Armageddon (and other) Silliness
Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:56 am
I read that NASA uses the movie Armageddon as a training video to see if their newbies can pick out all the things that are wrong with it. NASA identified 168 scientific inaccuracies. Some of these can be found pretty easily on Google, but I've yet to see a complete list. We're all nerds here, so how well can we do?
The movie is available on Youtube in 14 pieces.
1. During the intro scene with the Chicxulub impactor, the coastline is wrong. You can clearly see Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, neither of which existed 65 million years ago.
2. Charlton Heston describes the impact as being the force of "10,000 nuclear weapons." The most powerful nuke we ever detonated, Tsar Bomba, produced 57 megatons. At 100 teratons, Chicxulub was about 2 million times more powerful. So the smallest figure one could use and still be correct is 2 million nuclear weapons.
3. The asteroid itself is all kinds of wrong. It's described as being "the size of Texas." There's no asteroid that size in the belt. Texas is 790 miles at its widest point. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is only 590 miles across.
4. Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) says a rogue comet hit the asteroid belt, thus sending the asteroid toward us. The largest comets we've identified are far smaller than the stated size of the asteroid.
5. The asteroid, being the size that it is, should be spherical.
6. Truman states there are only 9 telescopes in the world that could spot the asteroid before it arrives. It should be easily visible even to the naked eye as it approaches for anyone who watches the sky regularly.
7. Splitting the asteroid as shown in the film, with the consequent acceleration of its halves away from the planet, would require vastly more power than every nuclear weapon on earth could generate.
8. Planting a weapon 800 feet deep on an asteroid 790 miles across is so shallow as to be meaningless. You might as well detonate it on the surface.
9. Spinning the space station in the manner shown would be useless. Being at opposite ends of the station, the people in the shuttles would be walking on the ceiling. The station is simply not designed to be spun for simulated gravity (unlike the one in 2001).
10. The asteroid and its attendant debris is moving at 22,000 miles an hour, well above escape velocity for the moon. The moon should only intercept the debris which is pointed right at it. Everything else will be slightly perturbed but will sail past (as it indeed does in the movie).
11. Speaking of debris, why in the hell is there so much of it anyway. If this thing was struck by a rogue comet, 22,000 mph is vastly greater than escape velocity for the asteroid, so why is it trailing debris at all?
12. The shuttles bank in space.
13. There's fire in space when the one shuttle crashes.
14. The drillers never use the thruster suits for their stated purpose of moving around in low gravity. Instead they walk around like normal.
15. Not only that, they walk around inside the shuttle just like normal, even though they're in a reduced-g field.
16. Why are they drilling at an angle? That will just add extra depth.
17. Both Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi's characters fire rotary cannons in space. Since gunpowder and primer both contain oxidizer they wouldn't require external oxygen to ignite, but there wouldn't be a muzzle flash as seen.
18. As the crew are pulling the tubing out of the hole, they're heaving it all into a pile, and it falls as it would in normal gravity. It should go sailing off a considerable distance.
There are many more. Anybody got any others, or ones from other movies you think are particularly egregious?
The movie is available on Youtube in 14 pieces.
1. During the intro scene with the Chicxulub impactor, the coastline is wrong. You can clearly see Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, neither of which existed 65 million years ago.
2. Charlton Heston describes the impact as being the force of "10,000 nuclear weapons." The most powerful nuke we ever detonated, Tsar Bomba, produced 57 megatons. At 100 teratons, Chicxulub was about 2 million times more powerful. So the smallest figure one could use and still be correct is 2 million nuclear weapons.
3. The asteroid itself is all kinds of wrong. It's described as being "the size of Texas." There's no asteroid that size in the belt. Texas is 790 miles at its widest point. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is only 590 miles across.
4. Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) says a rogue comet hit the asteroid belt, thus sending the asteroid toward us. The largest comets we've identified are far smaller than the stated size of the asteroid.
5. The asteroid, being the size that it is, should be spherical.
6. Truman states there are only 9 telescopes in the world that could spot the asteroid before it arrives. It should be easily visible even to the naked eye as it approaches for anyone who watches the sky regularly.
7. Splitting the asteroid as shown in the film, with the consequent acceleration of its halves away from the planet, would require vastly more power than every nuclear weapon on earth could generate.
8. Planting a weapon 800 feet deep on an asteroid 790 miles across is so shallow as to be meaningless. You might as well detonate it on the surface.
9. Spinning the space station in the manner shown would be useless. Being at opposite ends of the station, the people in the shuttles would be walking on the ceiling. The station is simply not designed to be spun for simulated gravity (unlike the one in 2001).
10. The asteroid and its attendant debris is moving at 22,000 miles an hour, well above escape velocity for the moon. The moon should only intercept the debris which is pointed right at it. Everything else will be slightly perturbed but will sail past (as it indeed does in the movie).
11. Speaking of debris, why in the hell is there so much of it anyway. If this thing was struck by a rogue comet, 22,000 mph is vastly greater than escape velocity for the asteroid, so why is it trailing debris at all?
12. The shuttles bank in space.
13. There's fire in space when the one shuttle crashes.
14. The drillers never use the thruster suits for their stated purpose of moving around in low gravity. Instead they walk around like normal.
15. Not only that, they walk around inside the shuttle just like normal, even though they're in a reduced-g field.
16. Why are they drilling at an angle? That will just add extra depth.
17. Both Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi's characters fire rotary cannons in space. Since gunpowder and primer both contain oxidizer they wouldn't require external oxygen to ignite, but there wouldn't be a muzzle flash as seen.
18. As the crew are pulling the tubing out of the hole, they're heaving it all into a pile, and it falls as it would in normal gravity. It should go sailing off a considerable distance.
There are many more. Anybody got any others, or ones from other movies you think are particularly egregious?