o

[ARS]

12 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

 

It only makes sense if their definition of "habitable" includes milli-gee surface gravity.

If I assume that the passengers are not necessarily human and they are travelling to the outer planets to find "habitable" worlds, where the smaller of the gas-giants moons might have very light surface gravity, then it could make sense.

If the context is significantly different from that, then yeah its garbage.

Well, they are humanoid aliens, but their definition of habitable is similar to humans (1G planet, atmosphere, oxygen within minimal habitation threshold, water) and their posture is like Navi in Avatar movie. In fact, their ship is occasionally crewed by humans too

[p1t1o]

5 minutes ago, ARS said:

Well, they are humanoid aliens, but their definition of habitable is similar to humans (1G planet, atmosphere, oxygen within minimal habitation threshold, water) and their posture is like Navi in Avatar movie. In fact, their ship is occasionally crewed by humans too

Oh I've thought of some other things.

We're automatically assuming a powered descent, but its not completely out of scope for a very large spherical craft to have a very low overall density, so that it could "float" in an atmosphere and not require much in the way of "landing" engines.

But Im reaching here...

[Superfluous J]

59 minutes ago, ARS said:

"The immense spherical object is a massive self-sustaining space city/ colony ship, intended to carry a whole generation of colonist to a distant planet. Due to the bulk of the ship's mass, it's engine is not powerful enough to give it any appreciable thrust, even though it's very fuel-efficient and reliable. It takes roughly hundreds of years to travel a distance comparable to earth-saturn mission. When arriving on a habitable planet, the engine is used for planetary landing and terraforming landing site terrain to fit for habitation and conversion of ship into a permanent city"

My problem is, 100 years for Earth-Saturn means an appreciable fraction of a million to get to Alpha Centauri. And that's using Star Wars type flight where you aim at something and burn. Realistically speaking, if it took you 100 years to get to Saturn from Earth, half or so of that would be periapsis kicking yourself out of Earth's SOI, and the other half burning your Ap to Saturn from Sun Pe, again via multiple kicks at Pe. I have no idea what that would mean for an interstellar ship, but geez that's crazy.

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

It's strange to really explain this.

Signed and stamped

gb

:-)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

"The immense spherical object is a massive self-sustaining space city/ colony ship, intended to carry a whole generation of colonist to a distant planet. Due to the bulk of the ship's mass, it's engine is not powerful enough to give it any appreciable thrust, even though it's very fuel-efficient and reliable. It takes roughly hundreds of years to travel a distance comparable to earth-saturn mission. When arriving on a habitable planet, the engine is used for planetary landing and terraforming landing site terrain to fit for habitation and conversion of ship into a permanent city"

Maybe like in KSPI-E mod, their engine can give either high ISP low thrust or low ISP high thrust. The former for cruising, the latter for landing.

As this is a colony ship maybe the high-thrust mode is a suicide burn for the engine, and can be done only once when they reach the objective.

1 hour ago, ARS said:

We're talking about an object the size-weight of 1/4 of death star here

Afaik Death Star is 110 km in diameter, so ~30 km.

1. At 1 g it would crush itself under its own weight, after crushing the rocks below.
2. If not - its upper part will be out of air.
3. Many of Jupiter/Saturn moons would land on it rather than vice versa.

P.S.
Sphere is not the best solution for this ship.
A cylinder with h=d has almost the same surface area but it's inner volume can be used more effectively.

Edited February 12, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

1 hour ago, ARS said:

Due to the bulk of the ship's mass, it's engine is not powerful enough to give it any appreciable thrust, even though it's very fuel-efficient and reliable. It takes roughly hundreds of years to travel a distance comparable to earth-saturn mission.

I bet this is that alien that a small Earth dog eaten whole.

[ARS]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

My problem is, 100 years for Earth-Saturn means an appreciable fraction of a million to get to Alpha Centauri. And that's using Star Wars type flight where you aim at something and burn. Realistically speaking, if it took you 100 years to get to Saturn from Earth, half or so of that would be periapsis kicking yourself out of Earth's SOI, and the other half burning your Ap to Saturn from Sun Pe, again via multiple kicks at Pe. I have no idea what that would mean for an interstellar ship, but geez that's crazy.

No, this isn't about orbital mechanic, there's not even orbit involved here. There's also no phlebotinum technology like warp drive or hyperspace travel. They simply used that engine to burn directly towards the Saturn from Earth, Constantly. And when they are about to crash into planet, they reorient the ship to point the boosters towards the planet and burn it directly for landing (while reentry)

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Maybe like in KSPI-E mod, their engine can give either high ISP low thrust or low ISP high thrust. The former for cruising, the latter for landing.

As this is a colony ship maybe the high-thrust mode is a suicide burn for the engine, and can be done only once when they reach the objective.

Probably. They didn't specify if the engine has alternate mode or not. Other than being very fuel efficient can run continuously for years but has horrible thrust

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Afaik Death Star is 110 km in diameter, so ~30 km.

1. At 1 g it would crush itself under its own weight, after crushing the rocks below.
2. If not - its upper part will be out of air.
3. Many of Jupiter/Saturn moons would land on it rather than vice versa.

P.S.
Sphere is not the best solution for this ship.
A cylinder with h=d has almost the same surface area but it's inner volume can be used more effectively.

The background material says that they are the race of nomadic alien. And their city is spherical in shape. Half of them above ground, the other half is underground. When they are departing, the whole city is lifted and flies into space. When they are arriving, the whole city lands and the engines.... How can I say it, basically point it towards the ground (while the city is still descending) to progressively create a crater that grows larger and larger the closer the city get to the ground so the whole half of the city will fit neatly into the crater

[p1t1o]

Perhaps engineering principles are the wrong filter to use here.

Maybe they just have really snobby standards, and to them shifting a dwarf-moon-sized spacecraft at 1G is considered paltry.

**edit**

Although...no that doesnt work. At 1G you can get to Saturn very quickly. At a constant 1G you can circumnavigate the observable universe in a few centuries of ship-time due to time-dilation.

Edited February 12, 2018 by p1t1o

[StrandedonEarth]

If the ship’s mass at the start was 95% fuel and it arrived nearly empty, then the TWR might get up to one. Especially if there are buoyancy effects 

[Gargamel]

On 1/30/2018 at 1:58 PM, NSEP said:

If someone ever makes a realistic movie/book about spaceflight that is enjoyable to watch/read, that person deserves millions of dollars, a wonderfull husband/wife, amazing children and a beautiful house.

It's more of a docu-drama, but HBO's From the Earth to the Moon was excellent.  Shows a lot of the inside stories, in drama form, of the Apollo program.  Sadly, on a HD TV, the CGI just didn't age that well.   

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

HBO

Sounds promising...

[KerikBalm]

Oh where to begin with this one...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_(2017_film)

Has it been brought up yet?