Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by npunt on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @01:54AM
(#16322712)
Wow I never looked it up before, but the lifting of the trench run from The Dam Busters is uncanny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M
Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by colordrops on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @11:45PM
(#16322298)
some sci-fi was never connected to the future. But when it comes to Arthur c Clarke and Neil Stephenson, I'd have to disagree.
Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by narrator on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @01:32AM
(#16322641)
Maybe they could explain it all away saying that in a previous era autonomous weapons were used and almost exterminated everyone in the whole star wars universe, so all parties including the empire and the rebels agreed to not make use of automatically controlled weapons or space craft.
Or maybe software technology was lost and they are only able to use extremely rudimentary systems...
Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by krapp on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @06:05AM
(#16323655)
>Maybe they could explain it all away saying that in a previous era autonomous weapons were used (...)
Except that fully sentient AI is already commonplace in the form of droids, including battle droids.
This is a universe where a small robot that only speaks in clicks and whistles had to physically transport holographic "data tapes" about a moon-sized space station that can travel faster than light. A lot of it doesn't make sense when you think about it, but then it's supposed to be Flash Gordon with the serial numbers filed off.
The original Star Wars was made in 1977, and based heavily on World War 2 combat films (much of the space combat and the trench run on the Death Star was lifted - sometimes shot for shot - from a film called "The Dam Busters.") For reasons of continuity and tone, that mechanical aesthetic can't ever change much throughout the franchise, or else it wouldn't "look" like Star Wars.
But the point is that it's exciting, it's visceral, the archetypes of the fighter pilot and joystick and of buttons that do important things make sense to the audience, and as a result those scenes can convey emotion though the use of familiar visual language.
Sci-fi was never "connected" to the future, and it was never (or at least, never explicitly) about attempting to accurately describe or predict the future. Yes, you could have replaced the ships and pilots in Star Wars with remote or AI controlled drones, not colored in the blasters, etc, and it might be more realistic, but no one would enjoy watching it.
People do enjoy dogfights (and spaceships that bank when they turn) and space wizards with laser swords doing flippy shit and punching each other with telekinesis, though.