# Movies with impeccable science/logic in them... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 5, 2004, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275 "2004-09-05T22:27:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MikeCollins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bbce88/32.png) [@MikeCollins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeCollins)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/1 "2004-09-05T22:27:11Z")
In my follow-up to the first thread, [“movies with Factual Scientific errors in them”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=273192), I would like to hear about movies with near-brilliant scientific explanations/details or very good physics (etc.) in them. Someone in the first thread said that Babylon 5 had some excellent physics in it regarding the manouvering of fighter aircraft in space. I was wondering if there are movies that actually do bother to get details right, and ensure that thier plots are watertight (as opposed to the usual Hollywood garbage). So, begin your list my friends. How many movies actually bother to get realistic effects and logical plot details correct? ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/2 "2004-09-05T23:10:27Z")
Well, I think as mostly agreed upon in your prior thread, **2001: A Space Odyssey** is pretty damn close. Also, I would think **Contact** did a decent job as well. ---
**Author:** ![Nightwatch\_Trailer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9dc877/32.png) [@Nightwatch\_Trailer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightwatch_Trailer)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/3 "2004-09-05T23:58:31Z")
Actually, someone already took a cue from your first thread: [Amazing things they got RIGHT.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=273451&highlight=movies) It’s pretty short, though. I’d like to see more in this new thread. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Great\_Zamboni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@The\_Great\_Zamboni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Great_Zamboni)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/4 "2004-09-06T16:14:52Z")
I second **2001: ASO** and **Contact.** They prove that real science can be as thrilling and moving as the fake stuff in Star Trek and Star Wars. Beyond these two, I can’t think of any sci-fi movie Hollywierd got right. ---
**Author:** ![ZebraShaSha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/eada6e/32.png) [@ZebraShaSha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZebraShaSha)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/5 "2004-09-06T16:26:52Z")
2010, the sequel? Besides the whole aliens thing, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/6 "2004-09-06T16:33:10Z")
_Apollo 13_ got damn near everything right. In the commentary track with Jim Lovell and his wife, about the only thing he complains about is a jet showing a contrail at too low an altitude. And there are a few events that are altered or compressed for narrative purposes, but all the technical stuff was scrupulously done. (And some things that might seem like dramatic inventions are true. E.g., they had the longest “blackout period” during reentry of any of the Apollo missions – four long minutes.) ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/7 "2004-09-06T16:38:52Z")
Now that I review the thread, I see that we’re talking about science **fiction** movies, not a docudrama like _Apollo 13_. Sorry 'bout that. There were some movies in the 50’s, like _Destination Moon_ and _Conquest of Space_, that did a pretty good job using space science as it existed then (though with a lot of things that seem silly now). ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/8 "2004-09-06T17:41:09Z")
> [@ZebraShaSha](#): > > 2010, the sequel? Besides the whole aliens thing, of course. How dare you 😉 Anyways, it may have been a slightly more accurate film, scientifically relative to other efforts, but as I recall it made several huge errors. It’s been some years since I’ve seen it, and as I have no intent on subjecting myself to it again, hopefully someone can back up what I’m saying. Anyways, as I recall, the movie had sound in space. Number 2, as I also recall, didn’t every ship have artificial gravity without any reasonable explanation as to why? Also, though not a scientific error, this one just bugged the hell out of me. Why did that, after having lovingly re-created the sets from the first film, have to add a “Hal-9000” title to every one of Hal’s eyes? That wasn’t there in the original! Damn you 2010! I’m sure there are many other errors I’ve missed, but I’m unable to recall them as I seemed to have blocked a majority of that movie out of my mind. ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_C.Mulligan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3be4f8/32.png) [@Chad\_C.Mulligan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_C.Mulligan)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/9 "2004-09-06T18:03:40Z")
Actually, 2001 and 2010 both showed that they did not have artificial gravity. Remember the scenes of either Poole or Bowman jogging around the rotating ring inside Discovery? And Tsiolkovsky also had a rotating section that provided artificial gravity. There’s a scene where they stop the rotation in order to dock Tsiolkovsky with Discovery prior to the burn to get them back to Earth. Admittedly, they didn’t show the characters in zero-gee much, but presumably they either used Velcro slippers (as seen in 2001 on the Pan-Am shuttle en route to the space station) or kept one hand on handholds at all times to maintain their orientations relative to the desk and each other. ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/10 "2004-09-06T18:15:24Z")
> [@Chad C. Mulligan](#): > > Admittedly, they didn’t show the characters in zero-gee much, but presumably they either used Velcro slippers (as seen in 2001 on the Pan-Am shuttle en route to the space station) or kept one hand on handholds at all times to maintain their orientations relative to the desk and each other. Well, perhaps I forgot that they did have an explanation. Oh well, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bad movie. And sound in space, come on, you can’t tell me I remembered that incorrectly 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/11 "2004-09-06T19:01:19Z")
I liked “2010” quite a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/12 "2004-09-06T19:25:31Z")
It’s not a movie (yet), but _Firefly_ had the most accurate science I’ve seen yet in a science fiction program. No sound in space, realistic depictions of being out in space suits (a villian is killed simply by unhooking his magnetic boots from a ship and letting him drift away, helpless), etc. The one thing they got wrong (putting a gun in a spacesuit so it would have air to fire) was a result of their actually trying to get it right - a technical advisor let them down when they asked what they needed to do to get a gun to fire in space. Another big detail they covered which you never see in other SF shows - ever notice how when the Enterprise meets up with another ship, it always seems to be in the same plane, and they are never rotating with respect to each other? In Firefly, that doesn’t always happen. Often a ship will appear and the Firefly will have to match rotation, or turn 90 degrees to meet it, or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Duderdude2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/13 "2004-09-06T19:27:40Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#): > > I liked “2010” quite a lot. Some people do it seems, relative though to 2001? I have no qualms if even so, I just don’t know how anyone could put those two in the same league (not that they’d be wrong for doing so…) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/14 "2004-09-06T20:03:24Z")
While the science in _Contact_ was okay, it was all the other crap (the Palmer Joss character, the anti-science terrorist, Tom Skerritt’s obvious sliminess, that eye-rollingly dopey climax, and the idiotic congressional hearing scene afterward) that made the movie tedious. They could have done away with the all the manufactured conflict and romantic stuff and still had a good film. _2010_ was sort-of okay, but there simply isn’t enough mass in Jupiter to make a stable star, even if you could squish the planet down enough for spontaneous fusion to begin. As soon as you had sufficient density, the heat and pressure of the fusion reaction would make that planet rapidly expand again, bringing the chain reaction to a halt. The post-squish planet would be smaller than the original(more of the mass would be concentrated in the core) but it wouldn’t be a star. I suppose if you kept crushing Jupiter and letting it rebound, you’d eventualy get a chunk of iron about 200 times the volume of Earth (I may have misplaced an exponent somewhere along the way) which is pretty impressive but it ain’t no star. Even if you assume the monolith material was some ultra-dense (yet stable)substance and you could compress Jupiter to the volume of Earth, you wouldn’t get more than a short-lived flare, let alone a self-sustaining star. Do post-apocalyptic films like _The Road Warrior_ and _The Blood of Heroes_ count? ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/15 "2004-09-06T20:25:29Z")
> [@Duderdude2](#): > > Some people do it seems, relative though to 2001? I have no qualms if even so, I just don’t know how anyone could put those two in the same league (not that they’d be wrong for doing so…) Certainly, “2010” isn’t in the same league as “2001,” but it’s a nice way to spend an evening. One thing I really like about “2010” is that the explanation for why HAL went crazy is a good one. It doesn’t make you say, “I waited all these years to find out … and THIS is why!!! What the fuck!!!” And since a big reason to even bother making “2010” was to answer this question, it had better deliver on this point. Plus, Roy Scheider is cool. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/16 "2004-09-06T20:51:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Another big detail they covered which you never see in other SF shows - ever notice how when the Enterprise meets up with another ship, it always seems to be in the same plane, and they are never rotating with respect to each other? In Firefly, that doesn’t always happen. Often a ship will appear and the Firefly will have to match rotation, or turn 90 degrees to meet it, or whatever. While I hate to pass up a chance to catch one of Star Trek’s many blunders, I don’t think this is one of 'em. C’mon… they have sensors that can spot a ship coming from lightyears away. For them, it’s not a special thing to just rotate the ship to match orientation. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/17 "2004-09-06T21:42:37Z")
> [@SPOOFE](#): > > While I hate to pass up a chance to catch one of Star Trek’s many blunders, I don’t think this is one of 'em. C’mon… they have sensors that can spot a ship coming from lightyears away. For them, it’s not a special thing to just rotate the ship to match orientation. True, though there was one odd episode of NextGen (“The Most Toys”) where a dangerous substance had to be transported ship-to-ship via shuttle, and the ships were nose-to-nose, forcing the shuttle pilot (Data, in this case) to make two unnecessary 180-degree turns. Had the ships been back to back, he could have flown a straighter, simpler and presumably safer direct path. Interestingly, one of the few times space was treated as truly three-dimensional was the climactic ‘submarine fight’ sequence from the end of the second movie, and even then, Spock had to remind Kirk. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/18 "2004-09-06T21:50:35Z")
> [@SPOOFE](#): > > While I hate to pass up a chance to catch one of Star Trek’s many blunders, I don’t think this is one of 'em. C’mon… they have sensors that can spot a ship coming from lightyears away. For them, it’s not a special thing to just rotate the ship to match orientation. Yes, but why would they? Especially in a combat situation, it seems that always approaching each other on the same plane would vastly limit your tactical options. ---
**Author:** ![Just1Lurk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c0e974/32.png) [@Just1Lurk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just1Lurk)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/19 "2004-09-07T02:27:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally posted by **Bryan Ekers:** > 2010 was sort-of okay, but there simply isn’t enough mass in Jupiter to make a stable star, even if you could squish the planet down enough for spontaneous fusion to begin. I had always assumed those magic monoliths had done more than squish the planet. Teleported in additional mass perhaps… ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275/20 "2004-09-07T06:15:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes, but why would they? Especially in a combat situation, it seems that always approaching each other on the same plane would vastly limit your tactical options. Because the Federation prefers aesthetic prettiness over utilitarian efficiency. I mean, look how poorly their ships are designed. I’m just saying that, for them, in the future, the fuel used up to make that sort of reorientation is a trifle, so they have no qualms about using it. Now if only they’re equip their chairs with seatbelts, and re-invent circuit breakers for their keyboards… [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-with-impeccable-science-logic-in-them/263275.md?page=2)