History SciFiWritersHave / NoSenseOfVelocity

** 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'', Trip describes the ship's top speed in terms of how long it would take to travel to Jupiter and back, and he's exactly right, based on conventional estimates of how warp factors work). In fact, if you use those same calculations, the Klingon home planet would be two and a half lightyears 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.

** In order to save the Earth, the Argo needs to travel about 300,000 light years round-trip to Iscandar and back within a year. It takes the ship about a week to reach Pluto, 4.5 light hours away from the sun. Yep, we're screwed.

** At least in the movie, the final battle is mentioned to take place in a pocket universe that can be shaped with Spiral Power, so the laws of physics as we know them(and scale, for that matter, seeing how you have a mecha with a visible planet on its head throwing a galaxy at another mecha while standing on a much bigger galaxy) need not to apply.
* In ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', the original Funimation English dub had a DubInducedPlotHole because of this: Goku learns to teleport himself in such a manner that he claims to move at the speed of light. He states that he could have used this technique to get to Earth faster than with his ship, if he thought it was necessary. He was traveling on that ship from a planet millions of light years away. That trip took 3 years. In short, his teleport ability is millions of times slower than his ship was. The original script (and later events in the franchise) make it clear that Instant Transmission is exactly what it sounds like: instantaneous. The only limiting factor on distance is how well Goku can "sense" a source of ki at his destination.

** ComicBook/TheFlash's writers eventually gave up trying to apply science to the Scarlet Speedster, and introduced the magical Speed Force.

* 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.

** 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 explains 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/TunnelInTheSky'', two teenagers notice a new visible star above the alien world they're stranded on, and conclude that they've just witnessed a nova. At the book's end, it's revealed a nova is what interfered with their CoolGate back to Earth. If it's the same nova -- which is strongly implied; indeed, the chapter where they see it is ''titled'' "The Nova", and it reads like a ChekhovsGun -- then the boys shouldn't have been able to see its light until years after it happened. (Assuming, of course, that whatever disrupted the gates wasn't some substance or energy traveling outwards at the speed of light.)

* In Creator/EEDocSmith's ''[[Literature/SkylarkSeries The Skylark of Space]]'', the titular ''Skylark'' accelerates to 3 times the speed of light in the space of 20 minutes, knocking its inhabitants unconscious. While Smith acknowledges that this violates Einstein's universal speed limit, he fails to acknowledge what such an extreme acceleration (about 75,000 G's) would [[ChunkySalsa do to a human crew]].
* ''Literature/StarCarrier: Earth Strike'' describes the railgun cruiser ''Kinkaid's'' spinal mount as accelerating a slug at 500 gravities down a 1 kilometer barrel. This results in a muzzle velocity of about 3.1 kilometers per second, only about four times the muzzle velocity of the average RealLife assault rifle. At that speed it would take a very large, very heavy slug to do much damage (at least, damage noticeable to ships that regularly weather hits by 10 kiloton nukes), which sort of defeats the purpose of using a railgun that long ([[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409497/electromagnetic-railgun-blasts-off/?nlid=857 real railguns have achieved 2.4 km/s with a much shorter barrel]]).
* 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.

** By the time of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', a Warp Speed scale was firmly established by Paramount, where a speed of Warp X (below Warp 9) meant the ship was travelling at X^3.3333... times the speed of light. This makes Warp 1 equal to light speed, Warp 2 just a hair over 10 times the speed of light, and Warp 9 a little more than 1500 times light speed. Yet in the episode "Where Silence Has Lease", the Enterprise traverses the 1.3 parsec distance to the edge of a giant space cloud at Warp 2 in about 30 seconds.
** 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).

** 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'', Trip describes the ship's top speed in terms of how long it would take to travel to Jupiter and back, and he's exactly right, based on conventional estimates of how warp factors work). In fact if you use those same calculations, the Klingon home planet would be two and a half lightyears 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.

* ''Series/StargateSG1'' and ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' [[ZigZaggedTrope zig zag this trope]]. One the one hand, the ''Daedalus'' is able to reach Atlantis for the first season finale in about three days while powered by a ZPM. The Pegasus Galaxy (assuming the one in the series is the Pegasus Irregular Dwarf Galaxy in RealLife as is implied) is 3 million lightyears from the Milky Way. That's a speed 365 ''million'' times the speed of light. It's also mentioned that the trip would take about 2 weeks without the ZPM. That's about 78 million times the speed of light. Taken by themselves, these don't seem horrifically unreasonable. The universe runs on [[TimTaylorTechnology MORE POWER!]]. The problem comes when one considers that it usually takes them a few days to get any where in the galaxy. At the aforementioned speeds, they could traverse the entire observable universe in and 55 and 255 years, respectively. So either they normally run their engines ''far'' below their capacity, or it's this trope.

** {{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 some time 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.
** ''[=40K=]'' also borrowed the inertialess drive from the {{Literature/Lensman}} series for the Necrons. It makes the ship unbound by inertia, allowing it to almost instantly (the time it takes for the drive to activate) accelerate to a practically infinite velocity, then immediately come to a stop. Necron phase technology would prevent them from crashing into anything, and the precision of their machinery (their weapons, for example, are crafted atom by atom, as an idea of how precise Necrons are) would ensure they don't go waaaay too far, out past the galaxy.

* 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 like it does on everyday vehicles.

* ''Videogame/XRebirth'' has ships that move roughly at the same speed as before, but a completely reworked map system makes the screwy velocities less silly. The game uses explicit solar systems, with sectors being in orbit around different planets while zones (equivalent to the sectors of previous games) connect points-of-interest. [[HyperspaceLanes Highways]] connecting the zones accelerate ships to several kilometers per second, and the Super Highways that connect planets accelerate ships past the speed of light.

** 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.

** 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 actual program.

* Some Flat Eathers 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.

* Early in ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2'', the Guardians have to reach a jump point while being pursued through a [[AsteroidThicket quantum asteroid field]] (the asteroids randomly pop in and out of existence). Said jump point is stated as being 15 clicks from their starting point yet it takes a couple minutes to get there. Unless a click means something other than a kilometer in space, they should have reached it nigh instantly.

* A ''Franchise/MassEffect'' example caused by a minor continuity error: In the War Assets for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', the Turian Spec Ops Team's entry mentions they came from a turian colony world named Taetrus where their home city of Vallum was destroyed by a terrorist ship ramming it at FTL speeds. The energy release from a ship impacting at such speeds would do tremendous damage, possibly destroying the entire planet depending on velocity. However, the larger story surrounding Taetrus' civil war and the Vallum blast was detailed in the Cerberus Daily News series (a collection of daily news snippets released between ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' and ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'') which specified that the ship was [[http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Cerberus_Daily_News_-_May_2010#05.2F05.2F2010 not traveling at faster than light speeds]] and in fact only impacted at the speed of a single mass accelerator round.

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Second Impact is said to have been caused by a meteor hitting Antarctica at near the speed of light. Putting aside the question of how a meteor would ever attain such speeds in the first place, a meteor going that fast would probably have shattered the whole planet, not just caused a bunch of weather cataclysms. [[spoiler:Of course, this is probably justified as the meteor story is just a cover to placate the masses, and hide the fact that Second Impact was actually caused by SEELE messing around with [[EldritchAbomination Adam]].]]

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Second Impact is said to have been caused by a meteor hitting Antarctica at near the speed of light. Putting aside the question of how a meteor would ever attain such speeds in the first place, a meteor going that fast would probably have shattered the whole planet, not just caused a bunch of weather cataclysms. [[spoiler:Of course, this is probably justified as the meteor story is just a cover to placate the masses, and hide the fact that Second Impact was actually cased by SEELE messing around with [[EldritchAbomination Adam]].]]

** Or they simply don't have the juice. [=ZPMs=] are vanishingly rare, can't be recharged, are unstable, are ten thousand years old, and everybody wants them. Most of the series has a search for more [=ZPMs=] as a sub-plot.
*** Actually, the series outright states that there are two types of hyper-drives: the slower inter-stellar type and the faster inter-galactic type. One could also argue that navigation is a factor; ships can move faster between galaxies because there's nothing in the way.

* In ''Literature/TunnelInTheSky'', two teenagers notice a new visible star above the alien world they're stranded on, and conclude that they've just witnessed a nova. At the book's end, it's revealed a nova is what interfered with their CoolGate back to Earth. If it's the same nova -- which is strongly implied; indeed, the chapter where they see it is ''titled'' "The Nova", and it reads like a ChekhovsGun -- then the boys shouldn't have been able to see its light until years after it happened.

* ''{{Space 1999}}'' comes through again by having characters track the approach of faster-than-light craft optically, and by allowing floating space rubble, conventional rockets, alien spacecraft, and a moon hurtling interstellar distances in days to be in range of each other for exactly as long as the plot demands.

** ''[=40K=]'' also borrowed the inertialess drive from the {{Literature/Lensman}} series for the Necrons: the Inertialess Drive. It makes the ship unbound by inertia, allowing it to almost instantly (the time it takes for the drive to activate) accelerate to a practically infinite velocity, then immediately come to a stop. Necron phase technology would prevent them from crashing into anything, and the precision of their machinery (their weapons, for example, are crafted atom by atom, as an idea of how precise Necrons are) would ensure they don't go waaaay too far, out past the galaxy.

** ''[=40K=]'' also came up with a nice solution for the Necrons: the Inertialess Drive. It makes the ship unbound by inertia, allowing it to almost instantly (the time it takes for the drive to activate) accelerate to a practically infinite velocity, then immediately come to a stop. Necron phase technology would prevent them from crashing into anything, and the precision of their machinery (their weapons, for example, are crafted atom by atom, as an idea of how precise Necrons are) would ensure they don't go waaaay too far, out past the galaxy.

* 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 HandWaves employed over the last 50 years.

** Or they simply don't have the juice. ZPMs are vanishingly rare, can't be recharged, are unstable, are ten thousand years old, and everybody wants them. Most of the series has a search for more ZPMs as a sub-plot.

* In ''Film/DeepImpact'', the spaceship in Earth orbit maneuvers down a fissure in the comet to detonate at the comet's core. The ship starts off (to a good enough approximation compared to the other velocities) stationary relative to the Earth, so the ship/comet relative velocity is similar to the Earth/comet relative velocity. The Earth/comet relative velocity can't be less than the Earth escape velocity (11 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]) and is more likely on the order of the Earth's orbital velocity (30 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]). So they're navigating down that narrow fissure at something between 10 and 40 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]....
** Then again, the space ship in question did have an OrionDrive, which can produce an ''insane'' amount of thrust.
** The spaceship was not in Earth orbit, it was already paralleling the comet after having previously put a lander on it. It starts off stationary relative to the comet, not relative to the Earth, and it took a year of flying to match velocities with the comet.

* In ''Film/DeepImpact'', the spaceship in Earth orbit maneuvers down a fissure in the asteroid to detonate at the asteroid's core. The ship starts off (to a good enough approximation compared to the other velocities) stationary relative to the Earth, so the ship/asteroid relative velocity is similar to the Earth/asteroid relative velocity. The Earth/asteroid relative velocity can't be less than the Earth escape velocity (11 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]) and is more likely on the order of the Earth's orbital velocity (30 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]). So they're navigating down that narrow fissure at something between 10 and 40 [[superscript:km]]∕[[subscript:s]]....

* Any time you are dealing with a speedster like TheFlash, the laws of drama beat up the laws of physics and take their lunch money.
** TheFlash's writers eventually gave up trying to apply science to the Scarlet Speedster, and introduced the magical Speed Force.

* In ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'', it's discovered that a piece of the space station which was jettisoned by the player in the first game has crashed on a planet in the Tau Ceti system - crossing a distance of 12 light-years in a mere 30 years. This would require the ejection charges to have kicked the module loose at about half the speed of light. Even if you can accept that ''that'' happened, this would have resulted in the module slamming into a planet at half the speed of light, which is more than enough velocity to disintegrate the entire thing on impact.

[[folder:Videogames]]

* Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog has it's 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.

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Second Impact is said to have been caused by a meteor hitting Antarctica at near the speed of light. A meteor going that fast would probably have shattered the whole planet, not just caused a bunch of weather cataclysms. [[spoiler:Of course, this is probably justified as the meteor story is just a cover to placate the masses, and hide the fact that Second Impact was actually cased by SEELE messing around with [[EldritchAbomination Adam]].]]