Random question... was this movie supposed to be named Gravity at some point in its lifecycle? I haven't found anything stating that (mostly since Googling "interstellar" and "gravity" is kind of a hopeless dream) but the movie made me really feel like that was its name at some point in developmen.
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Jonathan Nolan's first draft of the screenplay (2008) was called Interstellar.
Edited by BugsMeany
You might be thinking of the film Gravity. Different premise, also set in space.
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Dread Lord of their D&D World
Just one part of the article that doesn't make sense to me:
"Although the crew of the ship is correctly seen subjected to G-forces as they spin up to match the Endurance for docking, the G-force seems to increase as the ship spins faster and faster - whereas in reality the G-force would be relative to the acceleration rate of the spin, which did not increase at all during the maneuver."
Surely that doesn't matter? The G-forces are due to the ship rotating during the maneuver, not because the ship's rotation is increasing. After all, acceleration is a change in velocity, and velocity is specifically the speed and VECTOR of travel.
So basically, once the ship's up to the same rate of rotation, there's still G-forces as the ship is still accelerating.
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I came to this page for exactly this problem.
Much of what we're seeing is centripetal force, not acceleration force. As the lander is spinning up to match the rotation rate, yes, it's acceleration Gs. But once the spin is synced, there are still centripetal Gs, and at that rate (looked to be somewhere around 270 degrees/sec) the effect would be significant.
This is not only very real and very dangerous, but something we've encountered before. As mentioned in the Based on a True Story trope entry for the film, during Gemini 8, due to a jammed OMS propellant valve, the capsule entered an uncontrolled spin, ultimately reaching nearly 300 degrees/sec and the crew (Armstrong and Scott) were in real danger of blacking out. It was Armstrong's piloting ability that saved the mission from catastrophic failure.
Edited by Scifiwriterguy
Nobody was able to explain the logic, so I've gone ahead and removed it now.
Kick the world, break your foot.
I found this movie funny, in a way, as it can serve as a great example of just why GMO food products are needed. The blight that wipes out the majority of food crops in the world(leaving humanity with corn as their main staple, instead of wheat, and a sparse few other viable crops) would be one of the first things GM Os would be immunized to through genetic engineering.
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That's not how that works. GMO's are less resistant to blights because of Monoculture.
Yes, they resist disease better, but if they are overwhelmed by a disease, there's no chance for the survival of the crop: When you have a variety of crops, their differences can buffer the lethality of a blight.
Granted, that's just a case for having diversity in the crop: All the crops could still be GMO's if they are sufficiently differentiated.
StormKenshio appears to be saying that, once the blight was detected, GMOs would be introduced that were resistant or immune to the blight. (They may become monocultures that another blight could overwhelm, but variations of the original blight are unlikely to adapt.) This is similar to what has happened with Ug99. Though in a way, this itself is the "variety of crops" advantage - just, most of the (potential) crops do not actually exist at any one time.
On that note, I have moved the "this blight is totally realistic" spiel to YMMV, since there is quite a bit of reason to doubt it could happen.
Edited by WingedCat
And apparently there is disagreement. So! Is this Reality Is Unrealistic, Artistic License – Biology, or something else? And does it go on the main page or, because there is disagreement, YMMV (which apparently neither Reality Is Unrealistic nor Artistic License – Biology are allowed on)?
I got the chance to watch the movie again recently (it was my fourth watch [^~^]), and got to see various comments on the blight accuracy through the web (I omitted Mr. Krauss's analysis, though, because he's just biased negatively against the film as he hated it).
The average take for what I've seen is that, while theoretically a blight of that nature could exist on a moderate scale (a state or a country), it's implausible that it would occur on a planetary scale. Here's an excerpt I found in a science forum:
Nitrogen is an inert gas and thus no organism can "breathe" it to make energy. However what can happen is that the organisms might be converting nitrogen to other compounds (the movie doesn't explain this). Also no organism can have a major effect in such a short term on atmospheric levels of nitrogen or oxygen but it is possible that other gases are created out of nitrogen. Blights usually only attack one species and cannot cross species, Blights which cross species are usually not very harmful.
On The science of Interstellar: fact or fiction?
, the blight scenario is labelled as unlikely:
“Without chloroplasts a plant will die. Now suppose that some new pathogen evolves , for example in the oceans, that wipes out all algae and plant life in the oceans and jumps to land where it wipes out all land plants. [...] This is possible. I see nothing to prevent it. But it’s not very plausible. It is unlikely to even happen.”
Finally, from this article:
In conclusion, the chance of the Blight attacking the Earth is ultimately small. I believe that we should not believe a film entirely without researching the films’ facts first. Our environment is maybe getting worst, but technological developments are always invented simultaneously. Of course, we should not fully rely on the scientists out there either. Though the chance is small, we people should begin to learn how important a good condition of our environment is. Conserve our environment, and we will preserve our lives.
All things considered, I would identify the entry as Artistic License – Biology, more because of the many factors that have to occur at the same time for it to happen than anything. And in a world as variable and changing as this it's near-impossible to have that scenario.
Edited by MyFinalEdits 135 - 158 - 273 - 191 - 188 - 230 - 300
I, too, would identify it as Artistic License – Biology, not only for the reasons stated above but because the world's response in the movie is one long Idiot Plot. Keep growing the same crops the blight is infecting instead of trying different crops? Grow everything outdoors instead of keeping crops in (large) greenhouses that might possibly be quarantined (a variant of which later worked, except the "greenhouses" were spaceships)? Force the people who might possibly cure the blight to go farm instead?
All of this on top of the extreme unlikeliness of this blight in the first place.
I'm proceeding to change the example's trope identity, and explain why in the edit reason.
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I think it's heavily implied Donald is a Millenial born in the late 1990's or early-2000's. It's really interesting to see our generation portrayed as the elderly in more futuristic movies.
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Your generation. This Gen X'er is starting to feel long in the tooth.
Edited by pittsburghmuggle "Freedom is not a license for chaos" -Norton Juster's The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
Idiot Ball and Informed Attribute : Mann cut communication with Cooper and Brand, maybe suspecting a distraction manoeuvre. That would inply that it wasn't a idiotic error and would not subvert the informed attribute of Mann being the best astronaut.
Removed:
- Shout-Out:
- The narration used in the trailer and shots make it look like Nolan is paying Homage to Terrence Malick (one of Nolan's inspirations for filmmaking).
- The first scene features a recollection of the current day dust storm is reminiscent of how John Steinbeck described the 1930 Dust Bowl in the first chapter of The Grapes of Wrath.
- The shot of the NASA base when Cooper first finds it is the same composition and set-up as the Cheyenne Mountain exterior shots from Stargate SG 1.
- The cylindrical layout of Cooper Station may somewhat remind viewers of one of Nolan's previous films, as well as the O'Neill Cylinder colonies from the Universal Century.
None of these look like strong contenders for Shout Outs.
- This might be an homage, but it's also just narration. What specifically makes it link to Malick?
- The film is obviously referencing the Dust Bowl, but I don't see anything specifically about Grapes of Wrath.
- This sounds strong, but I find it highly doubtful that Nolan is deliberately referencing Stargate SG-1. Can someone confirm that it's the exact same set-up, and if so that Stargate didn't take this from something earlier?
- Space stations are cylindrical for gravity. The shape itself isn't a reference to anything.
As I understand it, Go Mad from the Isolation refers to actually "going mad", like Mann, or at least (from the page) depression, hallucinations, inability to function normally in society, terrible dreams, etc. I do not think Romilly's stiff behavior is worth mentioning under this. (I actually had him as an aversion, but I'll concede he may not be that.) A referendum here is more productive than an edit war with Captain Crawdad, so what say anyone else?
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I am with you on Romilly. He actually seems to have turned tranquil over those 23 years.
So I'm wondering why no one bas posted how the scene in the tesseract is an example of And I Must Scream? Admittedly it is only temporary but he is clearly seriously disturbed by watching himself and screams at the top of his lungs in a futile attempt to communicate. He does learn how shortly after, but a momentary example I would say.
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If you think it was an example, then add it.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.-Philip K. Dick
Fridge Logic, maybe? The Ranger is shown as able to lift off and climb to space on its own — under crisis conditions from the surface of a planet with more than twice earth's surface gravity — but is shown as requiring what looks like a Saturn V to get to Endurance, waiting in low earth orbit.
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Fridge examples aren't tropes. Please don't add them to main or YMMV pages.
They can be added to YMMV pages, actually.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I see this as fridge brilliance or a shown their work - By using the booster stages to get to orbit at the start of the mission, the Ranger is able to save all or most of its fuel load for visiting the destination planets and (potentially, as it isn't shown) carry additional cargo to the Endurance that would be subsequently unloaded.
"Days of Future Past: The Crapsack World mentioned above is in many ways the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s on a global scale."
That's a curious way to put it... the Great Depression of the 1930s DID happen on a global scale (and it arguably led to the rise of Hitler and hence the outbreak of WWII among other things).
Edited by 80.86.167.100
Woah, I was eating breakfast and was wondering "if the 5th Dinemsional Aliens knew how urgent Earth's situation was, why the hell would they add 2 years to the mission by building the wormhole aaallll the way at Saturn, of all places?"
Wikipedia: Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.
With regards to this entry:
"Objects spin around their centers of mass. After it's damaged by Mann's failed attempt to enter, the Endurance is no longer symmetrical, and would not spin around its former center, where the central hatch is located. Therefore, Cooper would not be able to dock it, no matter how fast his module is spinning around its own center of mass. If the Endurance has failsafes for such a contingency, the movie doesn't mention them."
I rewatched the docking scene and you can see that, even when they've spun up, the Endurance and the lander are both wobbling away from each other a bit. Presumably part of the reason TARS is in the airlock with the stick is to be able to counter the wobble as well as tell when they're lined up and dock them. It'd be difficult for a human to do, but TARS isn't humans and probably has unnaturally fast reactions and enough processing power to do it.
Kick the world, break your foot.