What's some dumb science you've seen in fiction?

[dystopian]

Nevermind, that the satellites could not be stationary above the cities, but the end solution to disable these satellites was to blow them up just in the nick of time.

Hello? Wouldn't the rubble from the satellites, including dozens of those tungsten rods, just drop in that case on the cities? Way to go destroying the world G.I. Joe!

Would it? I haven't seen the movie but;

I'd think the satellites blowing up would either destroy the rods (depending on the force of the weaponry used), or just fling them off into space due to the force of the explosion, yes they'd be caught by Earth's gravity and eventually come down again, but their entry vector might be different enough to whittle them away to nothing and at the very least they wouldn't be coming down on the cities they were hovering over before.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Hello? Wouldn't the rubble from the satellites, including dozens of those tungsten rods, just drop in that case on the cities? Way to go destroying the world G.I. Joe!

Most of it would tumble and thus burn up on reentry. Just like all the other crap we've left up there.

The rods have to be pretty carefully aimed to actually make them threats.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

G.I. Joe: Retaliation was of course by no means even trying to be serious, and it had too many stupid plot points to count, but in terms of science blunders, there is one that stuck out...

Terrorist organization Cobra was blackmailing the planet with a fleet of satellites capable of orbital bombardment by dropping solid tungsten rods to any major city in the world. The movie made it clear that the rods were dropped, not launched. Nevermind, that the satellites could not be stationary above the cities, but the end solution to disable these satellites was to blow them up just in the nick of time.

Hello? Wouldn't the rubble from the satellites, including dozens of those tungsten rods, just drop in that case on the cities? Way to go destroying the world G.I. Joe!

Someone didn't understand how Thor works. The rods need an ejection velocity of some hundreds of miles per hour.

Note, though, that blowing up the satellite wouldn't pose the danger the rods do:

1) The satellites are not hovering. Blow one up and the debris hits some point in the orbit, most of which will be empty space.

2) The rods are only deadly if they make a guided entry. If they don't enter straight on they're going to burn like other space debris and even if they don't they won't retain their deadly velocity.

 

[Jayjay]

Fine, when I checked that scene in Netflix the satellites are annihilated completely and remaining pieces are hurled to different trajectories. So I guess G.I Joe is hard science fiction after all.

But I have another pet peeve: Doctor. Fucking. Who.

In this season, there was an episode where it turns out the moon is an egg. Then it hatched into a space bird. Which immediately laid another egg exactly the size of the original moon.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fine, when I checked that scene in Netflix the satellites are annihilated completely and remaining pieces are hurled to different trajectories. So I guess G.I Joe is hard science fiction after all.

We aren't saying it's hard sci-fi, we are saying that it's not nearly as messed up as you portrayed it.

While AFIAK nobody has actually built a Thor-type system it is technically sound other than the need for a lot of lift to deploy it. The weapon is basically a guided rod. There is no engine on it, just tiny steering fins and a seeker. It is thrown from it's launcher on a trajectory that hits the atmosphere. Once in atmosphere it guides itself to whatever it's aimed at. It's built long and thin so it retains most of it's orbital velocity on the way in. The idea is to hit somewhere around Mach 20.

This makes things *VERY* hard for the defenders--it will slice through any mobile armor ever built. Since it's just a flying hunk of metal it's very hard to kill--by the time it's in intercept range it's basically on target, killing it's seeker won't stop it. Even if you manage to make it tumble it's probably too late to stop it from hitting (although if it's tumbling it won't go through armor very well). Reactive armor does nothing to it.

It's a precision target weapon, you do *NOT* want to be a tank or a ship with one of those things heading for you. It's not too useful as an area weapon.

 

[Togo]

The neutrinos have mutated!
2012

 

[Lucia]

 

[Keith&Co.]

It's a precision target weapon, you do *NOT* want to be a tank or a ship with one of those things heading for you. It's not too useful as an area weapon.

But it's damned good at a street address.

The rod penetrates the ground for about a mile, hypercompressing the crust material into the shell of the hole. After the rod passes, the pressure of that hypercompression comes back out, blowing up out of the hole, kind of like Hades' own shotgun blast.

The Trident missile has the precision to deliver this sort of rod to a target, to take out a building without making a whole city radioactive. No seekers or steering fins, the equipment section aims and releases and it falls ballistically, just like the current warheads.

 

[Jarhyn]

Fragile meat Popsicles jetting around at near-light speed in similarly fragile hollow bubbles of gas.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's a precision target weapon, you do *NOT* want to be a tank or a ship with one of those things heading for you. It's not too useful as an area weapon.

But it's damned good at a street address.

The rod penetrates the ground for about a mile, hypercompressing the crust material into the shell of the hole. After the rod passes, the pressure of that hypercompression comes back out, blowing up out of the hole, kind of like Hades' own shotgun blast.

The Trident missile has the precision to deliver this sort of rod to a target, to take out a building without making a whole city radioactive. No seekers or steering fins, the equipment section aims and releases and it falls ballistically, just like the current warheads.

If you're going to penetrate a mile down you either need a penetrator something like 1000' long or else degenerate matter.

And a trident is *NOT* built to come down that fast, it wouldn't be nearly so effective.

 

[thebeave]

It's a precision target weapon, you do *NOT* want to be a tank or a ship with one of those things heading for you. It's not too useful as an area weapon.

But it's damned good at a street address.

The rod penetrates the ground for about a mile, hypercompressing the crust material into the shell of the hole. After the rod passes, the pressure of that hypercompression comes back out, blowing up out of the hole, kind of like Hades' own shotgun blast.

The Trident missile has the precision to deliver this sort of rod to a target, to take out a building without making a whole city radioactive. No seekers or steering fins, the equipment section aims and releases and it falls ballistically, just like the current warheads.

I worked on the Trident II development back in the 80's and 90's , and after the Cold War wound down, people were tossing around ideas for alternative uses for the D5 missile (other than launching nuclear warheads). One of the ideas being considered was to replace an RB position with some sort of rods ejection system. I never got involved in it, but I heard others talking about it. I think it was going to be tried on a test launch, but I never heard the final outcome. I had left that program by then.

P.S. Remember this? Just about everyone in the Missile Systems Division at Lockheed shit their pants that day, wondering, "I hope its not a result of something I designed!". I worked on the fix a little bit, but that problem had nothing to do with me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But it's damned good at a street address.

The rod penetrates the ground for about a mile, hypercompressing the crust material into the shell of the hole. After the rod passes, the pressure of that hypercompression comes back out, blowing up out of the hole, kind of like Hades' own shotgun blast.

The Trident missile has the precision to deliver this sort of rod to a target, to take out a building without making a whole city radioactive. No seekers or steering fins, the equipment section aims and releases and it falls ballistically, just like the current warheads.

I worked on the Trident II development back in the 80's and 90's , and after the Cold War wound down, people were tossing around ideas for alternative uses for the D5 missile (other than launching nuclear warheads). One of the ideas being considered was to replace an RB position with some sort of rods ejection system. I never got involved in it, but I heard others talking about it. I think it was going to be tried on a test launch, but I never heard the final outcome. I had left that program by then.

Agreed--a Trident could carry a suborbital version of Thor in place of it's normal warhead, although it wouldn't be as effective as it wouldn't be going as fast. (Still nasty, though.)

 

[bilby]

I worked on the Trident II development back in the 80's and 90's , and after the Cold War wound down, people were tossing around ideas for alternative uses for the D5 missile (other than launching nuclear warheads). One of the ideas being considered was to replace an RB position with some sort of rods ejection system. I never got involved in it, but I heard others talking about it. I think it was going to be tried on a test launch, but I never heard the final outcome. I had left that program by then.

Agreed--a Trident could carry a suborbital version of Thor in place of it's normal warhead, although it wouldn't be as effective as it wouldn't be going as fast. (Still nasty, though.)

Well I bet thebeave and Keith&Co. are relieved to have their opinions on the use of submarine launched munitions confirmed by an expert.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And a trident is *NOT* built to come down that fast, it wouldn't be nearly so effective.

Okay.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I worked on the fix a little bit, but that problem had nothing to do with me.

Yeah. I was one a C-3 Tender when that happened. That was the gas generator pretty much pressure-welding thenozzle to one side, wasn't it?

 

[thebeave]

I worked on the fix a little bit, but that problem had nothing to do with me.

Yeah. I was one a C-3 Tender when that happened. That was the gas generator pretty much pressure-welding thenozzle to one side, wasn't it?

IIRC, right after it breached the surface, a giant column of water, hit the bottom of the first stage nozzle and broke the connection between the first stage TVC and nozzle. The column of water is expected generally, but the engineers underestimated its magnitude. A HUGE water "cannon" was built down at China Lake to test the fixes on a simulated first stage motor prior to the launch of PEM-2. My roommate at that time worked on that test. The major fix was to mount a giant frisbee on the bottom of the nozzle to deflect the water jet. There were some other hardware fixes (e.g. beefing up the TVC/nozzle interface, relieving hydraulic pressure at the TVC so it would act more like a shock absorber rather than a rigid structure) plus some software fixes, etc. It was a time of panic. There were rumors it was not going to be solvable and the program would be cancelled, etc. Giant frisbees FTW!!

 

[Keith&Co.]

There's also the deflector in the eject chamberso the gas generator pressurizes the chamber rather than blasts the nozzle.

Bringing this back around ot the OP, the climax of The Spy Who Loved Me when they cringed at the screen that looked like the two missiles were going to collide in space. It's bad enough that every representation of a an ICBM or SLBM missile in flight stays intact from launch to impact. Apparently the third stage motor just burn through the first and second stages when it's its turn... and it's powered flight all the way to detonation....

 

[thebeave]

There's also the deflector in the eject chamberso the gas generator pressurizes the chamber rather than blasts the nozzle.

Bringing this back around ot the OP, the climax of The Spy Who Loved Me when they cringed at the screen that looked like the two missiles were going to collide in space. It's bad enough that every representation of a an ICBM or SLBM missile in flight stays intact from launch to impact. Apparently the third stage motor just burn through the first and second stages when it's its turn... and it's powered flight all the way to detonation....

Yup, that always bothers me too. I don't know whether the writers/producers do that out of ignorance, or because it makes for "better" visual impact. Annoys the fuck out of me.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, Star Trek isn't usually "science fiction", but Nemesis had me blurt out loud in the theater when Dr Crusher said, "Theta radiation disintigrates organic life at the subatomic level."

But organic life is carbon based life, not neutron or proton based life.

 

[bilby]

There's also the deflector in the eject chamberso the gas generator pressurizes the chamber rather than blasts the nozzle.

Bringing this back around ot the OP, the climax of The Spy Who Loved Me when they cringed at the screen that looked like the two missiles were going to collide in space. It's bad enough that every representation of a an ICBM or SLBM missile in flight stays intact from launch to impact. Apparently the third stage motor just burn through the first and second stages when it's its turn... and it's powered flight all the way to detonation....

Yup, that always bothers me too. I don't know whether the writers/producers do that out of ignorance, or because it makes for "better" visual impact. Annoys the fuck out of me.

Viewers can be relied upon to recognise a complete stack with a nice jet of flame coming out of it as 'a nuclear missile'*; show them a final stage on a ballistic trajectory, and 85% of them would be confused, and wouldn't know what the fuck they were looking at, or why James Bond was worried about it.





*OK, fair enough, most of them would think it was a nucular missile, but at least they wouldn't completely lose the plot