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Why in Sci-Fi they always use Marine or Naval terminology and structure instead of Aviation for the spaceship structure, navigation and military ranks? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by vis4valentine@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I don't really know how to structure this question, but yeah, why is always Naval and never Aviation?

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[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sci-fi spaceships often have the ability to dump solar-system levels of energy into propulsion, so they really only follow orbital mechanics when they're parked at a planet. Consider if you could get from Earth to Mars in a few seconds, you'd pretty much just point yourself at it and go.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah, we were segueing into hard sci-fi and the real future here, so I'd thought I'd bring that up. OP was about this tendency in general.

In soft sci-fi you can just handwave stuff, with the basic way frames of reference work being a frequent casualty (via FTL travel). If traveling by starship is like traveling by boat, it makes sense day-to-day life would be a bit boat-like, and so that's where many writers have gone.