General > General Technical Chat
SciFi movies and pathetic misconceptions of tech failing for the story line.
Infraviolet:
Post #34, the thing with Interstellar is that it could have been good if they'd just made a movie version of the novel Tau Zero (Poul Anderson) instead. Among the many things that annoyed me with Interstellar is the way that they have a super shuttle which can pull itself out of the gravity well of a planet near a black hole with only its internal fuel reserves, and yet the same vehicle needed several stages to get off from Earth at the start of the mission.
Another annoying thing I've found is something that occurs often in superhero films. If we accept that the superhero has extreme strength and is virtually immune to injury then why:
a) Is a superhero able to restrain a helicopter from taking off without clutching an immovable ground fixing at the time, however much strength he has he cannot prevent take-off when the helicopter's liting force is greater than his body weight.
b) Does a superhero flung out from a fight plunge throuhg all manner of debris and keeping moving for hundreds of metres before halting, sure he might have impenetrable skin and somehow survive the extreme decelarations involved in the series of collisions, but conservation of momentum means he'd come to a stop, however fast he was flung, within the course of the first few big objects he hits purely due to him having only a roughly typical human's mass.
coppice:
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on March 27, 2023, 09:49:25 pm ---Post #34, the thing with Interstellar is that it could have been good if they'd just made a movie version of the novel Tau Zero (Poul Anderson) instead. Among the many things that annoyed me with Interstellar is the way that they have a super shuttle which can pull itself out of the gravity well of a planet near a black hole with only its internal fuel reserves, and yet the same vehicle needed several stages to get off from Earth at the start of the mission.
--- End quote ---
The whole movie is filled with problems like that. One moment technology looks close to present day, and the next they do something almost as amazing as the aliens, or far future Earthlings, arranging a convenient wormhole. The technology mismatch between the multi-stage booster they use to reach Earth orbit versus the much more advanced ship they use once in space sets things up very poorly for the rest of the movie. If they edited out out the launch scene the rest of the movie would have gelled much better.
tszaboo:
--- Quote from: coppice on March 27, 2023, 09:59:21 pm ---
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on March 27, 2023, 09:49:25 pm ---Post #34, the thing with Interstellar is that it could have been good if they'd just made a movie version of the novel Tau Zero (Poul Anderson) instead. Among the many things that annoyed me with Interstellar is the way that they have a super shuttle which can pull itself out of the gravity well of a planet near a black hole with only its internal fuel reserves, and yet the same vehicle needed several stages to get off from Earth at the start of the mission.
--- End quote ---
The whole movie is filled with problems like that. One moment technology looks close to present day, and the next they do something almost as amazing as the aliens, or far future Earthlings, arranging a convenient wormhole. The technology mismatch between the multi-stage booster they use to reach Earth orbit versus the much more advanced ship they use once in space sets things up very poorly for the rest of the movie. If they edited out out the launch scene the rest of the movie would have gelled much better.
--- End quote ---
The entire premise of the movie is bad. No matter how much we mess up the earth, it will be always easier to fix it than to travel somewhere else, and terraform another planet. How are we expected to have technology that can terraform a completely alien planet, if we cannot fix minor issues here. And they had what... Crop failure and dead bees? Surely thats going to be a smaller problem than lack of atmosphere or a million km travel.
The delta V to get out from near a black hole would be astronomical, no amount of near future tech would do it.
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on March 27, 2023, 09:49:25 pm ---b) Does a superhero flung out from a fight plunge throuhg all manner of debris and keeping moving for hundreds of metres before halting, sure he might have impenetrable skin and somehow survive the extreme decelarations involved in the series of collisions, but conservation of momentum means he'd come to a stop, however fast he was flung, within the course of the first few big objects he hits purely due to him having only a roughly typical human's mass.
--- End quote ---
I gave up watching DC movies years ago, and Marvel recently. Even then, the physics part of it was all over the place.
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on March 27, 2023, 07:53:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: snarkysparky on March 27, 2023, 01:46:43 pm ---Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.
--- End quote ---
Hmm, I guess you never watched the opening sequence of the first episode. So they did make at least 1 attempt.
--- End quote ---
Which first episode?
Rick Law:
Re: Interstellar
Interstellar is the kind of Science Fiction that at least tried to be Scientifically accurate. When Navy advisors opposed to certain part of the "Top Gun Maverick" scenes, Tom Cruise is supposed to have said "We are trying to make a movie, not a documentary. (We need certain artistic freedom to make it entertaining)"
Kip Thorne (Professor at CalTech teaching theoretical physicist, gravitational physics and astrophysics) was Science Advisor and Executive Producer for the movie. Kip was known to be amongst the top blackhole/wormhole authority at the time. So he kept Christopher Nolan (Producer and Director of Interstellar) inline. It was rumored (according to at least one youtube reviewers) that Christopher Nolan even took some Physics course at CalTech to prep himself for the movie. Interesting to note that the first photo image of our galaxy's center blackhole (2022) is consistent with how Kip Thorne theorized a black hole should look -- as seen in the movie Intestellar movie (2014) which use mathematics provided by Kip to create the simulated images of the black hole. Watching Interstellar is about as close to really flying around a black hole for anyone in decades to come.
In my mind, I put SciFi into 2 categories, Science-Fantasy Fiction, and Fantasy-Science Fiction. "Interstellar", "2001 A Space Odyssey", "2010: The Year We Make Contact" (and many others) are in the Science-Fantasy Fiction category. "Starship Troopers" is a good movie, but is Fantasy-Science. "Star Trek The Next Generation" is like most other - tried to be Science-Fantasy, but at times Fantasy-Science.
Personally, I found Interstellar even with its consistence problems still managed to be a rather good Science Fantasy Fiction.
David Hess:
--- Quote from: BrianHG on March 18, 2023, 11:51:30 pm ---Yes, with ease, any EMP strong enough to fry most long length wiring to HV distribution transformers will also fry the CMOS gates in an IC with the tiniest length of exposed wiring, but not vaporize the blunt wiring itself.
--- End quote ---
These discussions about EMP are conflating two or three different things.
A nuclear detonation in the upper atmosphere ionizes a large volume and the resulting charge pushes the Earth's magnetic field lines around causing common mode currents in power transmission lines which saturate power distribution transformers causing them to fail and short out. The resulting power surges from the shorting transformers are hard on anything connected to the power line. EMP weapons are detonated high in the atmosphere to maximize this effect. A big solar storm has the same effect.
The powerful broadband RF spike attenuates with the square of the distance so is more dangerous in close proximity, where you are likely to have more pressing concerns like blast, incineration, and perhaps prompt radiation. Most affected devices will suffer from single event upset rather than destruction and only require restarting or rebooting at most.
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on March 27, 2023, 09:49:25 pm ---Among the many things that annoyed me with Interstellar is the way that they have a super shuttle which can pull itself out of the gravity well of a planet near a black hole with only its internal fuel reserves, and yet the same vehicle needed several stages to get off from Earth at the start of the mission.
--- End quote ---
Maybe they should have explained it, but I assumed that the launch included other things besides the shuttle, including consumables like fuel so they left with the maximum possible fuel load.
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