Bad science in fiction Hall of Shame

[kerbiloid]

That's I even yet not started about Barbarella!

[SpaceFace545]

20 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That's I even yet not started about Barbarella!

Hrmm, barbarella was amazing, don’t talk bad about it. Especially the title scene.

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Hrmm, barbarella was amazing, don’t talk bad about it. Especially the title scene.

[kerbiloid]

Aquarium of the Dead (2021) by Asylum

Zombie crabs have red blood.

P.S.
Though, who knows, when they are zombies.

[cubinator]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Aquarium of the Dead (2021) by Asylum

Zombie crabs have red blood.

P.S.
Though, who knows, when they are zombies.

Maybe human zombies have clear hemolymph and dorsal hearts too.

[SpaceFace545]

Stowaway (2021) by Netflix (respectively)

That's some crappy life support they had to just fail after an extra person and their rocket they launched on noticeably had a performance decrease after an extra person is aboard. Also how the heck does a person just stumble aboard a rocket about to launch.

[KeaKaka]

22 hours ago, SpaceFace545 said:

Also how the heck does a person just stumble aboard a rocket about to launch.

Even worse, in the movie it states (more implies) that he fell while removing the second stage arming pins, then somehow he ends up screwed and strapped into the space remaining behind the one panel that covers the life support system onboard the cycler.

What the flblp Stowaway.

[kerbiloid]

We know this just from his words, so he's a liar, and should be asked to get out.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Oxygen (2021, on Netflix), a couple of things annoyed me about it.

The Medusa nuclear sail was good, right up until it actually detonated the first bomb and warped away at ludicrous speed exactly like a Medusa wouldn’t- it’s designed for slow, sustained acceleration at a couple of Gs maximum, not magic warp mode that would liquefy everything on board, especially the frozen people that it was meant to be carrying to a new planet (for some reason, a tidally locked super-Earth  very close to its star with a thin survivable zone at the terminator between day and night, which slightly ignores the deadly radiation that would be bombarding the planet from being that close to its star), especially since the ship was already damaged by a pesky meteor.

The thing with the sycamore seeds just didn’t make sense to me- how are those meant to survive being dropped from orbit? And the whole thing about “muscle memory” was pseudoscientific technobabble, it makes no sense whatsoever and they should have stuck with something at least tenuously related to the brain to explain that.

But other than that it was a pretty good little film. It’s a French film, but English dubbing is available and I barely noticed the difference.

[kerbiloid]

52 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

The Medusa nuclear sail was good, right up until it actually detonated the first bomb and warped away at ludicrous speed exactly like a Medusa wouldn’t- it’s designed for slow, sustained acceleration at a couple of Gs maximum

They were expecting this, too...

But it - TAH! - banged it!!!

[kerbiloid]

If you like the Oxygen, then Black Box (2021) is definitely yours, too.

Is it a modern trend to make movies of a lonely survivor despair and death?

[KeaKaka]

I'm not sure if anyone has done this before, they probably have, but here is me absolutely roasting Armageddon.

 

First, in the opening sequence we see the shuttle Atlantis in orbit, with an astronaut about 100 meters away servicing a satellite while wearing an EMU. My first problem with this is the payload bay on Atlantis is closed, meaning no on-orbit thermal control. Secondly, IRL the satellite would have been either attached to the RMS or to the satellite servicing platform in the payload bay. There is only one astronaut on EVA which probably goes against NASA guidelines, and then the action happens. A "meteor shower" occurs, shredding the satellite, astronaut, and causing the shuttle to explode. While I don't have too much problem in particular with this, the fact that NASA immediately knows that Atlantis "exploded", which would be practically impossible to know until debris or a black box was found in the following days, not immediately. Another thing that annoys me is that they keep saying Atlantis exploded, when the more appropriate word would be "destroyed".

In a following scene, where the asteroid/comet/whatever is discovered, the reasoning why is wasn't discovered earlier is that NASA is only able to tract 3% of the sky due to budgetary reasons. Plausible but kind of ridiculous.

I'm mostly fine with the next ~30 minutes.

The shuttle launch is mostly okay, except for the launch of two shuttles at once (severe range safety concerns) and the roll manoeuvre where they just keep rolling. Also they detach the SRBs and the ET at the same time and the plumes don't do vacuum expansion.

In the sequence with the Russian space station (which is just Mir with more trusses), it starts spinning and then magically has a uniform 1g throughout the station.

O2 does not burn nor explode on its own.

When they slingshot around the Moon while performing a burn it shows them getting up to 11gs of thrust, which is completely ridiculous, because where on earth are you going to get 107.8m\s\s of acceleration from?

And finally, they would have needed to drill a lot further than 800 feet into the asteroid/comet/whatever the size of texas to split it in two. And realistically, if you did actually split it half, you've just got the plot of Deep Impact all over again

 

There's probably a bunch I've missed but this is all I can do for now. But then again, this was a Michael Bay film, what did I expect? 

[lemon cup]

29 minutes ago, KeaKaka said:

When they slingshot around the Moon while performing a burn it shows them getting up to 11gs of thrust, which is completely ridiculous, because where on earth are you going to get 107.8m\s\s of acceleration from?

Definitely a misconception of the "slingshot adds speed" principle = "you feel tons of acceleration." In reality, even during a very tight gravity assist or "slingshot" around the moon a person in a vessel would feel weightless - you are "falling" towards the moon at the same rate as whatever ship you are in, so no net gravitational forces would be felt.

#ThingsKSPteachesYou

EDIT: Of course things start to get complicated when the scales go up and you're dealing with black holes and massive stars...!

Edited July 12, 2021 by lemon cup

[Clamp-o-Tron]

I remember a story (possibly from Scott Kelly's book) about astronaut candidates in the late 1990s playing a game at JSC in which they would watch Armageddon a single time and note any inaccuracies they could find.

In my very fuzzy memory of his telling of it, the record was over 150.

[kerbiloid]

22 minutes ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

In my very fuzzy memory of his telling of it, the record was over 150.

Nobody was able to watch the whole movie?

[DDE]

2 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

While I don't have too much problem in particular with this, the fact that NASA immediately knows that Atlantis "exploded", which would be practically impossible to know until debris or a black box was found in the following days, not immediately.

The cloud of scaterring debris would by found by USAF space situational awareness units within the timeframe of hours, possibly less since they'd be queued towards a known target.

2 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

In a following scene, where the asteroid/comet/whatever is discovered, the reasoning why is wasn't discovered earlier is that NASA is only able to tract 3% of the sky due to budgetary reasons. Plausible but kind of ridiculous.

Evidently that's how science budget policy is conducted in the US. Hollywood flicks.

2 hours ago, KeaKaka said:

When they slingshot around the Moon while performing a burn it shows them getting up to 11gs of thrust, which is completely ridiculous, because where on earth are you going to get 107.8m\s\s of acceleration from?

Well, they relight 3 SSMEs without an ET and they also set off what look like GEMs or SRBs from a Titan-IV. They are packing a lot of thrust, although probably still not enough for such a (potentially fatal) TWR.

[KerikBalm]

The Tomorrow War.... so many many issues.

[kerbiloid]

The Tomorrow War and others.

(Spoiler warning)

Spoiler

The Tomorrow War

 

The Cloverfield

 

The Quiet Place

 

They return over and over again.

Different, but still same.

Evolution? Convolution? Doesn't matter. Now we can see that they are from the same source of evil.

[kerbiloid]

Ebola Rex (2021)

(A spoiler warning)

Spoiler

Even if it's possible to infect a genetically revived T-Rex with Ebola, unlikely it could put a whole town on fire and resist the gun and rocket fire from a pair of Mi-24 which for some reason appeared in a small American city.

 

[DDE]

27 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

a pair of Mi-24 which for some reason appeared in a small American city.

Those cartels were getting restless.

[Minmus Taster]

Dune (1984)  

[StrandedonEarth]

50 minutes ago, Minmus Taster said:

Dune (1984)  

Oh c’mon, you may as well complain about Star TrekWars   

 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Minmus Taster said:

Dune (1984)  

That movie looked mostly great, except the godawful thopters, and literally everything about the sound module things (I only ever saw the movie once, in the theater, though I recently skimmed through it to see my friend in it).

The big failure was the plot changes.

(but as for SF hall of shame—at least it's "space opera" and not meant to be even slightly "hard" SF)

[antipro]

1 hour ago, Minmus Taster said:

Dune (1984)

Dune in Hall of Shame? De gustibus non est disputandum but are you mad?
It's a cult movie with Patrick Stewart, Sting (musician), Sean Young, Max von Sydow, Virginia Madsen, Kyle MacLachlan. etc.

Alia Atreides: [as rain begins falling on Arrakis] And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!

 

Edited September 20, 2021 by antipro

[Minmus Taster]

A cult movie does not make it a good movie.