Dr. James Van Allen (for whom the Van Allen Radiation Belt is named) was once asked by a reporter to 'define space'. He replied, "Space is the hole that we are in." Most people (if not, in fact, everyone) can't get their minds around just how big the universe is. So it should come as little surprise that most Speculative Fiction writers can't either. This is chiefly true of creators of TV, film, and video game SF. Creators of written science fiction can be positively obsessive about accuracy (but on the other hand, sometimes they're not). If your qualitative yardstick is based around an author's ability to describe distances, this may be a useful way to distinguish good print science fiction from bad print science fiction. And it's why a lot of science fiction fans don't like the movie and