What irks you the most about movie space travel?

[Kilmeister]

Slightly offtopic, but this reminded me of another gem I found linked from an old thread in these forums

How to Destroy the Earth

And interestingly, as I was re-reading it just now I noticed it too mentions Bear's "The Forge of God" method as Brdavis pointed out.

[John.E]

when 2 or more ships meet in deep space, why are they always the same way up?

Magic or failing that the fact that all the navigation and gyro systems came from one supplier

[theend3r]

KSP seriously destroyed any enjoyment I had from watching these movies, mostly due to orbital mechanics. For exaple the latest Star Trek: Into the darkness had a scene where they warped to earth and started falling straight down. This mean either:

a) the other planet was moving at exactly the same speed and direction

warp can influence speed, but then why couldn't they just change it by 0,0000...01% less to achieve orbital speed?

Gravity is in the same league. The same debris hitting you periodically over and over? Hard to believe. It would have to orbit at exactly the same speed as you but in reverse direction, who would launch something like that?

Still, I don't regret it, KSP is way more awesome than those crappy physics movies

[FenrirWolf]

*snip*

I like your perspective on the issue. Sci-Fi doesn't always portray things properly, but you're right in that neither do most of the other kinds of media we like. And sometimes those breaks from reality are the very things that can provide their own level of enjoyment. But that being said, it's always nice seeing those rare stories that actually do get everything right while telling a great tale at the same time.

[Drunkrobot]

Here is this trope turned on it's head in a video game. Thanks Bioware!

"You'll have no idea how many times people have asked me,'Why are we turning the ship around? We're only halfway there!'"-Commander Shepard

[peadar1987]

KSP seriously destroyed any enjoyment I had from watching these movies, mostly due to orbital mechanics. For exaple the latest Star Trek: Into the darkness had a scene where they warped to earth and started falling straight down. This mean either:

a) the other planet was moving at exactly the same speed and direction

warp can influence speed, but then why couldn't they just change it by 0,0000...01% less to achieve orbital speed?

Gravity is in the same league. The same debris hitting you periodically over and over? Hard to believe. It would have to orbit at exactly the same speed as you but in reverse direction, who would launch something like that?

Still, I don't regret it, KSP is way more awesome than those crappy physics movies

Or be in an orbit with a period that's an integer multiple of your own. You go around the earth twice, and meet the debris after it's gone around once.

[Thiel]

Or be in an orbit with a period that's an integer multiple of your own. You go around the earth twice, and meet the debris after it's gone around once.

That's actually perfectly possible. How the debris got into such and orbit is beyond me, but there's nothing impossible about the orbit itself.

[tmikesecrist3]

The problem I have is not on the list.... but the way poor old Newton seems to get chucked out the air lock

[Ralathon]

That's actually perfectly possible. How the debris got into such and orbit is beyond me, but there's nothing impossible about the orbit itself.

Or the debris could be in a polar orbit. So you got a polar debris ring and your equatorial orbit intersects it twice per orbit. There are plenty of ways to make something rendezvous at regular intervals in space.

[basbr]

Playing KSP ruined gravity for me.

[peadar1987]

Or the debris could be in a polar orbit. So you got a polar debris ring and your equatorial orbit intersects it twice per orbit. There are plenty of ways to make something rendezvous at regular intervals in space.

Yup, and it actually makes sense that a military satellite would be in a polar orbit. Not that it's at all likely, but it's not physically impossible.

Anyway, the point's been made that the film isn't supposed to be a documentary about Newton's, or even Kepler's, laws, it's a survival film that deals with isolation and desperation, which just happens to use space as a setting, so I don't mind too much if some of the more advanced stuff like orbital rendezvous and the distance between real life space stations gets thrown out of the window. That said, I wish they'd come up with another way of

with the parachute at the ISS. Even having the station obviously rotating would have solved this nicely.

[theend3r]

Yes, but the collisions would change their velocities, wouldn't they?

[tmikesecrist3]

Not according to newtion... the conservation of energy and velocitie, it states that if your are moving, you have to keep on movieing unless ated upon by an out side force, that means that both objects still have to have the same energy after a colliosion that they had before the collision... even of both objects broke up, the energy is still there... it dont matter if your one space craft or a million smitherines, the energy affter an impact has to be the same after, now the smitheriens might edivgualy have slower velocities but if you ad the energy/vosaty of each peace, the it would be equel to what it had before

[Ralathon]

Yes, but the collisions would change their velocities, wouldn't they?

So? You don't need to get hit by your own debris, any debris will seriously ruin your day. And most debris misses, so that will show up on the next pass.

Besides, we don't know the relative inclination between the orbits depicted in Gravity. Considering that you can visually see the debris floating by I suspect the original debris was from an equatorial orbit while the space station was from a Kennedy inclined orbit and they where meeting at the ascending and descending nodes. This means that any hit will dump the new debris in a inclination between the station and the original debris and a velocity relatively close to the original orbital speed. Since a direct hit tends to cause some spread in the velocity of the debris it is entirely possible that some fraction ends up in a synchronous orbit and rendezvouses on the next node.

[kiwiak]

Like when she holds George Clooney's hand and he's "falling" from the ISS, they could just have made them spin, or have him loose pressure, or anything to explain the force.

Werent they falling because parachute lines still ddint fully extended and absorbed their veloity?

[peadar1987]

Yes, but the collisions would change their velocities, wouldn't they?

You're dead right, and that makes things worse, because the collisions change the velocities of all of the pieces of debris by a small amount, putting them in slightly different orbits, meaning the spread out and form a cloud, instead of all staying together. This greatly increases they area of space they sweep through, and therefore your chances of getting hit.

[theend3r]

But it also changes YOUR velocity. To be hit by the same cloud of debris after you both change your velocities? I don't think so. Also nobody would consider sending satelites up into those orbits so that such situation could arise. Everyone playing KSP knows that for two things in space to collide, you have to make a serious effort. The chances are basically zero it will happen randomly and even less it will be so perfectly synchronised.

Not saying that it's totally impossible, just that it hindered my enjoyment of the movie.

[peadar1987]

But it also changes YOUR velocity. To be hit by the same cloud of debris after you both change your velocities? I don't think so. Also nobody would consider sending satelites up into those orbits so that such situation could arise. Everyone playing KSP knows that for two things in space to collide, you have to make a serious effort. The chances are basically zero it will happen randomly and even less it will be so perfectly synchronised.

Not saying that it's totally impossible, just that it hindered my enjoyment of the movie.

Aye, point taken, but it would have been a much less interesting movie (at least for the mainstream) if it was about a mission to repair the Hubble Space telescope that went smoothly and resulted in a textbook landing at Edwards in clear skies and light south-easterly breezes!

[Themohawkninja]

The fact that the engines are ALWAYS BURNING.

No matter how much I love Battlestar: Galactica, and no matter how well they take into account the need for RCS to maneuver and how complicated an FTL "jump" would be (it normally takes ~10 minutes to calculate the trajectories and paths) and explosive decompression and all of that... the are always burning the engines.

This goes for BS:G, Star Wars, Star Trek, and probably StarGate (although I haven't seen it in a while).

They can get every ounce of physics right, except for the part where they don't need to keep the engines burning the whole time.

[peadar1987]

The fact that the engines are ALWAYS BURNING.

No matter how much I love Battlestar: Galactica, and no matter how well they take into account the need for RCS to maneuver and how complicated an FTL "jump" would be (it normally takes ~10 minutes to calculate the trajectories and paths) and explosive decompression and all of that... the are always burning the engines.

This goes for BS:G, Star Wars, Star Trek, and probably StarGate (although I haven't seen it in a while).

They can get every ounce of physics right, except for the part where they don't need to keep the engines burning the whole time.

They could be idling, ready to throttle up at a moment's notice. Let's face it, we don't know how sci-fi engines work, or what they look like in various stages of operation, so the creators can hand-wave it however they want

[Themohawkninja]

They could be idling, ready to throttle up at a moment's notice. Let's face it, we don't know how sci-fi engines work, or what they look like in various stages of operation, so the creators can hand-wave it however they want

I suppose, but that seems like a bit of a easy-way-out excuse to address such an issue.

[Themohawkninja]

I suppose as far as the poll is concerned:

Distance: You can't really avoid it unless you want to either (A) Keep the whole thing on one alien world, or ( accept the fact that everyone who isn't on the ship will have long since died due to a combination of cryostasis and time dilation.

Weaponry: Aside from slower than light lasers, sci-fi movies tend to stay in the bounds of physics for these. That being said, science fiction writers really love nukes sometimes.

Planet Busting: Eh, if you can build a powerful enough laser to ablate enough of a planet to get to the core, very, very bad things are going to happen to the planet, even if it doesn't explode. That much magma, molten metals, the huge decrease/flux in the magnetic field and so forth, the fact that it blows up is the humane way of showing it if you ask me.

Fuel sources: From what I've seen, the fuel sources either aren't explained, totally fictional, or anti-matter, so I don't have much of a problem.

Lack of interest on the part of the pilot: I wouldn't care much about the universe either if I was getting shot at. Plus, most of the pilots in those shows/movies grew up in a futuristic world whereby space travel was so common that post-doctoral level knowledge of astronomy today is bachelors degree level knowledge in their universe, so there wouldn't be much to wonder about that you couldn't just research.

[jjwb22101]

My major qualms about sci fi are that almost no sci-fi movie portrays orbital mechanics properly, and that whenever ships meet, they are almost always in the same plane. I am also annoyed by the relative closeness of celestial bodies, as well as having completely unrealistic fuel sources/realistic fuel sources that are completely over powered.