MovieChat Forums > Sunshine (2007) Discussion > The payload propulsion duration problem?

The payload propulsion duration problem?

posted 9 years ago by hhle123
2 replies | jump to latest

The initial plan was to bring the payload to the predetermined delivery point, which was 19 hours away from when Capa realised Pinbacker was onboard the ship, before its thrusters would shoot it into the sun. Presumably Pinbacker stopped the ship soon after attacking Capa around 18- 19 hours away from where they were supposed ejected the payload into the sun.

Question: How did the payload make up this time/distance before being manually detonated by Capa from 18- 19 hours from the planned position (propulsion fuel problems given the planned time of payload propulsion was 4 minutes total)? And how would Capa know when to detonate the bomb manually given the distortion of space/time so close to the sun, making his judgement faulty?

[–] yurenchu 9 years ago

If I remember correctly, Pinbacker had sabotaged "the system" so that the payload couldn't be activated & detonated from remote control and he had also sent the complete spaceship into an orbit into the Sun so that the payload and the spaceship were simply going to burn up in the heat of the Sun (unless Mace and Capa acted fast enough to regain control, separate the payload, fire it into the Sun and detonate it manually). Furthermore, the movie applied time compression techniques to narrate the story. And payload specialist Capa managed to detonate the payload within the proper "window of success" because it's a movie (with a happy ending).

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[–] hhle123 9 years ago

Film never says into the sun, just saying they were in orbit. But if it was orbiting into the sun, wouldn't the payload still survive the trip into the sun and still be manually detonated? Why the urgency to jettison?