spaceships in movies

just to remind you guys about some principles of spaceflight. it sure looks great in star trek or star wars (or any other science fiction movie for that matter) when those space ships speed through space, and curve, and bank, and turn and stuff.

prob is, can't happen. you can only bank and curve and stuff when there is air present. there is no air present in space. you go in one direction basically, that's it. boring, and that's why in movies, ships curve and bank and stuff.

airplanes have wings to bank on the air. luke skywalker's x-wing has wings. there is no air up there to bank on. but he does it anyway. that was 'money in the bank' - get it?

there is no air, friction, that kind of stuff in space, so there is nothing to stop you for one, and nothing to change your direction. think of a hockey puck. you slap it, it keeps going, one direction, without slowing down......unless of course it hits something....if that were you in a space ship, well...and you hit, say, a planet, you would stop....and be dead.

but it looks cool in movies for space ships to do what airplanes do. check out apollo 13 with tom hanks, and you will see what i mean.

every thing goes straight in space, basically. instead of being able to change your direction to get to your goal, what you do is head toward the spot where your goal is going to be when you get there. when the astronauts headed to the moon, they didn't head for the moon, because by the time they got there, it wouldn't be there any more.

they had to head to where the moon was going to be by the time they got there. i hate math, and that's why i don't work for nasa, but any way.

there is another nasty principle of space i'm still trying to understand. you can't dilly dally in space; you can't turn left to hit the tim horton's. if you are orbiting uranus or something, yours not mine, and say you want to go into a wider orbit - you just go faster. as soon as you go faster, your orbit automatically becomes wider - you can't do anything about it. complaining won't help.

if you want to shorten your orbit, go slower. through all this, you are not turning or anything. you are basically still going in the exact same direction, like the hockey puck. you can't really turn. a turn in space means making that turn within the next 50,000 miles.

'kay, this got a little long. just wanted to share that.