Most common errors found in mainstream movies?

[Triumph]

And not exactly in lots of movies, but stealth in space. Impossible. Don't try it, its impossible. There is no way to achieve visible stealth or thermal stealth or really any sort of stealth from common detection methods.

Either you know something about undiscovered technology that none of us do, or you're just trying to make it sound like you're smart.

 

[IronWing]

And not exactly in lots of movies, but stealth in space. Impossible. Don't try it, its impossible. There is no way to achieve visible stealth or thermal stealth or really any sort of stealth from common detection methods.

Cold, black mirror

In theory it works as long as you're not emitting thermally detectable exhaust.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Why so?

Simple thermodynamics. In order to achieve stealth, you need to have 100% thermal insulation. There is no other way. Now what happens when you have a machine that is outputting heat and absolutely zero heat can escape. You're going to have a piece of slag flying through space in a short while.

Also, you need to match the temperature of whatever magical device you have that can insulate 100% of heat output from the ship to the temperature of outside space, namely 2-3 degrees Kelvin. Of course, this means that the heat from the outside shell (being heated by solar radiation and other radiation) also has to go somewhere, and considering you want stealth, you also cannot vent that, so even more heat needs to build up inside that shell.

Also, in order to vent heat in a way that is fast enough to matter, you need GIGANTIC radiators. The doors in the Space shuttle arne't there to just open up for the satellite, they are heat sinks for the shuttles systems, so as soon as you want to vent, you have to unfurl giant radiators to slowly release heat. Also, by doing this, you're also ensuring that whatever people who are looking for you is able to get a pretty decent idea of exactly where you are going assuming you don't make course corrections, which then they will also pick up and figure out where you are.

So yeah, unless you can somehow make heat magically disappear, you're going to light up like a christmas tree in space.

 

[RelaxTheMind]

Simple thermodynamics. In order to achieve stealth, you need to have 100% thermal insulation. There is no other way. Now what happens when you have a machine that is outputting heat and absolutely zero heat can escape. You're going to have a piece of slag flying through space in a short while.

Also, you need to match the temperature of whatever magical device you have that can insulate 100% of heat output from the ship to the temperature of outside space, namely 2-3 degrees Kelvin. Of course, this means that the heat from the outside shell (being heated by solar radiation and other radiation) also has to go somewhere, and considering you want stealth, you also cannot vent that, so even more heat needs to build up inside that shell.

Also, in order to vent heat in a way that is fast enough to matter, you need GIGANTIC radiators. The doors in the Space shuttle arne't there to just open up for the satellite, they are heat sinks for the shuttles systems, so as soon as you want to vent, you have to unfurl giant radiators to slowly release heat. Also, by doing this, you're also ensuring that whatever people who are looking for you is able to get a pretty decent idea of exactly where you are going assuming you don't make course corrections, which then they will also pick up and figure out where you are.

So yeah, unless you can somehow make heat magically disappear, you're going to light up like a christmas tree in space.

you would go about it in another fashion. you remove heat from the exterior surfaces. if you cool the surface of an object that radiates heat it would blend in with the surrounding area given any specific temperature.

some type of super coolant wouldnt sound too outlandish. so you wouldnt make heat magically disappear, it would be masked by the cooler surfaces.

 

[angminas]

Simple thermodynamics...

All technology seems like magic before it's invented. I'm not a scientist, but I can easily think of several ideas for dealing with heat that aren't completely insane and may someday be possible. You know better than to do an "everything that can be invented has been invented".

And stealth doesn't mean 100%.

 

[Jeff7]

With the space stealth thing, you could also settle with keeping your outer temperature around that of the cosmic background radiation - just blend in like a chameleon. Keeping your hull too cold would make you stand out.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Simple thermodynamics. In order to achieve stealth, you need to have 100% thermal insulation. There is no other way. Now what happens when you have a machine that is outputting heat and absolutely zero heat can escape. You're going to have a piece of slag flying through space in a short while.

Also, you need to match the temperature of whatever magical device you have that can insulate 100% of heat output from the ship to the temperature of outside space, namely 2-3 degrees Kelvin. Of course, this means that the heat from the outside shell (being heated by solar radiation and other radiation) also has to go somewhere, and considering you want stealth, you also cannot vent that, so even more heat needs to build up inside that shell.

Also, in order to vent heat in a way that is fast enough to matter, you need GIGANTIC radiators. The doors in the Space shuttle arne't there to just open up for the satellite, they are heat sinks for the shuttles systems, so as soon as you want to vent, you have to unfurl giant radiators to slowly release heat. Also, by doing this, you're also ensuring that whatever people who are looking for you is able to get a pretty decent idea of exactly where you are going assuming you don't make course corrections, which then they will also pick up and figure out where you are.

So yeah, unless you can somehow make heat magically disappear, you're going to light up like a christmas tree in space.

I just coated my spaceship with a thin layer of shielding that 100% insulates, thus masking all internal heat. Also, I can project onto this shield the radiation received from the opposite side of the ship, thus making it invisible in the whole electromagnetic spectrum, from any angle. In addition, there is a tiny wormhole inside my shielding that vents the excess heat to the opposite side of the galaxy, so there is no thermal buildup.

Simple thermodynamics.

 

[CZroe]

If the ships can warp and/or deflect particles and energy with some kind of magical deflector shield and/or absorb kinetic and energy weapons with a suspended energy shield of some kind, they could potentially redirect and radiate all heat in a different direction and warp light and background radiation around them or sink it into a different dimention of space and fold the space behind them so that you can't see them.

Making the surface match the surrounding temperature is ridiculous if you don't do anything to keep your emissions from raising the surrounding temperature because you are still right in the middle of a hot-spot. As pointed out earlier, you can't simply insulate or all energy used as propulsion would then BBQ the ship.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Stealth in space is not that commonly used. The Mass Effect games go to great lengths to explain why it's so difficult and how the Normandy is able to achieve it anyway - keep in mind, it is supposed to be the most technologically advanced ship in the galaxy. And even it can only go stealth for a few hours before it has to vent all the heat it had been building up.

BSG had stealth in space with the Blackbird (stealth Viper) but they really only made it invisible to DRADIS (aka radar). They never claimed it was invisible to any other detection methods. Other than spaceships and FTL drives, most of BSG seems pretty low-tech.

A lot of sci-fi really messes up the sense of scale. Ships are portrayed as being right next to each other all the time. In Star Trek they often throw out ranges in the thousands of kilometers, but they appear much closer. In that case they're probably just depicting them as being closer than they really are for the sake of an interesting presentation.

The Star Trek movies are weird too. Several of them involve some sort of anomalous enemy ship heading towards Earth, and it's never depicted as traveling at warp. Yet it still manages to get from "deep space" (wherever that is) to Earth in a few hours, maybe a couple days. The one that did make sense was when the Enterprise was flying through the V'Ger probe in the first Star Trek movie. They were moving at impulse speed, and it took them almost an hour to get from the edge to the center. The time actually does work out. But it never explains how V'Ger was able to go from Klingon space (presumably many light years from Earth) to the solar system in a couple days unless it was traveling at high warp the whole time and then inexplicably slowed down once it reached the outer solar system.

 

[Homerboy]

The most common error movie directors make, is assuming a bunch of internet nerds can suspend disbelief.

Every movie made has to be a REALITY show.

We hate Reality TV..

But movies MUST be Reality!!

So fuckign true.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Simple thermodynamics. In order to achieve stealth, you need to have 100% thermal insulation. There is no other way. Now what happens when you have a machine that is outputting heat and absolutely zero heat can escape. You're going to have a piece of slag flying through space in a short while.

The Mass Effect games tackled this concept with a heat buffer, that has to be purged eventually, in order to explain the Normandy's stealth capabilities. Of course they have the benefit of using advanced alien technology to allow such a thing

It's not perfect, I just like that they actually attempt to address the issue. Honestly, I think Mass Effect is the best sci-fi universe to come out in ages. I'm certain there'll be a movie someday...I just hope they don't fuck it up.

 

[HomerJS]

In the movies it only takes ten seconds or less to pick a lock. You just stick a paper clip into the keyhole, wiggle it and the door opens.

or when a hot lesbien sticks her tongue in a lock and picks it - Miss March

 

[Jeff7]

...
A lot of sci-fi really messes up the sense of scale. Ships are portrayed as being right next to each other all the time. In Star Trek they often throw out ranges in the thousands of kilometers, but they appear much closer. In that case they're probably just depicting them as being closer than they really are for the sake of an interesting presentation.

And just so that you can see the damn things.

"Approaching ship is 500,000km out."
That's somewhere around the distance between Earth and the Moon, and the ship is maybe 1-2km long. Even with the beacon lights running all the time (seriously, beacon lights on a spaceship?), you still wouldn't see it.

The game Homeworld2 at least saw this, and so it had an "NLIPS" setting, or some such thing. It was something to do with nonlinear inverse perspective. That way you could still see things like fighters while zoomed out to see the whole battle. At normal scale, even things like corvettes and frigates were smaller than the turrets on the super-capital warships like the battlecruisers. Fighters were damn near invisible without the perspective correction.

Other things about Star Trek: Why the hell do the ships miss each other so frequently when shooting? Ok, if you're using a torpedo, the target can use some kind of countermeasure to screw with its targeting.
But phasers? Does the whole phasing of light reduce its speed to 200mph? Even so, there's often some missing going on when the target is sitting perfectly still. Clean the damn dust off the targeting lens once in awhile.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Other things about Star Trek: Why the hell do the ships miss each other so frequently when shooting? Ok, if you're using a torpedo, the target can use some kind of countermeasure to screw with its targeting.
But phasers? Does the whole phasing of light reduce its speed to 200mph? Even so, there's often some missing going on when the target is sitting perfectly still. Clean the damn dust off the targeting lens once in awhile.

They don't seem to miss THAT often with phasers, although they really should never miss. Then again, the ships are usually either traveling faster than light or they're using impulse engines that propel them at a significant percentage of lightspeed, so they should actually be able to avoid phasers.

Usually it seems they'll fire one phaser blast, it does nothing, and then their ship is damaged to the point where their weapons stop working.

What makes even less sense is how "lasers" in Star Wars travel much slower than light. Slow enough that you can see them moving and they're not just continuous beams. But whatever, it's space fantasy! Even Star Trek, which tries to be a little more "realistic" than Star Wars, simply uses technobabble instead of "the force" to cover up anything that doesn't make sense. The only sci-fi that doesn't routinely break the laws of physics is super hard sci-fi, which only really exists in literature.

 

[CZroe]

They don't seem to miss THAT often with phasers, although they really should never miss. Then again, the ships are usually either traveling faster than light or they're using impulse engines that propel them at a significant percentage of lightspeed, so they should actually be able to avoid phasers.

Usually it seems they'll fire one phaser blast, it does nothing, and then their ship is damaged to the point where their weapons stop working.

What makes even less sense is how "lasers" in Star Wars travel much slower than light. Slow enough that you can see them moving and they're not just continuous beams. But whatever, it's space fantasy! Even Star Trek, which tries to be a little more "realistic" than Star Wars, simply uses technobabble instead of "the force" to cover up anything that doesn't make sense. The only sci-fi that doesn't routinely break the laws of physics is super hard sci-fi, which only really exists in literature.

I figured that the speed was specifically why they never called them "lasers" in Star Wars... always "blasters." Even so, they are clearly energy-based weapons. Perhaps they've somehow entangled energy with matter for an extra "punch" and it slows things down. I always try to use my imagination before discounting something in scifi.

 

[eits]

Tires squealing loudly as an automobile skids - on dirt or sand.

not to mention tire tracks in the sand or dirt on the exact same path the car is supposed to take for the first time.

incorrect quantities of things, like classes of water or shaving cream on a face or something between takes annoys me. for example, a conversation between a man and woman and the man shaved half of his face and has shaving cream on the other half still... sometimes, the amount of shaving cream and the application strokes visible on the skin will change.

 

[zinfamous]

pulling a knife out of a wooden counter, cutting board, knife block and getting the metal-on-metal "shink!" sound

weird.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I'm going to try answering these point by point

you would go about it in another fashion. you remove heat from the exterior surfaces. if you cool the surface of an object that radiates heat it would blend in with the surrounding area given any specific temperature.

some type of super coolant wouldnt sound too outlandish. so you wouldnt make heat magically disappear, it would be masked by the cooler surfaces.

I'm honestly not sure what the mechanism is here. But it doesn't remove the fact that heat builds up on the inside. Removing heat from the outside also causes more heat to form.

With the space stealth thing, you could also settle with keeping your outer temperature around that of the cosmic background radiation - just blend in like a chameleon. Keeping your hull too cold would make you stand out.

I addressed that point. You have to keep the hull at a perfect 3 degrees kelvin.

I just coated my spaceship with a thin layer of shielding that 100% insulates, thus masking all internal heat. Also, I can project onto this shield the radiation received from the opposite side of the ship, thus making it invisible in the whole electromagnetic spectrum, from any angle. In addition, there is a tiny wormhole inside my shielding that vents the excess heat to the opposite side of the galaxy, so there is no thermal buildup.

Simple thermodynamics.

Are we talking some sort of physical thermal shield? I'm not really sure what you're trying to say with the second point, if I'm correct you're thinking of somehow trying to move heat around to other areas? On the wormhole point, I'm trying to stay away from science fiction, because atm, there is no evidence that WH exists. But going with the idea it does, what kind of heat transfer mechanism are we talking about? Would the WH exist in a vacuum, making it incredibly difficult to radiate heat into it, or would it have some sort of athmosphere. But if it did have some sort of medium, would that medium be at the same pressure as the pressure of the ship. Would it continually blow or suck stuff in and out of the ship? How does one store a WH, and how do you keep it going at the same speed the ship is going? How much energy would it take to keep one open, and would the heat formed from generating that much energy be more than the ability of the WH to take the energy in?

If the ships can warp and/or deflect particles and energy with some kind of magical deflector shield and/or absorb kinetic and energy weapons with a suspended energy shield of some kind, they could potentially redirect and radiate all heat in a different direction and warp light and background radiation around them or sink it into a different dimention of space and fold the space behind them so that you can't see them.

Making the surface match the surrounding temperature is ridiculous if you don't do anything to keep your emissions from raising the surrounding temperature because you are still right in the middle of a hot-spot. As pointed out earlier, you can't simply insulate or all energy used as propulsion would then BBQ the ship.

Even if you could radiate heat specifically in a way you want to, you need to know exactly where the enemy is looking. Also by doing directional emission, you're generating even more heat trying to shift the already existing heat around. Also, directional heat means that the area that can be used to radiate heat is so small that the amount of heat being raidated would be insignificant to the amount of heat being generated even just trying to get heat only there. Also simply being alive raises the temperature of the ship to above 0c, which is a torch in space.

The Mass Effect games tackled this concept with a heat buffer, that has to be purged eventually, in order to explain the Normandy's stealth capabilities. Of course they have the benefit of using advanced alien technology to allow such a thing

It's not perfect, I just like that they actually attempt to address the issue. Honestly, I think Mass Effect is the best sci-fi universe to come out in ages. I'm certain there'll be a movie someday...I just hope they don't fuck it up.

Meh, I'm not a fan of the ME universe. Not interesting. Also, I don't really want to get into how the ME method just doesn't work. I really dislike it when sci fi universes try too hard to explain how their tech works. The more they try to explain with tech, the easier it is to rip holes into the function of it.

 

[PingSpike]

"Hacking" scenes are the worst.

Except for the movie "Hackers" which was 100% technologically accurate.

 

[ShawnD1]

Simple thermodynamics. In order to achieve stealth, you need to have 100% thermal insulation. There is no other way. Now what happens when you have a machine that is outputting heat and absolutely zero heat can escape. You're going to have a piece of slag flying through space in a short while.

Bring a super cooled material to absorb heat. Rather than venting excess heat, the heat would be fed to the super cooled material. Depending on how much heat this material can absorb, you could stay thermally cloaked for a few minutes or a few hours. To recharge the super cooled material, just let it cool off in the dead cold of space.

At one time we thought radar cloaking was retarded. Then we actually did it. Stealth bombers do not reflect the waves used for conventional radar.

Also, you need to match the temperature of whatever magical device you have that can insulate 100% of heat output from the ship to the temperature of outside space, namely 2-3 degrees Kelvin. Of course, this means that the heat from the outside shell (being heated by solar radiation and other radiation) also has to go somewhere, and considering you want stealth, you also cannot vent that, so even more heat needs to build up inside that shell.

Liquid helium would circulate along the shell of the ship to keep the temperature near 0. The inside of the ship would be insulated with a vacuum, like a thermos bottle.



Not really a mistake, but I always found it weird how movies show high school students driving to school. Where I live, nobody drives to school because there's nowhere to park. The school has enough parking for the staff and that is it. Parking on the streets in front of schools is almost never allowed (here) and even then that would only be maybe 10 cars worth of space.

 

[sandorski]

pulling a knife out of a wooden counter, cutting board, knife block and getting the metal-on-metal "shink!" sound

weird.

Sound effects are almost always nonsense in movies. Like sneaking up on somebody with clearly audible footsteps or people talking while hiding undetected just an arms length away.

 

[sactoking]

Silencers taking a 100+ dB gunshot and reducing it a 10dB 'thwip'.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Bring a super cooled material to absorb heat. Rather than venting excess heat, the heat would be fed to the super cooled material. Depending on how much heat this material can absorb, you could stay thermally cloaked for a few minutes or a few hours. To recharge the super cooled material, just let it cool off in the dead cold of space.

At one time we thought radar cloaking was retarded. Then we actually did it. Stealth bombers do not reflect the waves used for conventional radar.

Liquid helium would circulate along the shell of the ship to keep the temperature near 0. The inside of the ship would be insulated with a vacuum, like a thermos bottle.
.

The heat sink method doesn't work for several reasons. First of all, there is no material known that can hold the amount of heat we're talking about, but of course there could be future materials that can hold the absurd amount of heat we're talking about. Also, as above, we're going to have to figure out some way of regulating how much heat is traveling. Unless you want to instantly kill everyone on the ship when this magical cube soaks up all the energy in the entire ship. This in turn would use more energy which generates more heat etc etc. It's just not feasable. How do you even store something like that? A perfect vacuum in the middle of a ship? How would you go about transferring heat into it. The heatsink way isn't feasable.

And I'm pretty sure we never thought radar stealth was unfeasable.

Liquid helium boils at 3.3K. Unless you're talking about lugging a moon sized amount of liquid helium with some way of storing the helium gas produced from simply existing, its also not feasible.

 

[PingSpike]

I think the thing that bothers me the most and happens most often is the single blow demobilization of enemies. It probably pulls the rating from an R down to PG-13, but come on. The guy hits a guy and he goes out like a light, at least Spock had the nerve pinch.

Except when its the good guy or the lead bad guy, where they take impossible beatings or even die and come back to life...sometimes multiple times! But yes, all mooks are KO'ed by a gut punch of an akido throw.

My favorite PG-13 induced nonsense is with knives. Its bad enough when James Bond used to mow down 100s of a guys with AK-47s only to have them fall down instantly dead from nonexistent gunshot wounds...but when Wolverine starts slicing and diced dudes all day are never spills a drop on his shirt its LOLer-time.

 

[PingSpike]

It sure seems like that heat thing could be solved for short bursts...just letting it buildup within the ship for awhile and then shutting it down. That would be a pretty serious tactical advantage on a combat ship even if you couldn't fly around with it on all the time like the Klingons. Sounds like that is what they do in Mass Effect.