Space things that Hollywood and TV regularly stuff up1. Showing sunlit objects with stars in the background. The difference in brightness between the two is so great that the human eye, film and video can properly see one or the other, but not both at once. Sunlit objects should be seen properly exposed against jet black sky, with maybe just the odd dot (Venus, Jupiter, perhaps Sirius) in believable positions.
2. Hardly ever showing real, recognisable star patterns, which should be simple these days. "Star Wars" occurred in a galaxy far, far away, so we expect it there, but any part of space that we can realistically travel to should show proper constellations. Provided we don't also see sunlit objects at the same time.
3. Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon. Many of them pinch footage from "For All Mankind" where he's showing jumping down to the footpad instead of later, when he took that one small step.
4. Spacecraft soaring in space. Bruce Willis's shuttles did it when he took off to save the planet, but that's Hollywood for ya. Soaring requires the same thing gliders require and space lacks: Air.
5. Spacecraft firing their engines continuously. That currently requires more fuel than a craft could launch with. Once under way at the right velocity, Mr Newton does the driving without requiring more fuel.
6. Spacecraft travelling in straight lines everywhere, and soaring in to land. Currently, everything travels in one particular orbit, then switches to another if necessary.
7. Billowing smoke. That too requires air. Remember the military hotheads who wanted to fire off an atomic bomb on the moon back in 1957 so the Soviets would have the hell scared out them by the big mushroom cloud? They seem to have forgotten that that also required air.
8. Noises in a vacuum. 'Nuff said.
9. Noises in a vacuum that reach the viewer's ear or the camera's microphone at exactly the same time as the very distant explosion -- with the billowing smoke -- becomes visible.
10. The ignition start-time and liftoff time of a Saturn V rocket (8.9 seconds to go and zero in the countdown). Even with space nut Tom Hanks on board, Hollywood still stuffed it up.
Again from "The Invasion of the Moon 1969 - The Story of Apollo 11", Peter Ryan. Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England (1969), pages 65-66
T minus fifteen seconds... twelve, eleven...
T minus 10 seconds. Positioned on either side of the flame trench below the Saturn, nozzles of the water deluge system began pouring water into it at a rate of 8,000 gallons per minute.
... nine...
T minus 8.9 seconds. Automatic ignition of the five FI engines of the S-IC first stage. Five plumes of flame began to roar down into the trench from the eighteen-foot-high, fourteen-foot-wide engine nozzles, vapourizing the water pouring from the deluge system.
... Ignition sequence starts. Six, five, four, three...
T minus 2 seconds. All engines were now running at ninety per cent of the seven and a half million pounds of thrust, gulping kerosene and liquid oxygen at the rate of 10,000 pounds per second.
... one ...
For the first time ever the normally monotone voice of Jack King at launch control began to break with emotion.
T minus 0 seconds. Ground elapsed time, GET 00:00:00 (hours:minutes:seconds) 2.32 p.m. BST. The 'launch commit' signal was flashed by computer to hold-down arms on the platform of the mobile launcher which gently released the 3,000-ton rocket, now some 86,000 pounds lighter since ignition. At the same moment the remaining service arms swung clear and the
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deluge system poured water down on the platform and into the flame trench at the rate of 50,000 gallons per minute.
...zero, all engines running. Lift-off, we have a lift-off.
The sound of the shouts and cheers of 3,500 newsmen was heard for a moment before it was drowned by the earthquake and thunder of the Saturn.
GET 00:00:02 A yaw manoeuvre, achieved by gimballing the four outer FI engines of the cluster of five, gently tilted the Saturn; eight seconds later the Saturn had cleared the launch tower, watched by close on a million people who had come to Cape Kennedy, including Hermann Oberth (the German rocket pioneer who had inspired von Braun) and many of America's political leaders.