Pretty interesting article here,

http://io9.com/5936924/10-myths-about-space-travel-that-make-science-fiction-better

Puny humans and their excuses.

Of course, pretty much all SF that spends any time in space offer explanations for these things. Naturally using the tech we have now none of this is possible. It's all predicated on the idea that there will be breakthroughs that will allow us to circumvent these limitations, not just ignore them as the article seems to say.

I'll give the gravity one, ships badly damaged or out of power shouldn't have any, but it's too expensive to show on almost anything other than a decent-budgeted SF film because it just slows production down to have people floating.

Apollo 13 did it the best between wire rigging, putting people on moving teeter-totters, and filming some things on the Vomit Comet to have actual weightless shots. However, that is out of the question for TV. Even making ships with centrifuges ala 2001 is out of the question because filming is harder and how are you going to do that for season after season?

IIRC Defying Gravity they used the velcro slippers idea and then had people's hair short and tied back with no objects left floating around, so they SAID there was no gravity even when there was.



The Jedi Master

To me most of those have been production compromises known for years. Especially to sci-fi geeks, since they're into all that anyway.

B5 was probably the TV show that tried the hardest to follow the physics, but it's just not easy or cheap enough to do it in every scene and episode.

B5 addressed it some. Earth ships and the station all had to rotate. When rotation stopped, gravity was lost. Other races had tech we didn't, that's about all that was said about that. Enterprise mentioned something about a gravity generator (whatever they called it) and mentioned a sweet spot where gravity was inverted.
Always liked how B5 space battles tried to be "realistic" with movement too. They made it an advantage, not something to overcome.

Star Trek had their inertial dampeners and stuff, so most shows try to address it a little, but without the actual technology, there's only so much they can say about it.

One thing that I never see addressed is that the artificial gravity generators or whatever are, well, generating gravity, so why isn't that pulling other celestial bodies out of place, etc., as they pass? I assume there's some sort of "anti-gravity" field blocking it from going outside the ships' hulls, but I don't recall ever seeing that discussed on any show.

Exactly right. It's also the reason why most sci-fi shows have oversimplified and generalized alien species such as having a single culture, single language, etc. It would simply be too time consuming to make an alien race that had the same kind of diversity that humanity has.

The stuff that most bugged me about a lot of science fiction was not the sidelong winks at physical constraints, but the blatant disregard for logical consequences of whatever future tech they came up with. I don't care what sort of universe a writer builds, so long as it makes sense. If you are going to have Stormtroopers running around in spotless armor, great. But the armor better be able to deflect something. Anything. At least small rocks hurled by Ewoks. Seriously, wtf?

The last fact sits a bit funny to me - the one about needing magical shields to survive the sun's radiation. How on earth did we send men to the moon in their flimsy space capsules in the 60's then? I don't think you'd need something like that article suggested.

We are going to need something like shields in space. The longer you are out there the more danger you are in. The apollo astronauts were not on the moon that long. Just a few hours.

Water. If you are going on a long mission, you could create a double hull, in between which they could put the water that is needed for the journey and on the surface.

notice there's no mention of stargate in there... lol..

It's a serious concern for any manned trip to Mars. Radiation out there can be brutal, especially during solar maximums. Water is indeed the most likely solution. IIRC, the only time I saw it mentioned in a show was on Defying Gravity where they had to retreat to a certain "safe spot" in the ship where the water was stored when a CME happened, and stay there for several hours.
Also, the old miniseries "Space", which IIRC was based on a Michener novel? That started with WvB in WWII but by the end had an Apollo 18 where they went to the Moon when a CME or something happened and they all died from the radiation with 2 of them still on the surface.


The Jedi Master

Uh, just how strong do you think their gravity generators would be? Gravity drops off as a function of distance VERY rapidly. Since it's also a function of mass, to move ANY "celestial body" requires a HUGE gravitational force. To do that, everyone on the ship would basically be squashed flat! I recall in some novel or other they mentioned that the plates in the floor created a very quickly deteriorating field, to the effect that a cup you dropped at the height of your knee fell much faster than one you dropped that you held over your head.

Of course, things like a gaping chasm or long elevator shaft in a spaceship SHOULD have no gravity at all, let alone have people plummeting to their deaths in a fist fight (always done purely for dramatic reasons).




The Jedi Master

well:

2 and 3 can arguably be related. Whatever tech and create gravity, it can probably negate inertial effects too.



I think the best addressement I've seen of these issues is Mass Effect. ME canon notes that space battles usually happen across vast distance, often with fleets never making visual contact. They also explain artificial gravity as being a helpful side-effect of the Ezzo cores.

The ever-present massive energy reserves doesn't bother me either. Look how powerful batteries have become since their first conception.


The biggest peeve i have though is that every species in the universe evidently decided that English is to be their standard language. Star Wars nods to this, noting that english is actually galactic basic, but that the alphabet is not the roman one we use (it's actually backwords Hebrew, IIRC)

Thanks dude, I can never watch sci fi again!!!!!!

You know, you can find a Big Bang Theory clip on youtube for just about any geek reference ever.

Maybe I'm not factoring something in, but if people are walking around at 1G, wouldn't that be the same pull as the Earth? I guess it would depend on the "technology" creating the artificial gravity, but if the artificial gravity felt identical to being on Earth, I'm not sure why it wouldn't have the same overall pull as Earth's gravitational field.

I never heard the comment about the plates, but that doesn't seem like it would be very consistent with what's shown on those various shows, where the pull was different within a very short distance. It's all fictional, of course, so I guess it doesn't make much sense to over-analyze it.

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/11/fireflys_15_best_uses_of_chinese_profanity.php

Yea, really liked that show, and it's attention to making it really seem like a "real NASA" mission...really disapointed it got cancelled, and I know I'm not the only one!