If you have any reasonable time plan in space, rockets have range. Fastest mode is half tank thrust and half tank break if possible, and other options being more economic, but also taking longer.
Nothing that takes you to other stars fast enough though, be it antimatter or not, so "not fun".
I'm aware of that. That was an attempt at rocket scientist humor.
What is up with the aggressive tone again? The last time time with the mechs and athom too. You strike discussion out of nothing with people you don't know and switch to knife speech mode ridiculously fast, even if they just speak normally and rationally. What have I done to you, lord byron?
No aggression meant. As I said, that was an attempt at humor. I genuinely bear you no malice.
Aha, well, I would say, since objects for the hardness scale you pursue are such hypothetical "hypersolids" that we both cannot find any, I doubt the majority would share this perspective. I will not demonstrate the same haughtiness just because I think so though, and demand you change because I think differently. "Recalibrate"?, please, read your writing. Don't you get how this comes across? And because of what?
Nobody has done a real, released newtonian space-combat simulator (there have been a couple attempts, at various levels, including my attempt to build one in Excel). I guess that Aurora would come first among space combat sims, but it's first only because there's almost no competition. But it's no more realistic at core than Star Trek or Star Wars, just more consistent (not hard to do) and with better technobabble (the lasers, for instance, are well-executed technobabble and not math-based). If we expand our search to include board games, I've already given one example of a much, much harder game, with Newtonian movement and math-derived lasers. If we allow all computer space simulators, I've given two others. My point about recalibration was that you're taking a tiny fragment of the field of Sci-Fi, and that Aurora should not really be judged by normalizing just that fragment.
That is really curious in this situation, because I myself can absolutely not stand Dr. Who, and I really gave it chance up into season 3 or so. The reason being what you don't seem to like on much harder games it seems: The science is ridiculous and just screams at me in ways in hurts.
Who gets a pass on that for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn't take itself seriously. If it tried to do that, I'd tear it to shreds in a heartbeat. Second, it's enough fun that I usually don't care, and there's a vague veil of plausibility that I can sustain. The one episode that stretched said veil too far (Kill the Moon) I loathed.
It looks to me as a show for people who just want to see "weird scientist stereotypes", just like Big Bang Theory series later on, and this constantly reminds me that people hear exactly the nonsensical mambo-jumbo they speak there, even when other-place listening to real science, and that makes me sad. To them I, or some better lines in Star Trek sound like that, because they don't see the difference. I would like to un-know this, and Dr. Who is sacrilege for spreading/validating this type of ignorance from my point.
Anyone who watches Doctor Who with the expectation that he's a scientist is going to be sorely disappointed. He's a wizard. Someone who enjoys it and continues to think that he's a scientist is clearly just dumb. Trek, on the other hand, at least pretends to be serious.
Lofty. The way you say it really sounds like you think of them as your brothers in arms in this matter? But that would be awkward, because...
I'm an aerospace engineer, specializing in orbits and propulsion. I was trying to point out that there comes a time when you have to stop looking to reality to justify your setting, and either throw reality out the window or change your setting to match reality.
Being serious though, your definition of hard sci-fi appears to me like this:
"- only science we know, and correct at that.
- nothing else projected.
- 'Fiction' in sci-fi stands for the stories you make with the science base, like adventures, but applying fiction to science in actuality is tabu."
I'd point you to the 'Respecting Science' section of Atomic Rockets, but I'll steal a quote from there, particularly relevant to your last point:
"This silly opinion implies that the word "fiction" nullifies the word "science." Since it is "fiction", and fiction is by definition "not true", then we can make "not true" any and all science that gets in the way, right?
Hogwash. By the same logic, the term "detective fiction" gives the author license to totally ignore standard procedures and techniques used by detectives, the term "military fiction" allows the author to totally ignore military tactics and strategy, and the term "historical fiction" allows the author to totally ignore the relevant history."
So it's permissible to apply fiction to the science, but it has to be done with the same care you'd apply it to a military or to history.
With regards to the first two, not exactly. I'd say that my metric is that the minimum amount of handwavium (sheer impossibility) needed to maintain the story is used, and that which is used is done well. FTL is where this exception is most often used, and it's OK, so long as it's consistent, parsimonious, and well thought-out. An FTL drive which logically allows anyone with a spaceship to destroy planets, but isn't ever used that way, is a major example of this. Any plugs to prevent this need to be good, too. Just saying 'it doesn't work that way' isn't good enough. Unobtanium (things we theoretically are able to do, but can't do today for engineering reasons) is pretty much OK. A fusion torch is a good example of this.
Is that correct? I doubt that is agreeable to most, and seems exotic, because again, there are basically no representatives who do it this way. So I understand it more like this:
- Soft sci-fi is story writing and no regard for current science, so series like Andromeda, or Battlestar Galactica.
- Hard sci-fi attempts to get most things right, and then starts imagining what other possibilities there could be at the fringe of our understanding, while trying to go the fewest off road they can.(this is how theorists come to hypothesis on first stage anyway)
Doesn't have to be 100% right every time, but notable trying is close enough already, as it is so much more than most writers do.
You're drawing a dichotomy between story and science, which isn't necessary. Any claims to the contrary were conclusively disproven by The Martian, which had very high levels of both. But to some extent, this is the definition I use. If I had to make a one-line summary, I'd say that we can based our definition on what happens when the author discovers that something they want to do contradicts science. In Soft SF, the author simply shrugs and says 'too bad for science' (if they stopped to consider what science allows, as opposed to what they can use scientific terminology to justify). In Hard SF, the author pays attention to science, thinks long and hard before deciding to ignore it, and takes steps to make sure that the damage they do to science is limited. (This isn't a binary choice, nor is it entirely one-sided. Usually, you go into building a setting knowing that you're going to have to make some compromises, and you carefully tailor them to the needs of your story beforehand, instead of making them up ad-hoc.)
By that metric, Aurora is very clearly Soft. The names of the various technologies come from science, but that's about all. This isn't bad in and of itself, and Steve did a really good job of building the framework he draped science on, but we should be clear as to what he did and didn't do.