I love that Return of the Living Dead is apparently the only film to address one of my main peeves… when it looks like zombies are going to take over the earth, you make a phone call and order a nuclear strike immediately. Debate the taboo if you must, but do it. But it seems like this generally doesn’t occur to anybody!
Babylon 5 was actually pretty good about this. Star Fury actions tended to be rather realistic.
Let’s say you had to fly around something. The right combination of directional thrust could accomplish a curve if you really wanted to. But more likely it would just be a series of oblique course corrections. It’s semantically debatable whether the latter actually qualifies as a “turn” but if a 180 degree change is a “turn”, then so is a 60 degree change.
So, you’re turned off by a future in which people dress as Medieval European peasants, but okay with a future where people dress as Medieval Asian nobility?
The path would be a curve, but the nose of the craft wouldn’t point in the direction of travel as it flies along that curve. Suppose your course is 180 degrees until you pass an object and then you need to fly to something that is in direction 90.
The slow way to handle this would be to slow down to zero as you pass the object and then accelerate in the 90 direction. This way, you’d make a sharp turn, like a pedestrian making a turn.
But it’s probably faster to pass the object at full speed, then turn to 45 degrees and fire the back engine(s), which will then simultaneously slow you down in the 180 direction and speed you up in the 90 direction.
You said “reversing course”, not “making a turn”.
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It is. See Energy Beings. See also Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, Evolutionary Levels, and Goal-Oriented Evolution.
Hey, Rule of Cool! Peasants ain’t cool!
You may be downplaying the value of having subjects. If someone wants a Glorious Empire, the possession of the Empire may be its own reward, establishing their version of Pax Romana on the galaxy.
Or they may just be dicks.
On a different subject, there’s an older book with an alien invasion and the liberal use of nukes in a pretty cool way. The use is itself something of a spoiler, so it’s in a spoiler box:
Footfall includes a massive spaceship launched into orbit via the use of hundreds of nuclear bombs detonating under it. It’s a wonderfully goofy–though scientifically plausible, I think–event in a pretty goofy book.
I don’t know if it’s a trope or not, but I tend to get most stabby when there’s not a clear line between Star Trek style science-fantasy and harder science fiction. Very, very few shows or movies do a halfway decent job of this- the only one I can think of offhand is Babylon 5, and they hand-wave it away with two things- jumpgates being “found” technology, and by explaining that humans are technologically backward. So the Minbari get artificial gravity, etc… while the humans have seat belts and/or rotating sections of ships.
But even Star Trek does it badly; they rarely manage not to mangle the actual science and physics in their shows.
I guess it’s a matter of keeping things where they belong- if you’re going to have fantastic sci-fi with crazy materials, FTL travel, and mind-boggling energy sources, that’s fine; just don’t try to pretend that it’s a seriously scientific story. Similarly, if your story is bound by conventional physics and materials, don’t go putting in sci-fantasy McGuffins.
Not if done properly. Firstly you need no acceleration in any direction. Secondly you need attitude thrusters at the extremities of the spacecraft. Thirdly, it helps if the human is or is near the centre of gravity.
Quartz: I’m not understanding what you’re saying. How do you change course with “no acceleration in any direction?” In space (gravitation aside) changing course is identical to acceleration.
Also, having the attitude jets out on the ends of wings or pylons won’t change anything. If the ship accelerates, then the cabin accelerates, and that means the pilot’s body accelerates. Being “in line” with the acceleration doesn’t matter.
I did, in fact, list enforcing one’s will on others. If you can’t do that, they aren’t your subjects in any way that would matter to a despot.
Re. Footfall, the authors made an interstellar invasion as plausible as possible. The invaders had a valid reason for coming to Earth- they had lost a civil war and would have been reduced to millennia of serfdom otherwise. They lived next door in the Alpha Centauri system, they had an insanely-difficult-but-not-impossible propulsion system and still required a mixed hibernation/generation ship. Their scout ships were fusion powered and had laser weapons, but their small arms were projectile.
I went through the thought processes of the why’s of an interstellar invasion and finally came up with a good reason in my book series. It took a LOT of thought and consideration though and it was pretty convoluted.
You listed it; I think you’re downplaying it. Rome managed a Costco-size empire with a very attenuated ability for a dude in Rome to enforce his will on some schmoe in England.
I’m partial to The Three-Body Problem in this regard.
You need to start off with no acceleration in any direction.
That’s not correct. Look at how the Space Shuttle flipped itself over. It’s the same thing.
Are we talking physics or Chinese science fiction? 
Yes!