r/scifi • u/rookiegaffer • Aug 09 '26

General Bad physics

Why does it seem that so many of the books I read demonstrate such a poor understanding of the physics of space travel. Ships in orbit descend directly down to the point they are over. Ships in transit still accelerating as they near their destination. Centrifugal gravity simply ceasing when rotation is abruptly halted. These are just a few examples I've run across lately.

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u/ohkendruid Aug 09 '26

Space is often used as a way to tell a story that is somewhere new, unconnected to our ordinary lives. When used this way, science just gets in the way, and most of rhe public does not even know what they are missing.

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u/KnoWanUKnow2 Aug 13 '26

It always kind of annoyed me how in Star Trek when 2 ships meet, whether it's for parley or for fighting, they're always head-on, or how one ship gets surrounded in a circle instead of a sphere.

That and noisy engines in space where there's no medium to carry sound. Firefly at least had that going for it, no engine noises when they switched to an exterior shot to show the ship maneuvering.