Movie Space ships compared to the real deal

[Khan_Tiger]

If (and it's a BIG if) you had a drive that could accelerate continuously at 1G you could pretty much point straight toward your target, accelerate for half your trip and decelerate the rest of the way.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how the ships in Mass Effect worked? Turn about halfway through the trip and decelerate the rest of the way? It wasn't really in any cutscenes, but I'm fairly sure it was buried in the lore somewhere deep.

[Awaras]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how the ships in Mass Effect worked? Turn about halfway through the trip and decelerate the rest of the way? It wasn't really in any cutscenes, but I'm fairly sure it was buried in the lore somewhere deep.

No idea about the lore, but ingame all ships move like WWI fighter planes... :/

[Awaras]

Actually, most SF universes have explanations that more or less sense in their lore, it's just that it rarely shows up in the visuals.

Let me take Star Trek for example:

One of the primary ship weapons in ST is the 'photon torpedo'. The lore says that it is powered by a small warp drive and moves at FTL speeds. However, watching any episode where they fire them they appear to be moving at a few hundred Km/h at most (basically at a same relative speed as an AA missile fired from a fighter plane). Also, in a few episodes during a battle scene, the crew members talk about ranges of several thousand kilometers or more but the visuals show the ships dogfighting at a range that seems less than a few kilometers.

So, you can rationalize it by imagining that the battle does take place over ranges of thousands of kilometers and you are being shown a 'simulation' with ship sizes greatly exaggerated and visual and audio effects added so it would be more visually exciting and more easily understood... or something...

[Guest]

Science Fiction spacecraft in movies not only ignore Newtonian physics, they don't even allow for apple-scented air freshener in the cockpits. As has been mentioned, their engines stay on no matter what because otherwise "the audience won't know they're still moving". Their engines are powered by anti-unobtanium, channelled through a doobertonium crystal matrix that allows them to move at whatever speed the plot requires, slowing only slightly in order to muss Einstein's hair as they whooooooooooosh past the camera.

[DressedInRags]

The thing is, in Star Wars we're talking about ships which have - in theory - MUCH better power-to-weight ratios than anything we can put together in KSP or indeed reality. Call me a great big ignorant fool if I'm wrong here, but wouldn't it be a doddle to just fire straight up if you didn't have to worry about maximising your fuel efficiency, and were flying a ship that could escape a gravity well with ease?

Anyway, as much as I love a bit of reality-fiction comparison, I do think that people are far too willing to shoot down Sci-Fi which is unrealistic, even when it doesn't purport to be. I tend to think of Star Wars as being much more.... swords-and-sorcery fantasy, if you see what I mean. What I'm saying is, I wouldn't compare, say, LOTR to real life...

[nyrath]

The Hollywood misconception that really annoys me is that most spacecraft are laid out like a passenger aircraft, that is, with the direction of "down" at ninety degrees to the direction of thrust. In reality, the crew quarters of a spacecraft will be arranged more like a skyscraper than like an aircraft. You will feel like the direction of "down" is in the same direction the exhaust is going.

Then comes the misconception that there is friction in space (turn off the engines and the ship slows to a stop, anybody who has played KSP knows this is stupid), that rockets are arrows (the ship MUST travel in the direction the nose is pointing, also quite stupid), and that space is two-dimensional like the surface of the ocean.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/misconceptions.php (thanks for the link Specialist290!)

But to answer the original poster's question: no, space fighters are not going to act like combat aircraft. The main reasons are here:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php#id--Space_Fighters--Efficacy

The question is: why did Hollywood and science fiction writers ever get the silly idea that combat spacecraft would act anything like combat aircraft? My theory is that it is a comfortable metaphor.

Given the popularity of space fighters in such mass media shows as Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Babylon 5, and others, they obviously appeal to people. I'm in the minority, but I think they are missing the point. Here's my reasoning:

It seems to me that the space fighter is nothing more that people taking a dramatic and comfortable metaphor (sea-going aircraft carriers and combat fighter aircraft) and transporting it intact into the outer space environment. But if you think about it, interplanetary combat is highly unlikely to be like anything that has occurred before.

Imagine a speculative fiction writer back in the Victorian era, such as Jules Verne. Say they wanted to write a novel about the far future, when heavier than air flight had been invented, and the age of Aerial Combat had arrived.

They might take the dramatic and comfortable metaphor of sea-going frigates and battleships and transporting it intact into the aerial environment. Held aloft by dozens of helicopter blades, the battleships of the air would ponderously maneuver, trying to "cross the T" with the enemy aerial dreadnoughts.

See how silly it sounds? Well, combat spacecraft behaving like fighter aircraft is just as silly. In both cases a metaphor is being forced into a situation where it does not work.

In reality, when the Wright brothers invented heavier-than-air flight and Fokker Triplanes started dog-fighting Sopwith Camels, it was totally unlike anything that had occurred before. Biplanes never ever tried to cross the T, and a sea-going battleship had never ever performed an Immelmann turn.

Therefore, by analogy, when interplanetary combat arrives, it too will be totally unlike anything that has occurred before.

[Tfin]

It really doesn't bother me that space vehicle travel is gotten so completely wrong in nearly every instance, because the truth of it is irrelevant for nearly everyone, and the point of real science fiction is the exploration of the human condition through the introduction of a novel element (Original Star Trek's alien races, for example, representing humans who have some singular difference like a lack of emotion).

The space travel is just a way to encounter a new civilization in a world where there aren't any. Gulliver was able to just get lost and find a remote island, we can't do that (very much) any more.

I'm more bothered by the everyday things that modern, mundane Hollywood fiction gets so wrong, like having two people type on a single keyboard to work faster, or claiming a rifled barrel isn't normal on a rifle.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Tfin

[Awaras]

The Hollywood misconception that really annoys me is that most spacecraft are laid out like a passenger aircraft, that is, with the direction of "down" at ninety degrees to the direction of thrust. In reality, the crew quarters of a spacecraft will be arranged more like a skyscraper than like an aircraft. You will feel like the direction of "down" is in the same direction the exhaust is going.

Well, that depends on the technology available. The 'skyscraper' layout makes sense if the ship spends a lot of it operational time under steady acceleration. If it accelerates only for relatively short periods at a time and spends a lot of time in freefall, than it might require adding some kind of centrifugal rotating ring or something like that to maintain crew health. On the other hand, if you add 'standard' Sci-Fi technologies like artificial gravity then the layout can be whatever you want...

[Canopus]

Well, that depends on the technology available. The 'skyscraper' layout makes sense if the ship spends a lot of it operational time under steady acceleration. If it accelerates only for relatively short periods at a time and spends a lot of time in freefall, than it might require adding some kind of centrifugal rotating ring or something like that to maintain crew health. On the other hand, if you add 'standard' Sci-Fi technologies like artificial gravity then the layout can be whatever you want...

the skyscraper layout would even make sense if you have magic gravity otherwise all you stuff would be thrown against one wall if you accelerate.

[Dolkramp]

The Rule of Cool trumps all laws of physics, mathematics, and anything else. 'Accurate' space battles might be cool the first scene for the "Hey! That's true-to-life!". After that it would be dreadfully boring.

[Warscribe]

Thats why it is called science FICTION; some people still seem to forget that this is made to entertain, i can suspend my disbelief if there is some "magic-tech" that has been introduced (like the Hyperdrive, artificial gravity field. etc. Dead Space did a good job at that, actually). I cannot, on some points, contain myself about out-of-nothing rule breaking of physics laws. (Alien : Resurrection; the re entry at the end would have compromised the whole vessel, if i remember correctly)

[ThePyrateCaptain]

The only thing ksp does that wound never happen is the rocket sounds in space. Turns sound off once in space for a realistic effect. But then again that would be boring, and in a game environment, boring is not good. But I agree with the term Science Fiction and they are after all movies and not historical documents..... Lol

[Railsmith]

You know, if you had equally-powerful engines pointing in every direction on a spacecraft, and an insane amount of fuel, you could get it to handle like an aircraft by firing engines to simulate atmospheric effects. Of course, this would be incredibly inefficient, unnecessary, and the craft would end up looking more like a Rockomax 6-way Node with LV-909s on every face than an F-14, but it would work.

And then it would get blown up from seventy kilometers away by a laser platform because the engineers could only fit a couple of shotguns in a gigantic cubical frame that consists of ninety percent fuel.

[Kerbface]

the skyscraper layout would even make sense if you have magic gravity otherwise all you stuff would be thrown against one wall if you accelerate.

Ah, but perhaps not so. What if they had it set up so that a secondary gravitational force would initiate, equal and opposite to the acceleration force. It would nullify it and keep you in a comfortable position.

[Guest]

You know, if you had equally-powerful engines pointing in every direction on a spacecraft, and an insane amount of fuel, you could get it to handle like an aircraft by firing engines to simulate atmospheric effects. Of course, this would be incredibly inefficient, unnecessary, and the craft would end up looking more like a Rockomax 6-way Node with LV-909s on every face than an F-14, but it would work.

And then it would get blown up from seventy kilometers away by a laser platform because the engineers could only fit a couple of shotguns in a gigantic cubical frame that consists of ninety percent fuel.

An aircraft mired in mud, perhaps. Think of the mass of something like that. You could even shape it like a fish, but it would still steer like a cow.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Guest

[nyrath]

Thats why it is called science FICTION; some people still seem to forget that this is made to entertain, i can suspend my disbelief if there is some "magic-tech" that has been introduced (like the Hyperdrive, artificial gravity field. etc. Dead Space did a good job at that, actually). I cannot, on some points, contain myself about out-of-nothing rule breaking of physics laws. (Alien : Resurrection; the re entry at the end would have compromised the whole vessel, if i remember correctly)

Sigh.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/respectscience.php

Edited May 1, 2013 by nyrath

[architeuthis]

The Hollywood misconception that really annoys me is that most spacecraft are laid out like a passenger aircraft, that is, with the direction of "down" at ninety degrees to the direction of thrust. In reality, the crew quarters of a spacecraft will be arranged more like a skyscraper than like an aircraft. You will feel like the direction of "down" is in the same direction the exhaust is going.

This one actually seems not so bad since the deck plans are a logical extension of the antigravity trope which is so common in science fiction film. I assume this is a result of Hollywood's budget constraints regarding filming things in free fall in addition to its general lack of imagination or respect of science. Of course one could still argue that orienting the decking parallel to the direction of thrust is idiotic from a design standpoint regardless. But I wonder, if you can create 1 g gravity fields at will, why bother with dinky little rocket engines for propulsion?

[Nullspace250]

Yeah that's probably true too lol.

Another example of Holywood ignorance is the movie Armageddon, iirc Nasa managers watch that to see just how many errors there are and they have come up with more then a few.

Deep Impact was a more realistic portrayl of a similar kind of disaster.

Well, Armageddon got 168 errors, or 1 error per minute of movie

The only person that can get such a nuclear bomb to destroy a 800 km asteroid (or dwarf planet) is Jeb

[EndlessWaves]

Thats why it is called science FICTION; some people still seem to forget that this is made to entertain

Science fiction is entertainment created by interesting applications of science. Completely implausible but amazing stuff is fantasy, whether it's dragons or laser bullets. It's not a judgement, both are very enjoyable, but writing/audio/video/games should be categorised primarily by style, not setting.

The only thing ksp does that wound never happen is the rocket sounds in space.

The sound that appears to be heard by a camera that can fly around at high speed and has the DeltaV and TWR to keep up with any rocket?

[Warscribe]

but why really bother? The purpose of a story is to convey (amongst other things) character development and plot, the "sci-fi" portion is merely a setting to let these things happen, to put them into a situation (a situation that can't be replicated in real life, thus alienating is just enough to let us see the circumstances of said situation and judge differently)

[ThePyrateCaptain]

but why really bother? The purpose of a story is to convey (amongst other things) character development and plot, the "sci-fi" portion is merely a setting to let these things happen, to put them into a situation (a situation that can't be replicated in real life, thus alienating is just enough to let us see the circumstances of said situation and judge differently)

well said Sir, Well said indeed.

[Kerbface]

Yeah, ultimately it's true, scifi is just a way to open up new storyline and thematic possibilities (And to look awesome), but just personally I'd like it if there were more sci fi movies that put effort into their science, real science is cool.

[Tw1]

but why really bother? The purpose of a story is to convey (amongst other things) character development and plot, the "sci-fi" portion is merely a setting to let these things happen, to put them into a situation (a situation that can't be replicated in real life, thus alienating is just enough to let us see the circumstances of said situation and judge differently)

I partially disagree. Character and situation are both important parts of the story. Some sci-fi is there to explore what it may be like in the future. Some is for educational purposes, in this case it's best if they point out any liberties they took with the science, like the magic school bus does/did.

If the story is just set in the future, and sci-fi elements could almost be interchanged with fantasy elements, then the purpose of the story was probably simply that: to tell a good story.

But sometimes, the situations, the realism or the was the author has worked around it, all are quite important.

Think of things like Tintin, or LOTR, where research and creation of an extensive world create a much more enriching experience, on top of character interactions.

Edited May 1, 2013 by Tw1

[Blackstar]

When the show Andromeda started (yeah yeah, I know), it had a lot of potential, and actually made some effort. Aside from magic artificial gravity fields, which also doubled as structural integrity, and quantum slipstream ("It's not the best way to travel faster than light -- it's the only way."), a lot of the physics and tech were based on scientific principles.

Things like no FTL communication; courier ships for long range. Communications delay based on the speed of light while at range, and anything needing high bandwidth or security uses a point-to-point laser but requires line of sight. Kinetic-kill projectile weapons and guided missiles. Remote operated sensor and attack drones for medium-range (more than a light-second away) combat, which was much preferred to being up close and personal. Non-FTL travel way more powerful than current tech, but based on PSL (percent of the speed of light), and bad things happen if you get too close to light speed. Inertia being a factor in sublight maneuvering, as well as gravity and relativistic effects playing a big role in the first few stories.

Then after the first season they forgot all of that and it really did become Hercules in Space. Blech.

[Guest]

but why really bother? The purpose of a story is to convey (amongst other things) character development and plot, the "sci-fi" portion is merely a setting to let these things happen, to put them into a situation (a situation that can't be replicated in real life, thus alienating is just enough to let us see the circumstances of said situation and judge differently)

Very well said! It's framework to tell a story in like any other, be it in the past, present, or far flung future. The "tech" is there to move the story along (unless the writer is exceedingly lazy and uses tech to wrap up the story - see Star Trek: Voyager for example).