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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

I gave up watching DC movies years ago, and Marvel recently. Even then, the physics part of it was all over the place.

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Hmm, I guess you never watched the opening sequence of the first episode. So they did make at least 1 attempt.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[coppice]

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.

But Interstellar is not at all scientifically accurate. Kit Thorne focussed on one or two points, ignored everything else, and then made some rather sad looking YouTube promotional videos.. They would have looked much more reasonable if instead of saying they "followed the science" they'd followed Tom Cruise and his approach to his publicity.

[Infraviolet]

Effectively, Interstellar produced a very accurate visual rendering of a black hole event horizon, and then used that accuracy as an excuse not to strive for accuracy anywhere else. The Martian came out within a few months of Interstellar, and it mnaged to be mostly fairly accurate except for the strength of wind prortrayed in the initial dust storm (the novel had a second dust storm take place too and showed it much mroe accurately, the main hazard being slow clogging of solar panels).

[mendip_discovery]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Hmm, I guess you never watched the opening sequence of the first episode. So they did make at least 1 attempt.

Which first episode?

The bit where they didn't have sound in the junkyard scene due to being in outerspace. It was nice to have for once that they just didn't put lots of noise there.

[Rick Law]

...
But Interstellar is not at all scientifically accurate. Kit Thorne focussed on one or two points, ignored everything else, and then made some rather sad looking YouTube promotional videos.. They would have looked much more reasonable if instead of saying they "followed the science" they'd followed Tom Cruise and his approach to his publicity.

Effectively, Interstellar produced a very accurate visual rendering of a black hole event horizon, and then used that accuracy as an excuse not to strive for accuracy anywhere else. The Martian came out within a few months of Interstellar, and it mnaged to be mostly fairly accurate except for the strength of wind prortrayed in the initial dust storm (the novel had a second dust storm take place too and showed it much mroe accurately, the main hazard being slow clogging of solar panels).

I gave "high marks" for Interstellar's accurate (according to then-current understanding) simulation of black hole.  This accomplishment counts a lot because for "the rest of the stuff" we have more knowledge of them and can use common sense to create mental pictures of how they should look and work.  Whereas black hole is rather alien to our common sense.  A good visual is difficult to generate mentally.  So I agree with the priority of making black hole simulation good and pay less attention to "the rest of the stuff" in the trade-offs.

In my view, the worst error committed by Interstellar is: it would have been a heck of a lot easier to repair earth's problem they are facing (dust bowl and crop blight) than to relocate the entire population of earth.  So "leaving earth" as a solution is just a silly idea; or did they even compared resource requirement of saving-earth vs leaving-earth before making the important decision.  Well, no lift-off, no movie, I suppose.  So I accepted that premise with salt.

Every movie has to do give-and-take trade offs.  I rather enjoy "The Martian" as well, but it got problems as well.  I get really bothered by: (1) Can thin Martian atmosphere really have such a strong wind storm that can blow/carry a person some multiple-meters distance?  I doubt it.  Dust storm, sure, but humans have a much heavier mass per surface-area ratio so it needs a lot more force than probably the thin atmosphere can muster.  (2) Can he really survive the radiation a year?  Mars doesn't have a magnetic field shield, so radiation is going to be deadly unless the station there is shielded for extended stays.  (3) How about the potatoes he farmed in Martian radiation with minimal shielding?  What gives the potato nutrients (minerals, vitamins...) as the only source of food?  A bit of poop wont be enough to do that, it needed more.  (4) The final "capture" of the astronaut (The Martian) by rescuers.  The sequence of events after his capsule took him into Martian orbit then ran out of fuel.  That sequence of events is pure fantasy.  But still, it is an enjoyable movie.

By the way, Kip Throne was also involved with Carl Sagan's Contact.  He helped Carl with ensuring that the Worm Hole part of that movie is accurate to the knowledge then.

I would like to see more Sci-Fi's like these three (Contact/Interstellar/The Martian) in the Sci-Fi genre.

[snarkysparky]

Intersteller had mistakes in it that it just didn't need to have.  No plot impact,  no cost to do it right.  It just made me pissed.

First thing is building a starship at the end of a gravel road. 

Second thing is the relativistic aging of the guy still orbiting the planet while the explorers were investigating the surface.  If the difference was that much then they would not be able to leave that gravity well.

And the Daughter whining about how her dad left her there on Earth to die.   Really?   I'd rather take my chances on a slowly dying planet that marooned on a one way trip to nowhere.

There are a few more but i forget.

There would be no cost to have fixed these.

For a good Sci Fi of the same type check out Arrival.

[coppercone2]

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.

maybe the engines only operate in a vacuum, like advanced ion thruster technology, not suitable for lift off in the atmosphere because they would destroy themselves with plasma

alot of technologies would have a problem in the atmosphere at high power level, like blooming

[David Hess]

The Martian came out within a few months of Interstellar, and it mnaged to be mostly fairly accurate except for the strength of wind prortrayed in the initial dust storm (the novel had a second dust storm take place too and showed it much mroe accurately, the main hazard being slow clogging of solar panels).

Niven once pointed out that a huge dust storm on Mars is about as dangerous as an enraged caterpillar.

The radiation hazard on the other had is considerable unless everything is buried.

[David Hess]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

[coppercone2]

I really want to see inertial dampers made in my life time. Hopefully connected to a ceramic resistor bank. And the bootleg space ships will use a salt water load in a tupperware when the manager does not want to buy a new load. How many watts do I need to dissipate to prevent my coffee from floating away?

Is that a shady practice done on large ships? Like discharging a battery bank into the hull ?

[BrianHG]

I'm about to watch 'Deus The Dark Sphere (2022)', will it be interesting, or a dud?

[David Hess]

I really want to see inertial dampers made in my life time. Hopefully connected to a ceramic resistor bank. And the bootleg space ships will use a salt water load in a tupperware when the manager does not want to buy a new load. How many watts do I need to dissipate to prevent my coffee from floating away?

Is that a shady practice done on large ships? Like discharging a battery bank into the hull ?

Niven's Known Space had "gravity drags" which returned the speed difference between the ship and a local mass as energy to be dissipated in a big radiator, with hilarity ensuing if circumstances required the energy transfer requirements to be too large.  Known Space also had artificial gravity so cabin gravity could be maintained at zero or high acceleration.

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

[Rick Law]

Intersteller had mistakes in it that it just didn't need to have.  No plot impact,  no cost to do it right.  It just made me pissed.

First thing is building a starship at the end of a gravel road. 

Second thing is the relativistic aging of the guy still orbiting the planet while the explorers were investigating the surface.  If the difference was that much then they would not be able to leave that gravity well.

And the Daughter whining about how her dad left her there on Earth to die.   Really?   I'd rather take my chances on a slowly dying planet that marooned on a one way trip to nowhere.

There are a few more but i forget.

There would be no cost to have fixed these.

For a good Sci Fi of the same type check out Arrival.

I'll give you one more Interstellar "mistakes in it that it just didn't need to have."  Newton's 3rd Law of Motion is "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" but they had it in the movie as "To move forward, we have to leave something behind".

Normal rocket-propelled forward motion is done by rockets thrust gas out backward at speed resulting in an opposite force pushing the rocket ship forward.  That is Newton's 3rd Law of Motion.

To gain forward motion by removing "Ranger 2" from "Endurance", detaching is not enough.   If Endurance push Ranger 2 away in the backward direction, that would work.  The push backward of Ranger 2 by Endurance will results in an opposite force pushing Endurance in the forward direction.  Pushing requires energy (fuel) and fuel is what they want to conserve.   However, detaching Ranger 2 is indeed helpful.  Helpful not due to the 3rd law, but helpful due to the 2nd law "F=ma".  Detaching Ranger 2 means less mass to move. Less mass requires less force to accelerate or decelerate, less force = less fuel needed.

The gavel road has a reason.  They want to hide the facility.  A well paved road to nowhere will draw attention.  The 1971 movie "The Andromeda Strain"  first "going to the lab" scene was the two scientist driving to a secret high-tech lab on a dirt road.  The scientist driving was explaining to the new comer how much money they spend building this dirt road and removing tracks from construction so as to hide the existence of the huge underground facility.

re: Arrival

It is a good movie and I do enjoy it.  I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie.  Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.

There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time.  While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.

[coppice]

I'm about to watch 'Deus The Dark Sphere (2022)', will it be interesting, or a dud?

Seen it. Slow and pretty dull. It was obviously made on a low budget, but they wanted it to look good. Spreading a small budget over some high quality visuals obviously meant they couldn't afford too many visuals, so they appear to have just spread a half hour of fairly polished material over 90 minutes. You still only get a 30 minute story.

[coppice]

re: Arrival

It is a good movie and I do enjoy it.  I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie.  Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.

There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time.  While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.

Our way of thinking affecting our perception of time is the whole plot of Arrival (The Story Of Your Life). If you don't like that then the movie has nothing for you.

[Brumby]

Ah, what it is like to be young, and not to remember 1950/60s movies[1], nor TV programmes like Space 1999.

[1] exceptions: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, 2001

I might also add War Of The Worlds (the 1953 version)

[tggzzz]

Ah, what it is like to be young, and not to remember 1950/60s movies[1], nor TV programmes like Space 1999.

[1] exceptions: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, 2001

I might also add War Of The Worlds (the 1953 version)

That was certainly a cut above the "reds/homosexuals/druggies are comin' t' get ya" movies. Nonetheless, living not far from where the martians landed, the movie felt too Amuricanised.

[Rick Law]

re: Arrival

It is a good movie and I do enjoy it.  I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie.  Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.

There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time.  While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.

Our way of thinking affecting our perception of time is the whole plot of Arrival (The Story Of Your Life). If you don't like that then the movie has nothing for you.

Time travel per se is not the issue.  It is how it was "used" in the movie.

In Interstellar, using Worm Hole to go back in time is consistent with the way we understand Worm Hole.  Constructing and transiting the Worm Hole for now are fantasies.  Accepting that two fantasies, no other Laws of Physics broken there for the time-travel part (unless there are new findings in the last few years that I am not aware of).  How Cooper can interact with Murphy's room is of course fantasy.

In Arrival, it was the brain perceiving past and future events.  That assumes future already happened so it can be perceived.  That is the part that I needed a good amount of salt to accept.  Further, learning a new language is a "software" change whereas time perception in our brain/mind is a function of both software and hardware (sub-processor level specialized groups of neurons).  To have those affected by a "language sub-processor software enhancement" takes yet more salt to accept.

Either way, both are good and enjoyable movies.  Both tried to be scientifically correct succeeding to some degree, but certainly both are good movies.

[coppice]

re: Arrival

It is a good movie and I do enjoy it.  I have a couple of issue with it but not enough to not like the movie.  Mostly, I have trouble with their treatment of Time and the assumption that changing our perception of Time can give us the ability to experience events in the future.

There was a time when I spend a lot of time thinking about Time.  While that time has passed, my thoughts on Time still consumes my free time; from time to time.

Our way of thinking affecting our perception of time is the whole plot of Arrival (The Story Of Your Life). If you don't like that then the movie has nothing for you.

Time travel per se is not the issue.  It is how it was "used" in the movie.

In Interstellar, using Worm Hole to go back in time is consistent with the way we understand Worm Hole.  Constructing and transiting the Worm Hole for now are fantasies.  Accepting that two fantasies, no other Laws of Physics broken there for the time-travel part (unless there are new findings in the last few years that I am not aware of).  How Cooper can interact with Murphy's room is of course fantasy.

In Arrival, it was the brain perceiving past and future events.  That assumes future already happened so it can be perceived.  That is the part that I needed a good amount of salt to accept.  Further, learning a new language is a "software" change whereas time perception in our brain/mind is a function of both software and hardware (sub-processor level specialized groups of neurons).  To have those affected by a "language sub-processor software enhancement" takes yet more salt to accept.

Either way, both are good and enjoyable movies.  Both tried to be scientifically correct succeeding to some degree, but certainly both are good movies.

I suspect Ted Chiang was riffing on differences between languages he actually speaks - Mandarin and English. English has a rich set of tenses that set things in very specific temporal contexts. When first learning Chinese (any dialect) an English speaker finds it bizarre that there are no real tenses, and tense has to be implied. Its a whole different relationship to time. He extended that, not to time travel, but to a perceiving a wide span of times at once, rather like we see large sections of the X, Y and Z axes not bit by bit, but concurrently.

[tszaboo]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

Ha. Flip and burn maneuver. Despite the early sci-fi CGI it really looks like something a ship would do.
It's a strange disconnect for people. Everyone seems to know that you can go to mars every 26 months, and the route is 9 months long, but then you rarely see anything else orbital implemented. Like I was watching Red Planet the other day. They start the landing like 20 minutes early, end up kms from the original landing site. So the ship must be going 20km/h in orbit I guess.

[tggzzz]

Firefly was a good show but they made no attempt to get spaceflight correct.

Firefly is the *only* show or movie that I have ever seen showing how a ship properly descends into a lower orbit for entry into the atmosphere.  I almost jumped up to cheer.

https://youtu.be/J3rX0T2XNxs

Forward takes you out, out takes you back, back takes you in, in takes you forward.

Babylon 5 was good w.r.t. spaceflight dynamics. It completely avoided the "spitfires/mustang in space" syndrome. It also replaced "cowboys and indians in space" with "Roman empire / Japanese empire / Tolkien in space".

But then B5 was pioneering in many ways, including CGI, 5 year story arc, plot points being introduced many many episodes  before they came to fruition, none of the "global reset" between episodes (think Star Dreck!), general literacy, being based around classic philosophical questions, and the way the creator (JMS)  interacted with the fan base on usenet after each episode was transmitted.

Still worth rewatching after 30 years. Newbies should start with series 3, get hooked, then watch the earlier series to see how they got to that point.