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Firefly also included gravity in terraforming: All those moons - just like the central planets, they're as close to Earth-That-Was as we could make 'em: grav

by mrec 6y ago

Firefly also included gravity in terraforming: All those moons - just like the central planets, they're as close to Earth-That-Was as we could make 'em: gravity, atmosphere, and such but never provided any explanation. In that medium (live-action TV) it's just handwaving around the production difficulties of showing low-G; Joss by his own admission will cry if you ask him science questions.

ansible 6y ago
While I loved the show, the science was particularly bad. For example, in the pilot episode, they pass by a Reaver ship while enroute to another planet. The encounter occurs slowly enough for the crew to get a long look at the Reaver ship as it passes. The closing speed seemed to be about 100mph at best. Whereas with the Apollo mission to the moon, the capsule was traveling 25,000 mph, or ten times the speed of a bullet. And even then it took three days to get to the moon. And even 25k mph is slow if we're talking about crossing actual interplanetary distances.
- mrec 6y ago
  Yeah, Joss 'fesses up to that one in the episode commentary. I don't know if it's "particularly bad" by the standards of screen SF. No shows do it well, and the vast majority don't even try.
  - albatruss 6y ago
    What about The Expanse?
    - mrec 6y ago
      From the little I've seen of it, much better than most but still not great.
      - ansible 6y ago
        There are things like the Epstein drive that is nearly "magic". It is as if you had some device that could do direct matter-energy conversion with 99.999999999999999999999% efficiency. Beyond that, they do treat maneuvering in space with greater realism that most shows.
        mrec 6y ago
        I don't really remember enough about that show to comment, but the usual failure mode of Newtonian flight models in visual media is that they're extremely reluctant to depict a ship doing a sustained thrust in the opposite direction to its velocity vector, which should logically be ~50% of its time under thrust. They just don't trust audiences to be able to grok it. Frontier: Elite II (the 1993 game) was the same; it was pretty hardcore Newtonian, but the autopilot would only use the front-facing thrusters to decelerate, even though the main thrusters were much more powerful. If you were under time pressure and needed an efficient flight plan, you had to do turnover and deceleration manually and by eye.
        albatruss 6y ago
        The Expanse does show deceleration explicitly many times. It's called a flip and burn in the show.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        Expanse is really interesting that there is basically just one super science item and thats the Epstein drive (well, if you don't count the near magic the protomolecule does). Everything else is pretty much slightly improved current tech (transparent smartphones, better medical tech, practical implants, advanced life support systems). One could even say some things aere kess advanced than one would expect - quite a few autonomous weapons, big rotating space colonies (oneil island 3, standfor torus, clarke wheel, etc) or worldhouses. Also no laser/gracer/xaser weapons or long range kinetic energy weapons. And no nuclear bomb pumped lasers.

by mrec 6y ago

ansible 6y ago

While I loved the show, the science was particularly bad. For example, in the pilot episode, they pass by a Reaver ship while enroute to another planet. The encounter occurs slowly enough for the crew to get a long look at the Reaver ship as it passes. The closing speed seemed to be about 100mph at best. Whereas with the Apollo mission to the moon, the capsule was traveling 25,000 mph, or ten times the speed of a bullet. And even then it took three days to get to the moon. And even 25k mph is slow if we're talking about crossing actual interplanetary distances.

mrec 6y ago
Yeah, Joss 'fesses up to that one in the episode commentary. I don't know if it's "particularly bad" by the standards of screen SF. No shows do it well, and the vast majority don't even try.
- albatruss 6y ago
  What about The Expanse?
  - mrec 6y ago
    From the little I've seen of it, much better than most but still not great.
    - ansible 6y ago
      There are things like the Epstein drive that is nearly "magic". It is as if you had some device that could do direct matter-energy conversion with 99.999999999999999999999% efficiency. Beyond that, they do treat maneuvering in space with greater realism that most shows.
      - mrec 6y ago
        I don't really remember enough about that show to comment, but the usual failure mode of Newtonian flight models in visual media is that they're extremely reluctant to depict a ship doing a sustained thrust in the opposite direction to its velocity vector, which should logically be ~50% of its time under thrust. They just don't trust audiences to be able to grok it. Frontier: Elite II (the 1993 game) was the same; it was pretty hardcore Newtonian, but the autopilot would only use the front-facing thrusters to decelerate, even though the main thrusters were much more powerful. If you were under time pressure and needed an efficient flight plan, you had to do turnover and deceleration manually and by eye.
        albatruss 6y ago
        The Expanse does show deceleration explicitly many times. It's called a flip and burn in the show.
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Expanse is really interesting that there is basically just one super science item and thats the Epstein drive (well, if you don't count the near magic the protomolecule does). Everything else is pretty much slightly improved current tech (transparent smartphones, better medical tech, practical implants, advanced life support systems). One could even say some things aere kess advanced than one would expect - quite a few autonomous weapons, big rotating space colonies (oneil island 3, standfor torus, clarke wheel, etc) or worldhouses. Also no laser/gracer/xaser weapons or long range kinetic energy weapons. And no nuclear bomb pumped lasers.