2015 m. gruodžio 27 d., sekmadienis

Sci-Fi nonsenses

One of the most irritating things when watching Sci-Fi is various mistakes related to real technologies. Here's my list of them.
  1. Pew pew pew
  2. You know what I mean: lasers! Well, not only lasers, plenty of other laser-like guns too. With all that progress they have made you certainly would expect soundless guns to exist. Considering that we have such today! Bonus is that many of those large laser-type guns in turrets on space ships also have a quite powerful recoil.
  3. We live in a middle of nowhere
  4. If you watched sci-fi a lot, you should have seen many cases when spaceship suddenly loses it's ability to fly faster than light. What happens next? Well, they just fly to a nearby planet, which is hours or at worst days away. At the same time our own planet is over 4 light-years away from the nearest other star. This means if some ship breaks down in the middle, it's over 2 years away from any help (if it can fly close to light speed that is). So that's why no aliens have visited us yet - we live in the middle of nowhere!
  5. Ships fly like planes
  6. There is a reason why planes fly the way they do: aerodynamics. They are restricted by our atmosphere. Spaceships however fly in vacuum. There is no reason for them not to be able to turn in place. And with all that fancy technology they have it should be possible for them to make 90 degree turn at high speed. Yet they still prefer to fly in an aerodynamic way. Why?
  7. Wars are fought with weakest weapons there are
  8. Many TV show have very powerful weapons available. A single shot can completely disintegrate multiple humans, a single missile can make entire planet uninhabitable and so on. Yet, when things come to interplanetary war, everyone place it nice and safe: weapons just make non-lethal injuries and planetary bombardments make no more damage than World War II bombs. Everyone is so civilized, no intentions of annihilating your foes even when you lose.
  9. Computers are still stuck somewhere in 70s
  10. This one is where sci-fi creators struggle the most to see the future. Besides human-like AI and ability to talk in human voice computers are more often behind the reality. Just think of it: counting smartphones as computers many of us actually have more than one, while spaceships of hundred years later still have a single computer in them. And often a quite a slow one too.
  11. Ships come to halt on engine failure
  12. What happens when ships engine fails? Usually it comes to full stop. And I'm not talking about faster-than-light travel, sublight speed spaceships also often stop on engine failure. At the same time our primitive space ships fly in close proximity of our solar system with their engines off most of the time. In vacuum there is no resistance you know, so you do not lose speed, hence engines are only for reaching it and maneuvering and fighting gravity.
  13. Aliens have no diversity and are sooo predictable
  14. Even in my city of a bit over half million of people I can't predict how someone will react to certain actions. And we look quite different. Dress different. Have different religions. We even have different native languages, though one dominates. While aliens we encounter in sci-fi are all the same, speak one language, have one culture and are very very predictable. How many times have you heard "these guys will act aggressively", "they never withdraw, that's their weakness", etc. Come on!
  15. We're the only species with creativity in extraordinary situations
  16. When something very unusual happens, our friends aliens, despite being significantly more advanced then us, seem to be unable to find any clever solution. They just do the usual, casual, what they are used to and only we, humans, are able to think of something smart, non-traditional to save everyone. How did those aliens manage to develop so much in the first place?
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