← Back to context

Comment by grey-area

1 day ago

Biggest thing they all still get wrong for reasons of drama is showing humans wrestling with controls and flying like a fighter pilot. Real spaceships do not and will not have humans in the control loop except to specify a destination or target.

15 comments

grey-area

Reply
krger  1 day ago

>Real spaceships do not and will not have humans in the control loop except to specify a destination or target.

Jim Lovell would like a word.

  • trothamel  21 hours ago

    After the accident, Apollo 13 had 4 burns.

    The DPS-1 burn which restored the free return trajectory was done using the Apollo guidance computer.

    The PC+2 burn which sped up the return from earth was done using the Apollo guidance computer.

    The MCC-5 mid-course correction burn was done by hand.

    The MCC-7 mid-course correction burn was done by hand, but used the Apollo guidance computer to integrate the accelerometer to let everyone know when the burn was done.

    (All the burns on Apollo 8 were computer controlled. I'd assume Gemini 7 and 12 were hand flown, though I don't know for sure.)

hnlmorg  16 hours ago

That’s actually how the cons work in Star Trek (and many other SciFi shows too).

What officers do at the con once the ship is in motion is monitor ships systems and check for any external changes to the environment (such as other ships coming in for interception).

hbarka  1 day ago

Would dead-reckoning work or using some galactic sextant?

  • shagie  1 day ago

    Maybe?

    Ultima (Proxima Book 2) by Stephen Baxter:

        “Oh, come on. This is just great. An imperial Roman starship! . . . We know they lack sophisticated electronics, computers. I wonder how the hell they navigate that thing.”

    “The drive isn’t always on,” said Titus.

    Stef realized that a more precise translation of his words might have been, *The vulcans do not always vomit fire.*

    “Every month they shut it down, and turn the ship.” He mimed this with his one good hand, like aligning a cannon. “The surveyors take sightings from the stars. Then they swivel the ship to make sure we’re on the right track, and fire up the drive again. It’s like laying a road, on the march. You lay a stretch, and at the end of the day the surveyors take their sightings to make sure you’re heading straight and true where you’re supposed to go, and the next day off you go. Works like a dream. Why, I remember once on campaign—”

    “Navigation by dead reckoning,” said the ColU. “Taking sightings from the stars—simply pointing the craft at the destination. They have no computers here, Colonel Kalinski, nothing more complex than an abacus. And they have astrolabes, planispheres, orreries, sextants, and very fine clocks—all mechanical, mechanical, and remarkably sophisticated. But, Colonel, this starship is piloted using clockwork! However, if you have the brute energy of the kernels available, you don’t need subtlety, you don’t need fine control. You need only aim and fire.”

the_af  1 day ago

Yeah. Though they do have some nods towards realism, like how most combat systems are fully automated. PDCs fire automatically (at most they need a designated target, and for point defense they just fire), and even torpedos are assigned to targets using some touch screen and that's it, they are not fired using a joystick or similar nonsense.

api  11 hours ago

Yes, even today it’s rare. Docking with the ISS or initiating the trans lunar burn on the most recent mission were all completely automated. The pilot arms the engine and authorizes it to proceed. I can imagine it being possible to grab the controls but it’s only done in exceptional or unusual cases.

Of course astronauts are trained for it in simulators in case computers fail.

If there are ever real space battles, that’s actually the most ridiculous time to have humans flying. Human reflexes and ability to mentally model 3D space under microgravity and orbital mechanics are just categorically inferior to what any machine can do. We are too slow and too imprecise.

If there are pilots at all it’ll be at a higher level, like the piloting equivalent of a programmer commanding AI bots. The computer will present the pilot with a digested real time tactical and strategic abstraction and the pilot would make decisions at that level.

A computer or avionics failure in a space battle would probably just be fatal. Which would mean EMP weapons against computers might factor in heavily.