Space opera is sci fi.

As a note… in many countries and languages there is no distinction between fantasy and sci fi. Sci fi is just modernist, scientificism inspired fantasy. Eventually hard sci fi came to be, and overtook most of the genre, but there are no requirements for sci fi to “make scientific sense”. It just has to have space, robots, lasers etc.

I mean, if you go by how the genre was born and all.