Worst epic science fail you have seen in sci-fi?

[stevebowers]

I've mentioned my complaints about Silent Running before, I think. The whole concept of putting greenhouses in space to 'preserve' the Earth's natural environment is daft enough, while the Earth is a self-regulating artificial environment at a constant 75 degrees (Farenheit, I presume). In order to feed the (presumably vast) population of the Earth the artificial recycling systems must be biotechnological marvels. But they apparently don't have enough room for a few tiny domes on the outer surface.
But then the premise is made even dafter by sending the Valley Forge and its sister ships to Saturn where the sunlight is about 1% of that on Earth. Then it takes Bruce Dern half the film to find out why the plants are dying. His character is far from sympathetic, by the way - an ecofreak who is prepared to kill.

Even the design of the robots is pretty impractical, although I admire the props immensely. And I have extreme doubts about whether that last remaining dome would survive, in deep space, with a single badly designed robot to look after it. There would be no need to blow these domes up, as the Earth government seemed to be inexplicably keen to do - they could just abandon the domes in space if they wanted to get rid of them.

Of Course Trumbull had never directed a film before, and his movie script went through several iterations - originally the domes were a subplot before the ship encountered aliens, but they never got round to that bit. But he did have some spectacular special effects of Saturn, originally conceived for use in 2001; that's why the ship was out there in the first place, to show off Trumbull's work. Appalling astronomy, appalling ecology, poor robotics, appalling psychology, annoying music.

[stevebowers]

I was a bit disappointed in Interstellar, too. The wormholes and black holes looked good, and were scientifically accurate (the wormhole looked a bit like an old simulation Anders made, way back in 2000). But then they go to a planet with frozen clouds.
What?

I've made up some wacky planets in my day, but frozen clouds is beyond the pale.

[Drashner1]

I wanted to like Interstellar - I really, really did. But the movie just never quite did it for me. The frozen clouds were one bit. The other (and biggest) was the solar system most of it takes place in:

A huge black hole, a neutron star, and a main sequence star - with habitable planets in proximity? Seems...unlikely to me. Ok, maybe it could happen, but the movie treated it as a given, not as something highly unusual. In addition the move took the approach that hard science can't be exciting or dramatic. It tried a bit, but the whole thing mainly came across as dry - when it wasn't spending way too much time blubbering through its attempts at human interaction. The Martian did hard science and drama much better IMHO.

Todd

[Rhea47]

Star Trek: 
"Lets use the deflector to shoot at the Borg" 
"Lets use the deflector to heal a space creature"
"Lets use the deflector to hack the mainframe"
"Lets use the deflector to trick the orbital defenses"
"Lets use the deflector to manipulate space time"
"Lets use the deflector to collapse the black hole"
"Lets use the deflector to cook dinner"
"Lets use the deflector to deus ex machina all the things"






DEFLECTOR

[Drashner1]

Star Trek: 
"Lets use the deflector to shoot at the Borg" 
"Lets use the deflector to heal a space creature"
"Lets use the deflector to hack the mainframe"
"Lets use the deflector to trick the orbital defenses"
"Lets use the deflector to manipulate space time"
"Lets use the deflector to collapse the black hole"
"Lets use the deflector to cook dinner"
"Lets use the deflector to deus ex machina all the things"






DEFLECTOR

At least some of these might work if we presume that Federation technology is highly reconfigurable (which numerous episodes across the entire franchise strongly indicate that it is) and depending on what principles it operates on. However, in support of your point, some of the applications are kind of out there (in polite phrasing) and the sheer use of the dish as a deus ex machina Maguffin starts to near the point of satire.

Of course, the deflector dish pales in comparison to 'subspace' or the 'particle of the week' and all the ways each of these two concepts are used to handwave virtually anything that needs/wants doing for the sake of the plot.

Todd

[stevebowers]

I was a bit disappointed in Interstellar, too. The wormholes and black holes looked good, and were scientifically accurate (the wormhole looked a bit like an old simulation Anders made, way back in 2000).

I found a copy of Anders' image. We used to use it on the site, but Adam said that the 'negative matter framework' (the while box-like shape around the 'hole) was likely unphysical. But it remains an accurate model of the spacetime distortions in a simple wormhole.

[Drashner1]

Again, this is a book (or set of books actually) rather than a movie, but...

In Niven's Ringword, much is made of the Puppeteer homeworld being home to one trillion Puppeteers and thus being essentially a single planet spanning city with buildings 'miles tall'.

However, a bit of simply math quickly shows that you could easily fit 1 trillion humans into a set of structures much less than 'miles tall' and still have plenty of planetary surface left over for other stuff.

For example, if you put 10,000 people each in structures the size of a World Trade Center tower, then it would only take 100 million such structures to house a trillion people. The land area of the Earth is 196.9 million square miles. If larger structures are used, the number can reduce. If smaller, but more, structures are used then more land area is used, but you could still likely have major areas of city with large parklands interspersed.

Point being that a planet covering city wouldn't really be necessary, even with structures we could build. With 'miles high' structures, the number goes down even more and much of the homeworld could be park or farm or whatever the Puppeteers wanted.

Trantor in Asimov's Foundation universe and Coruscant in the Star Wars universe also have this issue.

Todd

[Alphadon]

How has nobody brought up "cracking the event horizon" yet? Star Trek: Voyager, man.
Also, if I remember correctly, Coruscant is retconned to a higher population every time it's mentioned. And let's not even get started on the fact that THE GROUND IS ALSO A CITY.

[ai_vin]

Again, this is a book (or set of books actually) rather than a movie, but...

In Niven's Ringword, much is made of the Puppeteer homeworld being home to one trillion Puppeteers and thus being essentially a single planet spanning city with buildings 'miles tall'.

However, a bit of simply math quickly shows that you could easily fit 1 trillion humans into a set of structures much less than 'miles tall' and still have plenty of planetary surface left over for other stuff.

For example, if you put 10,000 people each in structures the size of a World Trade Center tower, then it would only take 100 million such structures to house a trillion people. The land area of the Earth is 196.9 million square miles. If larger structures are used, the number can reduce. If smaller, but more, structures are used then more land area is used, but you could still likely have major areas of city with large parklands interspersed.

Point being that a planet covering city wouldn't really be necessary, even with structures we could build. With 'miles high' structures, the number goes down even more and much of the homeworld could be park or farm or whatever the Puppeteers wanted.

Trantor in Asimov's Foundation universe and Coruscant in the Star Wars universe also have this issue.

Todd

Did anything in Niven's Ringworld books say the Puppeteers were human sized? If they were transapients then each miles high building could actually be a puppeteer.

[Drashner1]

Did anything in Niven's Ringworld books say the Puppeteers were human sized? If they were transapients then each miles high building could actually be a puppeteer.

From various descriptions in various places (e.g., other Known Space stories, various artworks, Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials) and possibly the Ringworld books themselves (I don't clearly remember, I'm afraid), Puppeteers are actually a bit smaller than a human and their buildings are filled with apartments and communal eating and socializing areas of various sorts - mostly connected by stepping disks so that more space can be given over to such chambers and not 'wasted' on hallways, elevator shafts, etc.

The idea of transapients per se (and possibly of transhumanism, Singularity, etc.) may not have been 'invented' yet as a fairly well known concept when the books were written - I'm not sure on the dating of Vinge's original Singularity article vs the publication dates of the books. But basically it wouldn't really apply to the Ringworld setting as written (although it's a fun idea in its own right). Also, at some point in the course of the Known Space books Niven basically said that superhuman AIs develop to a certain point and then turn themselves off - and nobody in-universe knows why (and in his Draco Tavern universe, it's said that it might be better not to know why because then we might turn ourselves off too).

Todd