Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[ARS]

James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies: 

Royal Navy frigate fires the cruise missile at the terrorist "flea market", M tells 007 he has four minutes to get clear. The target is 400 miles from the ship. A Tomahawk cruise missile (as shown) has a top speed of about 550 miles per hour. It should have taken the missile about 43minutes to get there. The novelization blows it even more thoroughly, with a Harpoon missile being launched, and traveling 800 miles in 4 minutes 8 seconds. First of all, a Harpoon (an antiship missile) has a maximum range of less than 100 miles, and second, it travels at about the same (determinedly subsonic) speed as the Tomahawk. To do 800 miles in 248 seconds, it would have needed to achieve about 11,600 miles per hour, or about 3.2 miles per second - about half of Earth's escape velocity. Also, any object traveling that fast at low altitude would burn up like a meteor hitting the lower atmosphere - plus what the shock wave effects would do to anything along its path on the ground

Edited February 19, 2018 by ARS

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

11 hours ago, DDE said:

.

 

The MIRV animation is a bad science as is.

The PBV (post-boost vehicle, bus) even doesn't try to navigate, rotate looking at the stars, extend sensors or antennas, or whatever. 
Nothing happens at all for a while. No navigation, no warhead decoupling. It just floats like a stupid piece of iron.
Like a hourglass cursor on screen.
Maybe a computer crash?

But no, at 01:43 it performs a short burn of RCS and starts rotating.
3 seconds later it thinks: "Wait... Why am I rotating so slowly?" and makes another RCS burn in the same direction.
Obviously it has some problems with eye-hand coordination.

At 01:51 it stops rotating just like this, No RCS burn, nothing. Just rotates slower then stops.
It obviously doesn't have any SAS except RCS, say a control moment gyroscope, but it stops.

Right before the full stop, at 01:53 it makes a short pathetic burn with a single RCS engine.
Why do it when the PBV is almost stopped, is not clear.
As the engine was one, rather than two like in previous burns, it should start rotating in a perpendicular plane. But no. It just stops. Well, at least RCS didn't make worse.

Right after it had brutally stopped, with no precise stabilization, PBV starts vomiting decoupling.

At 01:55 it ignites 4 RCS engines. Well, that's clear: it pulls herself back from the decoupled pen(etration)aid device, just like it should be...
...
... and a second later, at 01:56, it ignites the main thruster...!!!111oneone
The maniacal PBV tries to chase and ram into the just separated penaid device! She hates it!
Post-boost vehicle suffers from post-natal depression and tries to chase and kill her baby!

Happily, either an unseen Force pulls it back, or the main thruster has zero thrust, but full throttle doesn't effect the PBV motion at all! She is just continuing floating backwards.

At 02:05 this freak show happens again. It burns four RCS to get backwards at immediately after this - main thruster to move forward.
Undoubtly the RCS brain is badly damaged and suffers from the personality dissociation.
Happily, its main thruster is sick even more and makes no thrust at all.

This strange ritual repeats several times more, without any rerouting between the cargo separations.
So, all warheads and penaid devices will be reentering one-by-one close to each other and burn in fire of the first exploded warhead.
But it doesn't wonder us anymore, as we have already realized that PBV has some bad cerebral damage and takes no responsibility.

At 02:35 we can see both warheads and all six penaid devices entering the atmo.
Btw the penaid devices had been recolored, as originally they were red, now they are gray.
Suddenly they remember this and recolor back to red.
Maybe that's heating? But then why the warheads stay gray?

At 02:50 the penaid devices start undressing. They decouple the lightweight cond... ...itioning envelopes which made them looking like true warheads.
And they ignite the engine which pushes them forward letting lightweight them move as fast as the heavy warhead moves, so they can continue the warhead cosplaying.
Also the exhaust jet cosplays a real warhead heat radiation.
So far, so good.

At 03:04 the warhead starts undressing too. It decouples the same cover which lets her look like a penaid device cosplaying a warhead _{(kinda reverse-trap)}.
But instead of start small LCO₂ nozzles to start rotating it ignites a real big thruster. Probably the warhead is going to outrun the penaids and show'em all who is in charge in family.
Because with this thruster they will heat more and move forward from the cloud of penaid devices, making all these penaids absolutely useless.
6.5 km/s of reenter speed is not enough for the warhead, it cries "gimme moar!" and probably is going to leave the Earth-Moon system rather than fall down staying not melted.

03:47 only the warhead stay not burnt, and they are running one by one, so we can be sure that only one of them will burst, another one should be vaporized by her explosion.

Edited February 19, 2018 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

7 hours ago, ARS said:

James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies

I guess if you're expecting real stuff from a clean action you'd be baffled all the time.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The MIRV animation is a bad science as is.

Laziness, or capability-concealing ?

[Superfluous J]

On 2/17/2018 at 7:52 PM, ARS said:

Ah I see. I thought ICBM was guided instead of using ballistic trajectory

That's actually what the "B" means

[MinimalMinmus]

Lucy: "We only use 10% of our brain, and at 100% we become god or something like that."

Me: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

 

Also, I let a garbled screech in Rogue One, during the final battle, as they are in orbit but they aren't moving compared to the planet under them. AUGH.

Edited February 19, 2018 by MinimalMinmus

[NSEP]

On 17/02/2018 at 12:15 AM, DAL59 said:

Were you expecting otherwise? 

I was expecting a platform for writers to write their stories and readers to read others stories online. I wasn't prepared for what seems like a gigantic teen girl audience that took over de website. 

[mikegarrison]

6 hours ago, MinimalMinmus said:

Also, I let a garbled screech in Rogue One, during the final battle, as they are in orbit but they aren't moving compared to the planet under them. AUGH.

Well, there is one specific orbit for which that is the case.

[MinimalMinmus]

Just now, mikegarrison said:

Well, there is one specific orbit for which that is the case.

Except the whole scene is in low orbit, and there's no real reason for it to be also a stationary one.

[mikegarrison]

5 hours ago, NSEP said:

I was expecting a platform for writers to write their stories and readers to read others stories online. I wasn't prepared for what seems like a gigantic teen girl audience that took over de website. 

I have two words for you: "Mary" "Sue"

[Treveli]

27 minutes ago, MinimalMinmus said:

Except the whole scene is in low orbit, and there's no real reason for it to be also a stationary one.

I would assume repulsorlifts were involved, keeping it up and stationary. The surface base seemed to be the only major facility, so why have the only gate through the shield move.

[DDE]

On ‎16‎.‎02‎.‎2018 at 11:15 PM, NSEP said:

Wattpad is a %^$*# goldmine of complete nonsense when it comes to realism. The Sci-Fi there is 0.1% Sci and 99.9% Fi. Here an example:

Since 2307, boys and girls were seperated, boys went to Mars, girls went to Venus. Seriously, what type of messed up society thinks its a good idea to split men and women by bringing them to seperate worlds? This, type of sci-FI is what floats to the main page.

Also, it seems like all the sci-FI stories that float to the top must have some kind of adolecent/teen girl as main character, that either has to fall in love, be experimented on, or is a superhero. No rockets, no space opera, no space exploration, just teens. Heck, there is another story on the front page that is about a Rainbow Alien who flies around in her rocket to find friends. Seriously, what?

Oh, did you seriously mean THAT Wattpad?

 

[DAL59]

 

Back to science errors: Unlike in previous films, in TLJ, the ship's weapon's are fired up and then arc downward.  

[PB666]

Somehow I don't think one of these video links is going to last very long here. Fanfiction blink.

[kerbiloid]

 

5 hours ago, DAL59 said:

 

(On Vader's chest.)

Who presses these buttons and looks at these indicator lamps?
Who is that brave and mad?

Or maybe Dee-Vee always has a hand mirror in the mantle pocket?

Edited February 20, 2018 by kerbiloid

[razark]

19 hours ago, YNM said:

Laziness, or capability-concealing ?

Or conceptual video aimed at upper-level managers to sell a program that was still in the thought exercise stage?

[Gargamel]

On 2/15/2018 at 5:05 AM, Brikoleur said:

Another one was the Ascension miniseries. Stop reading if you don't want spoilers.

It's set on a Project Orion type starship supposedly launched during JFK's presidency, with the culture onboard frozen in a strange late-1950s style, but with major technological advances. Cool idea, right? Thing is, it turns out that the ship actually never launched: it's stationary on Earth with the people onboard just believing they're on their way to another star system. There was some Cold War rationale for that but never mind.

Thing is, that would never fly.

• Project Orion ships don't have constant acceleration. They use atomic bombs and a giant shock absorber to accelerate. It's a very bumpy ride during burns, and then zero-g for most of the trip.
• Even if they did, a constant 1g acceleration would have them going at c minus epsilon by now, which would put them halfway across the Milky Way in subjective time.
• When bad things (tm) happen onboard, the captain rushes to the bridge to check if they're "still on course." They're still under supposed constant 1 g acceleration, how could they have possibly gone "off course" because something in the hold blew up?
• They've got an observation cupola at the bow, with telescopes and such, peering at the (fake) sky. How could they possibly not tell the sky is fake? There would be parallax effects all over the place, a real telescope wouldn't even be able to focus on a fake star on a fake sky a few hundred meters away, tops, and they're highly sophisticated scientist types who must be maintaining the instruments so would easily be able to tell that they're fake. They even make their own instruments!
• Also the observation cupola is at the bow. With Plexiglass. On an interstellar starship speeding along at a significant fraction of c. They would be fried by gamma radiation in no time flat.

That's just a sampling. It's horrid. And again, it's something that masquerades as hard sci-fi, being anchored to a real historical epoch here and everything. Uncanny Valley again.

I literally just watched this series, again, last night. 

There's a lot of holes, scientifically, in the plot, but the premise is amazing.  Again, this show is ruined for you if you read a spoiler and haven't seen it yet, SO STOP READING HERE:
 

Spoiler

 

They have supposedly have highly trained astronomers on board, but your right, they can't figure out the star field is fake?  

These people supposedly invented the MRI and other things.  With what?  Spaceships like this are a closed environment.  Stuff wears out.  It can get recycled, yes, but the original no longer exists.  How can they create new things, from the old, without a lack of 'old' things.  Medicines and other chemicals fall into this too.  These are complex chemicals, that often require serious processing power to create, yet they seem to have a plentiful supply, each tailored to a specific genome.  Latex gloves?  Did they bring rubber trees?  They'd have too. 

One of the first things the Doctor (Who) mentions frequently, is the rumble of a ship's engines.  Even on huge starliners, the idea is you can still feel the mechanism working.  The lack of mechanical vibrations bothered me.  Has nobody ever seen the engines?  Why isn't there an engineering crew that has to manually wrench on these things?

Radiation protocol.  Writer's plot device.  These people are supposed to be pretty advanced in the medical field, so nobody has questioned why they have to all be sedated for a radiation strike? 

But if you can ignore these glaring holes, it's an amazing premise.  One of the few original ideas I've seen in a while.  I'd really like to see a second season, even with a new cast, set later on when whoel thing comes tumbling down. 

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Ascension

Spoiler

39 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

They have supposedly have highly trained astronomers on board, but your right, they can't figure out the star field is fake? 

Maybe they studied this star sky...

Say, on this forum from time to time somebody tries to navigate using the KSP fixed rasterized blurred skybox.

41 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Even on huge starliners, the idea is you can still feel the mechanism working.  The lack of mechanical vibrations bothered me.

Maybe the engine vibrations are so strong that they had to mount them in magnetic suspension?
So, instead of a killing vibration they got a total lack of it.
_{(Just spoons from time to time stick to metal teeth.)}

45 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Why isn't there an engineering crew that has to manually wrench on these things?

The mechanisms were so complicated that they would either have thousands of engineers with wrenches or make them as automated and failsafe as possible.
"Caution! Warranty void if opened!"

P.S.
I didn't see the whole series, just s01e01.

 

[p1t1o]

10 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Back to science errors: Unlike in previous films, in TLJ, the ship's weapon's are fired up and then arc downward.  

Yeh, I've heard this one a lot, but when I saw it I was just like "Huh, guided projectiles, cool." 

 

 

[YNM]

3 hours ago, razark said:

Or conceptual video aimed at upper-level managers to sell a program that was still in the thought exercise stage?

I think MIRVs are well underway since very early (like Titan or something ?). They'd have known when digital color video comes in.

[DDE]

11 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Back to science errors: Unlike in previous films, in TLJ, the ship's weapon's are fired up and then arc downward.  

And don't forget our new best friend, MG-100 StarFortress SF-17...

Oh, wait, it's exploded because someone dropped a spanner into the munitions bay... oh, and it's taken out another two bombers!

Edited February 20, 2018 by DDE

[p1t1o]

6 minutes ago, DDE said:

And don't forget our new best friend, MG-100 StarFortress SF-17...

Oh, wait, it's exploded because someone dropped a spanner into the munitions bay.

And the worst weapon range in space war history...

It was WAY too much of a stretch just to replicate that scene from Dambusters. AGAIN.

I predict the next movie will have spacefighters with actual propellers.

The one after that, space horses with pilots dressed like cowboys with laser-lassoos.

Edited February 20, 2018 by p1t1o

[DDE]

1 minute ago, p1t1o said:

It was WAY too much of a stretch just to replicate that scene from Dambusters. AGAIN.

Hey! At least the Dambusters had a range greater than zero! This one appears to have been hoist by its own petard... which begs the question of whether they even expect these things to not be kamikazes.

Even Rogue One knows what a Y-Wing is.

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, DDE said:

Hey! At least the Dambusters had a range greater than zero! This one appears to have been hoist by its own petard... which begs the question of whether they even expect these things to not be kamikazes.

Even Rogue One knows what a Y-Wing is.

Yeah the theme that "martyrdom is cool" has been getting stronger and stronger, Im not sure if Im ok with it.

[DDE]

1 minute ago, p1t1o said:

Yeah the theme that "martyrdom is cool" has been getting stronger and stronger, Im not sure if Im ok with it.

Uhm... is it?

https://youtu.be/rCB8DUGpYQQ?t=239

 

[Green Baron]

3 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Yeah the theme that "martyrdom is cool" has been getting stronger and stronger, Im not sure if Im ok with it.

I am not. That's why i am a little on a consumer strike with what has lately crossed the pond. Namely Star Wars and Trek and other series. For my taste, there is too much militarism and "blood and honour" and "they shall not die in vain" involved. But people seem to like it ...