Stars, planets and other Sci-Fi peeves

alfaniner said:
Scotty did, sending the MOAB to the Klingon engine room (The Mother of all Broods).
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Argumemnon said:
Voyager also sent a bomb to a Borg vessel at some point, but I wish I could un-see that series.
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Yeah, but that was always some "no one ever thought of this before" jury-rigged save-the-day thing. There was apparently never any real thought or study put into weaponizing them, as in actually developing tactics to use them effectively, or working on ways to overcome the "can't go through shields" problem (like, for example, transporter-equipped torpedoes that would transport themselves after firing, or stealthed mines that would sit idle until they detected a ship, then begin transporting bombs on board).
 
Hellbound said:
Yeah, but that was always some "no one ever thought of this before" jury-rigged save-the-day thing.
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Oops, yes I meant to point that out: it's written as some thinking-outside-the-box strategy rather than something they should do all the time.

The Federation seriously needs to expand their tactical repertoire.
 
Although it doesn't really peeve me, I find habitable planets to be too common in SF. I'd like to see more action done on stations. The Expanse is pretty good in that regard.

Argumemnon said:
That's one of the reasons I didn't like the well-reviewed Minority Report. Apparently if the pre-crime system isn't 100% reliable, it's worthless. that idea permeates the entire movie.
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That didn't bother me as much. It wasn't the prescience itself that was the problem, it was that they'd structured their entire legal system around the notion that if you were predicted to commit a crime, you were automatically guilty of it. That would only work if it was always right.
 
I was disappointed with Starship Troopers when I first saw it, mainly because I assumed there was some connection with the book.

I have come to love it though and can watch it anytime.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
That didn't bother me as much. It wasn't the prescience itself that was the problem, it was that they'd structured their entire legal system around the notion that if you were predicted to commit a crime, you were automatically guilty of it. That would only work if it was always right.
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Yeah but it could still be useful at 99.95% accuracy. They acted as if they needed to take the whole thing down. Plus, the cop character brought up a few good points but they get dropped really quickly. I get the impression that the movie would've been a lot better for me as a crime drama exploring the philosophical, ethical and legal ramifications of this technology, rather than a somewhat blunt action flick.
 
HansMustermann said:
While I would generally aggree with the idea that a practical spaceship wouldn't have ballroom-sized one-man dorms like in Star Trek and could probably be a lot smaller, I humbly present another idea: heat dissipation.

Take a look at those huge panels on the space station, and yeah, they're there to dissipate the heat from a tiny space station by SF standards. The issue is that in space you can't just transfer the heat to air like on Earth, so only radiation helps you. Granted, you could probably reduce them if you used a heat pump to make their surface hotter, courtesy of Messrs Stefan and Boltzmann, but even that only goes so far.
So I humbly submit that having a big outer shell could actualy serve a purpose. Namely that of heatsink. When you have to have whole square kilometres of heatsink just to get out the energy seeping from your engines and electronics anyway, it's not the worst idea to just make a huge wedge or saucer shaped hull with lots of space inside.

Granted, then what I'd also want to see is leaving some space between that heatsink outer hull and the inner hull -- kinda like the two hulls on a sub -- as spaced armour. Split it into airtight compartments, and you have some extra protection against explosive decompression of some room where the people are. Be it from battle or just grazing a grain of sand at relativistic speeds.

Basically it doesn't require VOLUME, but it might require SURFACE to get the heat out.

Edit: Which, incidentally would also explain some of the designs with strangely low volume-to-surface ratios, like the wedges in Star Wars or the dishes in Star Trek. I mean, think about it. If you wanted to optimize for volume, at the same weight, you'd probably make it a sphere. Or if you get into aerodynamics considerations (which are real even in interstellar space at relativistic speed, because you sweep a lot of space, so you collide with a lot of atoms) you'd make it tube-shaped like a submarine. Both the star destroyers and most ships in ST actually seem to deliberately go for most surface for least volume, which is the most stupid thing you can do... unless you have a good reason to need that surface.
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The huge solar panels are not part of the cooling system. In fact, they have their own cooling system. Most of the cooling system on ISS is ammonia filled pipes on the outside of the station.
 
slyjoe said:
The huge solar panels are not part of the cooling system. In fact, they have their own cooling system. Most of the cooling system on ISS is ammonia filled pipes on the outside of the station.
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Those ammonia fueled pipes are arrayed in sets of huge panels. They look a lot like solar panels. About 2/3 of the big panels on ISS are for solar power, the other 1/3 are for heat dissipation. They look kind of similar to a casual observer.
 
crescent said:
Those ammonia fueled pipes are arrayed in sets of huge panels. They look a lot like solar panels. About 2/3 of the big panels on ISS are for solar power, the other 1/3 are for heat dissipation. They look kind of similar to a casual observer.
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Yeah. They'd be the smaller set of panels at right angles to the solar arrays (the larger panels). One set of panels to catch the sunlight, another very much trying to avoid the sunlight.
 
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Argumemnon said:
Yeah but it could still be useful at 99.95% accuracy. They acted as if they needed to take the whole thing down. Plus, the cop character brought up a few good points but they get dropped really quickly. I get the impression that the movie would've been a lot better for me as a crime drama exploring the philosophical, ethical and legal ramifications of this technology, rather than a somewhat blunt action flick.
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It would actually be AWFUL at 99.5% accuracy. In fact, bloody frikken insanely awful.

Let's look at all non-negligent homicides and manslaughters. You know, from premeditated murder all the way to felony murder. Well, that was 4.9 per 100,000 population in 2015. A system with 99.5% accuracy would give you 500 false positives for 100,000 population, i.e., a whopping OVER A HUNDRED TIMES MORE false positives than accurate predictions. Pretty literally for every 1 murderer you preemptively put away, you'd also be putting away 100 innocents.

NOW do you see the problem with 99.5% accuracy?
 
HansMustermann said:
It would actually be AWFUL at 99.5% accuracy. In fact, bloody frikken insanely awful.

Let's look at all non-negligent homicides and manslaughters. You know, from premeditated murder all the way to felony murder. Well, that was 4.9 per 100,000 population in 2015. A system with 99.5% accuracy would give you 500 false positives for 100,000 population, i.e., a whopping OVER A HUNDRED TIMES MORE false positives than accurate predictions. Pretty literally for every 1 murderer you preemptively put away, you'd also be putting away 100 innocents.

NOW do you see the problem with 99.5% accuracy?
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First of all, I said 99.95, not 99.5, and I specifically put the decimals there to avoid nitpickers dodging the main point of my post with irrelevancies. I wasn't trying to be precise with my comments, but to make that point.

And the point is simple: no system is perfect, but the movie treats this one like it _has_ to be either perfect or discarded.

Do you have any idea how imprecise real-world justice systems are? How many guilty people are let go on technicalities or other issues, and how many innocents are held up or put in jail? My point is that the idea of pre-crime could have been useful in that universe even if it wasn't perfect.

:rolleyes:
 
HansMustermann said:
So the problem with what I wrote was...? I just said they're huge panels, not that they're the same as the solar panels.
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The "problem" was that in the absence of distinction in your post, you'd expect laypeople to think you were talking about the solar panels, not knowing that there are radiators on the ISS as well.
 
So as a way to put this all into context can anyone point to an example of a good design of a deep space / long voyage spaceship in fiction?
 
JoeBentley said:
So as a way to put this all into context can anyone point to an example of a good design of a deep space / long voyage spaceship in fiction?
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Well the one in Interstellar seemed rather functional, and the Discovery wasn't too bad in 2001, even though they removed the radiators from the design.

Can't think of another off the top of my head.
 
JoeBentley said:
So as a way to put this all into context can anyone point to an example of a good design of a deep space / long voyage spaceship in fiction?
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The discovery in 2010. Designed with realism in mind. The only thing they did was leave off the massive cooling radiators that would have been required so that people didn't think they were wings.
 
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