History SciFiWritersHave / NoSenseOfVelocity

** ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' once did an experiment to find out if the characters would really be able to dodge blaster fire. At one point they review the movies and estimate that blaster bolts travel at about 130 MPH. While this is too fast for a person to dodge (as the experiment confirmed), it's still [[SlowLaser absurdly slow]] for a futuristic Ray Gun, as most modern-day bullets travel more than ten times that speed.

*** At one point Han makes a hyperspace jump right out a hangar. The mechanics behind him are knocked over by the exhaust, when realistically they (and possibly the hangar itself) should have been reduced to quark-gluon plasma by the ship going to faster than light speed right in front of them.

* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual official manual]] the railgun in ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' fires it's slugs at "near relativistic" speeds, i.e a significant fraction of the speed of light. Realistically, the recoil from the gun should flatten whoever is using it, not to mention the friction created would probably destroy the gun as well, [[https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ along with everything else within a mile or so.]]

** Exaggerated with some of the modern games. Sonic now has attacks that are stated to let him move at light speed and [[SuperForm Super Sonic]] is stated to give him a speed boost on top of this. VideoGames/SonicGenerations, in particular, has Sonic outright obliterate the laws of physics with him being able to run so fast he can ''restore the space-time continuum'' and this is before being granted the speed boost of his aforementioned SuperForm.

** Zigzagged in the Star Wars expanded universe. Most of the starfighters have surprisingly low atmospheric top speeds; according to official sources, the iconic X-wing is barely able to make Mach 1, less than half the speed of modern jet fighters. Although this makes sense considering the non-aerodynamic shape of the vessel, one would expect a slightly higher level of sophistication from a spacefaring civilization. The trope is averted in official sources by the use of a fictional unit, MGLT, for a ship's highest-rated spacegoing speed... which then comes full circle because [[Main/ArtisticLicensePhysics objects in space have no actual speed limit]]. Additionally, considering the actual film footage, it's clear that the fighters in the films don't fly any faster in space than they do in atmosphere, which sadly undercuts the whole fictional-unit thing.

** Taken UpToEleven with some of the modern games. Sonic now has attacks that are stated to let him move at light speed and [[SuperForm Super Sonic]] is stated to give him a speed boost on top of this. VideoGames/SonicGenerations, in particular, has Sonic outright obliterate the laws of physics with him being able to run so fast he can ''restore the space-time continuum'' and this is before being granted the speed boost of his aforementioned SuperForm.

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* The roleplaying site [[http://megamanmush.com Mega Man MUSH]] once had a memorable example of this in its news files for the various character stats, describing what the specific numbers for each stat would represent. In the news file for the Velocity stat, where 1 signified "less than 5 mph (8kph)", 5 meant "60-150 mph (97-241kph)", and 9 was specified as "767 mph (1235kph, Mach 1, speed of sound)", 10 was defined as "escape velocity". {{Hilarity Ensue|s}}d when someone pointed out exactly how fast [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity escape velocity]] is: 11.2km/s, or over 40,000kph, thus leaving a drastically large gap between ratings 9 and 10.
* Some Flat Earthers claim the fact you can't see the Earth turning in satellite footage is proof the Earth is flat and doesn't move. When someone asked a question along these lines on Quora they responded by recommending they look at an analog clock and see if they can see the hour hand moving (the answer, assuming your clock is not broken and/or you are not fiddling with the thing, is no), and goes on to note that the Earth takes twice as long to make a full revolution as the hour hand does.

** In ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', the first episode has Archer stating the ship's top speed in terms of how long it would take to travel to Neptune and back --six minutes. Using those same calculations, Qo'noS would be less than one light-year from Earth; the nearest star to us in RealLife is four and a half.

* ''VideoGame/StarRuler'': You can travel faster than light on raw engine power alone, no Phlebotinum handwave provided. Lasers also remain hitscan even as their effective range becomes measurable in AU, which means that they are travelling FTL as well. However, the rest of the game generally is relatively "[[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hard]]".

''Series/Mythbusters'' once did an experiment to find out if the characters would really be able to dodge blaster fire. At one point they review the movies and estimate that blaster bolts travel at about 130 MPH. While this is too fast for a person to dodge (as the experiment confirmed), it's still [[SlowLaser absurdly slow]] for a futuristic Ray Gun, as most modern-day bullets travel more than ten times that speed.

* At the end of ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace'' [[spoiler: Zordon dies, and his death unleashes the Z-wave, which disintegrates or purifies all the villains in the Power Rangers universe.]] We see the Wave travel interstellar distances in a matter of seconds, and it's implied that it swept through the entire ''Universe'' in a day or less. Later seasons had an implicit {{Retcon}} that it only affected our galaxy, rather than the whole Universe. While this isn't quite as ridiculous, it would still have to travel something like 3-5 light-years a ''second'' to cover the Milky way in a day.

* At the end of ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace'' [[spoiler: Zordon dies, and his death unleashes the Z-wave, which disintegrates or purifies all the villains in the Power Rangers universe.]] We see the Wave travel interstellar distances in a matter of seconds, and it's implied that it swept through the entire ''Universe'' in a matter of days. Later seasons had an implicit {{Retcon}} that it only affected our galaxy, rather than the whole Universe. While this isn't quite as ridiculous, it would still have to travel something like 100 light-years a ''second''.

* ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'': Two ships battle in warp space, one knocking the other out. At this point, they are 250,000 miles from Earth, as pointed out by dialogue. That's roughly how far away thee moon is, so one of their computers should have been alerting the crew that they were near home. It's kind of like driving at 100 miles per hour and stopping on a dime an inch from your house.

* In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', near the end, the characters are looking out the side of a ship while watching some stellar object. The object has been identified by various sources as the Galaxy. However, if this was true, then given that the stellar object was visibly spinning, the Galaxy must, therefore, be spinning faster than the speed of light. The 2004 Blu-Ray commentary has either retconned or clarified that the object in question was a stellar nebula instead.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** In ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'' the ''Enterprise'' has left space dock and is on its way to intercept V'Ger. It heads away from Earth and, moving at only sublight speed, manages to pass Jupiter only a ''few moments after leaving Earth orbit.'' It also started the tradition of showing [[StreamingStars stars streaming past the window]] whenever they were at warp speed. Even at the movie-''Enterprise'''s maximum safe cruising speed of warp 6 (TOS scale), they'd still only be going 216 times the speed of light, too slow for distant stars zip past in a matter of seconds as shown. Some fans explain that these aren't stars but dust particles that interact with the warp field.
*** Kirk's log entry indicated that, in fact, several hours had passed after launch. That would make the trip comfortably sublight.
** ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'': Two ships battle in warp space, one knocking the other out. At this point, they are 250,000 miles from Earth, as pointed out by dialogue. This is really close to the Earth for either ship to have still been in warp, even battling the way they were. One of their computers would have been alerting the crew that they were near home. It's kind of like driving at 100 miles per hour and stopping on a dime an inch from your house.

* In ''Literature/PerryRhodan'', the maximum acceleration for spaceships is 500km/s/s, however, full power is needed for multiple seconds to minutes to slow down in the atmosphere. This alone shouldn't be a problem for a ship just coming in on a 400km/s/s brachistone from Jupiter, but ships also use 'braking orbits' to slow down from interplanetary speeds. These should provide about 1/1000 seconds worth of acceleration, and the speeds afterwards would mean for landing one only needs about 11/500 seconds of thrusting, assuming the defense screens can survive a fall into the atmosphere at orbital velocity.
** Justified in some issues by saying the ships use different engines for out and in atmosphere maneuvering to prevent turning the whole spaceport and surrounding city into slag.

* The ''Franchise/StarTrek'' franchise is such a frequent violator of this rule, even within their own rules, that the [[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor Memory Alpha wiki]] has a list of numerous contradictory values for the speeds of various warp factors, as well as a lengthy discussion of the various rules-of-thumb and {{Hand Wave}}s employed over the last 50 years.

** This was also completely abandoned by ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', where traveling anywhere invariably took about half a day. Runabouts (established as having a top speed of warp five) seemed to be able to reach Earth, Cardassia, and various other locations in the same short amount of time (while the distances aren't given, that would put both the Federation and Cardassian capitals within two light-years of each other at most). On another occasion, a runabout travels to a planet given as five light years away in a few hours (it should take over a week).
** Many episodes of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' also have the ship traveling at sublight for extended periods of time. This is no particular reason for a ship that's trying to get home in under ''7 years'' to travel at sublight. In fact, they may as well be standing still (to any stellar body nearby).
** In ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', the Klingon homeworld is several days' travel from Earth, which would put the two empires right on top of each other, given the increases in cruising speed in the other incarnations of the franchise. (Though one interesting exception: in the first episode of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', Archer describes the ship's top speed in terms of how long it would take to travel to Neptune and back --six minutes -- and he's exactly right, based on conventional estimates of how warp factors work). In fact, if you use those same calculations, Qo'noS would be less than one light-year from Earth; the nearest star to us in RealLife is four and a half. Missed it by ''that'' much. Which is, really, still a big distance in conventional terms, but isn't that much in terms of space.
** The fastest velocity ever mentioned in any ''Star Trek'' show or supplementary materials is warp factor 9.9999, which is stated as being the speed of subspace radio signals. This is quoted in supplementary materials as being equivalent to 199,516c (199516 * the speed of light), which admittedly sounds very impressive. Indeed, in the show, subspace communications are often shown as being instantaneous, or with a minimal delay over much longer distances. However 199,516c equates to almost exactly 500AU/s (1AU = Earth-Sun distance). Put this velocity into any interactive starscape, such as for example [[http://www.spaceengine.org/ SpaceEngine]] and set a course for our nearest neighbouring star system (Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years), and how long does it take to fly there at that velocity? ''11.5 minutes''. Fast, yes, but certainly not instantaneous. And that's only for the very nearest star...
** DependingOnTheWriter and how badly they feel like contradicting themselves some more, "impulse" might mean anything from real-world rocket engines to a weaker secondary FTL drive (although one possible handwave is that it may be a generic term in-universe). Some episodes have ships travelling at FTL speeds on impulse power without explanation.
** And speaking of impulse, one BadFuture episode of ''Voyager'' has the titular ship crash-land on what looks like [[Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack Hoth]]. According to Chakotay (one of two survivors courtesy of not being on the ship when it happened), it looks like ''Voyager'' hit the planet at full impulse -- which should've vaporized the ship and left a huge impact crater on Hoth.

** {{Handwave}}d in, where the chaotic nature of [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace the Warp]] means that the same trip can take vastly different amounts of time. We have at least one example of a ship arriving quite sometime before it left, and another of a vessel arriving at its destination millennia after it was supposed to arrive, though the crew seemed to believe it took only a couple of months. When your hyperspace is made of illogical thought, it's no wonder there's a bit of variation in travel times. In one case this is used for some dark humor. A crew of a ship responding to a distress signal travels through the warp ending up being attacked by demons. They proceed to send out a distress signal... which is sent back in time due to the anomalies in the warp, the very signal that they themselves responded to.

* ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankFutureACrackInTime'' has the titular heroes caught by [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Dr. Nefarious]] and propelled off his space station on a catapult-like device to their assumed deaths. They awaken on a planet "hours later". A large catapult is not likely to propel anyone to fast enough speeds to reach a planet outside presumed detection range without turning them into paste. Also may qualify as a Distance example.
** When comparing the distances and sizes of moons and planets in Crack in Time, this makes considerable sense. In R&C, the planets and moons '''really are''' that close together.
* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series has a particularly egregious example in which each individual map is at most two hundred kilometers across, and as little as ''tens'' of kilometers in the original ''Beyond the Frontier'' -- almost comically small by astronomical standards -- yet your ship requires a ''TimeDilation device'' to travel between locations on the same map in a reasonable amount of time. Unless the kilometer was redefined at some point, this suggests spaceships in the game are far, far slower than they have any right to be -- raising the interesting question of how any of the spacefaring races actually managed to ''become'' spacefaring races when they don't seem to have any ships that come anywhere near escape velocity for a planet with a mass similar to Earth. For added fun, the ships we actually see entering and exiting planetary atmospheres in the series are TL-class large transports, of which the absolute fastest in the series, tuned for maximum speed, can go about 1,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], and which are more typically in the 200-400 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] range. For comparison, the Space Shuttle moves at 7,743 m/s (27,870 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]] or 17,320 mph). Spaceships in the X-Universe traveling at Earth-bound speeds would take DECADES, if not, CENTURIES to move from one place to another in outer space; in other words, this is laughably sluggish by Real Life outer space standards, and if Newtonian physics were to come into play, these ships would be rendered entirely and legitimately unfit for space-worthiness (and it isn't just limited to velocity alone; see the [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfDistance other]] [[SciFiWritersHave/NoSenseOfEnergy entries]] of how the series fall under these ludicrous contrarinesses of [[WritersCannotDoMath mathematics]]). Apparently, the developers were confused about how actual velocity works in outer space and decided to make Earth-bound velocity work as it does on everyday vehicles.

* Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog has its main protagonist running at the speed of sound (hence the name); for reference, the speed of sound is ''1,235 kilometers per hour'' (or 767 miles per hour, for those of us not metric-savvy), equivalent to Mach 1, and most aircraft need to be specially designed to handle that sort of speed. At that speed, Sonic would be ''obliterated'' without protection (which is more than just shoes, of course). Then again, Sonic could have some BizarreAlienBiology to cope with said pressure... though his lungs would need to be ''enormous'' to supply enough oxygen to keep that speed going. [[Main/MST3KMantra It's best not to get worked up with these things, really.]] At least he's not depicted traveling at the speed of light, which is far, ''far'' faster than the speed of sound, and any being traveling at such speeds even when streamlined would instantly turn into paste.

** It should perhaps go without saying that [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Sonic has never been this fast in his games,]] as controlling him at such speeds (much less ''platforming'') would be essentially impossible.
* According to the [[AllThereInTheManual official manual]] the railgun in ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' fires it's slugs at "near relativistic" speeds, i.e a significant fraction of the speed of light. Realistically, the recoil from the gun should flatten whoever is using it, not to mention the friction created would probably destroy the gun as well.
** [[https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ And everything else within a mile or so.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus'' episode "Out of this World", the class has to stop an asteroid from hitting the Earth, specifically their school. It takes the whole episode for the asteroid to get close to Earth and that's with Dorothy Ann having tracked it for days prior to the start of the episode. They defeat it by changing its trajectory to HurlItIntoTheSun, which [[TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot it manages to hit within the span of a few seconds]]. This is {{Lampshaded}} in the producer segment ("Our show is less than thirty minutes long, what could we do?")
** The Magic School Bus' producer segment is a coda of sorts where the producers (occasionally one of the "kids" off the set) explains the creative liberties taken within the story to demonstrate the science of what is happening. The unrealistic speed of certain processes is a frequently discussed manner and the thirty minute run time was {{Lampshaded}}. Ironically, when the show was moved to a network with commercial breaks, the Producer's segments were cut to get the time to the 22 minutes of the actual program.

* Although this doesn't involve space ships, the roleplaying site [[http://megamanmush.com Mega Man MUSH]] once had a memorable example of this in its news files for the various character stats, describing what the specific numbers for each stat would represent. In the news file for the Velocity stat, where 1 signified "less than 5 mph (8 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", 5 meant "60-150 mph (97-241 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])", and 9 was specified as "767 mph (1235 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]])" (the speed of sound), 10 was defined as "escape velocity". [[HilarityEnsues Hilarity ensued]] when someone pointed out exactly how fast [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity escape velocity]] is: 11.2 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]], or over 40,000 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:h]], thus leaving a drastically large gap between ratings 9 and 10.
* Some Flat Earthers claim the fact you can't see the Earth turning in satellite footage is proof the Earth is flat and doesn't move. When someone asked a question along these lines on Quora they responded by recommending they look at an analog clock and see if they can see the hour hand moving (the answer, obviously, is no), and goes on to note that the Earth takes twice as long to make a full revolution as the hour hand does.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* ''VideoGame/StarRuler'': You can travel faster than light on raw engine power alone, no Phlebotinum handwave provided. Lasers also remain hitscan even as their effective range becomes measurable in AU, which means that they are travelling FTL as well. However, the rest of the game generally is relatively "[[MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness hard]]", but can go into MisaimedRealism when one has high-tech ships such as the aforementioned FTL lasers.