Science Fiction Failures

Discussion in 'Science' started by HereWeGoAgain, Jun 14, 2020.

  1. Derideo_Te

    Derideo_Te Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that.
     
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  2. Shook

    Shook Well-Known Member

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    Depends on the armor, the space craft's skin, power of the weapon and whatever else.

    Good post, however. You have answered a question I've had about who you might be. You should be relieved to know that you are not he. I know I am. :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2020
  3. Shook

    Shook Well-Known Member

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    The Green Slime 1968. Not well reviewed at IMDB either.

    [​IMG]

    1 Should be "The Green Slime Is Coming", or "The Green Slimes Are Coming". That's the first clue.

    2 I don't see no stinking slimes. Deal killer right there.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2020
  4. Lucifer

    Lucifer Well-Known Member

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    I can't play that for some reason.

    Here's another great video of Dullea and Lockwood talking about the film.
     
  5. Lucifer

    Lucifer Well-Known Member

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    Not to mention that in Zero G, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so shooting a weapon that fires any projectile would send the shooter backwards.
     
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  6. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

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    I enjoy them describing their experiences on the set.
    Thanks
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2020
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  7. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    I love The Expanse.

    The tv show is great, but the books are still twice as good as the show, maybe more than twice.

    There are 8 books, I keep them in a stack on top of my bookcase. When I finish one, I start the next one. I've read all of them several times.

    Anyway, back to what you said, there are no ray guns, time machines. Over time you would expect technological improvement, so a better engine is reasonable.

    There are some mistakes, that is inevitable in a sprawling Space Opera. I feel the worst is that the authors don't always seem aware of how much radiation is out there.

    One of the many things I love about it is that we are more technologically advanced, but we're still the same old humans. Nearly everyone is constantly making mistakes.

    I adore Avasarala. Now I want some pistachios.
     
  8. Lucifer

    Lucifer Well-Known Member

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    I love the actress who plays that character, Shohreh Aghdashloo. She has given that character a very real and empowered performance. You should check her in the movie, "The House of Sand and Fog" (2003).

    Since you have the books, what was that gigantic leap in engine technology? They included a brief flashback in the 2nd season IIRC, but never really elaborated on it, they just sort of stuck in there without any real connection to the rest of the story.
     
  9. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    I like that actress a lot.

    In the books, there was a guy named Epstein. He was a smart Martian that hadn't had much luck inventing things. One day he tried making a fusion engine, and it worked. That reduced the amount of fuel you needed by a huge amount, maybe 90%.

    Which meant you could make a really big ship, accelerate at as many Gs as you wanted, and get across the Solar system in a reasonable amount of time. (Although one of the things people say a lot in the books is "Space is just too damn big.")

    Unfortunately for Epstein, it worked better than he thought it would. The drive pinned him to his seat, so he couldn't turn it off. He left the solar system quickly, and his corpse (in the book) is still traveling a significant fraction of C.
     
    Last edited: Jun 24, 2020
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  10. Bill Murdock

    Bill Murdock Banned

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    I like reading a variety of fiction, but I always have read a lot of scifi. I agree with you about the silly crap they do. You can't hear the gorgon battle cruiser explode, there's no atmo. Plus in space the speed on light is very slow. Space battles would be very difficult unless the parties were very very close to each other. Then we have people suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space. I don't think they die as fast as they allude to. Also a peeve of mine is this one story I just read about a guy with a Glock on a spaceship. He pulls the trigger and it don't fire. So he pulls it again and still don't fire. He pulls it again and again and it still won't fire. lol, why don't they learn about things before they embarrass themselves? Then Geordi always reverses the polarity on everything. Why doesn't the face suckers acid blood eat his skin up? And then when you go eva to pull in the damaged relay satellite that weighs a 1000 pounds and you push it toward the hanger deck and it hits the edge of the hull and bounces right on inside where you want it, it still hit the hull with 1000 pounds of force multiplied by the inertia!

    On the sequel to Prometheus what kind of imbeciles land the landing vessel in a lake and then open the door and jump out in the lake on a planet they know nothing about? And lastly why does the salt vampire on star trek look so much like nancy pelosi?
     
  11. Distraff

    Distraff Well-Known Member

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    So many fails. Like the lack of seat belts on star ships, why they have to be so close together to do battle, why photon blasts are so slow, or why humans guide ships and aim weapons instead of computer systems.
     
  12. Bill Murdock

    Bill Murdock Banned

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  13. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    In The Expanse, you have to be strapped in, and they have something called juice that gets injected to let you better tolerate insanely high G forces.

    You need to close to do battle because you can dance out of the way, or knock down enemy missiles easily, at a distance.

    They don't have ray guns, and they do have computer controlled weapons, although priority is done by humans.
     
  14. Nightmare515

    Nightmare515 Ragin' Cajun Staff Member Past Donor

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    Well Sci Fi media is in the business to make money after all. We have to admit that Star Wars space battles wouldn't be nearly as cool in complete silence. Pretty much every person in the Western world can recognize the iconic scream of the TIE fighter engine nowadays, so certain artistic liberties must be taken ;)

    For me the biggest eye rollers of sci fi aren't so much the blatant breaking of the laws of physics but rather the logic used in these movies. Why the hell do X-Wings and TIE fighters dogfight in this super advanced galactic faring civilization? Vietnam era US Air Force and Navy would be able to repel an Imperial TIE fighter assault based on Star Wars logic lol. And why don't they just use rail guns and toss projectiles at these big capital ships at warp speed instead of using lasers. Apparently you can just hyperdrive a spaceship into another ship and destroy it according to the new movies so why the hell didn't they just hyperdrive an X-wing into the Death Star in the first movie lol.

    The whole wind on Mars thing in The Martian made me laugh as well. I knew nothing about the movie outside of it being hailed as "grounded in real science" and when I sat down to watch it and saw the landing craft get knocked over by the wind I was confused. I actually stopped the movie and went online to google some things because from everything I knew about Mars I was pretty sure the wind can be "strong" as in actual velocity but it doesn't work that way on Mars. Then I read online that yeah it's true and the director knew that but they couldn't think of a better way to knock the ship over and leave the guy stranded there so they just rolled with it. Damn movie made me pause and rethink my own understanding of physics for a second by hailing itself as grounded in real science lol.

    The massive over demonstration of relativity in Interstellar was a bit eye rolling but it was cool that they included it in the movie and I understand why they did it to such a dramatic extent. The ending was sort of lame though. I was thoroughly enjoying the movie until we started talking about love transcending dimensions and Matthew Mcconaughey flying into a black hole and teaching his daughter how to solve quantum gravity to make the generation ships fly or whatever the hell happened lol. I was sort of drunk by that point.
     
  15. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    Light speed is 186000 mi/s so I don't think it would be pitch black.
     
  16. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    Transparent metal.
     
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  17. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

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  18. politicalcenter

    politicalcenter Well-Known Member

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    Why the hail did they need the transparent aluminium anyway? Only so the audience could see the whales. My personal fantasy has no rules imposed by outside sources. My fantasy... my rules. Stuff like warp speed and artificial gravity is considered to be worked out. Unless I am building warp engines then my mind has to wander. And my inhabitable planets have to be pretty close to EarthLike ....in fact , almost duplicates. What are the odds? Skrew the odds it's my dream.
     

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