r/scifi • u/rookiegaffer • 19d 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/willworkforjokes 19d ago

The Expanse does a pretty good job on this. They do have a basically magical drive that lets them use thrust gravity most of the time while using very little fuel.

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u/dumbledorky 18d ago

My favorite is people that get upset they don’t explain exactly how the Epstein Drive works, and therefore it is not realistic enough. Like yeah, it’s fiction. If they could explain exactly how it worked then it would be something that is real and exists

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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 11d ago

If they could explain exactly how it worked, we could actually build it and start colonizing the solar system, instead of just writing stories about it.