IMDB and Interstellar

[Awaras]

You bring up a good point and one I hadn't considered. However I still find it unlikely that you can bring that much dirt, air, water, people, food for people (while they wait for their magic space corn to grow), etc without some degree of contamination. I mean, we're talking a pestilence so pervasive that no food crop was safe on Earth.

Exactly, and if they had the means to decontaminate all of that, they could have done the same in underground habitats or domes of some kind without the need to launch everything into space...

[rtxoff]

Actually, it is relevant whether you have a degree or not. I can also claim to have studied something in college related to relativity and start making assumptions here.

Sorry but no, a degree doesn't qualify you to own the collected knowledge of all mankind. Also it doesn't automatically qualify to hold the stick of truth.

I know plumbers that made millions and also i know people with a degree that became homeless.

Having a degree is not a valid argument for something to be true or not. A good discussion is not dictated through being someone with a degree or not however it can certainly be an advantage to have an degree and some knowledge about the discussed topic.

In a time where people in some countries can buy their degree with money it means nothing.

[ment18]

1. He "transmitted" the data by Morse Code, one letter at a time about, "singularity data"(probably very large) and got found within the spacesuit's supplies

2. Gravity was very iffy, they sat down in 0g, had gravity in the center of the spinning ship

3. The ship on a near escape trajectory falls back into the black hole.

4. couldn't the guy decouple the ship, leave the ship, and board the endurance? They would have to turn the engines off for a few minutes but that shouldn't matter

[Vanamonde]

Please talk about the movie rather than each other's personalities.

[adsii1970]

Ok, first and foremost, Intersteller was (wait for it.... wait for it....!) A MOVIE! and to expect anything other than what I refer to as "loose space physics and mechanics." Let's face it, if X-wing fighters actually performed according to what we understand about space travel, Star Wars would never have been a block buster hit. Star Wars would not be a block buster hit if instead of having high speed space chases that resemble the aereial dogfights of the First and Second World Wars but accurately performing spacecraft instead. I would like to give kudos to the people at SyFy that attempted to be accurate with the first season of Battlestar Galactica, and even they abandoned it to appease an audience that wanted action and visually thrilling chases rather than accurate depictions of space and space travel. After all, the move Avatar played very loose with physics but it does not negate its standing as a good movie for entertainment purposes.

Beyond most "cult" followings such as those Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and even KSP, we love space more than the average person. We dream of space, we dream of space travel, and I speak for myself here, I will endure bad acting just to see the view of space that a movie's producing crew and directors have. Watching sci-fi movies and expecting them to be completely accurate with astrophysics would be like demanding that SpongeBob depict accurate life in the sea. Both sci-fi and SpongeBob have something in common - an audience that demands what they want to see rather than what really exists. Every once in a while there are movies that are both accurate AND are popular, such as Schindler's List. Even most "accurate" war flicks, a very popular genre of movies, is not completely historically accurate. Many times characters and events themselves are slightly altered to appeal to the movie-going public. Think of movies such as Pearl Harbor, Titanic, and others that are based on real events. When people go to the movies they do not go to see reality; they go to movies to escape reality and to be entertained.

For those of you complaining about Intersteller, did you even bother to watch the special features? There is an interview with one of the physicists who helped with the science and physics portion of the movie. He even admits there is so much we do not understand about black holes and the cosmos in general, that some of the stuff in the film is based on theoretical physics. Again, with the vast majority of moviegoers simply wanting a good storyline, great visual effects, and a good cast and soundtrack, Interstellar did that well.

[Cydonian Monk]

For those of you complaining about Intersteller, did you even bother to watch the special features?

They don't show the special features in the theatre, so, no. (Though they charge more than the price of a BluRay, so I'm starting to think they should.)

[Shpaget]

Honestly, the thing that bothered me the most for some reason is that half the ship blows away randomly and yet the ship spin is still perfectly centered on the docking port, lol.

Not only that but the ship that is docking also has the center of mass conveniently placed on the docking port axis. Docking port is on top side of the ship and the astronauts in the cockpit, which is clearly in front of the docking port and facing forward are experiencing some monstrous lateral centrifugal force, not forward.

Also, when they are leaving Earth, they have spun up the ship. They are obviously experiencing simulated gravity even though they are almost in the middle of the rotating ship. Furthermore, the Earth is in the center of the rotating frame as seen from the cockpit. I would expect it to be to the side, rapidly and repeatedly coming from one side of the frame. There is no sense in the ship pointing at the Earth, since the engines would be facing the wrong way.

Addressing the Star Wars parallel... Star Wars is not a science fiction movie. It has never been. With all those knights, princesses, magic powers and wondrous creatures I wouldn't look further than calling it a fantasy flick.

Interstellar, on the other hand, is portrayed as a science fiction movie. Unfortunately with the emphasis on the fiction and the underachieving science department.

At the end, when they fished out the main character out of space I just could not ignore the similarity with 3001: The Final Odyssey...

Edited May 12, 2015 by Shpaget

[adsii1970]

They don't show the special features in the theatre, so, no. (Though they charge more than the price of a BluRay, so I'm starting to think they should.)

I hear you; I have not been to the theater since Star Trek: Into the Darkness came out. By the time you add the snacks (just not for Kerbals ) and the tickets, nearly $40 spent - and you're right! I bought the director's cut Blu-Ray for just barely above $25. And what's better? When I need to do a snack or bathroom break, I can pause it and NOT miss any of the movie! Besides, the extra content on the Blu-Ray actually makes buying the disc a better value than the theater experience.

[SpaceXray]

1. He "transmitted" the data by Morse Code, one letter at a time about, "singularity data"(probably very large) and got found within the spacesuit's supplies

2. Gravity was very iffy, they sat down in 0g, had gravity in the center of the spinning ship

3. The ship on a near escape trajectory falls back into the black hole.

4. couldn't the guy decouple the ship, leave the ship, and board the endurance? They would have to turn the engines off for a few minutes but that shouldn't matter

Actually, it WOULD matter(also you have a grammar mistake there).

It is impossible to undock a ship without anyone on it. The grabber mechanism is located on the Ranger

Furthermore,their maneuver had a periapsis dangerously close to the even horizon, so they had no time to spare. Also remember, those are high-tech plasma engines, and every engine re-ignition is a risk. Shutting down engines and re-activating them isn't as easy as in KSP.

Also, to ignite the Ranger engines, someone had to be on board to do that, as well as shut them down.

It would also take too much time for Cooper to get out of the Ranger, close the hatch, and somehow ditch it, all while the Endurance is accelerating. Of course, none of this would be possible, so the only option was staying in the Ranger.

But yes, there is something weird going on with centripetal force at the center of a spinning Endurance. They probably thought it was too complex to have to act it out. Zero G scenes take a lot of prep and acting skills, and are very tiring and complex.

Edited May 12, 2015 by SpaceXray

[theend3r]

Furthermore,their maneuver had a periapsis dangerously close to the even horizon, so they had no time to spare. Also remember, those are high-tech plasma engines, and every engine re-ignition is a risk. Shutting down engines and re-activating them isn't as easy as in KSP.

Also, to ignite the Ranger engines, someone had to be on board to do that, as well as shut them down.

It would also take too much time for Cooper to get out of the Ranger, close the hatch, and somehow ditch it, all while the Endurance is accelerating. Of course, none of this would be possible, so the only option was staying in the Ranger.

But yes, there is something weird going on with centripetal force at the center of a spinning Endurance. They probably thought it was too complex to have to act it out. Zero G scenes take a lot of prep and acting skills, and are very tiring and complex.

That's some ancient tech if it can't be remotely controlled.

As for the periapsis being close to the event horizon that would imply they were moving at velocity close to c relative to the black hole so their puny engines wouldn't do squat anyway. Also with a celestial body this large waiting a few minutes wouldn't change the maneuver all that much.

[adsii1970]

Addressing the Star Wars parallel... Star Wars is not a science fiction movie. It has never been. With all those knights, princesses, magic powers and wondrous creatures I wouldn't look further than calling it a fantasy flick.

Interstellar, on the other hand, is portrayed as a science fiction movie. Unfortunately with the emphasis on the fiction and the underachieving science department.

At the end, when they fished out the main character out of space I just could not ignore the similarity with 3001: The Final Odyssey...

No, Star Wars is not science fiction, but science fantasy. It does contain elements of science fiction within it. 3001: The Final Odyssey was never turned into a movie but was the last installment of the Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke. In my opinion, it was also the worst of the series with 2001 and 2061 being the two best books.

As a side note, when 2010 and 2061 were originally published, the nation the U.S. was competing against was not the Russians (Soviet Union) but the Chinese. When 2010 was made into a movie, the director and producers were certain the American public would NEVER see the Chinese as space rivals, so the screenplay changed 2010 to have the U.S.'s rival to be the Russians - remember, the movie was produced in the last twenty years of the Cold War and there was no consensus as to when it would ever end. In the end, Clarke's vision of the Chinese being our main space rivals in the 21st Century was spot on.

[billbobjebkirk]

With regards to the docking scene, I prefer to imagine that the port was spinning off center, and possibly off axis, which would actually justify CASE's comment about it being impossible.

[Shpaget]

That was exactly my thought when I first heard CASE say it, however, they proceed to do it anyway. What does that mean? That CASE miscalculated? That hardly seems likely since that calculation is trivial if you know where the center of mass is in relation to the docking port, the angular speed required and the thrust the thrusters can produce. You don't need a highly advanced computer to do that sort of math.

In the end, it turns out it's just another inconsequential filler dialogue line intended to increase the suspense for a few seconds and another hole in the movie.

There is no science in Star Wars, so it can't be called science anything.

[tater]

It's funny that someone would be in here vociferously defending realism in that movie (I saw it for the first time last night). Even more funny is requiring that a contrary opinion must hold a physics degree, but not a pro opinion, apparently (is astrophysics good enough?)

My verdict? It was somewhat entertaining as an action movie, but fairly ridiculous. Treat it as a fantasy. I knew almost nothing about it, but had heard positive generalities (from non-science people)… I was expecting rather more.

Any planet close enough to experience GR time dilation effects would be ripped to pieces by tidal forces I'd think, and the radiation levels would make life untenable regardless (all that junk in the accretion disk banging together produces x-rays, after all, and that's assuming the planet was even there and not inside the Roche limit).

Of course we first needed to suspend disbelief on getting into a black hole without being torn to pieces by tidal forces in the first place. (I suggest "magic").

Just because it uses GR as a plot device doesn't mean it's accurate, it just means it exposes an audience to the idea that GR is a thing. I suppose for our group, here, it's "very kerbal" in that they send a hugely important space mission without planning, well, at all. They had 3 places to visit, even without knowing the order before hand due to lack of communications, they'd have pre-figured all the possible combinations of visits possible to allow the crew educated choices, not Han Solo seat of the pants flying.

I liked the O'Neil colony.

<EDIT>

Been thinking more about this (wife was just asking me as she fell asleep during the film). The whole first planet thread was spectacularly dumb for the reasons I mentioned above. The required plot device was GR time dilation, right? One, have that ocean world at a reasonable distance, which means no time dilation there. None. Then have the Endurance be on the other side of the system such that travel times to visit the worlds are not good for their required time window---say bad alignment of the various worlds (ideally it should be a binary system, as they need a real sun, so maybe the 2d two worlds are a LONG way away from the black hole around the "real" sun (50-100 AU? (Saturn is ~10 AU from our sun)). The water world is between someplace safe from radiation and tidal forces… but on the opposite side of the binary system. Then, to get the dilation effect they need for plot, he plots a slingshot that dips into where time dilation effects kick in. Anyway, you can get the plot device without that absurd 1st world entirely. Of course they get vastly more time dilation effect entering (or even closely approaching) a black hole anyway, even presuming a magical way to not get killed doing so. At the event horizon, it stops entirely, so if they passed into the first black hole, everyone on earth was long dead (as well as our Sun) before the story even starts moving along

On an engineering level… how is it they need a Saturn V to get to orbit from earth, but they can SSTO on a world with 1.3g surface gravity in a tiny spaceplane?

Edited May 14, 2015 by tater

[Kuu Lightwing]

everybody is just nitpicking too much. Yes it's not completely realistic, but what scifi movie is? even praised 2001 had issues with realism. I liked Interstellar even though I too noticed some issues.

Edited May 14, 2015 by Kuu Lightwing

[Deutherius]

On an engineering level… how is it they need a Saturn V to get to orbit from earth, but they can SSTO on a world with 1.3g surface gravity in a tiny spaceplane?

I thought it was the SLS. Anyway, fuel? Maybe they didn't need it, it was just convenient. If you could choose between sending up the ranger and depleting all (/most) of its fuel supplies, or using a giant rocket that you just have lying around from the golden age (without any better purpose for it, really) and keep all (/most) of the ranger's fuel, what would you do?