ISV Venture Star

[MarkD]

Here is a cool link on it http://www.pandorapedia.com/human_op...v_venture_star You see a small clip of the ship from the movie.

[Palulukan_Taronyu]

It takes the ISV 5-6 Months just to reach 70% the speed of light.

[Replica]

It's my most favourite space ship of all time. It looks awesome yet nothing like anything ever seen before.

[Palulukan_Taronyu]

It's my most favourite space ship of all time. It looks awesome yet nothing like anything ever seen before.

Well it is realistic. This is how you can expect to see spaceships in the future. You will never see anything like the Star Destroyer from Star Wars or the Enterprise from Star Trek. They are unrealistic designs.

[MarkD]

I do wonder if the ISVs have a docking station in Earth orbit to refuel or do they just float up there like when at Pandora?

[Replica]

Probably just float about in orbit. Seems impracticable to me to build one for it

[Typhon]

Well it is realistic. This is how you can expect to see spaceships in the future. You will never see anything like the Star Destroyer from Star Wars or the Enterprise from Star Trek. They are unrealistic designs.

What is your point of reference for this statement? I'd like to know what logic led you to this conclusion.

[Dusso Janladde]

Well it is realistic. This is how you can expect to see spaceships in the future. You will never see anything like the Star Destroyer from Star Wars or the Enterprise from Star Trek. They are unrealistic designs.

Funny thing is, the big ships, even the Death Star, are the most realistic things in Star Wars. Hyperdrive and artificial gravity excluded, we could build one right now if we had enough gross domestic product.

Likewise, with the exception of the cryogenic freezing technology (we can freeze them, but not thaw them out) we could build an ISV right now. However, it would be completely useless without antimatter fuel. Using current technology, it costs about $25 billion per gram to manufacture it and it's basically done one atom at a time.

The main things that are completely unrealistic in spaceflight-based science fiction are...
1. Faster-than-light travel
2. Teleportation (notably absent in Star Wars)
3. Artificial gravity and antigravity
4. Handheld energy-based weaponry (blaster, lightsaber, phaser etc). Ship-mounted ones are no problem as they'd be powered by the ship's primary power source.

If you don't see any of those used, it's 100% feasible with current technology or that of the next 100 or so years.

[Palulukan_Taronyu]

What is your point of reference for this statement? I'd like to know what logic led you to this conclusion.

Look at this vid.....

[Typhon]

Look at this vid.....

Alright, first of all most of this first part sounds simply as if you would have to change the interior of the ships more than anything else. Have the various decks and sections built around the idea of the ground up with vertical decks rather than horizontal ones placed across the ship. Fine, I can see that being done fairly easily and might even improve the overall designs of an Imperial Class Star Destroyer. But both would still have the rear sections of their ships placed purely at the back. The entire rear section of a star destroyer is made up of three gigantic engine assemblies and it’s easy to see how the enterprise is built for such a concept in mind the more recent designs.



Secondly, the entire section of gravity plating is based upon the idea that each ship would have vertical decks rather than horizontal ones. Change the design and that solves itself. Or in the cases of some science fiction, has been taken into account with their ship designs:



The section upon fighters is based upon the idea that they are to be used purely in space. First of all, almost every ship barring a few in that universe, such as the X-wing, were designed to be used in the atmosphere. I’m not denying that there’s a problem with the space battles in this sense, and the distances they were fighting at was far to close, but it’s unfair to simply ignore this point.
Next, the section featuring the points of the fighters having to slow down again defeats itself. Each time they have to land, they come in to either a ship or a planet. Either way they are suddenly going to have gravity working upon them, and a force directly working against them. Outside of when they come in to land, when, in the original films, do we see a fighter slowing down? More to the point do we ever see a fighter with their engines off?
Oh, and just one point i’d like to make here. The reviewers mention that the ship would have to flip over the ship to slow down to point the engines backwards and that fighters would not be able to perform half the moves the do. One of the examples the author uses for flaws within ship designs was that from Battlestar Galactica, which, rather surprisingly actually avoids this quite well. The fighter craft, Vipers, have dozens of small thrusters arrayed across their hulls allowing for them to change direction and slow down when required.
The bigger ships even have huge versions of this to do exactly what the maker of this video states, as seen in the Battlestar Pegasus’ escape from the shipyard massacre. I’m been unable to find shots of these as of yet but if you were going to go and ask any fan of the recent remake they would support these points.

Right, for this next part, i’m not going to argue the physics behind his argument that space is cold but give a link to this page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsCold
Hardly the best source for scientific information, I know, but it gives a much more detailed background and explanation of the process than the maker of this video did. Star Wars actually quite largely averts the whole idea of space being cold, the points for which are listed on the link above. I’d also look at a lot of the other examples on that page to see how well the author’s claim that all other science fiction is utterly unrealistic holds up.
Oh, also, one more note. TIE fighters are utterly reliant upon capital ships for long range travel and support due to their design, and might have skipped on a lot of additional equipment which would have only been necessary for prolonged time in space.

Yeah, Stargate did quite a bit of an episode on the point of travelling near the speed of light. The entire first part anyway: http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/The_Return,_Part_1
In addition to this, more than a few science fiction genres I have encountered have the habit of featuring sleeper ships as this. Having ships moving close to the speed of light relies upon the effects of time distortion rather than just cryogenic freezing.
In addition, the author doesn’t really make any points against the use of hyperspace. Sure, he points out that there are easier methods but it would make an author’s life a living hell to try and make a long range chase scene without the technology of hyperdrive.

I’ve got to largely agree with the point about inertia. There are a lot of ways around it such as changing sections of the ship design, but this is something i’ve argued had problems for a long time so I’ll just agree with this one.

Alright, in conclusion i’m just going to state a few things. First off, this author had apparently not done that much research into other sci fis and was focusing upon much older ones such as the original series of star trek and star wars. Both produced forty years before Avatar, give or take a bit. He’s first of all ignoring that science has advanced since then and it is unfair to compare series and films of today with those of the past in terms of scientific accuracy for obvious reasons. The knowledge wasn’t as widespread, Avatar and other series were created understanding the criticism of those films and avoided their problems.
It would be like comparing a film from the 1920s with one created several decades later. It would naturally be unfair if we were to do so.

Furthermore however, the author seems to have ignored some of the more scientifically accurate series made in the last twenty years or so such as Babylon 5, Firefly and (except for a mention) Battlestar Galactica. Which either get by the problem by having some focus upon accurate science fiction or by largely not commenting upon the physics behind the ships. All would have stood up far better by the commentary this person was giving with science in science fiction.

The author similarly ignored something when it came to the ships he was comparing. Those such as the ones in Avatar were made based upon our understanding, experience and technology of today. The first Enterprise in Star Trek was made it was created in the 23rd century with the assistance and knowledge of races who had been travelling in space far longer than humanity had.
Star Destroyers were created after tens of thousands of years of space travel with almost every species in the galaxy learning and developing from one another. We can’t predict exactly how science, and technology, will advance in three hundred years let alone thousands. As such for all we know some of the designs and ideas might be possible in those franchises, with some obvious changes.

Finally, neither Star Wars nor Star Trek were especially focused upon scientific accuracy. Star Wars was, prequels notwithstanding, focused upon telling a good story and a saga people might enjoy. Star Trek was always about moral issues and complications, and the much more human aspects of the shows.
Both largely avoided science and gave audiences events such as space battles, plasma sword duels and comments upon the flaws in human nature.
Avatar gave audiences a several hour long morality play for five year olds, and uses its science for the following:

PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?

CAMERON: I came up with this free-floating, lion’s-mane-like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they’re right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we’re going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We’ll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector’s item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.

Next time please don’t try to bash other franchises that have already proven their worth to make your film better. Do not try to call others unrealistic when the main point of your film is beaming people’s minds into alien bodies.