OFF: UK Charts

[Jean Lansford]

On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Paul Mather <paul at GROMIT.DLIB.VT.EDU> wrote:

>On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Jean Lansford wrote:
>
>> Armageddon is fun and the science is good enough to not bounce most
>> people out of the film.  NASA was involved in making it.  As for
>
>Funny, I heard the opposite: that _Deep Impact_ had the decent science,
>and that _Armageddon_ didn't.

Didn't say the science was good, just good enough.  8)  IOW, nothing
that was so obviously wrong that you stop and say "What the hell?"
like, for ex, most of Batman and Robin.  That one didn't even do good
comic book physics.

>One example cited was the spacecraft
>used.  In _Deep Impact_, they use something big and beefy---like it
>could handle a long flight---but in _Armageddon_, they hurtle off in
>what look like souped-up space shuttles, which would've run out of juice
>long before they reached the thing.

Well, they did stop to refuel at Mir....

>Also, the notion that a body "the
>size of Texas" could sneak up on the Earth at such short notice is a
>little too hard to believe.

Not when we can only monitor about 3% of near space.  (The number
mentioned in A, which I assume they got from NASA.)

>Still, the important thing is that New York City gets bashed
>spectacularly... ;-)

And a major European capital.  That was ... impressive.


Jean Lansford
lansford at vnet.net
http://users.vnet.net/lansford/