MovieChat Forums > Space Cowboys (2000) Discussion > Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait ...

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait....

posted 17 years ago by SCOTTisntNOT
28 replies | jump to latest

Tommy Lee Jones LANDED on the moon...using a satellite? He strapped himself to the satellite, blasted off in ONLY a spacesuit, and managed to land on the moon?

Wouldn't the moon's gravitational pull as well as the satellite's speed (remember it's being propelled by nuclear rockets) have caused the satellite to crash into the moon...like really hard? Really really hard? I mean think about it, it would have been like an asteroid slamming into the moon, Tommy Lee Jones wouldn't even EXIST anymore.

I'm no rocket scientist or anything, so maybe I'm wrong, I dunno. But the ending of this movie was extremely stupid in my opinion, showing him lying up there on the moon with satellite debris. It's not like he could have just unbuckled himself and jumped off; floating down to safety. He'd have been going just as fast as the satellite, and when he hit the moon you can be sure he would've gone f-cking SPLAT!

I dunno...whatever. The movie was alright I guess.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] rsblaker 17 years ago

you guys know this is a movie right?

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] sinceimetjc 17 years ago

You guys know that there is also no sound in space, right? And that doesn't stop people from liking Star Wars, Star Trek, and other space movies.

"The hideousness of that foot will haunt my dreams forever."

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] sinceimetjc 17 years ago

true, true

"The hideousness of that foot will haunt my dreams forever."

[–] SCOTTisntNOT 17 years ago

You guys know that there is also no sound in space, right? And that doesn't stop people from liking Star Wars, Star Trek, and other space movies.

That's a stupid comparison, the sound during space battles in those movies is put there because a completely silent space battle would be boring. It's for the viewer's convenience, and it doesn't affect the plot in any kind of way.

Tommy Lee Jones not being pulverised into tiny little pieces after crashing onto the moon whilst strapped to a satellite is different. Because it's f-cking stupid and they actually chose to end the movie that way...get it? The movie wasn't bad, but that ending actually made me sit up and go 'WTF?'. Which isn't supposed to happen when you're watching a movie.

[–] peter-mcgill-1 17 years ago

maybe a combination of the space craft's attitdue and direction vector resulted in a 'glancing' approach to the lunar surface, and the engineering status of the spacecraft was sufficient for it to survive a high velocity low angle of incidence interface with the lunar surface, resulting in the spacecraft washing off the impact speed to zero prior to the integrity of the spacecraft becoming zero.

the resulting loss of inertia allowed the astronaut to survive the..............what was the question?

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] jejozi 14 years ago

Wouldn't have mattered anyway, he would have been dead long before the crash. 240,000 miles, limited O2. He got the missles off and died shortly afterward.

This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.

[–] creamcheese742 16 years ago

Star Wars and Star Trek are clearly really really fiction movies whereas this one was based off of satilites that could be out there and the tools that we have now. TLJ should've just been a new crater but then again I guess they coudln't have fit Frank on the soundtrack then.

[–] martiinez 16 years ago

Ever heard of suspension of disbelief ?

Yossi

[–] themanwithnomoney 16 years ago

Were talking about 4 men who are well over their're sixties to go into space, and you complain about the moon bit?? please...

"What do you mean the movie isnt real"

[–] glock78 16 years ago

Were talking about 4 men who are well over their're sixties to go into space, and you complain about the moon bit?? please...

Ever heard about this guy? He was nearly 80 last time he went up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn

As for Hawk landing the satellite... he didn't.
He crashed the satellite.

He landed the MMU. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_maneuvering_unit
Like a parachute.

You know... Like jumping out of a falling plane. Only with one tenth the gravity, and MMU thrusters used to slow the fall instead of air resistance.

See the ending carefully.
MMU lies separated from the satellite debris, but only couple of steps away from Hawk's final resting place.
MMU was attached to the head of the satellite, with Hawk strapped to MMU when his trip to the moon started.

So.. not QUITE like an asteroid crashing into the moon.

[–] desertskies 16 years ago

Your MMU theory is entertaining and educational at the same time.

Imagine this actually happening.
Hawk gets "launched" from an orbiting "satellite", from Near Earth Orbit, on course to the Moon, one thing MUST happen.
"Course correction".

One does not fly from Los Angeles to Honolulu because the heading shows the "proper" heading.
While flying over the Pacific towards Honolulu, the Earth still rotates.
Course correction comes to mind.

The Moon is still doing an evolution while the spacecraft is on a certain heading.
The Moon was at a certain position when this satellite was launched but is evolving around the Earth.
IF that spacecraft fails a course correction, it's gone!

An MMU wouldn't do squat.

"So.. not QUITE like an asteroid crashing into the moon."
What crashing?
From what the movie displays, this could explain the demise of the Jupiter Five from Lost in Space.

FYI, the gravitational field on the Moon is 1/6th not 1/10th.

IT'S A MOVIE!
ENJOY IT.

Next up kids, Glock78 will explain the weakness of Heartbreak Ridge.

"You can run me, you can starve me and you can beat me and you can kill me. Just don't bore me."

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] jjtoday2001 16 years ago

The final scene clearly implies that (however he did it) Hawk was alive when he landed on the moon.

The MMU is sitting several yards away, there are tracks in the dust where he unstrapped himself from the unit and then crawled some distance before sitting up propped up against the rocks, facing earth, when (presumably) his air ran out.

But yeah, in all likelihood he would have been blasted into dust upon impact on the moon. Probably very wisely, they didn't go into a big explanation of how and why he wasn't.

[–] desertskies 16 years ago

It's still a great movie to watch on HBO, Showtime, TNT, TBS, HDNET, whatever to kill a Sunday afternoon.

"You can run me, you can starve me and you can beat me and you can kill me. Just don't bore me."

[–] mgallmachine 16 years ago

Actually, I didn't notice. I just thought it was kinda creepy to see him laying there knowning he was dead under that visor. Not all that great of an ending.

[–] planetmutty 15 years ago

How long would it have taken Hawk to get to the moon? I seem to remember that the Apollo missions took the best part of 3 days to get there. So unless Hawk found a qicker way (or knew a shortcut..) I'm guessing his air ran out long before he got to the moon.

I didn't really have a problem with the ending because we are left with the nice romantic notion that Hawk eventually made it to the moon, but I think it was highly unlikely that he lived that long.

When I said I wanted to be a comedian, they all laughed at me. Well, they're not laughing now!

[–] jconn426 15 years ago

My theory is that Tommy Lee Jone's character was modeled after Gordon Cooper. And he was the best pilot you ever saw. ;-)

Go, Hotdog! Go!

[–] SeisCinemaSeis 14 years ago

This movie is uber-silly from start to finish. Having said that, I am not complaining neccesarily about its "silliness". Actually I kinda liked the first part of the movie that is basically a black comedy and satire. What I hate is that at the middle of the movie, it switched from its farcical tone and became a "serious" action thriller (or at least tried to). That's when the preposterous and glaring plot holes became even more evident and far more annoying. The final outcome was a movie too far-fetched, generic and derivative.
Let's face it, many people may defend 'Space Cowboys' because it's a Clint Eastwood movie boasting a terrific cast. But IF instead of being an Eastwood film it were directed by let's say Michael Bay, many of you would be slamming it with rage.

To me 'Space Cowboys' (alongside 'Absolute Power') is the worst film directed by Eastwood between Unforgiven (1992) and Mystic River (2003).
I admire Clint Eastwood, the filmmaker, in particular his latest films. However truth is 'Space Cowboys' is one of the worst stinkers he has ever shot. To find something worse than SC in his filmography (as a director) you gotta go back to 'Sudden Impact' or 'Firefox'.

5/10

[–] DeepFriedJello 14 years ago

Big time splat!
I thought it was odd that the couple at the end were looking up at the moon and asking if Hawk made it. Surely NASA would have been tracking the satelite with Hawk. And there would have been a hell of an impact crater and dust cloud visible with a good telescope. I didn't notice the footprints on the moon, but that's ridiculous.
Also the comment made that if you hit a baseball halfway to the moon, the gravitational pull of the moon will pull it the rest of the way, is so stupid, that lady lost all credibility.

[–] chris3-4 14 years ago

It was explained by Sutherland's character. The rockets fuel would be empty long before lunar incursion. The unit would enter on a horizontal trajectory allowing for a semi-soft landing that Hawk could walk-away from. His EVA suit would protect him from trauma. However he ran out of O2. Prolly took his Sciencelab Corp. cyanide pill embedded in helmet boom mic.