The article is plain wrong on many accounts, such as the following:
Far too many SF shows make the scientifically inaccurate assumption that space travel will be just like ocean travel. This is very wrong.
Wrong, Sci-fi shows do not make this assumption, it more so has to do with the constraints of early model capture processes. It is not something sci-fi shows wished to have, nor said science supports.
There is no limit on their orientation either. If you saw the Starship Enterprise approaching the Starship Intrepid and one was "upside down" with respect to another, you might think this was wrong but in reality there is nothing preventing this.
Wrong buddy, there is a system in place which prevents this, it's a computer with a background process which "syncs" the alignment of Federation vessels. This is addressed in ST:tNG or DS9, I forget which atm.
You also cannot turn on a dime. The faster the ship is moving, the wider your turns will be. Your spacecraft will NOT move like an airplane, it will act more like a heavily loaded 18-wheeler truck moving at high speed on a huge sheet of black ice.
Ever play Wing Commander? Ever see the current Battlestar? How about Macross? Babylon 5? Yes you can turn on a dime in space, as nearly any sci-fi with jet fighter like craft has opted to put manuvering thrusters all over the ship. Even Star Trek craft are covered in impulse and more conventional fusion thrusters. Any craft can be disigned to flip on itself, you just then need to thrust in the new direction.
In the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, you may have noticed that the spacecraft Discovery was traveling to Jupiter with nary a puff coming out of the rocket motors.
This is why it makes no sense to talk about the "range" of a rocket. Any rocket not in orbit around a planet or in the Sun's gravity well has a range of infinity. In theory it can do a burn and travel to, say, the Andromeda Galaxy, it is only that it will take millions of year to get there. Instead of a rocket's range, one should talk about a rocket's delta V capacity.
Wrong again, objects in space are not in fixed locations! Objects in space are in constant motion, you are not trying to go from point A to B on a fixed line like this guy seems to think, a ship has to thrust in order to end up in the same place in space that an object will be! With the years we put between each "deep" solarsystem mission it gives us time to only launch things during optimal windows, where they can use as little thrust as possible, in a 2001 future with constant commercial space flights, each flight will use different amounts of thrust to get from object A to B (not points in space). Also, a rockets "range" is usually a description of either the atomic fuel core's life or the amount of provisions on board, not how many space miles or whatever it can clear before it runs out of fuel.
And many, many other problems exist on this page. It seems like he is trying to make himself easy arguments in many areas by using extreemly defunct atomic rockets as the subject of many arguments. Surely he doesn't actually think we would make a stealth device that using the power of atomic reactions, pretty directly, to fly through space...
