Starship Bloopers
It is always easy to read or write a science fiction book where you either are asked to "just accept it" or you ask your reader to do so. It goes without saying that this rule must ring true with moviemakers and their audiences. Such was the case with director Paul Verhoeven, who is renowned as a sci-fi guru of sorts in the movie world, and his interpretation of Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers. "Paul became a box office success after the release of Robocop (1987), [and then with] Total Recall (1990)[,] and...Critics often praise him for his violent and intelligent science fiction movies" (Expatica.com). However, despite his "...degree in math and physics"(Expatica.com), he failed to consider, and take into account, many obvious mistakes, some of which are catastrophic to theorems we rely upon today.In the following paragraphs I will discuss some of the small, yet obvious mistakes that we are asked to "just accept" after which, I will discuss the largest and most bothersome mistake in the movie. We can start with the basics of the time that it takes to travel across the galaxy. Given the rough estimate that the galaxy is 100,000 light years from end to end and the battle for the bug planet Big K had taken place in
After estimating the size of the ship and making a comparison, it appears that the asteroid is a cylinder roughly three times the length and four or five times the diameter of the Roger Young. A rough estimation of the size of the asteroid is 8.8 billion cubic feet. If it were composed of 70% granite, 15% nickel and 15% iron it would have a density of 270 lb per cubic foot and a total mass of 1.2 billion tons. If this asteroid were to enter the planets atmosphere at the speed of the KT meteorite, 11km per second, it would have much more catastrophic affects to Buenos Aries than was grossly understated in the movie. However, since we are aware that the asteroid is moving much faster than that we could assume that the impact of the meteorite would not only destroy Buenos Aries but also send tidal waves towards Africa, Antarctica, and even north possibly as far as North America. Such an impact could possibly break the plate on which the continent sits, as well as flooding the atmosphere with enough debris such as to drop the temperature and block the sunlight for a critical amount of time. Other affects could be in the increase in volcanic activity. Some may even speculate that it may hit with an impact that would have enough force to tip the planet off of its axis and possibly to throw the moon out of orbit. No matter what the affects we do know from the comparison of other craters that the approximate size of the crater that would be left would be 20 times the size of the meteorite. In this case about 20 miles in diameter, which would easily destroy modern day Buenos Aries and set to ruins an unpredictable amount of fallout area. And this is the Starship Blooper. It then follows that we have to accept that the "Bugs" were/are intelligent enough to accurately, quickly, and efficiently calculate the necessary path of the asteroid to earth and still consider the gravitational force of every star, planet, or black hole that it is going to pass while en route. the Klendathu system, it is reasonable to say that traveling at light speed the troopers could land on the surface of the planet fifty to seventy thousand light years after they left earth. Unless they left the earth traveling at one thousand times the speed of light, in which case it would take
Some common words found in the essay are:
Total Recall, Drop Ship, Mobile Infantry, Jupiter Earth, North America, Gulf Mexico, Buenos Aries, Berringer Crater, , K-T Extinction, speed light, buenos aries, flight deck, bug planet, ship launch bays, obvious mistakes, aware asteroid, left earth, seventy thousand, launch bays, 12 drop ship, drop ship launch, fifty seventy thousand, ship launch,
Approximate Word count = 1537
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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