Moonraker: a Technical Analysis of the 1979 James Bond Film. Louis Shalako.

The structure is typical for the era, shiny and mostly bullshit...

 

Louis Shalako

In the James Bond film Moonraker, in the opening scenes, a space shuttle is stolen off the back of a Boeing 747. 

You may remember the scene, where a couple of guys sneak out of the broom closet or the pantry or somewhere. They fire up the engines, and take off, with the blast destroying the plane. 

(Yeah, piss-poor security, eh. - ed).

The empty weight of the shuttle would be about 165,000 lbs. It was transported on the back of a 747. That part is real. It really did happen, sort of. There would be no payload, obviously, what is really interesting is that there would be no fuel either. That is because the engines were fueled from the massive central tank system, additional boost coming from the solid-fuel rockets strapped onto that. So the entire premise of the film is bogus from scene one. Further criticisms are sort of redundant, and yet I plan on doing it anyways...

(That's our Louis. - ed.)

I could mention that the aircraft crashes in northern Canada and Drax’s shuttle base is in South America, or at least somewhere with some really big fucking snakes.

You simply can’t get there from here. There is no reason for the onboard tank, which would be located behind the cargo bay and ahead of the engines, to have any fuel at all in such a scenario. 

It is true, that the shuttle was glide-tested, and landings were conducted in order to gain the knowledge necessary to fly and land the thing. That was one reason for the whole 747-rig, that and transport between assembly and launch pad. Landing gear might get a lot of assistance from gravity, but they do have to contend with aerodynamic forces, and you want them to fully deploy and to lock into position. This implies some sort of powered system. You want to see three green lights on your dashboard. Two greens and one red would be real bad news—

It’s not rocket science, ladies and gentlemen—

It's not rocket science, Mister Bond...

#snork

You don’t use reaction control in the atmosphere, not when you have rudder, ailerons, elevators, all of which could run on battery-powered electric servo-motors. You don’t use reaction control to run the pumps and compressors for the hydraulic landing gear system, for example. All you need are batteries, in fact otherwise powerless aircraft have been saved by deploying a wind-turbine into the slipstream in order to generate minimal electrical power. With electrical power, temperature is less of a consideration, you don’t want an air tank or a fluid, hydraulic system to freeze up just when you need it most. And if you want to trickle a little bit of heat to any such system, you still need a battery.

Drax's shuttles do have external tanks, and solid boosters, and their cargo bays are full of people. They did that much research, they checked that many facts. Once that central tank is dropped, minimal fuel is aboard the shuttle, that is for maneuvering and re-entry, otherwise you're kind of stuck up there. The big problem there, is that the blast from all engines popping off at once in an enclosed space, would surely destroy the shuttles, all of them, as they were built as lightly as possible…also, there is no way in hell Bond and Doctor Goodhead could ever outrun the blast, directed as it is down, in an enclosed space, with ducts and tubes and all of that. Even so, Bond and Doctor Goodhead seem to be blasting along in Drax's personal Shuttle Five all right, trying to shoot down the pods that are to dispense the bug-juice, thereby destroying the human race…right? Those lasers run on electrical power from one source or another...

Oh, James...

As you know, in the actual shuttle flights, the solid boosters dropped off first, the shuttle riding the tank up a little higher, but of course it's the bottom part of that equation that takes most of the energy—going from zero miles per hour, at the bottom of that gravity well. The force of gravity varies inversely to (or with), the square of the distance, as we recall from our elementary school exercises, ladies and gentlemen. The higher you get, the less the force of gravity upon your 'body', organic, celestial, or man-made machine. The force of gravity would be an accelerating (or decelerating) curve, the further you get away from Earth.

Bearing in mind Drax's space station has a 'radar jamming system', even if it worked, (and not just putting out a strong signal in the sky, over a large band of frequencies, which could hardly be missed), such a large object would be visible due to simple reflected sunlight. You can see the ISS, (International Space Station) on any clear night, (even when it's dark out), and you can even track it online so you know where and when to look. The only thing more predictable than an orbit, is a geosynchronous orbit, if I may submit. That's because it ain't actually going anywheres, it just sits there in one spot all the fucking time. It's not really clear what Drax's station is doing from the available information, probably nothing if you ask me...

The ISS is a lot smaller than Drax's space station. I won't worry you with the artificial gravity, although with that central area allegedly 'horizontal', and the station rotating in the vertical axis, there are so many technical problems with this film that it isn't even funny. It has been said the series became, over time, a parody of itself. As for the actual structure, this thing is hardly designed for stealth.

The best part of this film is when Bond comes in the front door of the glass works in Venice. That girl—yeah, that one right there, that one interests me. She makes a lot of other women look like boys...

As for an amphibious gondola, coming up out of the water and zooming off through the square by what is presumably St. Mark's Cathedral, that one is just plain ridiculous. Everyone likes ‘Q’, the scenes where they ride across the pampas to the theme from The Magnificent Seven are cute. Just cute. Fight scenes in a glass museum, tossing a guy out through an antique clock, well, they’re always fun and satisfying for the audience.

Everyone loves me...'Q'.

***

I took my girlfriend to this film when it first came out. It was a thing, these were popular films and the truth is, we had a good time. These films are, first and foremost, entertainment.

I’ve mentioned fight scenes on top of cable-cars in a previous blogpost.

Stealing a parachute in mid-fall is of course hopeless…boat chases and runaway aircraft appear in other Bond films, in fact they reprise themselves surprisingly often. There are hang-gliding scenes in this film and in Live and Let Die, then there is the gyrocopter in You Only Live Twice, the jet-pack scene in Goldfinger and the car-plane in The Man With the Golden Gun. The battle in space, forces conveniently colour-coded, reprises the underwater scene in Thunderball and the ninjas-dropping-from-above of You Only Live Twice.

Right?

There were reasons why this series sort of fell away for a while and in fact it was Timothy Dalton that sort of breathed new life into it. It was still bad, in many ways, but it was at least watchable. Timothy Dalton is not gay, which puts his performance in The Lion in Winter, (Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins), into its proper perspective and all the more impressive because of that...

 

#technical_stuff

 

END

 

Images. Stolen from the internet.

Louis has books and stories available from Amazon.

See his works on Fine Art America.

Check out this story on the #superdough blog.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

What Will Virtual Reality Look Like in the Future?

"In the slums of the future, virtual reality junkies satisfy their violent impulses in online entertainment. An expert player discovers that the line between games and reality is starting to fade away. 3DAR’s latest short film explores the frightening potential of our next technological revolution. Behind the scenes coming soon! Stay connected, but not too much ;)"



Commentary by Louis Shalako

What does the future of virtual reality look like?

It’s a complex question and one well worth asking.

But when the cat is scratching at the door to come in and it looks like a Pokemon, that would be one logical outcome for those with the desire and the cost of admission to a whole new world, one that is an artificial overlay on all that is real.

In Vernor Vinge’s award-winning Rainbow’s End, people wear ‘augmented reality’ glasses and other hardware, which allows them to superimpose whatever gloss they want upon their present surroundings. In a case like that, one person might live in a perpetual Disneyland, while another might prefer a world where every person or object is modeled on the Flinstones. If you like Clint Eastwood and scenes of people on horseback riding across the Painted Desert, you will be able to superimpose that sort of thing onto your present circumstances. A really good system would give everyone a western drawl. 

You could take a really interesting vacation and never even have to leave home.

In a world of increasingly grim inequalities, virtual reality might mean that whatever shoes you’re wearing look like Guccis rather than a ratty old pair of runners, long since due for replacement. When you take off the goggs or shut down the implant, reality comes back. 

But then, reality has always been perception--and now we will be able to control those perceptions a little better than we could before.

In a proper game-space, where all the machines, ‘wearables’ or implants even, would all be talking to each other, how we present ourselves to others would be a matter of choice, (just as it is to some degree now). The other person, similarly-equipped, may see that we are wearing Gucci footwear when really, we’re not.

People of all ages are sort of living in the Pokemon Go world now. They’re not even wearing special goggles. They seem intent enough on the relatively small screens on their smart-phones, to the extent that they’re stepping out in front of buses and falling off cliffs already.

They’re walking around with their faces down and their attention elsewhere. Virtual reality might be somewhat less dangerous because it will be totally immersive. In this virtual future, a person might choose to have city buses appear as charging rhinos. In a virtual world, one would hope that peripheral vision would be roughly as good as our own natural vision. The odds are that we won’t be stepping out in front too many charging rhinos, chugging diesel fumes and squealing the brakes, going down Main Street U.S.A. anytime soon. Let’s hope not, anyways.

Virtual reality is not just for fun and games. Scientists will use virtual reality in a number of ways.

Sensorama, 1950s. Photo Minecraftsyco, (Wiki.)

A robot equipped with enough sensors will be able to show all angles as it enters a nuclear reactor facility under meltdown and show outside observers exactly what’s going on in there.

Observers will be able to slip on a headset and look up, down, all around at no risk to themselves.

With improved medical imaging systems, a surgeon might be able to ‘make himself really small’ with virtual reality. They will be able to stand beside a tumour deep inside the brain and direct laser beams, micro-scalpels, or a small cluster of nano-bots to more accurately excise a tumor for example.

Soldiers will train on virtual reality renditions of sensitive targets without having to build an expensive, and rather insecure mock-up, which will become increasingly difficult to hide or camouflage from space-based observation as time goes on.

I have minimal experience with virtual reality. A few years ago, a buddy had a set of FatShark goggles and a camera aboard a model airplane. The aircraft was equipped with a video transmitter, and he had an antenna and recording unit on the ground, with the goggles plugged into the system.

He could fly the plane from the point of view of the aircraft itself—the only real complication being that when he swiveled or panned the camera, tilted it up or down or whatever, it was easy to lose that centred, forward view. The field of view was also quite small. There was a learning curve and it involved not just adrenalin, but some disorientation as well. The field of view is limited, but makers are continually improving the product. When you move your head inside of a proper game-space, the view changes, just like in real life.

I was wearing the goggles when he finally brought it in for a landing. With the ground, real enough, coming up at me, I literally braced my feet for impact and tottered back and forth, heart pounding, as the machine hit the grass.

It’s also pretty amazing when the plane is rolled, looped or spun. Reality, or a real model airplane flying in a real atmosphere, isn’t even really necessary to the equation. There is nothing real about World of Warcraft. People become totally immersed in a violent and convincing rendition of a battlefield. There is the sound and the fury, the flinch as a spear or sword comes at the player. The only thing lacking is blood, but there might even be some real fear in there, once a player has really let go of their external circumstances.

In terms of history, and many other applications, VR might be a useful teaching tool or a 

learning experience.

Weaponized.

It’s real enough, or it certainly could be and the peaceful uses of virtual or augmented reality are presently being explored. It may be possible to plug directly into the brain, in which case the deaf might hear and the blind might see, a case of a parallel technologies, based on many of the same principles as VR. The real difficulty there is the brain/electronic interface, another problem that science and manufacturers are working on.

In the future, virtual reality, like all tools designed and built by humans, will be weaponized.

It will be used to save lives, to improve lives, and ultimately, no doubt used to take life as well.

As for the author, I have to get back to the game. Them other dogs are beating me at poker (again) and I need to sting somebody for cab fare at the very least.

END