MovieChat Forums > Europa Report (2013) Discussion > wait so they did all the drilling....

wait so they did all the drilling....


finally get to the water....but the astronaut just walks out and scoops some ice and they discovered what they were looking for?

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They were looking for micro-organisms or any sign of life. They knew there was water underneath the ice.

Since they missed the target zone, where the ice was thinner, they were going to use the probe to get underneath the target zone in hopes of finding the organisms there.

When that failed, hot chick went on the ice. The target zone ice cracked underneather her when she went to look at the ice. Then of course the alien ate her for her for good measure.

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She wasn't eaten by an alien.

She was eaten by a native. SHE was the alien. (g)

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Oh My God he's right.

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Oh My God he's not.

The alien was an alien to us.

Calm down.

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Wait, it ate her?

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Wouldn't you?

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πŸ˜‚

nobody lives forever...

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πŸ˜‚

nobody lives forever...

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Yep!

😎

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they're in a foreign place.

There are a bajillion possibilities of finding and discovering something new, wherever they go.

... it's a beetroot!

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maybe they should have tried the ice scoope before all that p.i.t.a. drilling then!

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While I loved the movie and think it's the best sci-fi out in a while (emphasis on the Sci), there were (as always) valid nitpicks.

They travel all the way to Jupiter (taking two years) and have only ONE probe???? When they lost the probe, I was waiting for them to groan and then discuss whether to launch another or try to move. Then I realized they had only one. ::facepalm::

And then finding life an inch deep in ice exposed to vacuum and radiation?? Granted, while we have found life in some rather harsh extremes here on earth, I find it implausible for life to be able to exist in a vacuum at absolute zero while being exposed to full solar radiation.

Not having EVA suits with propulsion or at least a tethering mechanism???

Yeah, those were the most blatant, but overall, I thought it was a good movie.

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[deleted]

I meant tethered to the ship. I know they were tethered to each other.

Reminds me of Peanuts, when Lucy explains why mountain climbers tether to each other. "Because if one falls, they All fall, you Blockhead." Something to that effect.

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[deleted]

Hmmm...watched your clip, but I don't see where they were tethered to the ship. Looks like they were tethered to each other, but I could see when he snapped taught, he could be anchored to the ship.

I'll defer to your observation.

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As you can see, they did have tethers. There's no good reason why the one guy had to sacrifice himself.


From the IMDB page:
...When they experience communication breakdown, Andrei and Corrigan need to go outside the spacecraft to repair it. However, Corrigan accidentally contaminates his suit with hydrazine and he is left behind in space.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/trivia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine

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No good reason? Did you not watch your own videoclip? They were discussing how his suit was contaminated with hydrazine and would intoxicate the oxygen of the entire ship! And at the exact same time, Andrei's oxygen ran out! How is this not a good reason? Can you live without oxygen?

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[deleted]

Well, Andrei fainted due to lack of oxygen. And right before doing so, Andrei opened up our hero's suit, which reduced his air from 20 minutes to Β±2. So it was either kick Andrei in, who had already fainted and would surely die if he had not acted fast enough (and he knew he was losing air, because he said so) or both die. He panicked when they told him to wait outside when he had 20 minutes, then Andrei opened up his suit and eventually he decided to (try to) save Andrei's life as he was contaminated and was losing oxygen quickly.

All together makes sense to me. Sure, if I was in that situation and I didn't panic, I'd go with your suggestion :p

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[deleted]

[deleted]

Absolute zero?

Very very cold; not quite *that* cold.

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No, they actually said that's what the temperature was.

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They were wrong. Considering how hard the filmmakers apparently worked to make the science plausible, that's an egregious oversight, especially since there was no dramatic or narrative purpose behind fudging it. Absolute zero is unattainable in the universe, at least by the current laws of thermodynamics. Outer space is around 2.5-2.7 Kelvins. Barring some extraordinary circumstances, it's extremely unlikely that a planetoid of any sort would achieve that temperature, let alone abolute zero. It certainly wouldn't do so as part of a solar system, since the sun's radiation alone would keep it warmer than the surrounding space (considering it is made up of entirely conductive, to some greater or lesser degree, material.)

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If you're going to nitpick, others get to nitpick you.

"...I find it implausible for life to be able to exist in a vacuum at absolute zero while being exposed to full solar radiation."

It wasn't solar radiation. Solar radiation comes from Sol (the Sun). It's Jovian radiation (from Jupiter) that was of concern here.

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There was a line something to the effect of finding evidence of life that had been pushed up through the ice and trapped relatively close to the surface. This does not mean that said cell (they alluded to it being something like blue-green algae) was actually alive, merely a frozen and dead fossil of what might be living in a safer zone deeper in the water. What they're looking for in the ice is something akin to finding the dessicated remains of plankton on a beach.

The Anne Sellors fan club: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1856457/board/threads/

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They travel all the way to Jupiter (taking two years) and have only ONE probe????


Yeah, why not having two probes? Why not having three, if the second one fail? Why not having backups for every component on the entire ship? (Why not having two ships? Why not making a space station orbiting Europa and then explore it?)

EVERY SINGLE POUND of cargo counts in space. You don't have gas stations to refill on your journey in space. (They were drinking filtered urine, too much water was too fuel costly to carry.)

Not having EVA suits with propulsion or at least a tethering mechanism???


Watch the movie again, you missed some things.
Remember the hydrazine on the suit? Highly toxic? Remember the argue between him and Andrei? Remember Andrei having seconds left until depressurization?
He gave his life for Andrei.

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So you're implying they only have one of everything. One air filter / recycle system. One water recycler, etc. Just the type of idiot who will get a government job and only give one screw for every hole. Gotta save that extra screw weight.

There is little 'sci' in this movie. It's a banter emo focus movie set in space. Poorly written, ok acted, poorly designed. Like yeah, protruding knows and shielded screen faces. Not!

And the 'monster'. Neon blue space squids. Seriously!!!

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The probe WAS the backup plan.

They were supposed to land on a precise spot on the moon where the ice was thin enough and they wouldn't need the probe, let alone a second one. Unfortunately, volcanic steam of some sort altered their trajectory and landed 100 meters off target.

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Please be patient jrregan, perhaps one day they'll make a movie that conforms to your specific expectations of space travel and alien life.

Please click on 'reply' at the post you're responding to. Thanks.

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Watch the movie again, you missed some things.
Remember the hydrazine on the suit? Highly toxic? Remember the argue between him and Andrei? Remember Andrei having seconds left until depressurization?
He gave his life for Andrei.


You watch the movie again. They say that he had 20 minutes of oxygen left, and that they will try to figure something out. If he had been tethered to the ship, or had some sort of propulsion mechanism, he would have been able to hang around for 20 more minutes, time that they could have figured out a solution in.

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You are correct. The Egineer's plan (before he passed out) was to go into the chamber, have all the oxygen cut off, and have the guy strip down to remove the contaminated suit. This could have been pulled off by having a spare suit in place, pressurize the room but leave the oxygen cut-off, have the guy switch out into the other suit holding his breath, then when he's changed, depresurize, open the air lock and toss out the contaminated suit.

If the engineer hadn't floated off into space because no one knows what ropes are in the future, he'd have plenty of time to wait for the chief engineer to recover, go get a spare suit and pull off the switch.

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[deleted]

You watch the movie again. They say that he had 20 minutes of oxygen left, and that they will try to figure something out. If he had been tethered to the ship, or had some sort of propulsion mechanism, he would have been able to hang around for 20 more minutes, time that they could have figured out a solution in.


Maybe you should watch the movie again. Andrei, tried to get the other guy into the ship as well. He was going to get him out of the contaminated suit and put him inside or in another suit. But, Andrei fainted from lack of oxygen just after opening part of the other guys *beep* which let out most of his oxygen. You can clearly hear the crew on the ship state that he was losing oxygen. So he pushed Andrei in and closed the door. He wasn't going to make it anyway due to lack of time.

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The problem wasn't the lack of a tether - the problem was that he had 2 minutes of oxygen. When James freaked out about having to wait while Andre went into the airlock, James had 20 minutes of air. But then Andre decided to "save" James right before passing out - so all he accomplished was ripping open James' air supply, so then James had 2 minutes instead of 20.

As others suggested, I think they got untethered in order to enter the airlock. But the fact that James floated away really didn't matter. He would have died whether he'd been tethered to the ship or not. In terms of the film, the real weakness isn't James floating away - it's that the decision by Andre was so boneheaded it's pretty unbelievable that an experienced astronaut would have done that. (But yes, having James float away did seem like the writers were checking the box of required space film events.)

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Ya, this film struck me as trying to be a highbrow; realistic sci-fi; and yet failed on many obvious pointers like the tether; number of probes; lack of standard procedures.

Oh and having a tentacle monster at the end was akin to the multitude of B-grade sci-fi flicks of the 50s.

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[deleted]

I don't understand the "thin ice" They only landed about 100 meters off their original site. They drilled almost 3 KILOMETERS before hitting water. But then all of the sudden they can see light underneath cause it's thin. And when they crash land at the original target location, the ice is thin and cracking, with water all around the ship. Pretty stupid.

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HERE BE SPOILERS


i think it is implied that that attacking creature(s) somehow melts the ice to reach the surface

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Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of. I guess they did say that the water temperature rose 50 degrees when the underwater probe got bumped. But still just as silly. It could explain why they'd not be stable sitting on that much ice, but doesn't make the logic any more feasible.

If they're sitting on 3 kilometers of ice, that this creature is just sorta tunneling through... I mean, aside from inability to explain such a creature living in such conditions, and assuming this ice and water is actually water, you'd need more like a 500+ degree change to quickly melt it to pass through. They did say the temp was absolute zero, after all.

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[deleted]

I don't know what I might have said to lead you to believe I wasn't paying attention. It seems like you didn't pay attention to what I said.

I understand that there was a vent where they landed, and that they missed their target. I mentioned that they missed their target.

Are you suggesting that it's feasible that a small moon with a heated core would have surface temperatures of absolute zero? Are you suggesting that a heat vent leading to a surface with absolute zero temperature would make thin ice 100 meters away from ice that's 3 kilometers thick?

But then I also mentioned that where they did drill, despite the 3 kilometer depth, the ice was also acting somewhat unstable, and somehow the view from underneath showed ice thin enough for the sun to shine through. It was all pretty ridiculous.

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[deleted]

"Fiction" does not mean "nonsense". It does not mean "excuse for lack of writing qualities". If you establish a pyhsical system in your fiction which resembles that of the reality and you don't stick to it, you break the movie. Which is why Futurama would be allowed to make this mistake, but this film not.

That said, I have to admit - I did not pay attention either.

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Were none of you guys paying attention in physics/chemistry? The movie states absolute zero (0K), yeah...but absolute zero is the theoretical minimum POSSIBLE temperature in the universe, period. Nothing can get colder than absolute zero, it's impossible. This is because at absolute zero, all motion ceases at the subatomic level. In other words, it is ridiculous to say that the temperature on the surface was absolute zero. NOTHING could get that cold...

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This is because at absolute zero, all motion ceases at the subatomic level.

That would violate the uncertainty principle.

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OK smartass. That is technically true, which is why at 0K (absolute zero), there are still infinitesimally small quantum vibrations happening. But as far as classical mechanics go, there is no movement whatsoever. And look, the point was that there is no effing way that the surface temperature on Europa was absolute zero because nothing could have been living at that temperature. Furthermore, even in the deepest darkest reaches of space the temperature gets to just a little under 3K. Getting to absolute zero is theoretically impossible, just like exceeding the speed of light.

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OK smartass.
What's your problem?

And look, the point was that there is no effing way that the surface temperature on Europa was absolute zero because nothing could have been living at that temperature.
So? That wasn't what I disagreed with.

Getting to absolute zero is theoretically impossible ...
Depends how you define "temperature" and "absolute zero". See, as some of many examples,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature;
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/48292/temperature-below-ab solute-zero;
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/96007/lowest-temperature-p ossible-in-the-universe;
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/48615/less-than-absolute-z ero-possible/48637#48637
etc.

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If you have to change the definition of words and understood science in order to make your scientific point... You're not doing actual science. You're doing mental hoop jumping just to not sound like a blithering idiot.

Absolute Zero in every science book I've read is theoretically impossible because no matter how cold you make something, it is always touching something warmer. Thermal Energy transfers between any and all objects. Human beings have gotten decently close to creating Absolute Zero on their own, but it so far remains out of reach.

Nature itself has yet to reach Absolute Zero. As of this writing, Absolute Zero isn't known to exist anywhere in the universe and is impossible to reach by Humanity through artificial means.

End of story.

If you have to redefine "temperature" and "absolute zero", you aren't doing science. You're engaging in a "what if" debate and then treating any information gleaned from the "what if" debate as real facts.

With that insane logic, we may as well say "depends on how you define speed or light. Depends on how you define artificial or natural".

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[deleted]

To me the bad stuff about the movie which I am not too happy with.. they don't act rational like scientist should. Take funny risk when they are only just a handful and each is vital to the mission and anything wrong will mean one part of the mission screwed. But yet we have that stupid woman who said she want to go out there, she willing to take the risk just when the mission and the problem only just started. WTF

Just for tension and keep the story tense they make them act and think like teenagers. There are no protocols to follow. Something cause the probe to stop function and no one things it might be some creature or something.

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You do bring up a good point, in that they could have probed the surface before they probed below the ice.

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