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alt title(s): Sound In Space 
"Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Acoustics: In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way."
NOTE: Sound does not travel in a vacuum. All sound effects are produced by the cartoonist while drawing.
Whenever a satellite or space vessel of any kind is shown, there will be either a beeping in time with one of the lights (for satellites) or the sound of the engines, which is usually a low rumble. Whenever weapons are fired, there will always be an accompanying sound, especially with "laser" weapons (which do not produce any kind of sound anyway, parodied in the Internet line " PEW PEW PEW!"). Whenever there is an explosion, it will be clearly audible. Whenever there is an Earth Shattering Kaboom, it's sure to make a terrible, ghastly noise.
This is mostly due to The Coconut Effect, but can sometimes be taken to extremes.
Very rarely will characters who find themselves outside of the ship require the use of the one way to talk to somebody in space without radio - going up to them and touching your helmet to theirs, allowing the vibrations to transmit directly from your suit to theirs. Even when distance, stellar activity, jamming, etc. are present, which would normally render most, if not all, radio communication impossible.
It is standard cinematic convention that sound is always subjective - you hear what the characters are hearing. If a scene cuts from an establishing shot to a close up while someone is speaking, the sound never changes in volume, even though the new camera might be a tenth as far away from the speaker as the old one. Since the ship can hear itself, and there is nothing else in the scene, it is natural to include audio from the ship's point of view. Deleting audio would only be correct if a character was somewhere able to see, but not hear, the ship.
Another more 'technical' explanation has more to do with the rules of television production: a silent space battle is supposedly incredibly boring, and unlikely to attract viewers that have just tuned in. Of course, those who have tried generally found the above untrue, but trying requires a certain amount of creativity many creators lack. A music track often serves just as well.
Space is also an excellent medium for carrying whalesong.
The best justification so far is in-world use of special effects: if we can have 3D positional sound with home acoustic systems, why should spaceships not have audio representations of events to complement visuals?
In Real Life, the inside of a spaceship is often noisier than the same machinery would be on the ground, because sound tends to echo a lot with nowhere to go.
A tangentally related phenomenon is filmmakers' frequent disregard of the speed of sound in action films. Regardless of how far away the camera and characters may be from an explosion, artillery piece, etc, the sound of the blast is usually heard at exactly the same time as it is seen. Compare this to, say, fireworks, or lightning.
Some viewers can ignore this patent unrealism by calling it just another Translation Convention for the benefit of the audience (see Art Major Physics). Others just can't get over it at all.
This is a subtrope of Space Does Not Work That Way.
Examples
Anime and Manga
Film
- Star Wars: Attack of the Clones featured "seismic charges", essentially noise-bombs used in space. In the commentary track of the DVD, one of the filmmakers commented that they were aware there's no sound in space, but used them anyway because they're so cool.
- Could be justified/hand waved in earlier versions of Star Wars as noise the computers on the ships put in. However, the recent Star Wars Clone Wars series had character talking to each in the void of space.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe, being largely books, tends to avert this trope, though usually without spelling it out. In the X Wing Series book "Wraith Squadron", the squadron is rendered dead in space and some fighters have had their communications knocked offline. One pilot is filled in by having another one in a space suit press his helmet against the canopy of the ship and shout.
- In The Thrawn Trilogy, there's this exchange. Our heroes are sheltering under a ship in atmosphere.
A violent thunderclap came from above them, flattening her to the ground with the shockwave. For a horrifying second she thought the aliens had set the ship to self-destruct; but the sound faded away, and the ramp was still intact.
Leia: "What was that?"
Han: "That, sweetheart, was the sound of an escape pod being jettisoned. Probably modified for atmospheric maneuvering. Never realized before how loud those things were."
Leia: "They usually take off in vaccuum."
- In Apollo 13 a wind effect was used for extravehicular shots of the module in freefall, really as an effect that is Quieter Than Silence.
- The film Tomb Raider features some space shots to illustrate that the planets are aligning. The planets themselves make a deep humming noise as they move through space; apparently they're cruising on impulse power.
- The Wing Commander movie. Three words: Sonar in space.
- Armageddon does this with everything. Explosions, the shuttle flights, drilling on an airless asteroid and so on. Given that the film is stuffed with enough errors to give anyone with even a trace of scientific knowledge an aneurysm though this shouldn't really come as a surprise.
- Although, the killer asteroid DID have minimal atmosphere, so some sound may have been possi... oh what the hell! It's totally bogus.
Literature
- Justified in literature: in Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant series it is mentioned that despite the soundlessness of space, the computer systems on warships are programmed to generate sound effects appropriate to ongoing events to provide audio cues for the crew. This allows them to take advantage of the considerable unused information bandwidth, without overloading visual readouts. At least one ship captain is said to have edited his sound effects to mimic that of an orchestra playing.
- The A New Hope novel justifies it the same way, as does the Radio Drama. The novelization uses the Hunting Party explanation during the Death Star escape to explain why the gunners can hear the scream of TIE fighters around the ship.
- As do the capsules used by pilots in EVE Online.
- AS do certain series of Mobile Suit Gundam.
- And in some of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels.
- In Starship Operators, the sound effects are added at the insistence of the reality TV producers who sponsor the ship - with the claim that it's what their viewers expect - much to the annoyance of some crew members.
Live Action Television
- Battlestar Galactica does not use silent space, but sounds in space are muffled. This is meant to represent the way explosions and fired weapons sound from the interior of the ships. Demonstrating the aforementioned "law of cinema", if a scene intercuts between shots outside and inside a fighter, the muffling increases inside the cockpit.
- The Doctor Who episode "42" uses the silence of space for effect when the two lead characters are in vehicles moving away from each other, but elsewhere in the episode, even the sun makes noise.
- Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski defends the sounds of exploding ships in space due to the air inside them resisting dissipation long enough to carry sound (This however is an illustration that Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale). He admits that the guns creating sound does not make sense, however.
- There was at least one mention of warships having a computer system creating all of the "sound in space", enabling the crew to use their hearing sense and instincts connected to it.
- On another occasion, Straczynski claimed that the "sounds" we were hearing during a space battle were actually part of the background music.
- Still doesn't explain why jump gates make noises when they open and close.
- According to Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek was originally planned without sound in the space scenes; the network required him to put sound effects in because without them, the scenes "looked fake".
- Of course, it looked fake anyway.
- In Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, you can hear thunder and see lighting in the nebula.
- I'm fairly sure a nebula has enough matter to transfer sound around. But thunder and lightning...?
- Well, lightning can happen on Earth between two clouds. Say you have a thin H1 (neutral atomic hydrogen) gas, in which there are two localized clouds of dust/particulate matter. This is analogous to clouds on earth, only much less dense. If there is a great electrical charge difference between the two dust clouds, they can ionize the H1, allowing current to flow. BAM, lightning. Of course, this doesn't happen in reality as far as we know. . .
- Nebulas are way too sparse to transmit sound, at a saturation of 1e3 particles per millilitre. Earth's atmosphere, by comparison, has 27e18 particles per millilitre. Put another way, Earth's atmosphere is 27 quadrillion times denser than a nebula.
- The nebula causes sensor interference in the movie. This could possibly be due to a density of particles and the lightning they're causing getting in the way. Lightning storms and antenna television don't mix so well either.
- The Gerry and Sylvia Anderson series UFO (1970-1) accompanies all its
model shots spacecraft with noise, from the eerie pulsating whine of the Flying Saucers to the roar of the interceptors. Scenes involving people in spacesuits tend to stick to the silence-in-space rule.
- Space 1999: Notably in the episode “The Last Enemy” the Alphans can not only hear a spacecraft flying over the base, but cower on the floor with their ears covered as missiles fly overhead.
Video Games
- Lasers, ship thrusters, explosions, and so on are very noisy in Stellar Frontier.
- In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, after escaping a collapsing fortress on the moon via teleporter back to Earth (or whatever the local planet is called), you hear it explode. (From the surface!)
- In Paper Mario, space has air in it. That's why Mario can breath on the Moon, and travel there via cannon.
- Yet in Super Paper Mario, Mario almost dies from being suddenly transported to outer space by a magical door. They should put a hazard sign on that door.
- IIRC, Mario doesn't wear the helmet in the part when he's on the "small planet", so clearly, 'space' doesn't have air, but celestial bodies...do?
- Justified in the game Tyrian 2000: where you can find a data cube that informs you that, in most ships a Mega Sound Chair is installed that amplify the sound waves from the very fine particle streams in space, as to make sure the new pilots wouldn't be driven insane because of the unending silence of space.
- Lampshaded and then Justified in Eve Online, the PC MMORPG. Space is filled with many wondrous sounds, but the game itself acknowledges that there is no sound in space. It justifies the presence of audio in the vacuum by saying that your ship's computer renders the sounds of activities in space in order to create a more reactive environment for the pilot to operate in.
- In space, nobody can hear you scream, but their on-board computer can synthesize the sound for their listening pleasure. Eve is that kind of game.
- The two Freespace games. Apparently space is very good at conducting sounds, because from your little hermetically sealed fighter you can hear the sound of plasma beams being several kilometers away.
- Oddly enough, even though it's high up on the Science Fiction Hardness Scale, ''Halo 2 does this. The (foot) battle in space even violated canon!
Other
- Even mighty NASA, it seems, falls victim to this troupe
 . Rocket noise and separation charges and so forth. They even seem to have launched up a record player along with it...
Exceptions
Anime and Manga
- Mobile Suit Gundam in all its permutations has been quite good at utilizing more or less real world physics, with the exception of the underlying technology of the "Minovsky Particle" which has many interesting, but well-defined properties (In fact, the Minovsky Particle requires them to pay more attention to the limitations of radio and laser communication).
- They still frequently have sound effects in space battles, though. Sometimes this is Hand Waved as being generated by the mobile suit's combat computer for the pilot's benefit. They do usually get the bit about touching to talk right, but a few times we see characters communicating by radio when it's supposed to be jammed (although it could be one of their "laser comm channels", but those are supposed to be reserved for emergencies, while there's often a lot of chatter going on in the show).
- The anime film Akira had a short scene in space, where there is actually no sound at all.
- Exception: In Kamen Rider Kabuto, the opening scene is an asteroid falling from space - completely silent.
- Averted, like many many more space tropes by Planetes. Of course, it's hard to notice when the soundtrack is busy with dramatic orchestral tunes, quiet, contemplative melodies, or even the character's banter.
- Not to mention all the sounds that you actually can hear inside the space suit, such as the hissing of air.
- Much like Planetes, it's hard to tell due to the music and dialogue, but there is no sound in space in Gun X Sword. This is most noticeable when Michael destroys Dann of Thursday's satellite - silently.
- Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars averts this, much of the time with comments such as "Sound... In space?" which is later explained to be merely the work of the characters projecting the scene. However, some moments do seem to go along with the trope, such as Muryou yelling at Nayuta in space. Still, it is possible that this is simply attributed to telepathy as he tries to speak.
Board Games
- Invoked in Battle Fleet Mars intro by Redmond Simonsen:
No sound, mused Ulans, no bang. They should put sound effects on these things so that you could hear a bang when you made a shot. The slight vibration and the glow on the screen wasn't enough. No real way to relate to that. Should be some noise.
Comic Books
- Exception in DC One Million: Superman of the 853rd Century flies out of the atmosphere with a cry of "Up, Up and "
- Averted in the Tintin story Explorers on the Moon where a meteorite impact on the moon is silent and the characters explain for the benefit of younger readers why this is so.
Film
- 2001: A Space Odyssey, possibly the first movie to have soundless space. The movie is especially notable for making dramatic use of the absence of sound, with the characters' breath inside their suits being the only thing we hear.
- But remember, "action-packed" is not an adjective which could ever be applied to 2001 with a straight face.
- Its sequel, 2010, plays this trope straight.
- The opening to Magic Users Club, where the Bell falls to Earth, is completely silent until it reaches the upper atmosphere.
- In the movie Robot Jox the two titular robot jox take their final battle up into space. This troper was surprised when the villain shoots the good guy with a missle and there is no accompanying kaboom in the wide shot, just the soundtrack.
Literature
- H. Beam Piper described ships blowing up in Space Viking as doing so "eerily silently".
Live Action Television
- Firefly rendered space as soundless - the space battles that so many sci-fi shows require were avoided by establishing in dialogue (in the second episode) that since the main characters' vessel Serenity was a cargo transport, it didn't have any kind of weapon system. In cases where we'd expect noise were they in an atmosphere (engine powering up, someone else shooting, etc.), the show makes up for the silence with appropriate musical score.
- Unfortunately, this was not carried over to the Big Damn Movie, in which a space battle was massively noisy.
- Which can be handwaved due to taking place inside the big ion cloud (and later, atmosphere) surrounding Mr Universe's planet - the battle was taking place in a big cloud of gas, which conducts sounds... It's notable that earlier space sequences, such as the ship's passage through the Reaver fleet were soundless, and the return trip had only the sound of the cannon being fired, which we heard from Mal's perspective as a muffled thump transmitted through the hull of the ship.
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think gas clouds in space (like nebulas) can conduct sound because they're not dense enough. Anyway, that whole scene was dominated by Rule Of Cool.
- You're wrong. The cloud in the movie was clearly an atmosphere, and it was clearly pretty dense, and even if it wasn't, sound waves can travel fine in thin gases. The speed of sound will be different, of course.
- This gas cloud was tiny in comparison to nebulae you see on Hubble pictures. It's possible this one WAS dense enough, and was in fact a part of the planet's atmosphere.
- In the early days of Star Trek The Original Series, the battles were depicted as soundless. Eventually, Executive Meddling brought about the change. Star Trek has had noisy space ever since.
- The standard intro in the first few episodes had the Enterprise silently move past the camera. That felt "dead" so the swish was added, and remained there for the rest of the series.
- Exception in Star Trek Voyager in the fourth-season episode "Day of Honor:" B'Elanna and Tom are stranded in space as the air in their suits slowly gets used up, and touch their helmets together so they can talk.
- Exception: When the crew is testing out external holographic projectors, they screw up the math, and Doc is beamed out into space. We, the viewers, can clearly hear him yelling at the top of his holographic lungs to let him back in.
- Partial exception in the 2009 Star Trek. Space is still noisy in most scenes, as with battles and ships entering and dropping out of warp, but in scenes with people in space there is only a faint ethereal hum or breathing noise (reminiscent of 2001).
- Done particularly well in a scene in which we see someone blown out into space after the Hull ruptures. We can hear the screaming and the air rushing out of the ship, but once the unfortunate crewman enters space, we hear nothing. This led Bad Astronomy to say he wanted to "kiss J.J. Abrams right on the mouth".
- Exception in the Doctor Who serial The Ark in Space: a spacecraft is shown exploding on a viewscreen in silence, a moment which is the more effective for the lack of noise.
- Another, in 'The Parting of the Ways'. Someone is looking out a window as the Daleks attack the Gamestation. One flies up. Even though the point of view is inside, no sound is heard, although the Dalek's lights flash as if it had just said a four-syllable word...
- A certain four-syllable word that every fan that's seen a Dalek episode should know...
Newspaper Comics
- An early The Far Side comic had a balding, lab-coated scientist jump up in the middle of a crowded theater shouting "Stop the Movie! Stop the Movie! Explosions don't go 'BOOM!' in a vacuum!"
Video Games
- In the videogame Spore, battling in the very high atmosphere won't make any noise. However, battling in outer space will; partly justified in that outer space isn't meant to be realistic at all, and your spaceship is magnified to the same size as a planet or solar system.
- Averted as well in Chzo Mythos game Seven days a skeptic. There are circumstances where you have to get out of the ship where the game takes place in a space suit. The only thing you can hear is the sound of your breath inside the suit. Not surprising, since Yahtzee actually intended it to be a Shout Out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Averted in Dead Space — in the vacuum segments of the game, nothing makes noise unless it's actually in physical contact with your character, and even then, it's usually muffled. This can be problematic, as the primary way to tell necromorphs are around before they're right on top of you is that they're incredibly noisy.
- Averted for use of an effect in Disgaea, where the Rising Dragon tech knocks the target up into outer space and at the highest point actually stops the game music.
Web Comic
Western Animation
- Possible exception in the fifth season finale of Teen Titans, where a fusion device is transported into space just before it explodes with a muted-but-audible thud. It seems likely that the writers were aware of this, but felt that the Rule Of Cool warranted some kind of noise.
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