08-06-2014, 04:20 AM | #1 |
Addict
Posts: 286
Karma: 7742186
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Idaho, USA
Device: Various PalmOS PDAs, Android Phones, Sharper Image Literati
|
A small thing for SciFi writers.
If you have a spacecraft in your story that is somehow going to develop a hole in its hull, please do not write that your characters get sucked into the vacuum of space.
They get blown out into space. Think of this, a car tire has air inside at a pressure greater than the atmosphere outside it. If you poke a hole in the tire with a nail, would you say the air is getting sucked out of the tire? NO! You'd say the air is blowing out of the tire. Same thing with wind. It blows from areas of higher atmospheric pressure to areas of lower pressure. "Man, that wind was sure sucking hard this morning!" Nobody ever says that. So if you're writing the next great SciFi novel, at least get this one thing right while you're typing about impossibly dense asteroid fields and kilometers long space dreadnoughts zipping around like fighter planes. If you really want to get an earful, use the term "vacuum pressure" in conversation with a person who works with gasses or liquids at pressures above or below ambient. If you absolutely must use the word pressure when talking or writing about less than ambient pressure (ie vacuum) use the term "absolute pressure". That's what engineers and scientists use when the variable of ambient pressure is not relevant or must be calculated in with the relative pressure. For example, the pressure in your car tires is relative to the current ambient atmospheric pressure. The absolute pressure in them is what the gauge reads PLUS the ambient - or what it would read if you took the wheel off and put it in a vacuum chamber with a 29.92 InHg vacuum. If your tire gauge reads 30 PSI, the absolute pressure is actually around 44 PSI. |
08-06-2014, 05:07 AM | #2 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,154
Karma: 3252017
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Germany
Device: Pocketbook Touch Lux (623)
|
Quote:
Air movement happens because of pressure differentials. When we consider the high end of the differential "normal", we call it sucking. When we consider the low end normal or completely disregard the cause, as for wind, we call it blowing. So from the inside of the space craft, where the higher atmospheric pressure is the norm, it sure is sucking. For an observer on the outside, it's blowing. Move on, no nits to pick here. |
|
08-06-2014, 05:17 AM | #3 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,305
Karma: 43993832
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Monroe Wisconsin
Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)
|
There are plenty of errors in Sci Fi. I remember in one Star Trek movie they show a bottle of champaign revolving in space til it hits the hull of a star ship whereupon it shatters and liquid splatters. I'd think that a rigid substance like a champaign bottle would shatter in vacuum as there would be no external pressure and plenty of internal. Not to mention the contents should freeze solid at 250 below zero (the temp in orbital space). No doubt hundreds of people worked on that movie and it still slipped through so an individual writer could make errors and not catch them as well.
|
08-06-2014, 07:27 AM | #4 |
Guru
Posts: 826
Karma: 18573626
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Canada
Device: Kobo Touch, Nexus 7 (2013)
|
I like to get the basic science right in my writing, but the latest Star Trek movies prove you can get away with pretty much anything.
I think my favourite part was the beginning of Into Darkness when the crew has to use a "cold fusion" device to freeze a volcano (cold fusion has "cold" right in the title, so it must just freeze stuff, right?). Leaving that aside, a volcano with a frozen top would still build up pressure from magma, and the eventual eruption would be even worse. |
08-06-2014, 08:43 AM | #5 | ||
eBook Enthusiast
Posts: 85,544
Karma: 93383043
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6
|
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
08-06-2014, 02:21 PM | #6 |
Wizard
Posts: 2,230
Karma: 7145404
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Southern California
Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+
|
Put me in the "eh" category and I work with high-vacuum equipment (physical vapor deposition, e-beam evaporation and magnetron sputtering). Now if you start talking Torr versus Bar versus Atmospheres... them's fighting words, lol.
|
08-06-2014, 05:31 PM | #7 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,613
Karma: 6718479
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Paradise (Key West, FL)
Device: Current:Surface Go & Kindle 3 - Retired: DellV8p, Clie UX50, ...
|
Quote:
1. you are "sucked" by the near vacuum of space. or 2. your are "blown" by the escaping air. If you are talking about to where you are translated ( ... sucked into the vacuum...), then either verb works because the active agent isn't defined except by the verb chosen. |
|
08-06-2014, 09:52 PM | #8 | |
cacoethes scribendi
Posts: 5,809
Karma: 137770742
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Australia
Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650
|
Technicalities are exactly that, technicalities. Even non-fiction books often over-simplify in order to make things accessible for their readers.
If in doubt, check the dictionary. From dictionary.com for "suck": Quote:
And that's all without getting into the more technical discussion of the difference between suck and blow - which, as already pointed out, is a matter of perspective (and convention) rather than real technical difference. Yes, there are lots of real errors in sci-fi and in other fiction (people getting thrown around as bullets hit them is always a favourite), but I think a suck vs blow complaint in this context is going beyond picky. |
|
08-06-2014, 11:30 PM | #9 |
Enthusiast
Posts: 43
Karma: 411648
Join Date: Aug 2014
Device: Kobo Mini
|
On the fate of the wine bottle:
Though exposed to the vacuum of space, the wine bottle is a rigid container which will not flex and expand therefore the contents will experience minimal change in pressure, thus no boiling and out-gassing from the wine and such. The bottle is a strong container and atmospheric pressure is only about fourteen pounds per square inch, thus the apparent increase in pressure when it is lobbed into the vacuum of space would be the same. The weak point, of course, would be the cork which might be pushed out, but we’ll assume that it is wired in place securely or that this is a screw top with a strong cap. Then comes the issue of heat loss. Space has, as noted above, no real “temperature” since there is no atmosphere of enough density to matter. Further, there is no liquid or gas in contact with the bottle to carry heat away by convection. Being in a near perfect vacuum, the bottle is perfectly insulated though it still will lose heat via radiation, and this will be a much slower process than in a cold atmosphere. The wine would probably take longer to freeze lobbed into the vacuum of space than if it were tossed out into the snow on a sub-zero winter’s day down here. Probably the only point where things would suddenly get very interesting would be when the bottle finally smacked into the ship’s hull and shattered because then the liquid droplets are exposed to vacuum and should begin rapidly boiling and consequently dropping in temperature rapidly therefore producing bits of ice which should survive even as most of the volume boils off. |
08-06-2014, 11:35 PM | #10 |
Member Retired
Posts: 3,183
Karma: 11721895
Join Date: Nov 2010
Device: Nook STR (rooted) & Sony T2
|
Possibly the most useful piece of writing advice I have read in this sub-forum.
Edit: There was a great thread about commas that opened my third-eye. But apart from that... |
08-06-2014, 11:35 PM | #11 |
Enthusiast
Posts: 43
Karma: 411648
Join Date: Aug 2014
Device: Kobo Mini
|
Oh yea, the cooling by radiation also assumes that the bottle isn't absorbing more heat than it is radiating. If this is a dark red wine exposed to sunlight, it could get pretty toasty pretty fast.
|
08-07-2014, 01:05 AM | #12 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,305
Karma: 43993832
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Monroe Wisconsin
Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)
|
Quote:
|
|
08-07-2014, 03:05 AM | #13 |
Addict
Posts: 286
Karma: 7742186
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Idaho, USA
Device: Various PalmOS PDAs, Android Phones, Sharper Image Literati
|
Now you have me thinking of the light beers scene in "Star Wreck: The Pirkinning"
|
08-07-2014, 12:55 PM | #14 |
Wizard
Posts: 2,230
Karma: 7145404
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Southern California
Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+
|
I've been curious about the real behavior of fires inside a spaceship in zero gravity. We've seen all sorts of variations in movies. Most of those feel bogus to me because there should not be much in the way of flammable substances inside a ship, aside from flammable or toxic gasses in some plumbing.
|
08-07-2014, 02:18 PM | #15 | |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 11,305
Karma: 43993832
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Monroe Wisconsin
Device: K3, Kindle Paperwhite, Calibre, and Mobipocket for Pc (netbook)
|
Quote:
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Multiplying calendar entries -- a PE thing or an android thing | Tunney | enTourage eDGe | 5 | 10-21-2011 07:27 PM |
It's a small thing, but... | Anarel | Amazon Kindle | 3 | 12-21-2009 05:08 PM |
Calling Writers and even Non-writers-yet... Let's Make a Zine | jeremy_ahn | Writers' Corner | 3 | 10-08-2009 09:49 AM |
For writers: 10 mistakes writers don't see | Colin Dunstan | Deals and Resources (No Self-Promotion or Affiliate Links) | 2 | 06-23-2004 02:47 PM |