MovieChat Forums > Europa Report (2013) Discussion > I stopped watching 10 minutes in. I'll t...

I stopped watching 10 minutes in. I'll tell you why and you tell me...

posted 11 years ago by whforde-103-918056
42 replies | jump to latest

I stopped watching 10 minutes in. I'll tell you why and you tell me why I should continue.

10 Minutes in they were showing the launch sequence. The dude in the craft calls out "Command Module Jettisoned" and I turned it off. Such a minor point but so simple it baffles me they got it wrong.

If they jettisoned the command module, they would have been jettisoning themselves. It's what they fly in.

I may be an idiot.

[–] toph1980 10 years ago

At least it's better than Interstellar.

--
A picture with a smile - and perhaps, a tear.

[–] DianaLis 10 years ago

Interstellar at least had some visual effects...

 http://diandianusfilmovus.blogspot.com/

[–] deecats 10 years ago

Man! Are you fussy!
Many films have lengthy lists of "goofs and errors" and a small thing like that killed it for you? Just suck it up, buttercup, & finish the film!

[–] sbowesuk 10 years ago

Oh come on now. Really? You quit the entire movie 10 minutes in over that one detail? Are you really that sensitive? Jeez, you must be a difficult person to know in real life, is things like that get you bent out of shape.

I assure you, people far smarter than you noticed that mistake, and brushed it aside without a second thought. Why? Because their world doesn't fall apart over trivial details. At the end of the day, it is just a movie. Get over it.

[–] jimmyolsenblues 10 years ago

I love the ignore button on imdb.com for you to shut off a movie where we meet an alien, because its not realistic enough, I hate movie reviewers like you. You are not someone I want to read.

[–] blisterpeanuts 10 years ago

i took it to mean the command module was separated from the launcher.

The mistake I noticed was the cost of the project: $3-4 billion. Surely that was a script error. The cost would have to be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions. Or, if it truly cost so little, that would explain why it was such a cheap and defective ship with so many mechanical failures and a lack of redundancy. There should have been an escape vehicle to get off the planet with, for example, or maybe a drone should have landed first before sending the entire crew down in a Hail Mary move.

But it was still a really good and interesting movie.

[–] mike45-580-469680 10 years ago

Keep in mind that the mission was funded and operated privately, not by any government, and quite possibly could have cost a tiny fraction of what a government would have spent, given the well-known ability of governments to mis-judge their budgeting. Of course that doesn't explain your perfectly good points about the poor design, particularly the lack of backup systems and redundancy.

On the other hand, I did, like others here, find it extremely boring -- and I've loved sci-fi, especially the "hard science" variety, since I was a kid. And there's lots of good films around that are reasonably accurate in their science and fun to watch ... "2001", of course, pretty much set the standard for everything after it, and I found the relatively little-known "Antibody" (2002, with Lance Henriksen) to be essentially a much superior remake of "Fantastic Voyage".

[–] slycer_2000 10 years ago

It is entirely feasible that a voyage like this, funded completely by private parties with no government oversight, and using entirely off-the-shelf technologies could get the job done in the amount stated. As you put it, however, that really doesn't leave much in the way for a cushion for backups and redundant systems.

[–] blisterpeanuts 10 years ago

Still, even for private sector work, I think they're off by a factor of 100. There's NO WAY this kind of a project could be done for $4B or even $40B! It's a huge space ship, a crew of half dozen, and probably dozens of people on the ground monitoring the flight.

Also, this is a decade or two into the future, so inflation would make the price even more higher.

This movie requires suspension of disbelief, although some bits of it were fairly realistic.

I didn't understand though, how did he get hydrazine on his suit if all he was doing was opening a communications panel. The whole EVA-to-fix-the-comm-panel was, of course, a reference to 2001.

But in reality, there's no way they would put a vital comm board outside the crew-accessible area, and behind a simple panel that could be bonked by a micrometeorite or something - that's dumb.

More believable would be, one of the ship's attitude adjustment thrusters developed a problem and had to be hand-repaired before the ship started spinning out of control. Then, getting fuel on him would make sense, almost. Of course, you'd think the fuel shouldn't be that easy to spill, even in that case.

[–] Vibradiant 9 years ago

Problem with a fuel leak is it would lack the dramatic tension resulting from the crew being cut off from Earth. And comm wasn't bonked by meteor activity, but hit by an electromagnetic surge due to an unpredictable solar flare.

I suppose they could've been hit by a large enough object to cause thruster malfunction, leading to fatal malfunction, but then things would still have to be wrangled in such a way as to cut off the communication, risking issues of pacing and being overly contrived.

Also, in addition to practical application as a rocket fuel, according to Wikipedia, it has also been proposed as an alternative to hydrogen in fuel cells (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine#Fuel_cells), offering a somewhat plausible reason he was splattered with it while working on an electronics panels.

"I like to watch."  Chauncey Gardiner, 'Being There'

[–] BBogus 10 years ago

Regretfully I didn't stop watching after 10 min. It is utterly pretentious and boring. Very much a cheap B movie. Found footage...with that I should have known that it would be crap.

[–] Ciaobaby-Rides-Again 9 years ago

The dude in the craft is presumably in the command module and identifying himself in transmission. He is reporting the jettison of a spent or useless stage that was attached to the command module.

Frankly, I love hard sf and I love psychological thrillers and I love Lovecraftian tentacles. This film was a very happy marriage of genres.

And, to put the cherry on top, today's CNN headline:

"Mystery moon may have ocean, life; Mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, passes big hurdle."

[–] simon-clingan 9 years ago

Here's what I saw. The command module and habitation module are stored separately in the launch vehicle. At the completion of launch the command module must jettison and dock with the habitation module for flight to Europa. There are logical reasons for this, and the lunar flights worked with the command module docking with lunar module post launch for flight to the moon.

[–] whforde-103-918056 9 years ago

jet·ti·son
ˈjedəsən,ˈjedəzən/
verb
1.
throw or drop (something) from an aircraft or ship.
"six aircraft jettisoned their loads in the sea"
noun
1.
the action of jettisoning something.

As the Command Module is the spaceship, it cannot be jettisoned. It was an error in the script. It happens.

[–] simon-clingan 9 years ago

Based on anecdotal evidence the only example being the Apollo missions, at the point of separation the command module etc is the payload and the launch vehicle is the spaceship because the launch vehicle would continue on current trajectory, and the payload would go off on a new trajectory. In the Apollo missions the term ejection was used in communication. Jettison is still valid to me because the payload must be 'thrown' from the launch vehicle so that the payload can begin its new trajectory. The launch vehicle would continue on its original trajectory, in the Apollo mission that was a solar orbit. The launch vehicle (stage 3) was not jettisoned itself but yes earlier stages were, because the remainder continued on the same trajectory and the earlier stages fell back to the atmosphere. Once the payload has been jettisoned then the payload would do a burn and become a spaceship in its own right, and on a different trajectory. In the Apollo missions, the term ejection also implies that the payload (including command module) is being thrown from the spaceship (launch vehicle, stage 3) since the command and LM modules of the Apollo were directed on a new trajectory at ejection, the term must refer to those. That's how understand it, but Im no rocket scientist. So I think your hangup on the term jettison is unwarranted.