To suspend disbelief, when any non-hard sci-fi show says “speed” I subconsciously translate it to “acceleration.” If the ship they’re chasing (or being chased by) is pushing their engines to the max then the enterprise also needs to push its engines to the max to match the speed. If they just free-float at constant velocity then they’ll fall behind very quickly.
I don’t even think it’s dumbing down. Speed is relative. That’s just how you’d say it when you’re describing your acceleration relative to another body, spaceship, whatever. No one thinks or cares about your absolute velocity on a universal scale.
For the same reason we describe speed relative to the ground on earth. Nobody’s specifying that we’re traveling ~1,624km/hr west, and ~1724km/hr east, they’re just going 50km/hr
The Expanse had some great dramatic moments caused by this important distinction. Like, they only had gravity if they were constantly accelerating. The moment you stop, no matter what speed you’re at, relativity will get rid of the “gravity” effect. So if you wanted to, say, perform surgery in zero-g then you’d need to be constantly accelerating to higher and higher velocities for the duration of the surgery.
To suspend disbelief, when any non-hard sci-fi show says “speed” I subconsciously translate it to “acceleration.” If the ship they’re chasing (or being chased by) is pushing their engines to the max then the enterprise also needs to push its engines to the max to match the speed. If they just free-float at constant velocity then they’ll fall behind very quickly.
This. The writers just dumb it down a bit for the normies.
I don’t even think it’s dumbing down. Speed is relative. That’s just how you’d say it when you’re describing your acceleration relative to another body, spaceship, whatever. No one thinks or cares about your absolute velocity on a universal scale.
For the same reason we describe speed relative to the ground on earth. Nobody’s specifying that we’re traveling ~1,624km/hr west, and ~1724km/hr east, they’re just going 50km/hr
The Expanse had some great dramatic moments caused by this important distinction. Like, they only had gravity if they were constantly accelerating. The moment you stop, no matter what speed you’re at, relativity will get rid of the “gravity” effect. So if you wanted to, say, perform surgery in zero-g then you’d need to be constantly accelerating to higher and higher velocities for the duration of the surgery.