Can't read sci-fi anymore

[Galacticruler]

You do not thrust toward a planet to deorbit! It is the classic noob mistake!

you just end up in a polar orbit.

or retrograde/flipped.

someone needs to make a short film of PROPER orbital mechanics, put it on disk and send lots of copies to Hollywood sci-fi movie writers, producers and directors, and watch as the world LEARNS.

[Cydonian Monk]

You know you've had too much physics in your life when you get irked at little things in otherwise enjoyable books....

I'm still grumbling at Ian Fleming for the end of Moonraker (the book). Either that "Russian Sub" is really bloody fast, or the nuclear-tipped V2 is really really slow. No way they covered the same distance in almost the same time.

[WafflesToo]

I just came back from watching Gravity about 30 min ago! I was going on about RCS to my friends in the car and after about 5 mins they stopped me and said "wait wait, you are not making any sense, what the hell is RCS??"

Curse you KSP and your educational ways!

LOL! IKR?! If they know their orbit is crossing a "cloud" debris that is on the same period as their's why NOT use the RCS to change your orbital period? It beats getting savaged every six hours and most certainly beats the dramatic dive into the atmosphere

[annallia]

Explanation(My own theory anyway): Coruscant's atmosphere is 99% CO2, and extends hundreds of kilometers above the ships battling. Note that all those "capital ships" are actually capable of high altitude flight.

Possible, but I can't sell it to myself.

[FenrirWolf]

You do not thrust toward a planet to deorbit! It is the classic noob mistake!

Technically you can if you want to, it will work in the sense that you'll approach the planet and eventually reenter the atmosphere. It's just that the maneuver is more costly than doing a retrograde burn, and you'll be coming in faster and at a different angle from the retroburn.

If you have a super advanced SciFi ship with essentially unlimited delta-v I suppose you can reenter however you like.

[spikeyhat09]

It isnt Science-Fiction.

It's Science-Fiction.

[FITorion]

I just watched Ender's Game a few days ago. I cracked a bit of a grin during the "Basic Rocket Science" bit.

[Vanamonde]

There is a terrific battle scene in Scott Westerfelds Risen Empire/Killing of Worlds. It combines some very high-tech with proper high-speed ship maneuvers, so it's a bit of both fanciful and realistic elements.

[_Aramchek_]

Or simply if you have enough power and thrust you can completely disregard gravity. At some point it makes as much sense as a 747 trying to take advantage of thermals coming off a field below it...

This, eventually when we have advanced significantly enough I doubt we'll be worried about orbital mechanics.

You can prove this in game for yourself, make a tiny craft with a mainsail and unlimited fuel, you can pretty much do whatever you want and physics/gravity can't stop you.

[Superfluous J]

Actually what bothers me is when they employ standard actual science and astronautics in these far-future fictional universes. Like in Firefly. They live in a Universe where fuel and energy is so cheap and abundant that you can profitably fly cows from one planet to another in a VTOL, but they eat nutrient paste and have to aerobrake for reentry. Yeah, right.

It'd be like if every time I went on a road trip, I had to be worried about getting Scurvy or the people in the car committing mutiny.

[Schitzree]

It'd be like if every time I went on a road trip, I had to be worried about getting Scurvy or the people in the car committing mutiny.

You obviously take road trips with a different crowd then me. Scurvy and Mutiny are the LEAST of my worries.

[Vanamonde]

Since the thread has mutated from KSP to science fiction in general, the off-topic lounge is a better home for it. Carry on.

[annallia]

Actually what bothers me is when they employ standard actual science and astronautics in these far-future fictional universes. Like in Firefly. They live in a Universe where fuel and energy is so cheap and abundant that you can profitably fly cows from one planet to another in a VTOL, but they eat nutrient paste and have to aerobrake for reentry. Yeah, right.

It'd be like if every time I went on a road trip, I had to be worried about getting Scurvy or the people in the car committing mutiny.

Oregon Trail?

But seriously... I can buy that. With some future form of fission I could see energy being ridiculously cheap while goods like food which have a finite capacity to be made are not.

Then again they had bricks as a cash crop business in Firefly...

[sjwt]

Oh, a nice recommendation for you..

Larry Niven 'The Integral trees' and its squeal 'The Smoke ring'.

Its about living in the ring of atmosphere that a dieing gas giant is leaking around a neutron star.

"East takes you Out, Out takes you West, West takes you In, In takes you East. Port and Starboard bring you back"

The story occurs around the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). A gas giant, Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits this star just outside its Roche limit and therefore loses its atmosphere, which is pulled into an independent orbit around Voy and forms a ring that is known as a gas torus. The gas torus is hugeâ€â€one million kilometers thickâ€â€but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life.

No "ground" exists in the Smoke Ring; it entirely consists of sky. Most animals therein therefore can fly--even the fish. Furthermore, the Smoke Ring is in orbit and therefore in free fall: there is no "up" or "down". Most animals have trilateral symmetry that allows them to see in all directions.

Most plants in the Smoke Ring are quite fragile because they need not support their own weight. A notable exception to this rule are the eponymous Integral Trees, which are up to 100 kilometers long. Tidal locking radially orients them: one end points toward Voy while the other points toward space. The ends of the tree feel a tidal force of up to 1/5 g. Each end consists of a leafy "tuft", where photosynthesis occurs. Compared to trees on Earth, the tufts are both canopy and roots.

Each tuft of a tree is up to 50 kilometers from the tree's center of mass and therefore either orbiting too slowly (the "in" tuft) or too quickly (the "out" tuft) compared to the atmosphere, which is in orbit at all points. The ends of the tree are subject to a constant hurricane-force wind that wind bends the ends into the shape of an integral symbol ∫ and pushes water and food onto tufts, or alternately onto trunks, where the gravity-like tidal forces pull the material out towards the tufts.

Twenty astronauts aboard an interstellar "ramship" colonized the Smoke Ring five-hundred years ere the story begins. Their descendants have adapted to the free-fall environment by growing taller and developing prehensile toes. Small numbers of devices from the original crew are coveted items in the Smoke Ring society.

[Merinsan]

This, eventually when we have advanced significantly enough I doubt we'll be worried about orbital mechanics.

You can prove this in game for yourself, make a tiny craft with a mainsail and unlimited fuel, you can pretty much do whatever you want and physics/gravity can't stop you.

I did this myself when testing science. I sent a small ship from Kerbin to Moho, in pretty much a straight line. I actually had to adjust my course when I realized it took me straight through the sun.

In my opinion, films like Gravity are much harder to accept, because they are not set in a highly advanced world. Star Wars on the other hand avoids most of these problems by setting the

things is a galaxy far far away, thus we have no idea of their level of technology. Simply having to ability to manipulate gravity could mean you can simply ignore orbital mechanics, and explain a number of things.

However, nothing will ever explain why lasers fire slower than the speed of light. I mean perhaps one day they'll find a way to slow down light, but why would you want your weapon to be slower?!

[sjwt]

It isnt Science-Fiction.

It's Science-Fiction.

Hence why you need a good 'Hard' Science-Fiction writer, like Larry Niven!

The man who was worried he would have to return the cheque for his first story that was about Mercury being tidally locked when inbetween the story being accepted and published it was revealed to rotate.

[Xeldrak]

That's the point of that quote. As the fourth draft of A New Hope in 1976 says, "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation."

And why on earth, should Han (space pilot!) mix up units of time and length?

No matter how shady he is, no car salesman will ever try to sell me a car that can drive ten kilometers in under thirty yards.

[Superfluous J]

And why on earth, should Han (space pilot!) mix up units of time and length?

No matter how shady he is, no car salesman will ever try to sell me a car that can drive ten kilometers in under thirty yards.

Yes, but now the problem is with the characters, not the science. People can say and do the dumbest things. To use Ben's own words against him, he agreed to follow the fool of a pilot who didn't know what a parsec was, making him the bigger fool.

[FenrirWolf]

Han was BSing them in that scene. It's how he rolls

[Awaras]

I did this myself when testing science. I sent a small ship from Kerbin to Moho, in pretty much a straight line. I actually had to adjust my course when I realized it took me straight through the sun.

In my opinion, films like Gravity are much harder to accept, because they are not set in a highly advanced world. Star Wars on the other hand avoids most of these problems by setting the

things is a galaxy far far away, thus we have no idea of their level of technology. Simply having to ability to manipulate gravity could mean you can simply ignore orbital mechanics, and explain a number of things.

However, nothing will ever explain why lasers fire slower than the speed of light. I mean perhaps one day they'll find a way to slow down light, but why would you want your weapon to be slower?!

IIRC, they never explicitly call them 'lasers', only 'blasters' or somesuch. They might be some kind of particle weapons instead.

[razark]

And why on earth, should Han (space pilot!) mix up units of time and length?

Han didn't confuse units. He did it to see if the rubes that were hiring him knew anything.

If they catch on and call him on his BS, the price goes down.

If they don't catch it, he knows he can charge them more.

[Deadweasel]

A lot of sci-fi doesn't try to be as hard as possible, but is sometimes forced to introduce "BS factors" in order to make a particular setting or critical plot point possible to the story. I've always balked at the term "science fantasy", because it's unnecessarily redundant. It's fiction; of course it's fantasy. It doesn't matter how hard you try to make it, there will always be something in there that takes some suspension of disbelief before the story can be enjoyed. Humans working in deep space, living on other habitable planets, interstellar warfare, the list goes on, and applies to just about any space-based science fiction story (that isn't based on possible real world scenarios, such as Gravity).

The Honor Harrington series goes out of its way to play the "hard science" card, but at the same time has some elements that are a bit of a stretch. They're all for the sake of the story though, and the general idea isn't that the reader is trying to pick apart the physics, so much as enjoy a good yarn full of action, intrigue and imagination.

That said, I usually find myself caught up in the space battles, which are usually based on tactics used in actual historical naval engagements. <3

[Dispatcher]

I've been working on an SF novel for quite a while now (research and writing). I'm into hard SF, and am writing the novel I want to read. I had already designed my ships before encountering KSP, and its interesting that playing KSP has given me a "feel" for piloting things which is more insightful and natural than merely watching what a pilot or astronaut does. Its my fond hope that someone reading my work will think that it is realistic and plausible; and at least fun.

[Jarin]

Or simply if you have enough power and thrust you can completely disregard gravity. At some point it makes as much sense as a 747 trying to take advantage of thermals coming off a field below it...

Okay, that's a solid comparison. I'll have to remember that one.

You know you've had too much physics in your life when you get irked at little things in otherwise enjoyable books....

Yeah, that's actually the problem I'm complaining about here. I'll be really immersed in a book and be enjoying the story when all of a sudden, some horribly-mechanically-wrong bit will happen in a space battle or something and just pull me completely out of my 'enjoyable reading' headspace. =/

Edit:

I've been working on an SF novel for quite a while now (research and writing). I'm into hard SF, and am writing the novel I want to read. I had already designed my ships before encountering KSP, and its interesting that playing KSP has given me a "feel" for piloting things which is more insightful and natural than merely watching what a pilot or astronaut does. Its my fond hope that someone reading my work will think that it is realistic and plausible; and at least fun.

Just remember that SOI isn't a thing that actually exists.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Jarin

[magnemoe]

Oh, a nice recommendation for you..

Larry Niven 'The Integral trees' and its squeal 'The Smoke ring'.

Its about living in the ring of atmosphere that a dieing gas giant is leaking around a neutron star.

"East takes you Out, Out takes you West, West takes you In, In takes you East. Port and Starboard bring you back"

The story occurs around the fictional neutron star Levoy's Star (abbreviated "Voy"). A gas giant, Goldblatt's World (abbreviated "Gold") orbits this star just outside its Roche limit and therefore loses its atmosphere, which is pulled into an independent orbit around Voy and forms a ring that is known as a gas torus. The gas torus is hugeâ€â€one million kilometers thickâ€â€but most of it is too thin to be habitable. The central part of the Gas Torus, where the air is thicker, is known as the Smoke Ring. The Smoke Ring supports a wide variety of life.

No "ground" exists in the Smoke Ring; it entirely consists of sky. Most animals therein therefore can fly--even the fish. Furthermore, the Smoke Ring is in orbit and therefore in free fall: there is no "up" or "down". Most animals have trilateral symmetry that allows them to see in all directions.

Most plants in the Smoke Ring are quite fragile because they need not support their own weight. A notable exception to this rule are the eponymous Integral Trees, which are up to 100 kilometers long. Tidal locking radially orients them: one end points toward Voy while the other points toward space. The ends of the tree feel a tidal force of up to 1/5 g. Each end consists of a leafy "tuft", where photosynthesis occurs. Compared to trees on Earth, the tufts are both canopy and roots.

Each tuft of a tree is up to 50 kilometers from the tree's center of mass and therefore either orbiting too slowly (the "in" tuft) or too quickly (the "out" tuft) compared to the atmosphere, which is in orbit at all points. The ends of the tree are subject to a constant hurricane-force wind that wind bends the ends into the shape of an integral symbol ∫ and pushes water and food onto tufts, or alternately onto trunks, where the gravity-like tidal forces pull the material out towards the tufts.

Twenty astronauts aboard an interstellar "ramship" colonized the Smoke Ring five-hundred years ere the story begins. Their descendants have adapted to the free-fall environment by growing taller and developing prehensile toes. Small numbers of devices from the original crew are coveted items in the Smoke Ring society.

Somebody else love the integral trees

Yes it was very good, I love weird environments and its tops everything else by an huge margin.

It avoids lots of problem by not being high tech. In fact except the artifact level remains everything is low tech.