Toonbots message board: Red Planet

Pooga Wed Jun 13 20:21:03 2001 Re: Red Planet > Does anybody else care about pseudoscience passed off as science in > Hollywood films? After all, they pay consultants big bucks to make the > military sequences as real as possible and they can't get some grad > student for the price of a good meal to do the same for the science? Just > doesn't make any sense to me. To an extent, and depending on the film: yes. Specifically, the OTHER Mars movie made that year had me rolling my eyes so often that I became dizzy. The main reason it bothered me wasn't so much BECAUSE of the techinical and physical improbabilities (if not impossibilities), but because through much of the film it's trying to play itself up as an "Apollo 13" of the future. They,re trying to make this seem like science fact that just hasn't happened yet. Of course they through all that away with the "Face on Mars was created by aliens" ending. A tip to future filmmakers (hundred of whom I'm sure read the Toonbots forum daily): if you're going to use a "mysterious unexplained phenomenon" as a major part of your story, make sure that it isn't one that was disproven over FOUR YEARS EARLIER! For those who might have missed it, newer photos taken in 1996 (IIRC) of the "Mars face" at a much higher resolution show that the geographical feature in question really doesn't look like a face at all. It was an over-enlarged section of a relatively low-res grainy picture. Finding the "Mars face" was the astronomical equivalent of finding a cloud in the shape of a bunny. This "face" is one of the key parts of what can only loosely be defined as the plot of this movie. Bah. I've thankfully blotted out most of the specifics, but there are many procedural items and occurences that left me scratching my head as to how NASA let themselves be associated with this picture. On request, I WILL submit myself to it again (my dad got the DVD as a gift) to provide details, but suffice it to say that you can take a great director, a great cast, and great special effects and still produce a movie that fails to do just about everything a movie should or could do. It's got the excitement and plotting of a documentary with the attention to detail and realism of a buddy-cop film. OTOH, there are many other films that have at least as big a problem with real-world physics that I quite thoroughly enjoyed. Armageddon was one. MI2 was another. The trick is knowing where to set your reality meter before starting the film.

Pooga Wed Jun 13 20:28:04 2001 Re: Red Planet 1> of the future. They,re trying to make this seem like science fact that 2> just hasn't happened yet. Of course they through all that away with the 3> A tip to future filmmakers (hundred of whom I'm sure read the Toonbots I really need to proofread my stuff more. :%s/They,re/They're/g 10G :s/through/throw/ :%s/hundred/hundreds/g

Pooga Wed Jun 13 20:29:43 2001 Re: Red Planet > :%s/They,re/They're/g 10G :s/through/throw/ :%s/hundred/hundreds/g Ack! what happened to my carriage returns!? They've become spaces! :(

Michael Thu Jun 14 00:09:25 2001 Re: Red Planet > Ack! what happened to my carriage returns!? They've become spaces! :( Yes, they do that. I'm considering making a Toonbots wiki, but I doubt anyone would read it. Forums, people can grok. Then on the other hand, the Jihad *is* pretty much an exclusive club for people of clue.

Napoleon Thu Jun 14 02:53:43 2001 Re: Red Planet > Yes, they do that. > I'm considering making a Toonbots wiki, but I doubt anyone would read it. > Forums, people can grok. > Then on the other hand, the Jihad *is* pretty much an exclusive club for > people of clue. Allow me to disprove that: 'wiki'? Huh?

Michael Thu Jun 14 09:56:35 2001 Re: Red Planet > Allow me to disprove that: 'wiki'? Huh? Well, OK, except for Napoleon, but everybody else is too afraid of her to say anything.

Brother Emsworth Thu Jun 14 11:54:22 2001 Wiki Wacky! > Well, OK, except for Napoleon, but everybody else is too afraid of her to > say anything. As far as I can tell, a "wiki" is a term for online collaborative endeavours, usually with a focus on software and shared ware, but sometimes devoted to a particular theme or subject, with different individuals contributing. Leastwise, that's how I understand it, so there's probably more to it than that (apparently a lot of links and whatnot involved as well.) If there were a Toonbots "wiki," at least a few Jihad members would probably read it. I'm sure I'd enjoy reading such a thing (then again, I also get a kick out of reading the pseudo-intellectual blurbs and the source codes.) Not sure why they use the term "wiki," aside from the fact that it sounds Hawaiian and is fun to say. Wiki wiki wiki! I also now have Spike Jones' Hawaiian War Chant running through my head. Hanna topoloia topolai! ::wolverines gnaw at wiki with renewed zeal::

Michael Thu Jun 14 12:00:47 2001 Re: Wiki Wacky! It's collaborative, yes. Thus you would not only read it, you'd *write* it as well. I'm not sure how it would fit in with a forum, if at all. And there's no way to ensure, with the little Wiki script I have, that some ass isn't going to come in and delete everything. No version control, no password protection, etc. But it'd be entertaining, to say the least. I think I'll set something up, anyway, and see what you all do with it. "Wiki wiki" is Hawaiian for "quick". It's a quick way to make web pages.

Tirdun Thu Jun 14 06:12:42 2001 Re: Red Planet I suspected either that Pooga was having a very indepth conversation with no one in particular or was blatantly trying to climb up the stats ladder. Fighting grammar and forum mechanics never occurred to me ;)

PV Fri Jun 15 15:05:23 2001 Re: Red Planet > I can't decide whether this was a good movie or not. On the one hand, > *somebody* was taking pains to get some stuff right: the fire on the > orbiter looked like a zero-gee fire, she put out the fire by venting > atmosphere (maybe the first nominally SF movie I've seen in which the > script writer seems to have known that space is a vacuum), the robot > looked good, the display technology is plausible. Since it was a fun film, I cut giant swaths of slack on the scientific accuracy. For everything they did right (my favorite example - the lander used the exact same touchdown method as Pathfinder did back in 1997. It could almost be a film of the pathfinder landing in fact), they did ten things wrong. A few that come to mind without even breaking a sweat: - The geneticist (Played by Robert Sizemore), when pompously enumerating the "four letter alphabet" he works in, gets one of the four letters wrong. He said "A, T, G, P", when any high-school biology student knows it's "A, T, G, C". - Mars has a datum (sea level equivalent when you have no seas) level total atmospheric pressure equivalent to about 100,000 feet altitude on earth; less than 5% of earth's sea-level pressure. Even if all of that miraculously became oxygen, it still wouldn't be breathable, even for a moment. You might as well be in space. They also talk about the ice storms being a "low pressure area", and state the pressure in hundreds of millibars. Huh? - They actually got the stats on Sojourner's transmitter correct (down to mentioning that it was based on an old 14.4K modem). Unfortunately though, Sojourner's trasmitting range could be measured in feet, not millions of miles. Pathfinder itself (seen briefly) did all the talking to home, via a largish high-gain dish antenna. None of the gear in either piece could possibly talk to home when carried around. Also, the batteries on both units are very, very, dead, and not rechargable anymore even today. The final death of the batteries are what ended the pathfinder mission. - The ship was beautiful, taken directly from NASA concept paintings. But as Michael said, a spinning section doesn't act like articifical gravity. It won't quickly turn on and off, falling objects would tend to follow a very noticeable curved path, and the vast majority of the ship would still be in zero G. - They did a fair job with the "AI" systems. I thoroughly enjoyed how stupidly the ship's systems reacted to speech. On the other hand, AMEE was far too competent a system, in just about every way. It (she) may as well have been T1 without Arnold wrapped around the skeleton. Sorry folks, robots like that are many nobel prizes away. - No animal life we know of *produces* oxygen. Sure the mars surface radiation would make for lots of mutations, but a) it's not a survival trait for the nematodes. If they produce it, they don't need it to breathe, and b) nothing like that is going to develop without tens of thousands of years of evolution in something as complex as an insect. Molds and bacteria evolve lots faster (it's easy when your generation time can be as short as a half hour), but they aren't as photogenic. - The impression was that something was going bad on earth, and Mars was being terraformed. Good luck with just some blue-green algae - it would die within minutes. The generally accepted technique would be to bomb mars with comets for a couple hundred years first, then start seeding with plants. The whole process would take more than 1000 years. Planets are big places. > Does anybody else care about pseudoscience passed off as science in > Hollywood films? After all, they pay consultants big bucks to make the This wasn't pseudoscience - it was just poor to nonexistent research. PV

Michael Mon Jun 18 14:52:45 2001 Re: Red Planet > Since it was a fun film, I cut giant swaths of slack on the scientific > accuracy. That's what my wife tells me to do. Drives her crazy. > - The geneticist (Played by Robert Sizemore), when pompously enumerating > the "four letter alphabet" he works in, gets one of the four > letters wrong. He said "A, T, G, P", when any high-school > biology student knows it's "A, T, G, C". Ha. I was only halfway paying attention there. I thought something was fishy with it. > Also, the batteries on both > units are very, very, dead, and not rechargable anymore even today. The > final death of the batteries are what ended the pathfinder mission. They did show a solar panel. (Then they showed them still talking at night.) That was enough to suspend my disbelief. > Sorry folks, robots like that are many nobel prizes away. Y'know, being in the field, at least marginally, I will actually almost believe robots that good in twenty years. And believe me -- the speech recognition showed was both non-stupid and quite plausible given twenty years. But AMEE was so beautiful I had no problems assuming she could exist. Nitpicking's one thing, but I just haven't the heart to nitpick something that pretty. > - No animal life we know of *produces* oxygen. Sure the mars surface > radiation would make for lots of mutations, but a) it's not a survival > trait for the nematodes. If they produce it, they don't need it to > breathe, and b) nothing like that is going to develop without tens of > thousands of years of evolution in something as complex as an insect. > Molds and bacteria evolve lots faster (it's easy when your generation time > can be as short as a half hour), but they aren't as photogenic. Yeah, the whole nematode thing killed me. And they're explosive, too! > This wasn't pseudoscience - it was just poor to nonexistent research. PV But that's what ticks me off. The research just wouldn't have taken very much to do, but they classify it as completely unimportant. Grrrr.

pv Wed Jun 20 11:16:46 2001 Re: Red Planet > They did show a solar panel. (Then they showed them still talking at > night.) That was enough to suspend my disbelief. The solar panels were used to recharge the batteries on pathfinder and sojourner. They never had enough power to run much of anything by themselves. I can't recall the wattage used on the high-gain transmitter, but it took about two square yards of solar panel to keep pathfinder charged, and the transmitter was by far the biggest load. > Y'know, being in the field, at least marginally, I will actually almost > believe robots that good in twenty years. And believe me -- the speech > recognition showed was both non-stupid and quite plausible given twenty > years. Stupid in the sense of extremely literal, and totally unable to cope with extraneous comments. As I said, I thought that part was dead-on target. As for robots being as advanced as depicted in 20 years, they said the same thing in 1980, and you can't even get one to do a decent job of mowing the lawn, let alone trusting them with deadly force. > But AMEE was so beautiful I had no problems assuming she could exist. > Nitpicking's one thing, but I just haven't the heart to nitpick something > that pretty. Damn straight. AMEE was probably the best motion-capture CGI that I've ever seen. Definitely slackworthy. > But that's what ticks me off. The research just wouldn't have taken very > much to do, but they classify it as completely unimportant. At least they didn't talk about the "face" in Cydonia. That would have *really* pissed me off. PV

Michael Wed Jun 20 14:30:18 2001 Re: Red Planet > As > for robots being as advanced as depicted in 20 years, they said the same > thing in 1980, and you can't even get one to do a decent job of mowing the > lawn, let alone trusting them with deadly force. Ha. Granted. But things are accelerating. And of course, in 1980, *I* wasn't in the field yet....

Tirdun Wed Jun 20 18:44:29 2001 Re: Red Planet > But things are accelerating. And of course, in 1980, *I* wasn't in the > field yet.... Meaning that there will one day be uh... toonBOTS? Will they be programmable with XML and have communist personalities? The kickass potential arcs along a rapidly inclining slope toward infinity. Or something.

Michael Wed Jun 20 22:48:12 2001 Re: Red Planet > Meaning that there will one day be uh... toonBOTS? Will they be > programmable with XML and have communist personalities? The kickass > potential arcs along a rapidly inclining slope toward infinity. Or > something. Yeah. That works for me. Singularity ho! Kind of like Max Headroom, except maybe Mao Headroom.... Hmm....

Tirdun Thu Jun 21 06:43:11 2001 Re: Red Planet > Yeah. That works for me. Singularity ho! Kind of like Max Headroom, except > maybe Mao Headroom.... Hey! F-F-F-F-F-F-F-Fred! This P-P-P-P-Pickle Crisp Suh-Suh-Suh-Sucks!