Science Fiction When There's Spaceships Already?

i see "sunshine" as a movie about human stupidity.pretty much everything that happens in the movie is the result of someone doing something really, really dumb.for starters, they need a crew of seven to hit a target like the sun. i think i could program a 386 to hit the sun. i'm not even sure i'd need a computer to do it. the sun is the larget, most massive target in the solar system by far. all you'd have to do to hit it is make sure you don't fall into orbit with it or anything else. and that's pretty easy: fire your rocket so it goes outside the ecliptic plane, and then have it turn toward the sun. why they need people on this mission in the first place, i don't know.but the one that really gets me, every time i watch this movie, is when they get trapped on the icarus 1, and have to get back to the icarus 2 with only one spacesuit. so they fire capa in the suit, and two other guys, out of the airlock, and leave one behind to die. why not fire the other three out of the airlock, and then slowly depressurize the ship, and the guy with the suit can take his sweet time getting back?

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actually, it wasn't. they just severely messed it up between the script and the screen, and didn't go into any expository details. apparently, the reason behind the sun dying was a roving micro black hole, that had become lodged in the sun. and the bomb to dislodge was supposed to have the mass of the moon, not manhattan, as said in the movie. and all this is apparently somewhat plausible.they made a few goofs, of course, but at least they portrayed space more realistically than most sci-fi movies. and made it dangerous again. i try not to pick apart movies, but sometimes, stuff just screams to me.

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there's actually an amusing quote from ridley scott somewhere describing the technology he originally wanted to have in alien. for instance, the main computer interface chamber, originally, was supposed to have floating translucent flat screen monitors, of course with slick graphics.they went the way they did because, well. these guys are a mining crew in deep space. they need rugged equipment that's not going to break when they touch it, because there's nothing to repair it for like 100 light years. and they need clearly legible computer interfaces -- not a bunch of slick graphics.the other reason being costs. but that's largely been negated, now. LCDs are getting cheaper by the day. so, i think you'll actually find that, probably until just recently, most industrial uses of computer technology followed a similar pattern.

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yeah, but where's our sense of adventure?there are just certain things probes can't do. i don't know that jupiter is ideally suited for a manned expedition, but we really should have been to mars by now.the only bit from 2001 that isn't actually possible at the moment is the cryogenic sleep. but i think that was a reasonable failure -- we didn't know then just how difficult it would be to achieve.

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"truckers in space" and all that. it almost seems like fanboy-retconning, but ridley did indeed say something to that effect.btw, there's a new alien movie being made right now. i'm sort of interested to see how it's done. it's a sort-of prequel, titled prometheus, and promises to have less to do with the xenomorphs we saw in the other movies, and more to do with the really big one on the derelict at the beginning of the first movie. scott is at the helm for this one again, so i'm really interested in seeing what he does with 30+ years of technological difference on the production end, and what the technology will look like the movie. we might well see that really slick fancy stuff in spaceships that aren't space-big-rigs.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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