Sorta-OT: Movies and Electronic Design

Feb 25, 2013 152 Replies

Would you prefer practicing for the next military adventure instead? NASA has worked long and hard trying to disassociate itself from military research.

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We're talking about movies, not reality. That would probably be necessity for extended real space missions, where muscle loss in zero gravity is a very real problem. NASA is currently screwing around with alternatives to the obvious solution, such as exercise machines, and muscle massage. Hopefully, they'll find a solution as artificial gravity has plenty of problems.

However, for the movies, rotating the spacecraft, and not the audience would make the audience suspect that the movie was shot inside a rotating cement mixer. Audience members, that had not lost their last meal watching the rotating screen, would probably experience some level of vertigo. One possible solution is a rotating disk TV, which CBS tried in the 1950's as their solution to broadcasting in color. Another is to issue Dramamine (air sickness pills) with every episode.

The various space shows will also need to modify their hardware to accomodate a rotating spacecraft. For example, the Star Trek shuttle would need to de-spin before landing, or it would drill itself a hole in the ground upon landing. The propellent consumption would not be huge, but since movie spacecraft run on high specific impulse rockets that operate on ejecting mass, more modern ion drive and low specific impulse drives would need some kind of rocket powered de-spin mechanism. Trying to de-spin with an ion drive would take years.

Incidentally, I used to watch the NASA channel when I had trouble going to sleep. Never have so many, done so much, to make the exitement of space exploration, so boring.

Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Thank you for pointing out my error of thinking about three pseudo code distances and an accurate clock, while in practice, you have four satellites to get the pseudo code distances.

Anyway, any leaky feeder system will show the GPS stationary repeater antenna position on any mobile antenna in the tunnel.

Whatever you do, don't cut the _RED_ wire.

Ed

Thunderbirds often flew at very high speeds, yet the exhaust smoke curled upwards quite soon after it left the engine. Almost as if there was some bloke blowing cigarette smoke down a tube.

Cheers

Syd

What if they are all red wires?

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:19:06 -0500) it happened ehsjr wrote in :

The new designs use 80 lead flat cable. The issue is you use scissors, cut from the left and you are OK, cut from the right and up you go :-) (That is because of the wire that gets cut first).

-:)

In one movie the thing was underwater. The surface expert tells the diver not to cut the red one. The diver looks at the wires, and the sea water & lighting conditions make them all look greenish-gray.

Ever notice that they never defuse the thing with say an hour and forty-seven minutes left on the count down timer? It's always done with something like 3 seconds (or less) left.

Ed

Yeah, I always design so that the red one is the exploding wire.

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Many years ago, I built an interval timer into a black plastic box which had red 7 segment LED's on the front panel. I was doing a "site survey" in the middle of a crowded shopping center parking lot, when I was surrounded by the local police. When they saw the red LED's, they immediately deduced that it was a bomb, just like in the movies, where even the most futuristic nuclear device is detonated by a red LED countdown timer. It took some fast talking to convince them that I was not a suicide bomber intent on decimating the SUV population of the shopping center. When I returned to my office, I swapped the red LED's for a mix of green and yellow.

In this day and age of high resolution graphic terminals and desktops, the computer screen shown in some movies use huge fonts, that can be seen by even the most myopic viewer. At least the computer screen is in RGB color, as earlier movie computer screens were all green monochrome text only terminals in 40 characters per line vt100 format. Fortunately, the screens seem to be getting more realistic (and larger):

Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

When I was living in West Hollyweird, managing my father's apartment building, I was told a story by one of the tenants. He was working on a low budget movie thriller that including disarming a bomb. Someone had built a suitable electronic timer, complete with flashing lights, running from an external lead acid battery pack normally used to power one of the film camera. There were the traditional black and white wires from the battery pack to the timer. The plot required that the actor disable the bomb by cutting one of the wires. However, the director had added some time burning drama to the scene my having the actors debate which wire to cut. In confusion, the actor cut both wires at the same time with predictable pyrotechnics. Fuse? Nope. It would have worked just fine if he cut either wire, but nobody had thought what would happen if he cut them both. I suspect that this scene may be on one of the movie bloopers videos, but I haven't seen it yet.

Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

That's because the script writers have no imagination.

Or they could just remove the battery.

One of thed umbest thing I recall on TV was a McGyver episode where he is in a nuclear power plant & the security system was built on Radio Shack proto boards.

LIAR. Jorge is the one who makes exploding wire.

On a sunny day (Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:36:00 -0800) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Just add a ticking noise

The 2001 was enjoyable indeed, for the accuracy of details although the story was imagined. Another charming one is "Porco Rosso", love, death, nostalgia - and accurate technical details.

An example of disturbing details are helicopters in some action movies: many times there are obviously piston-engined choppers (like Rotorways) with turbine sounds. Sometimes turbine choppers have piston engine sounds, but it's more common the other way around.

Regards, Mikko

review a

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greenish-gray.

They have plenty of imagination, just zero stomach for reality in the scripts. Not even in "cine verite" "reality" shows.

?-)

in

Odd, i have watched my copy of "Porco Rosso" many times and i find way too many problems with the technical details, still beautiful animation though.

I also notice that almost every time someone steps up to a PA system microphone, there has to be a short feedback sound to make it real sounding.

boB

All airplanes in a steep dive make a "Stuka divebomber" howling noise, even large airliners.

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