Interstellar - Wow.

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Well, I guess that article is amusing , in an "Onion" kind of way.

Actually, if this article is supposed to be a hallmark for understanding, then you could follow the logic or humor and say everyone in this forum is also already dead.

Yep. I took it as not at all serious, and kind of amusing.
 
I've been reading "The Science of Interstellar" by Kip Thorne, and it's been pretty interesting. I haven't gone through it completely yet, but so far I've enjoyed it. Besides the more basic things we've talked about (black holes, worm holes, etc), he gets into topics such as the Blight and how it could happen (depressing reading), why Gargantua looks like it does, how you can actually avoid spagettification if your black hole is massive enough, etc. A neat point...they actually had to tone down the visual size of Gargantua on screen. In reality, the visual size of a black hole of Gargantua's mass would have been MUCH larger.

I have to say, the more I think about Interstellar, the more I enjoyed it. When I think about it verses 2001, I tend to consider 2001 closer to a 'tech demo', verses Interstellar which has more interesting characters - even if the dialogue was a little clunky.FC

I agree with you, in fact, the more I think about the movie the more questions and plot holes I can find, but despite that - I like the movie even more.

Now, here is where Gary needs to come in and say, "Then stop thinking about the movie". LOL
 
Darn, there isn't a link yet...

Ira Flatow, is currently on NPR with Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne talking about Interstellar.

FC
 
I really want to see this, but it doesn't seem like I have much of a chance of getting to soon. Maybe when it comes out on blu-ray.
 
I really want to see this, but it doesn't seem like I have much of a chance of getting to soon. Maybe when it comes out on blu-ray.

Well whatever works for you.
A lot of people say you have to see it in IMAX on a big screen, with IMAX sound.
I went to a smaller Regal the second time that was not IMAX and the sound was much better.
See it in a theatre if you can, a larger screen doesn't necessarily make for a better experience if you trade off sound quality, but it sure looks nice!.
 
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Well whatever works for you.
A lot of people say you have to see it in IMAX on a big screen, with IMAX sound.
I went to a smaller Regal the second time that was not IMAX and the sound was much better.
See it in a theatre if you can, a larger screen doesn't necessarily make for a better experience if you trade off sound quality, but it sure looks nice!.

I'd love to, but with a newborn in the house, prospects don't look good.
 
Wow! Just saw the movie last night. I don't buy movies much anymore, but I sure will get the Blu-ray of this one as soon as it is available. Amazing.
 
I'd love to, but with a newborn in the house, prospects don't look good.

Some theaters have a "crying room" where people with babies can watch a movie and not disturb other moviegoers. I though the crying room might be a place I could send my wife during a tearjerker movie, but it turns out it's for babies.
 
That is a GREAT read. It really puts things in perspective.

I too don't understand the general disinterest in space travel...not to mention the lack of folks who don't recognize the reality of global climate change...

...I could go on, but man, that movie was AWESOME. One thing I noticed is that there were no shots of the launch vehicle that weren't onboard. Probably intentional. Would love to see what that vehicle looked like in 3rd person. I read they based all of that on Saturn V liftoff footage...I believe it.
 
Interesting commentary indeed. My counterpoint to those who say we should 'clean our house first' has always been that it doesn't matter how clean your house is if someone drives a truck through it...and you don't have insurance, which we don't.

There have been 5 mass extinction level events events in Earth's history without any help from ourselves. Yes, we can and should try to avoid causing one, but that doesn't help us if something from outside decides to do us in through just pure randomness.

On a different note, I've been reading Kip Thorne's book and it's pretty interesting. Definitely requires some thinking - not a causal read by any means, but most of it is laid out in a clear manner. I've been reading it in small sessions during down time.

FC
 
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Interesting commentary indeed. My counterpoint to those who say we should 'clean our house first' has always been that it doesn't matter how clean your house is if someone drives a truck through it...and you don't have insurance, which we don't.

There have been 5 mass extinction level events events in Earth's history without any help from ourselves. Yes, we can and should try to avoid causing one, but that doesn't help us if something from outside decides to do us in through just pure randomness.

On a different note, I've been reading Kip Thorne's book and it's pretty interesting. Definitely requires some thinking - not a causal read by any means, but most of it is laid out in a clear manner. I've been reading it in small sessions during down time.FC

I've been reading things online about an asteroid out there named Apophis.
I think the predictions on earth impact have been revised based on recent projections, but continued observations have been recommended, given detailed data is incomplete.
There was enough concern at one point to recommend funding a space mission to closely observe it.

From Wikipedia:

Additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. However, a possibility remained that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a small region no more than about 800 m (half a mile) wide, that would set up a future impact exactly seven years later, on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006, when the probability that Apophis would pass through the keyhole was determined to be very small. During the short time when it had been most concerning, Apophis set the record for highest rating on the Torino Scale, reaching level 4.

In 2007, The Planetary Society, a California-based space advocacy group, organized a $50,000 competition to design an unmanned space probe that would 'shadow' Apophis for almost a year, taking measurements that would "determine whether it will impact Earth, thus helping governments decide whether to mount a deflection mission to alter its orbit". The society received 37 entries from 20 countries on 6 continents.

The Sentry Risk Table estimates that Apophis would make atmospheric entry with 750 megatons of kinetic energy.The impacts that created Meteor Crater or the Tunguska event are estimated to be in the 3–10 megaton range.The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons and the biggest hydrogen bomb ever exploded, the Tsar Bomba, was around 57 megatons. In comparison, the Chicxulub impact has been estimated to have released about as much energy as 100,000,000 megatons (100 teratons).The exact effects of any impact would vary based on the asteroid's composition, and the location and angle of impact. Any impact would be extremely detrimental to an area of thousands of square kilometers, but would be unlikely to have long-lasting global effects, such as the initiation of an impact winter. Assuming Apophis is a 325-meter wide stony asteroid, if it were to impact into sedimentary rock, Apophis would create a 4.3 kilometers (2.7 mi) impact crater.

In 2008, the B612 Foundation made estimates of Apophis's path if a 2036 Earth impact were to occur, as part of an effort to develop viable deflection strategies.The result was a narrow corridor a few kilometers wide, called the "path of risk", extending across southern Russia, across the north Pacific (relatively close to the coastlines of California and Mexico), then right between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, crossing northern Colombia and Venezuela, ending in the Atlantic, just before reaching Africa.Using the computer simulation tool NEOSim, it was estimated that the hypothetical impact of Apophis in countries such as Colombia and Venezuela, which were in the path of risk, could have more than 10 million casualties. An impact in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans would produce a devastating tsunami.
 
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Finally saw this last night with my wife... she's not a big sci-fi fan (not like me anyway) but she tolerates it because its one of *my* big interests...

We both LOVED the movie and were HIGHLY impressed! It was WONDERFUL and the way it was executed was absolutely brilliant! The performances were SO excellent; the casting was terrific and the actors did a brilliant job in their roles! The CGI was impressive without being overpowering, and it SUPPLEMENTED the story, not SUBSTITUTED for it, which is an EXTREMELY refreshing change from the usual sloppy writing and "dumbed down" stories of most Hollywood fare over the last few years (aimed it seems primarily at separating teen "mall rats" from their ticket money). We were both also HIGHLY impressed that there was NO bad language to speak of (a near "f-bomb" but he basically "mouthed it" by simply going silent for that word in the middle of his sentence). There was also no nudity, no sex, and only a limited allusion to a "love story" between two of the characters. The setup was, in Betty's opinion, a little long, but it effectively set up the story and the problems while also getting you to "care about the characters" and what happens to them later in the movie...

There were a FEW problems I noticed, but they were forgivable (but could have been SO easily corrected with a little more research...) I haven't been following this thread very closely since the first day fearing spoilers, so I don't know how deeply the film has been discussed here (whether there's spoilers in the thread or not) but I will say this... SPOILER ALERT!!! If you don't want spoilers, STOP READING THIS POST NOW!!!!

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Okay... while the films dedication to "scientific accuracy" in quantum physics was terrific, and its portrayal of the actual effects of time dilation at relativistic velocities and stuff was terrific and a cornerstone of the story, I openly laughed at the inaccuracies in the farming scenes...

When Cooper is fiddling about with the "robotic combines", and driving across the field chasing the drone and nearly running into the combine, they were all running in GREEN CORN... :facepalm: REALLY?? I've been a farmer all my life, born and raised on the farm, and I JUST got back from Indiana and helping my BIL with his corn harvest, and *anybody* with ANY even remote experience with agriculture knows that crops are NOT harvested "green"... (with the obvious exception of silage cut wet and green, where the high moisture and sugar levels are used to advantage to ferment the crop and preserve it in the absence of oxygen). Not only is the grain in NO WAY mature enough (still at the milk or at best dough stage of development-- hence still taking on starch and nutrients from the plant, which stops basically at the late "dough" stage (the kernels of grain, whatever grain, will when first formed/fertilized with pollen, will start off like blisters of water-- the individual kernel of grain starts out basically as a seed coat filled with a watery jelly, which turns milky and thickens through the "milk" stage and continues to thicken into the 'soft dough' stage (at which point if the kernel is pinched between the fingers, the milky contents will squeeze out, or later a soft, wet, doughy material) then to the "hard dough" stage (as the contents thicken continually, eventually squeezing a kernel will cause a damp, firm starchy pasty material to squeeze out; from that point on the kernel will get harder and drier and not be able to have the contents squeezed out...) it will go through the "dent" stage (for corn) where the drying kernel hardens further and shrinks, causing the end of the kernel to form a dimple or 'dent' in it, and then continue losing moisture and maturing to the "black layer" (when the kernels attachment to the cob is physiologically mature and ready to separate) when the grain is ready to be harvested. This is basically the same process for ALL grains, small grains (wheat, rye, oats, etc), sorghum, rice, etc., with a few minor variations, as they are all members of the grass family... and even soybeans (which are a broadleaf legume and not a grass) follows a similar maturing process for the grain. The plants transfer MOST of the nutrients stored in the plant tissues (built up during the vegetative and early reproductive stages) from the plant tissues into the developing grain. The plant then basically "dies" and dries down as it reaches physiological maturity, transferring virtually all its nutrients into the grain (which is why 'stover' or stubble is of very little feed value, but is valuable for animal bedding and such). Mature grain is a golden yellow-tan-brown, dry and ready for harvest-- the grain is hard and as dry as possible (ideally in the 13% range for safe storage in the bin, though field crops, depending on the region, climate, weather that particular year, variety (brand and type of seed), growth conditions, etc., may be as high as 25% or even 30% at harvest depending on drydown conditions-- such grain has to be dried to 14-15% moisture for safe storage (for corn, climate dependent) and about 13.5% for soybeans and even 12% for some other grains...) That's why harvest doesn't take place for some time after the crops actually physiologically mature and turn golden.

Besides, combines, like hay balers, are designed to handle DRY materials (stalks, leaves, stover, grain, husks, shucks, etc) NOT wet material... combines tend to choke up RAPIDLY and VERY BADLY in excessive green material (like weeds and vines and stuff) and the moisture squeezed out from this green matter during harvest can even increase the moisture content of the grain as its absorbed by the grain during threshing, when all of that stuff is ground together in the thresher and shaken to separate it all in the machine... plus the green sap squeezed out by the crushing of the thresher then sticks to the internal parts of the machine and dust then sticks to it, "gumming up" the concaves, grain pan, straw walkers or separators, chaffers and sieves, augers, etc, greatly reducing the efficiency and capacity of the machine and causing plug-ups and riding grain out the back with the chaff and stover. SO, running in excessively wet conditions is NEVER a good thing.

Heck, even *I* have posted videos on youtube of the corn harvest (especially last year and this years-- search for "luke strawwalker" if interested) along with hundreds/thousands of other farm-related videos... WHY screenwriters/producers don't do a *tiny* bit more research to more accurately "tweak" their screenplays and what they film for a little more accuracy is beyond me... I guess maybe it comes down to a pure financial decision-- filming in the middle of the crop season (mid summer) rather than waiting for "actual harvest conditions" in the fall... (though mid-summer IS harvest season down here in Texas, so that argument doesn't really hold water either... unless of course they have a sweetheart deal to film in a "certain place" at a 'certain time'. Anyway, its one of those things that just seem excessively sloppy...

Point two is, while the spaceflight scenes were VERY realistic and beautifully done, and they generally tried pretty hard to portray spaceflight and quantum physics as accurately as possible (within reason), there was one glaring error mentioned in the movie that immediately jumped out at me... they did a "gravitational slingshot" off MARS to get to Saturn... that really wouldn't gain you much. Mars is only about 1/3 Earth's mass... so a gravitational slingshot off such a low-mass body will not gain you much velocity AT ALL. Remember that Galileo did TWO fly-by gravitational assists from Earth and one from Venus (which are both very similar in mass) to gain the velocity needed to get to Jupiter. Cassini and the Voyagers did gravitational assists from Jupiter, which due to its ENORMOUS mass can provide a big increase in velocity due to the gravitational slingshot maneuver... the massive gravitational pull is the real key, coupled with the orbital velocity of the planet around the sun. A low mass body like Mars simply doesn't have the mass to provide enough of a gravitational pull to accelerate a spacecraft much... If they'd have changed that to "Jupiter" it would have closed that mistake.

There were also a few plot holes in regards to the "situation" on Earth... evidently, there was a big shortage of food, yet as Betty put it "they still had grain to ferment into beer??" Also, the movie was supposed to be (guessing) 50 years or so in the future, but vehicles haven't changed much (at all) and there seems to be a limitless supply of gasoline and motor fuels... I can *kinda* buy that-- the world has turned its back on technology and undergone some sort of "mini-Malthusian collapse" and gone "Luddite" to some extent (gov't textbooks saying Apollo WAS faked for pities sake!, no MRI machines, NASA banned) and thus sort of "gone Cuba" (in that they still drive cars from the 50's there since they've been "cut off" by the US for decades), so I can see that early 20-teen vehicles still being the 'norm' because nothing much was produced after that... but then the movie sort of contradicts itself...

For one thing, the education system determines who will be a farmer during adolescence, much like the old Soviet education system determined who would be sent to college and who would be directed into a trade preparatory courses or trade school preparatory coursework about the time they entered high school... (and what trade to direct them into). There is a general shunning of technology (and considerable scavenging, since Cooper puts himself, his family, and his vehicle at considerable risk to "capture" the India drone that overflies his farm, so he can scavenge it for parts, especially its computer which he can "graft into" a combine to operate it instead. There's a definite dichotomy there... I guess the "general population" was quite anti-science and Luddite, whereas the "misfits" like Cooper still embraced technology, as did certain other areas where it was required... maybe just not much of a "priority"...

It was also interesting to contemplate some sort of "mini-meltdown" of society based on lack of food, yet it resulted not in a collapse into resource wars, but an orderly progression of "eliminating armies and weapons and warfare" instead-- something which our own civilization, even in less troubled and more "resource-available" times, was nowhere even close to achieving. This was another dichotomy that I found implausible to rectify to the point of considering it a plot hole... Food is one of THE most basic resources, and its FAR more likely that nations, especially 'rogue nations' suffering a severe shortage of it will seek war as an answer (either to obtain resources or reduce the problem via "attrition"). That's why I'm a reluctant but realist believer that resource wars and some sort of "Malthusian collapse" (of whatever severity) is FAR more likely in the coming decades than any "peaceful adaptation" to increasingly scarce resources and burgeoning populations coupled with weapons proliferation and increasing sophistication and global unrest.

The O'Neill colonies were particularly well done... VERY cool... however the "adjustment" from an increasingly Luddite existence and anti-science culture on Earth to the ENORMOUS effort (and shift in mentality) required to build massive O'Neill colonies to evacuate Earth was again, such a huge unrectified dichotomy that I considered it a plot hole of sorts... Granted you can't address EVERYTHING in even a 2.5-3 hour movie without making it into a 3-4 hour movie... but still, it would have been nice to have these "holes" a little better explained or "closed"...

Anyway, it's a WONDERFUL movie and CERTAINLY should be seen by as many people as possible... I also think it's a REALLY good kids movie-- it's clean, non-sexual, and has a really inspiring and thought-provoking message and presentation, and was extremely well done and well presented. Some of the material was certainly "heavy" from a kid's perspective (Cooper leaving his young daughter especially hit 'close to home' for me, since I leave my wife and daughter for a month or so at a time twice a year to help my BIL plant and harvest crops in Indiana for the past three years (and who knows for how long) and every time I leave, I wonder if its for the last time (it is a long drive, and anything can happen, and farm work isn't the safest occupation on the planet by a LONGSHOT!) but I think that its also important for kids to learn to deal with and adapt to separation from one or both parents for some period of time, to experience some level of self-reliance and dealing with those sorts of issues, and learning that they CAN survive it and thrive and adapt, BEFORE such a thing might be FORCED upon them by events in life (such as death of a parent, divorce, etc.) I think that such things are part of growing up, and help teach the lesson "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger", and the important thing is "how *WE* REACT to the circumstances, not the circumstances themselves so much". I'm looking forward to taking Keira to see it...

Anyway, that's my first impressions...

later! OL JR :)
 
He said GOOD.

The new "re-imagined" ST movies are EXTREME over-the-top special effects at the expense of plot and good writing.

And the worst offense was the first one destroying the planet Vulcan. Thereby destroying the Star Trek Universe as we knew it.

- George Gassaway

Agree... I was kinda "on the fence" about the first JJ-Trek... the second one really sealed the deal and pushed me firmly and forcefully off the "JJAbramsTrek" bandwagon...

While I loved the casting and their performance, and how closely they mimicked the original characters without lampooning or parodying them, and some of the visuals were impressive, the story SUCKED (in BOTH movies), the sets SUCKED UTTERLY, and the whole tone of the movie was definitely NOT "Star Trek"...

JJ-Trek is a "comic book version" of Star Trek-- it's a good Saturday afternoon 2 hour romp diversion, but it lacks the "heart and soul" of what made Star Trek truly good and the long-lived phenomenon it is in its earlier incarnations... even the score of the Trek films sounds like a retooling of some goofy modern comic-book superhero crap film that seems to be all Hollywood wants to make anymore...

If I wanted to see some "Fantastic Four", "Wolverine", or "Captain America" type comic book film, I'd go see that... If I want to see "Trek", I want to see the same sort of deep character interaction and development, the exploration of various themes and quandaries of the human condition, and have a generally positive and hopeful outcome with real and lasting growth and consequences for the characters... not some fluff "superhero" comic book interpretation that just happens to be set in the "Trek universe" and feature the Trek characters...

I SHUDDER to think of how he's going to befoul the Star Wars franchise... hopefully he's learned a lesson from "Into Darkness"...

Later! OL JR :)
 
SPOILER ALERT!



There are spoilers in my reply below.

You've been warned!

I think a lot of people connected with the movie in an emotional way that I just was not able to do. My main problem with the movie was that I didn't understand some character's motivations for the things they did, and that made the emotional story just not work for me. The central emotional storyline is the relationship between Murph and Cooper, and I just did not get it. Why did she remain so angry and resentful of him for so long? It's clear that professor Brand took Murph under his wing, and she actually devoted her life to working for NASA on the same exact project that Cooper left to be a part of, so why didn't she eventually come around to seeing the importance of what he was doing and forgive him for leaving? She forgives Brand for sending her father on the mission, but she doesn't forgive her father for going. To me, that doesn't make sense. And then after everything, when the two are finally reunited, which is the main thing they both have wanted for the entire movie, they only spend about a minute together before they agree he should take off to go find astronaut Brand.

I had problems with the motivations and actions of almost every character in the movie. Why did Cooper think astronaut Brand would want him to follow her to the other planet? Didn't she go there to find Edmunds? Why didn't professor Brand just tell the astronauts that Plan A was doomed? Didn't he think that if they did find a habitable planet, they would try to return and implement hopeless Plan A instead of executing viable Plan B? Why did Mann think he needed to kill Copper? Didn't he think they would still take him with them even if he admitted he lied? And how does killing Cooper get him out of the lie anyway? He was supposedly the best and brightest among them, but he was willing to throw away the whole plan because he was stranded on an uninhabitable planet --- that did not ring true to me. Why wouldn't the brother allow his wife and son to get medical treatment? I even question the motivations and actions of the super-advanced 5-dimensional humans of the future --- why not just communicate the secret equation or black hole quantum data directly instead of this convoluted plan to get Cooper to go on this journey and communicate it back to himself (which is also a time travel paradox)?

There were a lot of scientific inaccuracies in the movie, but I can usually suspend disbelief enough to overlook those kinds of things for a good story. But the problem for me was that the story itself seemed full of false notes with the characters acting and behaving in ways that did not make sense to me.

Anyway, that's my take. I don't mean to dump on this movie, especially considering that many people did seem to connect with it emotionally and like the story and the characters. But that part just did not work for me.

These are good points that I overlooked in the first viewing but which would probably focus on more in subsequent viewings...

Goes sorta hand in hand with some of the plot holes I already mentioned...

Still, I found is a VERY refreshing movie considering the 98% pure DRIVEL that Hollywood cranks out in massive volumes nowdays which are a COMPLETE waste of time IMHO, for the most part...

Later! OL JR :)
 
These are good points that I overlooked in the first viewing but which would probably focus on more in subsequent viewings...

Goes sorta hand in hand with some of the plot holes I already mentioned...

Still, I found is a VERY refreshing movie considering the 98% pure DRIVEL that Hollywood cranks out in massive volumes nowdays which are a COMPLETE waste of time IMHO, for the most part...

Later! OL JR :)
Luke S - Been waiting for your evaluation since you are very well grounded in fact based evaluation and well researched.

I went to see it again last night with one of my neighbors and his wife, he happens to be a believer in the "moon landing hoax", also 9-11 truther.
I had to glance over at him to see his reaction where - in the beginning of the movie - Cooper is told by the school principal his daughter has been bringing moon landing "propaganda" to school.
I had an hour and a half discussion over a beer afterwards about the storyline, paradox and plot holes , cosmology in general, alternate cosmologies etc. - BTW he really liked the movie.
Haven't changed his mind on the Apollo moon landing stuff yet.
 
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Luke S - Been waiting for your evaluation since you are very well grounded in fact based evaluation and well researched.

I went to see it again last night with one of my neighbors and his wife, he happens to be a believer in the "moon landing hoax", also 9-11 truther.
I had to glance over at him to see his reaction where - in the beginning of the movie - Cooper is told by the school principal his daughter has been bringing moon landing "propaganda" to school.
I had an hour and a half discussion over a beer afterwards about the storyline, paradox and plot holes , cosmology in general, alternate cosmologies etc. - BTW he really liked the movie.
Haven't changed his mind on the Apollo moon landing stuff yet.

Well, thank you! I appreciate the kind words... :)

I just don't get the hoaxers at all... I guess it's just human nature... folks cannot accept that such a thing was possible, so it's easier to use some sort of circular logic based on fluff and rumor rather than simply accept such things were possible...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Well, thank you! I appreciate the kind words... :)

I just don't get the hoaxers at all... I guess it's just human nature... folks cannot accept that such a thing was possible, so it's easier to use some sort of circular logic based on fluff and rumor rather than simply accept such things were possible...

Later! OL JR :)

I'm trying to understand these moon landing hoax believers myself, I'm thinking it is mostly a generational thing.

For instance, my neighbor was born in 1968...so look what his world view consists of:
- the post Watergate era - numerous exposures of government scandals and cover-ups - dating back to Pentagon papers and Gulf of Tonkin etc. etc. especially Nixon - it happened during Nixon, right?
- an internet technology run wild with all manner of unverified nonsense posted as truth
-Shuttle Challenger Shuttle Columbia disasters
- NASAs foundering around trying to determine what to do and successive program cancellations while we have been stuck in earth orbit for 42 years
- decades of media and Hollywood emphasis on a distrust of the government
- the subsequent age of sophisticated computer animation and special effects movies - giving rise to suspicion of obfuscation with respect to Apollo videos
 
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Bullshit.

I was born in 1968 and I have no problem believing the moon landings happened. There are too many common sense ways to debunk hoaxers, truthers, or whatever the hell they are calling themselves this week.

It is plain old deliberately willful ignorance. Nothing more, nothing less.

FC
 
Has anyone seen the movie Sunshine? I saw it a couple months ago when my wife was out of town, and we watched it together last night. We both really liked the movie, and we both thought there were some similarities between it and Interstellar. There are also some major differences.

Similarities include the main characters are on a mission to save all life on earth, they are on a second last-chance follow-up mission and no one knows the fate of the first mission, they are out of communication with earth for a lot of the movie, and there are a lot of visually stunning shots.

Differences are that the scientific flaws in Sunshine are HUGE, and you just have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy it. (Interstellar also had scientific flaws, but they were easier to overlook than the flaws in Sunshine. It's not a spoiler to tell you that the sun is going out, and the mission is to reignite it. You just have to go with it!) Also Sunshine has some unexpected elements that sort of border on mild horror --- it's not a sci-fi slasher flick by any means, but there is some mildly creapy stuff. The ending is sort of weird and hard to follow.

Anyway, despite some flaws, I liked it. The writing and acting are pretty good, and the visual style is pretty cool. I think it is probably a love it or hate it polarizing film, but I think it is worth a chance. It has been free on Xfinity on-demand for a long time now.

And speaking of sci-fi movies that are similar to other better-known movies, has anyone seen Moon? It's a really good movie that shares a major plot element with the Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Oblivion. I think Moon is a better movie than Oblivion.
 
Bullshit.

I was born in 1968 and I have no problem believing the moon landings happened. There are too many common sense ways to debunk hoaxers, truthers, or whatever the hell they are calling themselves this week.

It is plain old deliberately willful ignorance. Nothing more, nothing less.

FC

1968 .....You're one of the rational ones....:)LOL
 
Has anyone seen the movie Sunshine? I saw it a couple months ago when my wife was out of town, and we watched it together last night. We both really liked the movie, and we both thought there were some similarities between it and Interstellar. There are also some major differences.

Similarities include the main characters are on a mission to save all life on earth, they are on a second last-chance follow-up mission and no one knows the fate of the first mission, they are out of communication with earth for a lot of the movie, and there are a lot of visually stunning shots.

Differences are that the scientific flaws in Sunshine are HUGE, and you just have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy it. (Interstellar also had scientific flaws, but they were easier to overlook than the flaws in Sunshine. It's not a spoiler to tell you that the sun is going out, and the mission is to reignite it. You just have to go with it!) Also Sunshine has some unexpected elements that sort of border on mild horror --- it's not a sci-fi slasher flick by any means, but there is some mildly creapy stuff. The ending is sort of weird and hard to follow.

Anyway, despite some flaws, I liked it. The writing and acting are pretty good, and the visual style is pretty cool. I think it is probably a love it or hate it polarizing film, but I think it is worth a chance. It has been free on Xfinity on-demand for a long time now.

And speaking of sci-fi movies that are similar to other better-known movies, has anyone seen Moon? It's a really good movie that shares a major plot element with the Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Oblivion. I think Moon is a better movie than Oblivion.

I watched "Oblivion" recently...ok movie. I couldn't get into "Moon" but I'm going to give it another try...I came in late and missed the beginning.

I have seen some fairly recent Sci - fi on cable which I liked - "Pitchblack" I thought was pretty good.
Also the remake of "Solaris" with G. Clooney.
 
Saw it with my wife tonight. Not sure what I was expecting, however I'm not certain what I saw was it. A good hard sci-fi movie with accurate scientific overtones in the Arthur C. Clarke genre. That said, I think it was about 30-40 minutes too long, and I found the score overpowering in places. It was nowhere near bad, but won't make it to my personal library.

Of course, I am more of a space opera fan, so YMMV.
 
I'm trying to understand these moon landing hoax believers myself, I'm thinking it is mostly a generational thing.

For instance, my neighbor was born in 1968...so look what his world view consists of:
- the post Watergate era - numerous exposures of government scandals and cover-ups - dating back to Pentagon papers and Gulf of Tonkin etc. etc. especially Nixon - it happened during Nixon, right?
- an internet technology run wild with all manner of unverified nonsense posted as truth
-Shuttle Challenger Shuttle Columbia disasters
- NASAs foundering around trying to determine what to do and successive program cancellations while we have been stuck in earth orbit for 42 years
- decades of media and Hollywood emphasis on a distrust of the government
- the subsequent age of sophisticated computer animation and special effects movies - giving rise to suspicion of obfuscation with respect to Apollo videos

Maybe so...

But the thing is, I was born end of March in 71... so I remember much the same things-- The wind-down of Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon, ABSCAM, the height of the nuclear arms race, the overselling and subsequent letdown of the shuttle, the war scare of 83, the digital revolution, and endless parade of canceled projects from NASA (usually due to attendant gov't stupidity), etc....

Yet *I* don't have any problem believing in Apollo...

I don't trust our gov't any further than I can throw it, I don't believe hardly anything that I hear on TV or other media, and I'm open minded enough to think that perhaps SOME conspiracies have some basis in reality-- how much or to what degree, I don't know. I think there's a LOT more to a LOT of the stories and things out there generally labeled "conspiracies" that we simply don't know, and perhaps will never know.

As a student of history, I have read about enough to know that history has a strange thread running through it... there's been any number of times that all of history would have unfolded differently had a SINGLE THING occurred (or not occurred), often largely accidentally....

Some people, I suppose, simply have to ascribe random, even coincidental, occurrences to deliberate intent, or some malicious intent. I guess that's why there is such a huge proliferation of "conspiracies" out there... Couple that with scientific ignorance, an inability to objectively weigh facts and "evidence", vivid imaginations, distrust of government, and plain old human nature...

It's a mess, with no solution in sight...

Later! OL JR :)
 
OK, been more than a couple of weeks since I posted anything on this forum, I really got SICK of it. Because once again TRF failed miserably at its goal of being an environment where everyone can kick back, relax, and be comfortable.

Anyway…… SPOILER ALERT.

Since people are posting spoilers about the movie, I will revisit what I said before about a couple of "WFT" moments, but could not say anything at the time.

The first was when Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) attacked Cooper. I could tell by the way things were going… he was about to attack him but I didn't know why. A "hard-ish" Sci-fi movie that degenerates into a physical brawl doesn't make a lot of sense. It was hard to recover from that, and finding out it was because the whole project of "Plan A" to resettle humans was a lie made a bad thing even worse. Now for me, the movie did recover from the big lie part, but still it was awkward and off-the-mark for the movie to have taken that sort of turn with a sudden brawl. This was supposed to be a sort-of-serious semi-realistic sci-fi movie, not Captain Kirk battling a Gorn or whatever.

The other "WFT" portion of the movie was what happened inside the black hole.

As Neil de Grasse Tyson has addressed in Star Talk a few times, anything entering aback hole would undergo "spaghettification". The differences in gravity forces from ones head to ones feet would be so great that the forces would try to stretch a person, like spaghetti. Though of course before they stretched that much there would be pieces ripped off then those pieces ripped into smaller pieces and so on, the human long dead.

So, how could Cooper and the robot survive that? That was a puzzle to me long after the movie was over. But by the next day I came up with a plausible explanation.

MAGIC.

But bear with me, not magic in the sense of Merlin or Grimm Fairy tales. And I will explain later exactly what I mean by magic.

The future humans had the technology to control gravitational forces, backwards thru time. If you can buy into THAT premise that the future humans can control gravity thru time (which you have to otherwise the movie falls totally apart), then if they can control gravity regardless of how powerful it is, then with the same premise then they could create a low gravity "bubble" inside of the black hole that would allow Cooper and the robot to survive in. And inside that low gravity bubble was where they constructed what Cooper experienced and used for his means of communicating with his daughter in the past.

Someone had asked in PM how could Cooper conveniently just appear near a ship in orbit around Saturn just before his air ran out? That had also puzzled me at the time, but once I got thinking about how the future humans controlled gravity, even to the point of a survival bubble inside a black hole, and remembered they created a wormhole to begin with, then if you buy the premise of the first wormhole (which again you have to or the movie falls apart), then it's "no big deal" for them to create a little wormhole to "spit" Cooper and the robot out not only near Saturn, but right next a ship so they could be rescued (and the future humans would presumably have access to accurate-enough historical records to let them know just where that ship would be at that time).

Now, when I said it was MAGIC, it was from a famous line by Arthur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The magic is that the future humans have technology so advanced, controlling gravity thru time, that it seems like magic to us and allowed for things like surviving a black hole and being spit out of the black hole to a specific place.

So, those were the two big things I had issues with. And in retrospect I consider the 2nd part solved, survival in the wormhole and Cooper appearing in orbit around Saturn. The big lie was a critical part of the movie. But the brawl still bugs me.

And I'll finish with another thing I wanted to mention before but could not. It was interesting to see Matt Damon in a spacesuit (he's not even listed as being in the movie). Because I am REALLY looking forward next year to seeing him in the title role in "The Martian", based in the fantastic book by Andy Weir.

- George Gassaway
 
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OK, been more than a couple of weeks since I posted anything on this forum, I really got SICK of it. Because once again TRF failed miserably at its goal of being an environment where everyone can kick back, relax, and be comfortable.

Anyway…… SPOILER ALERT.

Since people are posting spoilers about the movie, I will revisit what I said before about a couple of "WFT" moments, but could not say anything at the time.

The first was when Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) attacked Cooper. I could tell by the way things were going… he was about to attack him but I didn't know why. A "hard-ish" Sci-fi movie that degenerates into a physical brawl doesn't make a lot of sense. It was hard to recover from that, and finding out it was because the whole project of "Plan A" to resettle humans was a lie made a bad thing even worse. Now for me, the movie did recover from the big lie part, but still it was awkward and off-the-mark for the movie to have taken that sort of turn with a sudden brawl. This was supposed to be a sort-of-serious semi-realistic sci-fi movie, not Captain Kirk battling a Gorn or whatever.

The other "WFT" portion of the movie was what happened inside the black hole.

As Neil de Grasse Tyson has addressed in Star Talk a few times, anything entering aback hole would undergo "spaghettification". The differences in gravity forces from ones head to ones feet would be so great that the forces would try to stretch a person, like spaghetti. Though of course before they stretched that much there there be pieces ripped off then those pieces ripped into smaller pieces and so on, the human long dead.

So, how could Cooper and the robot survive that? That was a puzzle to me long after the movie was over. But by the next day I came up with a plausible explanation.

MAGIC.

But bear with me, not magic in the sense of Merlin or Grimm Fairy tales. And I will explain later exactly what kind of magic.

The future humans had the technology to control gravitational forces, backwards thru time. If you can buy into THAT premise that the future humans can control gravity thru time (which you have to otherwise the movie falls totally apart), then if they can control gravity regardless of how powerful it is, then with the same premise then they could create a low gravity "bubble" inside of the black hole that would allow Cooper and the robot to survive in. And inside that low gravity bubble was where they constructed what Cooper experienced and used for his means of communicating with his daughter in the past.

Someone had asked in PM how could Copper conveniently just appear near a ship in orbit around Saturn just before his air ran out? That had also puzzled me at the time, but once I got thinking about how the future humans controlled gravity, even to the point of a survival bubble inside a black hole, and remembered they created a wormhole to begin with, then if you buy the premise of the first wormhole (which again you have to or the movie falls apart), then it's "no big deal" for them to create a little wormhole to "spit" Copper and the robot out not only near Saturn, but right next a ship so they could be rescued (and the future humans would presumably have access to accurate-enough historical records to let them know just where that ship would be at that time).

Now, when I said it was MAGIC, it was from a famous line by Arthur C. Clarke:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The magic is that the future humans have technology so advanced, controlling gravity thru time, that it seems like magic to us and allowed for things like surviving a black hole and being spit out of the black hole to a specific place.

So, those were the two big things I had issues with. And in retrospect I consider the 2nd part solved, survival in the wormhole and Cooper appearing in orbit around Saturn. The big lie was a critical part of the movie. But the brawl still bugs me.

And I'll finish with another thing I wanted to mention before but could not. It was interesting to see Matt Damon in a spacesuit (he's not even listed as being in the movie). Because I am REALLY looking forward next year to seeing him in "The Martian", based in the fantastic book by Andy Weir.

- George Gassaway

I just finished reading The Science of Interstellar...I would HIGHLY recommend you read it GG. You will find the answers you seek...(okay, except for the fight scene).

FC
 
I think you mean "WTF" (what the fudge) rather than "WFT", which makes no sense (unless it's something I'm not aware of, which may be...)

Kinda reminds me of Biff Tannen's misuse of little sayings in the "Back to the Future" movies... ("that's as funny as a screen door on a battleship" (that's a "screen door on a submarine" ya dork!) and "why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here..." (slap to the back of the head "it's make like a tree, and LEAVE!" you sound like a d@mn fool when you say it wrong!")

Just sayin'... :)

Later! OL JR :)
 
I think you mean "WTF" (what the fudge) rather than "WFT", which makes no sense (unless it's something I'm not aware of, which may be...)......
Just sayin'... :)

i do mean "WFT". In the sense of saying "WTF" but scramblng it a bit. Since in theory this forum isn't even supposed have terms like WTF on it, and the moderators are incredibly inconsistent about what they choose to enforce.

I found out a year ago that one could not try to investigate claims that a group was holding illegal launches that broke FAA rules, and got an official strike against me, under the excuse of "inappropriate language" when I had used the properly sequenced version of "WFT" in my message. Although later I was told that was NOT why, it was due to unwritten make them up as they go along rules that were created and applied retroactively (though still not in the TRF rules and guidelines IIRC).

Just sayin'...

So, anyway why don't you make like a tree and get outta here? :)

- George Gassaway
 
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i do mean "WFT". In the sense of saying "WTF" but scramblng it a bit. Since in theory this forum isn't even supposed have terms like WTF on it, and the moderators are incredibly inconsistent about what they choose to enforce.

I found out a year ago that one could not try to investigate claims that a group was holding illegal launches that broke FAA rules, and got an official strike against me, under the excuse of "inappropriate language" when I had used the properly sequenced version of "WFT" in my message. Although later I was told that was NOT why, it was due to unwritten make them up as they go along rules that were created and applied retroactively (though still not in the TRF rules and guidelines IIRC).

Just sayin'...

So, anyway why don't you make like a tree and get outta here? :)

- George Gassaway

Ah, ok... Just wondering...

Seemed awful weird. I guess you have your reasons...

As for the other, don't get me started... "out of sight, out of mind" isn't a good thing...

Later! OL JR :)
 
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