Possible alternate ending to Armageddon (Warning: contains spoilers)

[rpayne88]

Warning: This contains spoilers.

I just saw the movie Armageddon today. If you have seen it, or haven't and can infer what happens by reading this post, you know what ultimately happens at the end of the movie. I think I may have come up with a more practical solution to the situation the crew faced. I'm by no means an expert on Hollywood nukes, but I have a possible solution to the situation. The solution relies on basic electronic circuits. Since there was still a hard wired way to detonate it, that is the way that got used in the movie after they defused it earlier in the plot. Wouldn't it have been possible to wire an RC (as in resistor- capacitor) circuit. In other words, its a very simple timer. The only two things you need are a resistor and a capacitor. The resistor and capacitors could be found on board the rover they left behind. Lets say that for some reason, they couldn't get a resistor or capacitor (damned surface mounted hardware.) They could easily make their own. The resistor would be the easiest; just a long piece of wire or metal. The capacitor would be a little harder, but still doable (albeit, somewhat disgusting.) Using a waste bag, water bottle, ect. as a containment device, use the natural occurring salt in urine to form an electrolytic. Then seal the container with two copper (or any other metal) leads. The leads would terminate inside the bottle attached to a piece of foil (their in space, so their bound to have a bit of that somewhere.) The foil acts as electrodes (I think that's the technical term for them.) The resistor is then wired to the capacitor which are then wired to a battery (once again, they are bound to have one somewhere.) The way it works is this. Electric current flows through the resistor, losing both current and voltage. That decreased current takes a longer time to charge the capacitor. Once the capacitor is charged, it discharges across the electrolytic and sends electricity into the bomb to detonate it. Meanwhile, the ENTIRE crew hops in the spacecraft and flees the blast zone with all due haste. Then they can watch the fireworks for a few minutes before returning home as heroes. I'm not an electrical or nuclear engineer, but provided they had enough voltage from the battery, I think this would work. If it would, this winds up as another case of Hollywood dramatizing stuff.

Can anyone tell me if I may be right or wrong.

[Nikolai]

At the level of science displayed by Armageddon, electricity is magic. So, in the movie, your plan would work. So would hitting it with a wrench. So would squinting at it until the switch felt intimidated.

If you're trying to make an RC circuit for real out of the material you just mentioned, you'd need a long wire. The decay time of an RC circuit is proportional to the resistance times the capacitance, and your resistance is pretty close to zero -- meaning that the timer would elapse really, really quickly.

[astropapi1]

Armageddon =/= science.

[Ralathon]

Didn't they have a 1 year notice for the asteroid in that movie? If we start to apply realism to that movie we'd probably just launch a nuke at it as soon as possible and use the detonation to push it out of the way. If it'll take another year before the thing is scheduled to hit you only need a small push to make it miss.

[Blue]

Who needs to be practical when you can be dramatic?

WELCOME TO REALITY

[Nikolai]

Didn't they have a 1 year notice for the asteroid in that movie?

Eighteen days. Yeah, when it came to science, they just. Didn't. Care.

If we start to apply realism to that movie we'd probably just launch a nuke at it as soon as possible and use the detonation to push it out of the way. If it'll take another year before the thing is scheduled to hit you only need a small push to make it miss.

You're not going to move an asteroid that the movie called "the size of Texas" (about 1250 km across, larger than 1 Ceres) that far in a year with one nuke.

Let's say the thing is made of rock, roughly 2500 kg/m^3. That gives us a total mass of 2.56e+21 kg. If you want to move that at the minimum speed necessary to miss the Earth from a head-on strike in a year, you need to change its speed by 0.202 m/s. That means your nuke, if you could direct all of the energy to asteroid deflection, needs to yield 5.22e+19 joules, or about 12,500 megatons. The largest nuclear bomb ever constructed, the Soviet "Tsar Bomba", had an estimated 50 megatons of explosive yield.

I can show you the math if you like.

[TwoHedWlf]

One problem with your idea...They did not hire macguyver for the mission making it impossible.

[Moon Goddess]

See I thought your alternate ending was going to be, they blow up the asteroid. Then the debris of the asteroid now hits the earth with the exact same kinetic energy that it had before only now dispearsed over the entire globe and wipes out all life on earth.

I thought that would be a fitting ending.

[Awaras]

You might as well argue the scientific merit of using unobtanium instead of adamantium in 'The Core'.

Hollywood doesn't give a d*mn about scientific accuracy.

[Galacticruler]

You might as well argue the scientific merit of using unobtanium instead of adamantium in 'The Core'.

Adamantium: Indestructible, unyielding to heat or hydraulics, weak to intense magnetic fields, nearly impossible to obtain. Unobtanium: Not quite indestructible, gains molecular strength with pressure, yields to massive hydraulic force, magnetism...unknown.

[rocknroller]

Remember....this is Hollywood.....err...fantasyland where people leap over tall buildings in a single bound. For entertainment this movie is about as good as it gets. It is made for enjoyment and most of all...to bring in the big bucks....Bruce Willis is a great action hero type and puts most of the others to shame.

However, you must remember that in the movie world...anything is possible and only those mentally impaired take it seriously....remember when a group of people slept out on the sidewalk just to be sure they could get in to see Starwars?

This mentality especially among the populace and many of the actors, gives reason for serious problems involving credibility....Extremely mediocre actors...yes....rational thinkers and the ability to reason...not a chance.....most of them are so impressed with themselves that they actually believe the crap and tripe that they espouse and support.

Please don't take my word for it...just be thankful for the very few actors that have or have had any common sense and pray that there are more to come....want an example of really good actors....Paul Newman, Charleston Heston, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne just to name a few (there are many more) real actors from the old school....

Today the number is greatly diminished e.g. Alec Baldwin, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez, Dr. Phil, Oprah and on and on.....it's hard to believe that people take these idiots seriously but they do and they pay them absurd fees for nothing...all it takes is marketing and the right endorsements to succeed.... real talent is no longer a requirement....

[Seret]

IIRC we're talking about the same movie where they sent a giant muscular off-road vehicle with a gatling gun on it. So I don't think applying common sense to the technology involved will help much, because it was clearly written by an idiot.

It's a Michael Bay movie, you're not supposed to be watching it if you've got more than about 4 brain cells banging around inside your skull.