# Another bad science fiction trope **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 26, 2021, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532 "2021-01-26T15:31:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/21 "2021-01-26T19:44:15Z")
It did not. Joss Whedon specifically ruled it out. He wanted to try for as much scientific accuracy as possible (other than River’s psychic abilities…). Which created problems. Like, how are they flitting from world to world that are explicitly, in dialogue, in different “systems”? In the canon in the show and movies, The 'Verse was colonized by giant arks using chemical rockets. Which would mean it should have taken _centuries_ if not _millennia_ to reach another star system. That’s just glossed over, with the clear implication that the arks reached The 'Verse within a single generation. The problem of all of the different planets and references to different systems was “resolved”, for some values of resolved, by eventually specifying that The 'Verse consists of a trinary star meta-system, with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons in the habitable zone of one or another of the three suns. Each sun has its own system of planets, but the three suns are orbiting each other in relatively close proximity, so travel from one system to another is a matter of weeks with their never-explained-but-fast sub-light propulsion systems. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/22 "2021-01-26T19:50:25Z")
Thanks, gdave. That kills the theory that the planets were moons of Jupiter. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/23 "2021-01-26T19:57:12Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > No, you missed my point–in the books, the travel time between destinations was shown to be weeks or months, not rapid. In fact, the voyages took much _longer_ than they would in reality given the stated acceleration. I didn’t miss your (presumably correct) point; I’m just observing that the Epstein Drive is essentially handwavium regardless of fudging the travel times. The constant high thrust with very low propellant mass usage isn’t physically plausible as a fusion thermal rocket because of the fundamental limits of thermodynamics and momentum exchange. This isn’t the only deviation from physical reality (of the show, at least…of the novels I’ve only read _Leviathan Wakes_); the rapid manifold swingby trajectory in “Here There Be Dragons” and the feasibility of using and orbital mirror to support farming on Ganymede are two of many technical inaccuracies, but again, the purpose of the show is to be entertaining, not an absolutely accurate presentation of physics. For a show as good as _The Expanse_, I’m willing to suspend disbelief and accept what is presented as possible in the universe of the story even though I could poke holes many holes in the feasibility if I were so inclined. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/24 "2021-01-26T20:08:20Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > To achieve the kind of constant thrust for days or weeks while using only the small amount of propellant that the ships actually carry means the Epstein Drive must have an efficiency approaching 1,000,000⋅s, which is ludicrously beyond any kind of thermal rocket and would give it _ **an effective exhaust velocity exceeding 30% of c** _ , for which the throughput specific power level would be enormous. I have to correct myself; that should be “exceeding 3% of _c_”, which is still wholly implausible for a fusion rocket by a couple orders of magnitude. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/25 "2021-01-26T20:17:26Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > the HMS Churchill is propelled with “constant acceleration,” which creates artificial gravity on the trip to Halley’s Comet. I thought that was interesting. > > Unfortunately, they forgot about the deceleration part. There’s no mention of turning the ship around and slowing down. Yeah, you would have to start decelerating at the halfway mark. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/26 "2021-01-26T20:20:26Z")
Upon further review… I misremembered just how convoluted the 'Verse is physically. There are actually _five_ main sequence stars, with four of them orbiting the fifth, and seven protostars orbiting one or another of the main sequence stars, along with dozens of planets, hundreds of moons, and asteroid belts orbiting in between the star systems. I can’t imagine a system like that would have anything remotely resembling stable orbits. It probably would have been _less_ of a hand-wave to just say they’ve got FTL drive. The Blue Sun Corporation, BTW, was named after one of the main sequence stars, known in the 'Verse as the Blue Sun. That entire system is owned by Blue Sun Corporation, and the series was originally supposed to slowly reveal all sorts of weirdness connected to them and the secret projects they had hidden in their system. River and her psychic powers were just supposed to be the tip of the iceberg. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/27 "2021-01-26T20:26:00Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > This isn’t the only deviation from physical reality Not the least being the spin-up of Ceres. (And I just realized that now that we are on Discourse spoiler tags are no longer useful for compacting long posts.) > [@physics people, answers?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physics-people-answers/778496/21): > > Reposting a relevant post I made on the The Expanse thread over in Cafe Society (which is itself a reworking of a post I made to a different forum more than a year ago.) Spoilered for length. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/28 "2021-01-26T20:46:11Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > > [@erysichthon](#): > > > > the HMS Churchill is propelled with “constant acceleration,” which creates artificial gravity on the trip to Halley’s Comet. I thought that was interesting. > > > > Unfortunately, they forgot about the deceleration part. There’s no mention of turning the ship around and slowing down. > > Yeah, you would have to start decelerating at the halfway mark. - They don’t have vacuum brakes? :flees: ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/29 "2021-01-26T21:43:20Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Not the least being the spin-up of Ceres. Potentially you could spin up an entire asteroid to simulate acceleration due to gravity if you reinforced it with a high tensile overwrap, but at that point it probably just makes more sense to construct a habitat out of materials extracted from the asteroid. From a risk standpoint, it makes more sense to build many smaller habitats rather than one very large structure. Fabricating them from minimally processed materials (e.g. silica fiber, water ice, carbonaceous chondrites) with a tensile overwrap would be relatively straightforward versus trying to reinforce a large asteroid or build a pressurized metallic structure. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/30 "2021-01-26T21:46:26Z")
You can still use the details tags for the compactification effect. > **Like this** > > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. And one of the recent Star Trek movies twice had a ship abruptly and prematurely knocked out of warp… and they were still reasonably close (reachable in a sublight shuttle) to their destination when it happened. Man, it’s a good thing the engines failed when they did, or they would have way overshot their destination. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/31 "2021-01-26T22:03:40Z")
I can fanwank the Avengers scene. We’ve seen in the Marvel universe that FTL travel is done using jumpgates (basically wormholes) and that a long distance might take multiple jumps. So they could easily get through one gate, and then need to kill their momentium to course change to the next one. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/32 "2021-01-26T23:34:43Z")
I have read a lot of SF and ftl travel is usually assumed to be possible. While I accept that premise, they never seem to take relativity into account in the sense that time would pass at different rates for the Travelers compared to those left behind. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/33 "2021-01-26T23:44:35Z")
[carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant) > While I’ve got you all here, did Firefly have FTL or not? Never mentioned (in-show or by Whedon) is that the Firefly universe had developed the Horrible Drive. > **** > > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/34 "2021-01-27T00:18:55Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I have read a lot of SF and ftl travel is usually assumed to be possible. While I accept that premise, they never seem to take relativity into account in the sense that time would pass at different rates for the Travelers compared to those left behind. There rarely seems to be much thought put into the mechanics of “faster-than-light” travel; again, it is basically treated as an “Age of Sail” conceit where travel occurs at a certain finite speed which is varied to support the plot. In _Star Trek_, for instance, many different systems of apparently faster-than-light travel and communication exist (in addition to the “slingshot around a star” time travel mechanism) and not only are they presented as simply traveling between two distant reference frames that exist congruently, the spacecraft are even able to interact with the external environment while in “warp”, albeit with a slight elongation of stars in the background. In reality, any method of superluminal or non-locally connected transit (including “warp drive”, “wormholes”, “hyperspace”, et cetera) presents fundamental problems with the assumption of causality as discussed [here](http://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2016/8/25/why-ftl-implies-time-travel). Of course, quantum mechanics poses problems with causality and/or locality as well, so it may just be that reality is not strictly causal and general relativity is just a mean field approximation (and there are good reasons to believe this to be the case, anyway), but then we’re left with the question of why we don’t see any indications of naturally-occurring non-causality on the macroscopic scale. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/35 "2021-01-27T00:29:52Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > That kills the theory that the planets were moons of Jupiter. I don’t think it was ever directly addressed in the TV series, but the opening sequence of the film is a flashback to a school lesson when River was a child, in which the teacher explicitly states that the colonists left Earth-That-Was, and came to a new solar system. OTOH, it’s actually a dream sequence, so it may not, itself, be truly canon, but as @Stranger_On_A_Train notes, other canon sources appear to corroborate it. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/wN7RW0eZtDw/hqdefault.jpg "Serentiy -- Earth-That-Was opening scene") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN7RW0eZtDw) ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/36 "2021-01-27T00:48:16Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I have read a lot of SF and ftl travel is usually assumed to be possible. While I accept that premise, they never seem to take relativity into account in the sense that time would pass at different rates for the Travelers compared to those left behind. At least End Game gives a nod to this. They come across a survivor from 5 years earlier but to him it was only 5 hours. He took a nap in the back of a van and wakes up after the end of the world (more or less). ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/37 "2021-01-27T00:54:50Z")
I don’t think there is any real evidence that _Firefly_ was intended to be grounded in any kind of hard science; it is a Western/post-Civil War milieu “in space” where every world looks like some version of the San Gabriel Mountains or occasionally the Mojave Desert, with a spaceship that was perpetually on the brink of failure but had an unfailing artificial gravity system, and in which the characters smuggle cattle from one planet to another for profit. The setting is more gritty than something like _Star Trek_ but aside from the very occasional nods to the hazards of space you could pretty much move it onto a boat and cast off into the ocean. It kind of feels like Joss Whedon took his _D6 Star Wars_ or _Traveller_ role playing campaign, filed the serial numbers off of it to remove intellectual property, and then gave the characters his trademark dialogue and interpersonal conflicts. It’s a fun show but not remotely focused on any science save for the plot hook of somehow turning River into a quasi-psionic government psycho assassin. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/38 "2021-01-27T00:59:48Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > At sub-light speeds, the ship is going to _appear_ motionless against a background of stars, I can’t count how many articles I’ve read on scientific inaccuracies in movies, that picked on some sci-fi film or another for showing a spaceship moving past stars. The problem in a movie that shows a spaceship, is that without showing motion relative to something else in the frame, the ship will appear motionless to audiences (and it probably is; it’s the stars that are moving. Motion has to be shown relative to something, to look like motion in a movie, and usually stars are all you got. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/39 "2021-01-27T01:01:48Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > In reality, any method of superluminal or non-locally connected transit (including “warp drive”, “wormholes”, “hyperspace”, et cetera) presents fundamental problems with the assumption of causality as discussed [here](http://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2016/8/25/why-ftl-implies-time-travel). One TNG scene had the Enterprise warp to a different location during a battle to surprise the enemy, or such. Just popped in out of nowhere and blasted away, iirc. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2021, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532/40 "2021-01-27T01:09:00Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > One TNG scene had the Enterprise warp to a different location during a battle to surprise the enemy, or such. Just popped in out of nowhere and blasted away, iirc. Well, that’s nice, but there are also many scenes where they detect ships many lightyears away, or visually see ships moving toward or away from them “at warp”. Unless they are operating on something other than the electromagnetic spectrum this makes no sense. Of course, almost none of the science-y stuff in _Star Trek_ is grounded in plausible physics; it is the very definition of space opera, and you just have to go along with that as part of how the universe within the story works, just as you do with a Warner Brothers cartoon or how Steve Austin can hold down a helicopter with his bionic arm. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bad-science-fiction-trope/931532.md?page=3)