Updates from David

Peter2 wrote:
It's also a lot more difficult for a movie than for a to fill in the background – the section that starts off by somebody saying "Now tell me, Professor, . . ." is a bit hackneyed by now, and in any case, I doubt whether modern audiences have the patience. Zero chance of any significant info-dump

Consider Dune for example. In its time, it was a wonderful book (for those who didn't dislike SF, that is), and it made an enjoyable film, but only if you'd read the book. The commonest comments I heard from those who saw the movie without having read the book, even if they enjoyed SF, amounted to "I had no idea what was going on."

If you're going to make an SF movie that stands a chance of making money, you need to place pretty severe limits on what you need to put over to the audience. You can limit the plot so that is next thing to simple-minded (e.g. Star Wars), base it in the near future so the audience already has the referents (e.g. 2001), or limit the scenario (e.g. Groundhog Day, or The Truman Show). And there are probably other ways that I can't lay mind to right now.
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You can add additional scenes not in the adapted book, to help the audience to understand what happens and why. As, for example, Gary Ross did in "The Hunger Games". The scenes with President Snow are no part of the book, but they helped the movie immensely, nonetheless.

I am so glad I grew up without a working TV. In my formulative years between the age of 4 and 16 my family TV died... It was in a beautiful hardwood cabinet and my father tore out the electrical components and added shelves. The dead TV became a lifeline where upon those shelves books were placed. My five sisters and I read more books during that 12 year period than most children read in the entire life time... Those books and the stories they contained took my sisters and I anywhere our imaginations carried us. To this day TV and movies are unimportant. The authors words spark a journey far beyond CGI... To see a movie poorly based on a book is demeaning to the author(s)intent and sours my appreciation.

Kruhn wrote:
Scientologists consider any deviation from the word of L. Ron Hubbard sacrilege. Although Travolta is a dilettante amongst Scientologists, I doubt he'd break a cardinal rule of this group known for its bloodthirsty and ruthless tamping of dissent.

Well, then they should have hated the movie, because it didn't follow the book all that well.

Of course, if it had, it would have had to be a miniseries rather than a movie, since no one could have sat through it in one sitting.

Peter2 wrote:It's also a lot more difficult for a movie than for a to fill in the background – the section that starts off by somebody saying "Now tell me, Professor, . . ." is a bit hackneyed by now, and in any case, I doubt whether modern audiences have the patience. Zero chance of any significant info-dump

Consider Dune for example. In its time, it was a wonderful book (for those who didn't dislike SF, that is), and it made an enjoyable film, but only if you'd read the book. The commonest comments I heard from those who saw the movie without having read the book, even if they enjoyed SF, amounted to "I had no idea what was going on."

If you're going to make an SF movie that stands a chance of making money, you need to place pretty severe limits on what you need to put over to the audience. You can limit the plot so that is next thing to simple-minded (e.g. Star Wars), base it in the near future so the audience already has the referents (e.g. 2001), or limit the scenario (e.g. Groundhog Day, or The Truman Show). And there are probably other ways that I can't lay mind to right now.
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To be honest, I don't think I *ever* read Dune, even though I like some of Herbert's work. But the original Dune movie had a storyline/plot that was quite clear. I never had the "I had no idea what was going on" feeling.

I did think the second version wasn't quite as good. But, then, remakes rarely are. Even so, it was better than a lot of them.

I also wouldn't say 2001 was "near future" at the time it was produced. Space stations were still a far off dream. For that matter, it's still a far off dream *today*. The ISS has *nothing* in common with the space station in 2001. It's like comparing a coracle to a cruise ship. To be honest, I'm quite pro-Space exploration and use; but I was very disappointed in plans for the ISS. At the rate we're going, we'd be lucky to have a station like the one in 2001 by 2050.

That said, I think it wasn't so outre simply because it *was* something we could conceive of doing; whether we were actually capable of doing so or not. Maybe not as soon as 2001, but something at that time we were socially committed to doing; and thus the approximate timing wasn't unbelievable. Unfortunately that commitment lapsed in the 80's; and has never really re-established itself.

OrlandoNative wrote:

Kruhn wrote:
Scientologists consider any deviation from the word of L. Ron Hubbard sacrilege. Although Travolta is a dilettante amongst Scientologists, I doubt he'd break a cardinal rule of this group known for its bloodthirsty and ruthless tamping of dissent.

Well, then they should have hated the movie, because it didn't follow the book all that well.

Of course, if it had, it would have had to be a miniseries rather than a movie, since no one could have sat through it in one sitting.

The movie was just bad all around, I posted that one critic thought that someone had urinated on the print and that if someone actually had it wasn't a bad idea.

I have a friend who is the owner of a B&N franchise. When they order books from the distributor. They often come out of the box with price tags already on the books from various bookstore chains including their own, with store codes from B&N bookstores from all over the place like FL, AB, CA, MD, ND, MI etc. Basically the Hubbardits are buying the books and giving or selling the books back to the publishers to prop up sales numbers.

OrlandoNative wrote: === SNIP ===
I also wouldn't say 2001 was "near future" at the time it was produced. Space stations were still a far off dream. For that matter, it's still a far off dream *today*. The ISS has *nothing* in common with the space station in 2001. It's like comparing a coracle to a cruise ship. To be honest, I'm quite pro-Space exploration and use; but I was very disappointed in plans for the ISS. At the rate we're going, we'd be lucky to have a station like the one in 2001 by 2050.
=== SNIP ===

I agree about the 2001 Space Station but not the ISS. The ISS is an analog to the Antarctic stations, a place to visit, do science and return. In no way are either of these a stepping stone to a further place except by accident or emergency. Thus it is not even a coracle which does move one from place to place.

The 2001 Space Station was the classic Wiley Ley / Werner Von Braun / Arthur C Clarke way station, a combo of Grand Central Station and JFK Airport. Hotels, restaurants and transit lounges with all the backstory that Arthur Hailey would have loved to write. Left unsaid was the implied facts of people living there, research done there and other uses. I hope we get it by 2050, but I fear it will not be by the USofA and to get it, the prerequisites require actual space commerce!

OrlandoNative wrote:I also wouldn't say 2001 was "near future" at the time it was produced. Space stations were still a far off dream. For that matter, it's still a far off dream *today*. The ISS has *nothing* in common with the space station in 2001. It's like comparing a coracle to a cruise ship. To be honest, I'm quite pro-Space exploration and use; but I was very disappointed in plans for the ISS. At the rate we're going, we'd be lucky to have a station like the one in 2001 by 2050.

That said, I think it wasn't so outre simply because it *was* something we could conceive of doing; whether we were actually capable of doing so or not. Maybe not as soon as 2001, but something at that time we were socially committed to doing; and thus the approximate timing wasn't unbelievable. Unfortunately that commitment lapsed in the 80's; and has never really re-established itself.

I am sorry but you've hit upon one of my pet peeves. There is this meme that says, "except for the lack of political will we'd have Lunar Colonies, Space Cities, and manned missions to the outer planets by now."

I don't buy it.

Costs to orbit are on the order of $10k per kg. We are never going to have any space colonies at those prices. It just isn't possible economically. And lots of smart people have been working on the problem of lowering launch costs for decades without a whole lot of progress. Similarly, manned vehicle failure rates are unacceptably high, on the order of one out of 100 launches for the Shuttle and probably one out of 500-1000 launches for Soyuz. Getting to a more reasonable rate of one out of 10000 or more will require technology that we do not yet possess.

For my money (and some of it is my money) the considerable resources and effort spent on ISS would be more productively spent pursuing order-of-magnitude improvements in launch costs and vehicle reliability and safety.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:I am sorry but you've hit upon one of my pet peeves. There is this meme that says, "except for the lack of political will we'd have Lunar Colonies, Space Cities, and manned missions to the outer planets by now."

I don't buy it.

Costs to orbit are on the order of $10k per kg. We are never going to have any space colonies at those prices. It just isn't possible economically. And lots of smart people have been working on the problem of lowering launch costs for decades without a whole lot of progress. Similarly, manned vehicle failure rates are unacceptably high, on the order of one out of 100 launches for the Shuttle and probably one out of 500-1000 launches for Soyuz. Getting to a more reasonable rate of one out of 10000 or more will require technology that we do not yet possess.

For my money (and some of it is my money) the considerable resources and effort spent on ISS would be more productively spent pursuing order-of-magnitude improvements in launch costs and vehicle reliability and safety.

The thing is most of the huge cost is the throwaway launch vehicles. SpaceX is already well on their way to taking a big bite out of those costs.

Next, lets look at rotovators. True space elevators for Earth are beyond current tech but rotovators are not. Taking even a few km/sec off the burn makes a huge difference in how much payload a given rocket can lift. I think you can even balance the energy on a rotovator while only lifting material: Dock your rocket with the cable at less than the best position, drop the payload when you're at orbit and drop the booster at the best position for deorbit.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could take a current Falcon 9, equip the upper stage with the recovery module and a cable docking module and recover it with the aid of a rotovator. (With the proviso that you're limited to whatever orbit the rotovator is in.)

As you get more hardware into space you can start shipping down stuff from the moon (anything will do, all you need is mass) and your rotovator efficiency goes up. You can afford to increase the safety margins on your rocket.

Once you capture a sufficient asteroid an elevator on the moon becomes possible. (We can do the cable now, the problem is that without a big counterweight it's simply too long.) You can also use a big linear motor to throw stuff off the moon (but you'll need a rocket along if it's to go into orbit) and if your tech is good enough to land also.

Trying to build an elevator on Mars would be quite problematic but you can extend the rotovator concept there--there are two huge weights sitting there, so massive that the energy balance isn't a big deal. Put elevators on the Martian moons and 500 m/s will suffice for Mars -> Earth transfer orbit and a bit more for landing.

Guys,

This is a thread we don't really want to hijack, can we keep it for the original purpose?

ie

Updates from David

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:I also wouldn't say 2001 was "near future" at the time it was produced. Space stations were still a far off dream. For that matter, it's still a far off dream *today*. The ISS has *nothing* in common with the space station in 2001. It's like comparing a coracle to a cruise ship. To be honest, I'm quite pro-Space exploration and use; but I was very disappointed in plans for the ISS. At the rate we're going, we'd be lucky to have a station like the one in 2001 by 2050.

That said, I think it wasn't so outre simply because it *was* something we could conceive of doing; whether we were actually capable of doing so or not. Maybe not as soon as 2001, but something at that time we were socially committed to doing; and thus the approximate timing wasn't unbelievable. Unfortunately that commitment lapsed in the 80's; and has never really re-established itself.

I am sorry but you've hit upon one of my pet peeves. There is this meme that says, "except for the lack of political will we'd have Lunar Colonies, Space Cities, and manned missions to the outer planets by now."

I don't buy it.

Costs to orbit are on the order of $10k per kg. We are never going to have any space colonies at those prices. It just isn't possible economically. And lots of smart people have been working on the problem of lowering launch costs for decades without a whole lot of progress. Similarly, manned vehicle failure rates are unacceptably high, on the order of one out of 100 launches for the Shuttle and probably one out of 500-1000 launches for Soyuz. Getting to a more reasonable rate of one out of 10000 or more will require technology that we do not yet possess.

For my money (and some of it is my money) the considerable resources and effort spent on ISS would be more productively spent pursuing order-of-magnitude improvements in launch costs and vehicle reliability and safety.

I'm not saying it's entirely political. It's also social. Anyone who thinks the government can fix anything and everything obviously hasn't been very observant for the past half century or so.

I'm not going to say we'd have bases on Mars or routine journeys to the outer planets, but had we persevered after the original moon landings we could certainly have a decent orbital infrastructure and even moon bases by now.

As long as the government regulates travel; and controls certain technological experimentation and use, costs will remain high. What is needed to bring the cost down is some way of replacing chemical rockets with something else. Whether it's some sort of nuclear engine (which, of course, the government is loathe to let ordinary commercial entities to work on) or some breakthrough in physics, like the discovery of some way of generating anti-gravity, who knows? I doubt the latter is likely soon, but some sort of "hybrid" craft that used typical jet engines for lower altitude flight combined with some sort of non-combustion engine for higher altitude might be more cost effective. What brings the cost down is (1) adapting current technology to new usages, (2) doing away with "one time" usage, and (3) thinking "outside the box" whenever possible.

As for "manned vehicle failure" rates, tens of thousands of people are killed yearly in automobile crashes in the US alone. How many die in space or rocket accidents in the same time frame? If we still can't expect 0 fatalities utilizing vehicles that have been undergoing constant improvement for the past 100 years, why should we worry about every space fatality? Most auto accidents - even with fatalities - often go unreported by the media. Or at least relegated to the back pages of the "local news" section. I can't think of a *single* space accident that was so ignored, however.

*If* our ancestors had the same timid outlook we seem to have today, we'd either still be in Europe; or else the US would consist of only the Atlantic coast states. There was nothing "safe" about what the pioneers faced in moving westward. Why would we expect the exploration of space to be any different? If people are willing to take the risk, I say let them. Don't hold them back. Encountering problems leads to solutions. It's impossible to fix all problems if you don't know what they are to begin with, and the only way to really find them is to do something.

We seem to have forgotten that.