njohnson747
02-05-08, 07:55 PM
Super-Technology has no fail-safe rather just one button to obliterate all!;) nice drive setup, eh?
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/1169/selfdestructpanelty9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Sci-Fi Movies Need a Button Labeled "Improve Premise" in the face of Tech Reality
by Gregg Easterbrook
"Stargate Atlantis" is airing fresh episodes, and though the series has gotten lame, bear in mind that Atlantis and the droning, desperate-for-material "Battlestar Galactica" are the only first-run, space science-fiction programs on U.S. television. With all the money made on the various "Star Trek" serials, it's hard to believe the Trek franchise has abandoned the Alpha Quadrant and no alternative has appeared. Someone needs to come up with a new space-based sci-fi series. Just make sure the title includes the word "star," as sci-fi's three most successful television and theatrical efforts are "Star Trek," "Star Wars" and "Stargate."
A recent "Stargate Atlantis" episode hinged on an absurd button, which brings up the role of Absurd Buttons in sci-fi. Our plucky, wise-cracking Stargate commandos had been taken captive aboard a super-advanced alien starcruiser on its way to destroy Earth. The starcruiser was a product of an alien society that built the most sophisticated technology in the universe. The wise-cracking commandoes saved Earth by causing the starcruiser's power source to overload, exploding and destroying the ship; the plucky earthlings beamed off at the last instant. How did they cause the power source of overload? By pressing one single button.
I've never been aboard a super-advanced, faster-than-light starcruiser, but am guessing they don't have buttons marked CAUSE DEADLY POWER OVERLOAD. I am guessing that engineers capable of designing intergalactic starships do not build buttons that, if touched, instantly destroy the vessel. I am guessing that super-advanced, faster-than-light starships would have power sources that are elaborately safeguarded against overloads, plus protected by multiple redundant backup systems.
Reader Víctor Moreno of Querétaro, Mexico, an aviation engineer, notes that in the sci-fi movie "The Island," "The hero turns off a big switch and a huge spinning wheel catastrophically collapses. I wonder who was the bright guy who designed a switch that, if thrown at the wrong moment, could create such havoc. I work in the aircraft-engine business, and we definitely don't engineer those kind of switches. On the contrary, we go to great lengths looking for possible failure modes and act to eliminate or minimize the possibility."
Yet Absurd Buttons that cause instant catastrophe are a staple of the sci-fi and action genres. In one episode of "Star Trek: the Next Generation," an invincible battlestar of the ominous Borg fleet is about to destroy Earth. Plucky Captain Picard uses telepathy to trick the aliens on the Borg battlestar into falling asleep; immediately, their invincible ship explodes. Its self-destruct mechanism, we are told, was rigged to activate if everyone on board went to sleep. And why exactly would a super-advanced species able to construct gigantic, faster-than-light starcruisers design a mechanism that causes a ship to explode if the crew needs to sleep? In "The Return," a Star Trek novel sold as "by" William Shatner, Captain Kirk also fights the menacing Borg. Arriving at the Borg homeworld, Kirk discovers the sinister cyborg society has a self-destruct mechanism capable of exploding the planet; Kirk activates the mechanism, saving the galaxy while, of course, beaming out at the last instant. Set aside why a super-advanced alien world would want to devise a self-destruct mechanism for its own home planet. The fun part is that the planetary obliteration system is triggered by flipping a single toggle switch.
The best Absurd Buttons come in the James Bond movie "Moonraker." A supervillain has built his own private fleet of space shuttles, plus constructed an entire hollowed-out mountain from which five space shuttles can be launched simultaneously. I haven't priced hollowed-out mountains lately, but a construction project to excavate a mountain and place inside it a spaceport five times the size of the Kennedy Space Center should cost hundreds of billions of dollars, plus require thousands of workers many years to complete. Yet no one noticed the thousands of workers and their countless pieces of heavy equipment spending years hollowing out a mountain! The five space shuttles blast off, and fly to a space station several times the size of the actual International Space Station. Since the ISS has cost about $100 billion to build and place in orbit, the supervillain's much larger space station must have cost more. So based on his spending, the supervillain is by far the richest person in world history, yet no one knows about him, and no one notices the dozens of heavy-lift rocket launches necessary to place the components of his space station in orbit.
Needless to say, the space station is designed to destroy the world, and needless to say, James Bond gets aboard. What does 007 find but two big toggle switches. The first engages a "radar cloaking device" that, the supervillain explains, has prevented the space station from being detected by NORAD. CLICK HERE for NORAD's Web site (http://www.norad.mil/); note that this Pentagon-owned, top-secret military installation has a marketing slogan. Wait, even if there were "radar cloaking," a huge space station could be seen with the naked eye! Anyone can see the ISS with the naked eye; I've watched it pass overhead. This utility (CLICK HERE) (http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/)allows you to determine when the actual space station will make a naked-eye pass above your area.
Be that as it may, Bond lunges for the "radar cloaking device" switch and throws it into the OFF position. Immediately, NORAD detects the evil facility, and shortly thereafter, a space shuttle full of U.S. Marines is launched to attack. Now, if you built a space station designed to destroy the world, and its existence depended on "radar cloaking," would you include a mechanism that switches off the cloak by pushing a single button? But here's the best part. The other huge ON/OFF button controls the station's artificial gravity. Bond flips the switch to OFF and immediately the station begins to spiral out of control and break up. If your ultra-expensive space station depended on artificial gravity, would you design that system to be switched off by pushing a single button?
SOURCE (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080205&sportCat=nfl&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines#ashcroft)
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/1169/selfdestructpanelty9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Sci-Fi Movies Need a Button Labeled "Improve Premise" in the face of Tech Reality
by Gregg Easterbrook
"Stargate Atlantis" is airing fresh episodes, and though the series has gotten lame, bear in mind that Atlantis and the droning, desperate-for-material "Battlestar Galactica" are the only first-run, space science-fiction programs on U.S. television. With all the money made on the various "Star Trek" serials, it's hard to believe the Trek franchise has abandoned the Alpha Quadrant and no alternative has appeared. Someone needs to come up with a new space-based sci-fi series. Just make sure the title includes the word "star," as sci-fi's three most successful television and theatrical efforts are "Star Trek," "Star Wars" and "Stargate."
A recent "Stargate Atlantis" episode hinged on an absurd button, which brings up the role of Absurd Buttons in sci-fi. Our plucky, wise-cracking Stargate commandos had been taken captive aboard a super-advanced alien starcruiser on its way to destroy Earth. The starcruiser was a product of an alien society that built the most sophisticated technology in the universe. The wise-cracking commandoes saved Earth by causing the starcruiser's power source to overload, exploding and destroying the ship; the plucky earthlings beamed off at the last instant. How did they cause the power source of overload? By pressing one single button.
I've never been aboard a super-advanced, faster-than-light starcruiser, but am guessing they don't have buttons marked CAUSE DEADLY POWER OVERLOAD. I am guessing that engineers capable of designing intergalactic starships do not build buttons that, if touched, instantly destroy the vessel. I am guessing that super-advanced, faster-than-light starships would have power sources that are elaborately safeguarded against overloads, plus protected by multiple redundant backup systems.
Reader Víctor Moreno of Querétaro, Mexico, an aviation engineer, notes that in the sci-fi movie "The Island," "The hero turns off a big switch and a huge spinning wheel catastrophically collapses. I wonder who was the bright guy who designed a switch that, if thrown at the wrong moment, could create such havoc. I work in the aircraft-engine business, and we definitely don't engineer those kind of switches. On the contrary, we go to great lengths looking for possible failure modes and act to eliminate or minimize the possibility."
Yet Absurd Buttons that cause instant catastrophe are a staple of the sci-fi and action genres. In one episode of "Star Trek: the Next Generation," an invincible battlestar of the ominous Borg fleet is about to destroy Earth. Plucky Captain Picard uses telepathy to trick the aliens on the Borg battlestar into falling asleep; immediately, their invincible ship explodes. Its self-destruct mechanism, we are told, was rigged to activate if everyone on board went to sleep. And why exactly would a super-advanced species able to construct gigantic, faster-than-light starcruisers design a mechanism that causes a ship to explode if the crew needs to sleep? In "The Return," a Star Trek novel sold as "by" William Shatner, Captain Kirk also fights the menacing Borg. Arriving at the Borg homeworld, Kirk discovers the sinister cyborg society has a self-destruct mechanism capable of exploding the planet; Kirk activates the mechanism, saving the galaxy while, of course, beaming out at the last instant. Set aside why a super-advanced alien world would want to devise a self-destruct mechanism for its own home planet. The fun part is that the planetary obliteration system is triggered by flipping a single toggle switch.
The best Absurd Buttons come in the James Bond movie "Moonraker." A supervillain has built his own private fleet of space shuttles, plus constructed an entire hollowed-out mountain from which five space shuttles can be launched simultaneously. I haven't priced hollowed-out mountains lately, but a construction project to excavate a mountain and place inside it a spaceport five times the size of the Kennedy Space Center should cost hundreds of billions of dollars, plus require thousands of workers many years to complete. Yet no one noticed the thousands of workers and their countless pieces of heavy equipment spending years hollowing out a mountain! The five space shuttles blast off, and fly to a space station several times the size of the actual International Space Station. Since the ISS has cost about $100 billion to build and place in orbit, the supervillain's much larger space station must have cost more. So based on his spending, the supervillain is by far the richest person in world history, yet no one knows about him, and no one notices the dozens of heavy-lift rocket launches necessary to place the components of his space station in orbit.
Needless to say, the space station is designed to destroy the world, and needless to say, James Bond gets aboard. What does 007 find but two big toggle switches. The first engages a "radar cloaking device" that, the supervillain explains, has prevented the space station from being detected by NORAD. CLICK HERE for NORAD's Web site (http://www.norad.mil/); note that this Pentagon-owned, top-secret military installation has a marketing slogan. Wait, even if there were "radar cloaking," a huge space station could be seen with the naked eye! Anyone can see the ISS with the naked eye; I've watched it pass overhead. This utility (CLICK HERE) (http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/)allows you to determine when the actual space station will make a naked-eye pass above your area.
Be that as it may, Bond lunges for the "radar cloaking device" switch and throws it into the OFF position. Immediately, NORAD detects the evil facility, and shortly thereafter, a space shuttle full of U.S. Marines is launched to attack. Now, if you built a space station designed to destroy the world, and its existence depended on "radar cloaking," would you include a mechanism that switches off the cloak by pushing a single button? But here's the best part. The other huge ON/OFF button controls the station's artificial gravity. Bond flips the switch to OFF and immediately the station begins to spiral out of control and break up. If your ultra-expensive space station depended on artificial gravity, would you design that system to be switched off by pushing a single button?
SOURCE (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080205&sportCat=nfl&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines#ashcroft)