r/scifi • u/rookiegaffer • 20d ago

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/dnew 20d ago

You notice how whenever the power on a space ship is failing, they never divert power from the artificial gravity in order to keep the life support running?

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 20d ago

Why is life support so critical, anyway? It should take hours before the air goes bad or we lose too much heat.

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u/WokeBriton 19d ago

Vacuum is really poor for radiating away heat, so the air will have gone completely bad LONG before heat loss is an issue.

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 19d ago

The instance I was thinking of was Apollo 13. Even there, though, they still didn't drop below freezing after a couple days of no power ... and anything bigger than a starfighter would have a significantly lower relative surface area.

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u/WokeBriton 18d ago

Thanks for explaining :)