So Take Me Away, I Don’t Mind

It’s always amusing watching how people in the past imagined the future. Nobody can look forward with perfect clairvoyance, of course, and we all imagine the future to be pretty much the present– but with fancier versions of contemporary gadgets. What’s most amusing or interesting is to see what technology or applications of technology people would miss.

Take for instance, the cartoon The Jetsons.

Aside from the fact that The Jetsons continues the grand Hannah Barbera tradition of poorly drawn, poorly-animated cartoons of very little amusement value, it’s almost funny how it imagines Rosie. Rosie the robot is basically a human being: she has a personality, she has feelings but she happens to be a robot. So in The Jetsons the future involves human beings creating artificial life.

But what’s this? Their computers still require punch cards. Hell, just look at George’s office computer:

It’s a console the size of a room. With levers. The show is also replete with vacuum tubes and primitive screens. Let’s not forget the fashions– in the future people are wearing Sansabelt pants… the future of clothing!

It doesn’t stop with The Jetsons, of course. In a previous post I already mentioned how primitive Star Wars weapons and aerospace technology actually is. Here’s another example:

This is the so-called A-Wing fighter, and that monument to Anglo-nerdiness, Wookipedia, describes it as being hyper-sensitive to control inputs and requiring so much trimming and attention from the pilot that it was difficult for non-Jedi to fly. Basically, it required magical powers to be really flown effectively. Funnily enough, modern aircraft are designed with relaxed stability– fighters like the F-16, the Eurofighter or, more famously, the F-117 are unstable and require computers and instantaneous control inputs for level flight. However, it’s easily managed now– “fly by wire” and no magical powers required. So the Star Wars world– a world that can imagine golden protocol droids who have personalities and ambiguous sexuality–cannot imagine solid state computer technology and digital processing being used for aerospace applications. Their fighters are still flown with instinct and feel, like World War II machines.

Just like weapons technology– culture determines how people imagine the future, and in movies, cartoons, books and other media, its especially marked because aesthetics and amusement trump all other considerations. And well it should– I watch or read these things to be amused (when I do bother with sci-fi, which I normally don’t like).

It’s probably why space combat in most sci-fi movie not only resembles naval combat here on good old Earth– it resembles very old-fashioned and idealized space combat. Essentially, I have noticed that so much of space combat in sci-fi movies or books resembles combat between dreadnoughts– these things:

The big-gun dreadnought or battleship had its moment of glory just before World War I. The theory behind these ships was that battleships with homogenous armament– big guns of similar calibre on rotating turrets– would trade long range fire. In reality, this theory proved slightly less useful since fire control and spotting were incredibly primitive. In the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, the Americans managed something like a 4% accuracy rate– against stationary vessels. The American ships weren’t dreadnoughts, but their spotting and range finding technology was pretty much the same as could be found on the later vessels.

However– this kind of naval combat clearly strikes a chord with most people. It looks like a slightly more high-tech version of broadsides from sailing ships of the battle line, it’s loud, its heroic, its impressive. Battleships are also big, impressive, macho machines– people like them too. So it stands to reason, when you want to design a big, impressive space warship and you want to make it look like an effective machine, you basically make a space version of a dreadnought.

Again we have Star Wars. Star Wars space ship to ship combat is in many ways incredibly illogical and rather primitive– and it’s because its basically a high tech version of idealized dreadnought combat from the early 20th century– with a few fighters thrown in. First– why is there even a “front” or a “back” to this space ship? Why do the Star Wars space warships obligingly orient themselves on the same vertical and horizontal axes? In none of the movies do you see a fleet approaching an enemy one perpendicularly– they always face each other on essentially the same plane or on the same orientation.

One reason I can guess is that it would not look good– or movie viewers would be confused if the space battle wasn’t clearly laid out. If space warships fought on multiple axes, then I could imagine that the whole concept of “front” or “back” would be moot, and you might even logically have spherical warships with weapons pointing in all directions. Or perhaps because there is no up or down or left or right in space– once you move in one direction you keep going in that direction– space warships could point their nose opposite from the direction in which they are moving. Again, I only imagine that movie makers don’t make these kinds of space battles because not only would they be ugly and confusing, but when people imagine warships fighting each other, they imagine battleships.

In fact, you even had the absurdity of this:

George Lucas or whoever liked old-timey sailing warships so much that one of the Star Wars movies featured space warships with by god broadsides. So in the vastness of space, warships need to close to suicidal point blank range to damage each other. Today warships never even see each other in combat- they just flip Harpoons or Tomahawks at blips on monitors.

Movies with space fighters also fall into the trap of aesthetics trumping logic or science. Basically, I noticed that space fighter combat resembles World War II combat– at best. Space fighters use gun analogues– usually lasers– and dogfight each other at what is essentially point blank range. This is amusing because gun combat between modern fighters these days– with our primitive “airplanes” is incredibly rare. The majority of kills are now made beyond visual range– or with the enemy pilots never even seeing each other and firing missiles at dots on a radar screen.

The funny thing is that space would be the perfect environment for missiles. Aside from sensors and guidance– problems now pretty much solved in modern missiles like the AMRAAM– the major limitation with missiles today is that they can’t carry a lot of fuel. It is not uncommon for missiles to rely purely on inertia at the terminus of their flights– when they’re being guided onto their targets. This is not a problem in space– there is no gravity to overcome and missiles need only burn small bursts of fuel when making course adjustments.

Problem is– this is not very impressive looking. Modern air combat usually involves pilots getting killed before they even knew they were being targeted. This makes for poor visuals and might even seem unheroic to some. It’s why movies like Top Gun or Independence Day feature point-blank, visual-range dogfights. We expect our pilot heroes to engage in twisting and turning fights and displays of skill. We don’t expect them to point their fighters at the enemy, salvo off all their missiles in a few seconds, and then go back to the carrier for a cup of coffee.

Finally… I’m not an optimist and I find sci-fi optimism frequently as unrealistic or stupid as “cool” cyberpunk future dystopias. What I find both amusing and annoying about Clarke’s famous “prediction” of the future is… how nice it is. Where was the sci-fi author or scientist or whatever who was enough of an observer of human nature and culture to predict that communication and data sharing technology would one day be used to share utterly depraved porn or videos of kittens?

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