Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale/No Sense of Energy: Difference between revisions

* Any work with a "penniless tramp freighter captain" falls right into this trope, along with [[Space Is an Ocean]] (since the "tramp freighter" is copied from seafaring tropes). Realistically, decent spaceship engines ''start'' at the nuclear-submarine level (a NERVA rocket is essentially a nuclear submarine engine heating hydrogen for the exhaust instead of steam for a turbine), and the ''really'' high end ones make fission look like a cigarette lighter. It's generally agreed that if large-scale space travel ever does occur, it's going to be heavily regulated—many theorists doubt privately-owned spaceships will ever exist (after we graduate beyond chemical rockets, anyway), though a few might be ''technically'' private (albeit owned by corporations so huge they might as well be states).

* Similarly, any spaceship that can do both orbit-to-orbit and surface-to-orbit flight should never be described as a "clunker" or a "piece of junk", since it's widely suspected that having one spaceship do both is effectively ''impossible''. More realistically, spaceships designed to fly between planets will carry small, Space Shuttle-like landing craft. Even those landing craft are highly unlikely to get into orbit with a single rocket-stage—more realistic is multiple rocket stages, dedicated aircraft that carry the spaceships to a high altitude before they take off, or more exotic things, like space elevators that tow spaceships into orbit on a cable whose other end is in orbit.

* In V4 ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes]]'', the moon is blown up. Earth [[No Endor Holocaust|hardly notices]], even though just a few chunks of it should wreak disaster on the Earth equivalent to being hit by hundreds of asteroids at once. Later on, the Earth is blown up and said to damage the moons of Saturn, when the effect should be unnoticeable.

** How much damage are we talking about? Earth-shattering energy levels translate to at least a couple kilograms of TNT per square meter at this distance.

** The extra matter also ought to turn the River Valley into a miles-deep sewer of human waste in a few short years. There would have to be some means of converting the mass back into energy to avoid this.

* [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''[[Revelation Space]]'' series is usually very good about keeping distances, masses and velocities in proportion (not too surprising, as Reynolds is an astrophysicist). He does lose track of energy sometimes though. "Redemption Ark" has "crustbuster warheads" with a yield of 1 teraton - that's a million megatons, - and mentions that a destabilized Conjoiner drive on a lighthugger releases three orders of magnitude more energy than THAT. Granted, nobody sane ever tries to harm a lighthugger in vicinity of an inhabited planet, but couple times in the series starships do go up. In "Absolution Gap" lighthugger ''Gnostic Ascension'' blows up when less than 20,000 km from an icy moon Hela. At the very least on hemisphere of Hela should have melted.

** In fairness, the author Curtis Saxton is an astrophysicist so he's presumably well-aware of these issues. Most likely, he concluded that the amount of firepower on display is closer to what one would actually expect for a galaxy-spanning civilization capable of traveling many thousands times the speed of the light and creating planet-destroying space stations. That said, it is a bit of an oddity since he's also the author best-known for retconning the canonical size of the Death Star II and ''Executor'' super star destroyer based on what was to him self-evident from the film as shot. Even worse, Saxton is heavily suspected by his critics of being involved in the Pro-Wars side of the online Vs. Debate, and that [[Armed with Canon|his contributions were heavily influenced by the need to decisively win that]]. Gary Sarli, another scientist and [[Star Wars]] fan/contributor, analyzed Saxton's work and concluded that one of his more influential calculations overshot the mark by at least 5 orders of magnitude due to faulty assumptions on how the Imperials engage in planetary-scale scorched earth policy, particularly how Saxton seemed to have missed the dozens if not hundreds of ships that would be involved.

 

** Even better: a Lysian destroyer [[Curb Stomp Battle|effortlessly dispatched by the Enterprise]] earlier in the episode is mentioned as having disruptors worth 2.1 megajoules--500something times stronger than their starbase's shield output. The Satarrans' hat is ''brainwashing entire crews''. Wasn't there a simpler way for them to win the war than to make an episode of television?

* In the Secret of Bigfoot episodes of the ''[[Six Million Dollar Man]]'', Oscar Goldman has to detonate a 500 megaton atomic bomb that's beeh burried 500 feet down to trigger a fault and stop a much bigger earthquake that will level the west coast. The Aliens, who have their base in the vicinity send The Beautiful Woman of the Week to defuse the device, and Steve Austin has to stop her. Steve overcomes the alien and then runs off with T -10 seconds before detonation. It's been established that Steve can run at a top speed of 60 miles an hour, so while I dont know the exact calculations, but 10 seconds of 60 MPH run from an atomic bomb (even 500 feet down) would mean that he gets turned into a slightly lesser grade of Extra Crispy. Although to be fair, writer Kenny Johnson pretty much addresses the problem and goes "Yeah, but what are you going to do?"

 

 

* Kind of energy: the Pokédex entries for some ''[[Pokémon]]'' species. "Magcargo's body temperature is 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit" (Sun's surface: 5,800 Kelvin, or 9980 F), "Charizard's fire is hot enough to melt boulders" (1200 Celsius, 2192 F)...

** It should be noted however that numerous Pokédex entries are contradicted by both the games and the anime, contain a suspicious amount of rumours and conjecture, and considering the favoured tactic of Pokemon researchers is to recruit ten-year-olds and send them off without instruction, there's a strong implication that science in the ''Pokemon'' world is of a very poor quality.

 

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[[Category:No Sense Of Energy]]

[[Category:Sci Fi Writers Have]]