Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[YNM]

9 hours ago, ARS said:

Isn't it weird if the debris has the orbital trajectory to intersect all of them (Shuttle, Hubble, ISS), has roughly the same orbit trajectory but moves much faster than all of them?

Hmm... maybe it's on a different inclination ? It only intersect two orbits...

Edited February 4, 2018 by YNM

[mikegarrison]

As a movie, Gravity was much better than Interstellar. Interstellar mainly relied on that old plot-hole standby -- people behaving stupidly just because the plot needs them to.

Gravity was obviously mainly a movie-long exercise in cinematography, but it was done so well that it worked. Its biggest weakness as a movie was not orbital dynamics (because who cares? it's a movie!) but rather the script dialog.

Edited February 4, 2018 by mikegarrison

[NSEP]

9 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

As a movie, Gravity was much better than Interstellar. Interstellar mainly relied on that old plot-hole standby -- people behaving stupidly just because the plot needs them to.

Gravity was obviously mainly a movie-long exercise in cinematography, but it was done so well that it worked. Its biggest weakness as a movie was not orbital dynamics (because who cares? it's a movie!) but rather the script dialog.

Gravity is also way too action packed, wich is good, but, If this were real the crew would probably have stayed inside the Soyuz for protection. The MMU in the movie has way too powerfull thrusters. Again, this is good for a good movie, but not very realistic.

There is always boring procedure to live through a disaster in space. In the world of Sci-Fi the scientist and mission planners are always waiting for an easy to avoid disaster to happend rather than keep it in mind beforehand.

[Frybert]

10 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

 people behaving stupidly just because the plot needs them to.

Wasn't that the ENTIRE plot of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant?

[sevenperforce]

Oh god, how have I missed this thread until now?

Interstellar cracked me up, because they were all serious about how it was a REAL wormhole because it was a SPHERE and not a DISC, and how they consulted with REAL scientists to figure out how space would appear that close to a black hole, and yet they got so much basic stuff wrong. Black-hole-proximity time dilation will not make a "life signs" signal repeat infinitely. They "turned off" artificial gravity as they approached the wormhole because it was disorienting, but they did so while they were sitting in the Ranger, which was in the center of the spaceship and thus wouldn't have had any net artificial gravity. Not to mention an SSTO that can pass through a gravity well with time dilation so extreme that 10 years passes in a few hours. Twice.

The rank absurdities in 2012 met their zenith when a freaking WINNEBAGO outran a seismic wave.

Armageddon wins the award, for me, simply because it manages to cram in so very many mistakes. It's almost a work of art. "The gravity on the asteroid will be really low, so instead of training you to navigate in low gravity, we're going to give you RCS packs with 5 or 6 km/s of dV which will continuously fire upward...but when you're not in EVA suits, never mind." The SSMEs that fire a gentle blue flame without any fuel tanks, and the Shuttles that fly through a vacuum using control surfaces, like fighter jets, through a trail of asteroid debris. The meteor impacts which portend an impacting asteroid by months. The dwarf-planet-sized asteroid that they "simply hadn't noticed" prior, which is somehow split apart using a tiny nuke on its surface and which evidently contains a gigantic spring to shove the pieces apart so that they don't simply stay stuck together by gravity.

In Lost, they remove the "core" of a nuke from the body, and later detonate it by bashing it with a rock. The resident weapons expert explains that this is possible because the SmartCar-sized body is "just the delivery system". I'll let that one sink in.

[NSEP]

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.

[sevenperforce]

33 minutes ago, 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.

Star Wars is space fantasy, full stop.

Last night, I watched Downsizing. Horrible movie. Really interesting premise, and I was willing to suspend disbelief about the science of it if they explored the premise, but they didn't; instead it just took a nosedive.

In any case, shrinking humans to five inches high would make said humans virtually indestructible on their new scales. Able to jump dozens of times their body length, immensely strong, and so forth. However, stuff like the surface tension of water would become a problem. A slight summer afternoon sprinkle would kill you.

On the flip side, I believe we have already roasted Ant-Man to oblivion on this forum.

Edited February 4, 2018 by sevenperforce

[Shpaget]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Interstellar cracked me up, because they were all serious about how it was a REAL wormhole because it was a SPHERE and not a DISC, and how they consulted with REAL scientists to figure out how space would appear that close to a black hole, and yet they got so much basic stuff wrong.

Yeah, that's the probably the biggest issue I have with the flick. It tries to portray itself as the most hardcore of the hard SF out there, with Kip Thorne, himself, counseling on the scientific aspects of the movie,  endlessly praising its own accuracy when it comes to physics, yet when it comes to basic Newtonian stuff, it's worse than Star Trek. Star Trek, at least, doesn't pretend to obey action-reaction principles of rocket engines. This abomination does exactly that, yet fails miserably.

As a movie, it's ok, I've seen worse, but the amount of false advertising around it is what gets me. I don't demand hard SF or no SF, but the boasting got me prepared for nothing less and I started watching it expecting to see hard SF. And what do I get? NASA that has become a clandestine organization which has fallen out of memory, recruits a farmer to fly a mission to save the world. First step is to launch a Saturn V-ish thing that carries a shuttle that can land and get back up into orbit overcoming relativistic effects from gravity, then have enough dv for another landing and take off, and another visit to a black hole. But it needs a Saturn V to get up from Earth.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

In any case, shrinking humans to five inches high would make said humans virtually indestructible on their new scales. Able to jump dozens of times their body length, immensely strong, and so forth. However, stuff like the surface tension of water would become a problem. A slight summer afternoon sprinkle would kill you.

James Blish wrote a classic SF story about microscopic people who live in a puddle called "Surface Tension".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Tension_(short_story)

The problem with all such stories about shrinking or growing people is that chemistry does not work on arbitrarily large or small scales.

Edited February 4, 2018 by mikegarrison

[sevenperforce]

43 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

James Blish wrote a classic SF story about microscopic people who live in a puddle called "Surface Tension".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Tension_(short_story)

The problem with all such stories about shrinking or growing people is that chemistry does not work on arbitrarily large or small scales.

And it's a very intuitive thing, once you learn about it.

My three-year-old and five-year-old can explain basic physical chemistry based on valence electron arrangement. 

[monstah]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

it needs a Saturn V to get up from Earth.

Which they don't show!!! I mean, sure the black hole was gorgeous, but we had seen it on trailers already. I wanted so badly to watch an awesome Nolan launch of an awesome CGI rocket, and nothing! 

Edited February 4, 2018 by monstah
autocowrecks

[IncongruousGoat]

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.

[sevenperforce]

23 minutes ago, 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.

The flame will diffuse, yes, but not so much that welding would be impossible. An oxyacetylene torch will still deliver a nice high-energy plume in a vacuum, albeit a rather underexpanded one.

[monstah]

1 hour ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Artemis

Nononono, too recent, no spoilers!!

[IncongruousGoat]

1 minute ago, monstah said:

Nononono, too recent, no spoilers!!

Don't worry, nothing I said gives anything away about the plot.

[Bill Phil]

On ‎2‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 3:48 PM, ARS said:

Isn't it weird if the debris has the orbital trajectory to intersect all of them (Shuttle, Hubble, ISS), has roughly the same orbit trajectory but moves much faster than all of them?

Not really. It could be moving retrograde, which would result in very high relative velocity.

Although I haven't seen Gravity in a good while, so I don't know if there are any specific details in the trajectory in the movie.

[sevenperforce]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Not really. It could be moving retrograde, which would result in very high relative velocity.

Although I haven't seen Gravity in a good while, so I don't know if there are any specific details in the trajectory in the movie.

The debris cloud was supposedly formed by a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite.

[KG3]

2 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

The debris cloud was supposedly formed by a Russian missile strike on a defunct satellite.

I believe the missile strike was supposed to have caused a full blown Kessler syndrome type scenario.  Like, lots of other stuff in orbit was getting shredded too.  What I don't understand is why this caused them to loose contact with ground control.   

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, KG3 said:

What I don't understand is why this caused them to loose contact with ground control.   

Because it was thematic. The whole movie was about being trapped in space, all by herself. She had to lose contact with the ground for that.

Edited February 5, 2018 by mikegarrison

[radonek]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

Because it was thematic. The whole movie was about being trapped in space, all by herself. She had to lose contact with the ground for that.

No. Because  TDRSS sats got shreded too. Yes, they are on GEO, but at least they tried. Chmmmm… come to think of it, falling down from GEO on highly eccentric orbit would explain some of debris oddities.

But there is one other thing space nerds here should notice: when undocking from ISS, Sandra cuts short procedure, which is done by pyrotechnically cutting docking probe. But in the movie probe is intact. (It  would remain lodged in docking mechanism.)

[radonek]

On 3. 2. 2018 at 8:32 AM, kerbiloid said:

Whole Dune series consists of bad science from top to bottom.
It's easier to list what isn't a bad science in it.
Of course, it's more a space opera than a true sci-fi, but the author was trying to get into numbers. Fail.

P.S.
And what annoyed me a lot in these books: they have kinda laser guns and kinda force field domes.
If hit a dome with laser gun, it bursts between the dome and the shooter, killing the latter.
But a human can easily pass through the dome, so they use pathetic knives or so.

Why not drop a big laser gun on a chute, let it land inside a dome and then switch it on.
I would presume, then the explosion would crash everything inside the dome.

You got it completely, utterly wrong. Shields work different from what you think. Lasgun-shield interaction is much less predictable and it's usage is more driven by political ramifications then technology. Much like everything else in the book. Because, and here you made biggest mistake, Dune is not a space opera at all.  

[YNM]

16 hours ago, 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.

This is why Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is good while some "Sci-Fi" are just bad. People can have high standards to a sci-fi, while to comedy/entertainment there's never a bar. A sci-fi that can throw references to bad sci-fi would be good though, however I wonder whether that would throw a wrench down their own neck as well or not !

Has anyone worked on a movie adaptation of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ? (apart from the BBC TV series !)

Edited February 5, 2018 by YNM

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

A sci-fi that can throw references to bad sci-fi would be good though, however I wonder whether that would throw a wrench down their own neck as well or not !

Rick & Morty comes to mind:

"Wait for the ramp, Morty. They love the slow ramp, it really gets their [ahem] hard."

Though they send up good sci-fi as often as the rest XD

[ARS]

19 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Armageddon wins the award, for me, simply because it manages to cram in so very many mistakes. It's almost a work of art

Well, you seem to think like me when I saw Armageddon. While Armageddon is nice sci-fi movie and exciting enough for space enthusiast like me, the amount of bad science it delivers really cracked me up. To list some:

1. The first scene is already a bad science on it's own: An asteroid that kills dinosaurs by impacting earth 65 million years ago. The narrator said "... With the force of 10 thousand nuclear weapons". Excuse me? I think that statement was really an underestimation. The asteroid that kills dinosaurs has the force around 100 terraton (terraton: 10^12). The most powerful nuclear bomb ever built, the tsar bomba, has a force of 50 megaton, which means, 10 thousand tsar bomba is still ridiculously puny compared to the asteroid that killed dinosaurs. Never mind the fact that the footage has a mistake when it shows that meteor impacted earth... With current-day continent and landmasses.

2. The movie claims that the asteroid is roughly the size of Texas. Do you know other object the size of Texas? CERES, the dwarf planet, discovered back then during 1801 using binoculars! They said they cannot detect it since there's only 15 telecopes that watches the sky, but you know what? How about millions of amateur astronomers around the world? (bless them!) They regularly watches the night sky, and with an object that big, it would be an unmissable target for those familiar with night sky. Even cheap home telescope is enough to see it if it was the size of Texas, far before it's imminent impact. Hell, NASA has tracked even smaller and farther object than that.

3. An asteroid with the size of Texas wouldn't simply slam on the Pacific ocean bedrock and create "tidal wave three miles high...", as the NASA scientist in the movie projected. Mind you, the earth crust is only few km thick on the ocean bedrock, and beneath it is a molten mantle, so the actual impact is much more devastating than what the movie projected

4. At one point a character reminded the main character to not whack the bomb or risk setting it off. If the nuclear bomb you bring could be set off by whacking it, then that's a VERY badly designed bomb. Real life nuclear bomb requires an extremely precise detonation to set it off. In fact, in real life, nuclear bombs are tested to ensure that they'll only explode when triggered to explode. Among the tests and abuse conducted, that involves dropping them from high place, burning it, and yes, whacking it.

5. A classic error in many space sci-fi, where the thruster of the shuttle is shown continuously burning while they maneuver in space as if they're flying like jet on earth atmosphere

6. The movie claims that the asteroid is so massive that it has it's own gravity, albeit very weak, so the main cast had to wear a space suit with RCS thrusters to keep them pressed towards the ground. No explanation given why the hell the female lead, who's always inside the shuttle and never wear a space suit is unaffected by such a low gravity while inside the shuttle (where the gravity (somehow) act normally)

7. Drilling a hole on the asteroid before shoving a nuclear bomb to detonate it so the asteroid split in half is pretty much implausible. The asteroid has a momentum, and detonating a nuclear bomb inside would only make things worse since the problem goes from "I shoot a watermelon with shotgun loaded with slug shell" into "I shoot a watermelon with shotgun loaded with buckshot shell". To split the asteroid cleanly in half, the bomb must be placed along the line that encirle the asteroid in half and detonated simultaneously

8. The Russian space station spins to create an artificial gravity before docking with 2 shuttles... Where to even begin? Docking is a delicate procedure and no docking operation is "routine occurence" (except for KSP players ). Spinning the station while 2 shuttles attempting to dock only make the docking procedure much more harder. Only masochist could handle such a thing (or jeb). Also, the artificial gravity created by spinning the space station would weaken as the distance from the point of rotation decreased, yet in the movie the gravity seems to work normally as the plot demands. If they are on the center of the station (it looks like they are on the station hub), then there should be little to no gravity!

9. The asteroid is shown being craggy and jagged. This kinda wrong. When an object has sufficient mass and size, it'll be formed into sphere under it's own gravity. Ceres alone has a diameter of 900 km, slightly smaller than Texas, yet it's already rounded by it's own gravity.

10. The movie said that the asteroid is knocked by comet out of asteroid belt and now headed to earth. First off, assuming it's around 900 km in diameter and made of iron (like what they claimed many times in the movie), it would have the total mass roughly 9 x 10^24 grams. That's a lot, you can ram it with comet for years and not move it much, never mind that the probability of a comet hitting an asteroid is incredibly low.

11. The plan is to split the asteroid in half, and they only have 4 hours to do it. Okay, assuming the asteroid has the diameter of 900 km, and it must be split in half, each halves must travel fast enough to cover 6400 km (earth's radius) over 4 hours, which means, 6400 km / 4 hour = 1600 km/h of acceleration is needed, and as explained above, if the asteroid really made of iron, with all that mass to move, it's clear that one bomb won't even do the job

12. The idea to bury the bomb makes sense when it comes to maximizing effect of bomb's explosion. However, on the asteroid with 900 km diameter, why the heck you only drill 800 feet!? That's around 1/5000th of half the diameter of the asteroid! Also, if they only have limited time to do it, then why they drill on 45 degree angle!? It adds an extra 300 feet to their drilling.

13. A bit of fact: tying someone on the chair with duct tape is a real life protocol of NASA spaceflight when dealing with someone with mental problem in space.

14. Someone complained "what are you doing with a gun in space?". Tell me a reason why nobody complained about having a freakin' chaingun on your rover (hell, there's no reason for it to be there in the first place)

The movie is filled with so many mistakes (in some shots, if you pay enough attention, you can see "grass" on the asteroid) and bad science that NASA used it to train their new recruit in management department by asking them to spot all the inaccuracies in it. So far, there's 160 inaccuracies found, and with the movie's duration of 2 1/2 hour, that roughly 1 inaccuracy per minute

Edited February 5, 2018 by ARS

[YNM]

On Armageddon : I think there's a reason why it's so bad.

 

It's an action rip-off of a sci-fi.

Here's the "real" stuff.