Slashdot Mirror
Reality TV "Astronauts" Lift Off
RJG writes "In the latest reality show on British TV, three British "space tourists" last night succesfully blasted off on a five day mission and are currently orbiting the earth 200 miles up. Or so they think. And to forestall the first question. They aren't experiencing weightlessness due to a combination of being in a low orbit (rather than outer space where the weightlessness is) and a few under-floor gravity generators."
Well, at least it's nice to be reassured that stark raving idiocy isn't an exclusively American trait. Apparently, any prospective 'astronaut' who showed even the slightest glimmer of comprehension of the rudimentaries of physics was automatically disqualified. leaving us with the pick of the litter...people who are stupid enough to believe that 'gravity generators' exist, and that exposure to 'near space' will make you shorter and increase your lung capacity.
Now add to the mix a psycho Russian pilot:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The last episode will be the best one, when the TV show fakes a leak in the station and they have five minutes to decide which of the three gets the two working space suits. Sort of like Lord of the Flies in space. I bet they will think it is soooooo funny when they find out it is just a TV show.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
So how long before other reality TV shows start happening in space? I can see it now, people being voted off the space station every week...
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
Finally proof they're just as stoopid as us Americanos :D
Get paid to code OSS
I suppose space is quite a long way from the Isle of Wight :)
so remind me why it's called that, again? Because it's "real"?
For once, a reality show sounds like a blast! I hope it rockets right up to the top of the ratings!
till they ask to look out the windows
...had to fail a drug test, physics test, and IQ test.
...gravity generators
Sure proof that those onboard deserve to be laughed at, assuming that they aren't paid actors.
I don't care about the rest, I want details about this little imaginary piece of machinery.
No windows I guess?
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
and the public laps it up...
At first I was disgusted from the initial appearance of this show, and unfortunately after a few quotes from the profiles such as these: I realize that this will probably be an instant success. It appears to be on a UK channel but I'm guessing it will be picked up and aired in the states.
I guess when you put people like this together, you have a formula for an instant TV hit (like every reality show before it). Am I allowed to hate this show if it's making light of the people I dislike the most in this world?
If you disagree that it's going to be a hit, check out the 9 pages of posts on its bulletin boards.
Also to note, there are posts on the bulletin that this may be a hoax on the viewing public. Just relaying that speculation.
My work here is dung.
I hope they brought an inanimate carbon rod.
The lesson here is the same one as in the U.S. with Jay Leno's Tonight Show: You get to be on TV if you can act like you are really stupid.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I read (can't remember exactly where) that they were putting super high definition screens in the windows to play bogus orbital footage. Supposedly the screens are equivalent to what are used for movie effects production.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Uhm, if you are in orbit, you would experience weightlessness nomatter how far you are above the earth.
not to mention the fact that a TV show would not be first one to have them for real.. :)
Reality television. 'nuff said...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"They aren't experiencing weightlessnes due to ... a few under-floor gravity generators." - "gravity generators" like, for instance, the EARTH?
"...rather than outer space where the wightlessnes is"
News for Nerds? I think you can safely assume that the Slashdot crowd understand where wightlessness occurs.
I imagine that part of the selection process included an IQ test with only those without GCSE's and an IQ below 50 allowed to take part. Otherwise the contestants might be able to work out that it was a hoax.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
It shows just how gullible people can be.
For example, in order to explain why when they go into space yet experience gravity and no above normal g-force on take off. They were given a talk on the "artificial gravity generators" which give the shuttle an artificial gravity, despite breaking the laws of physics.
The amazing thing is they not only bought that up but everything else, it shows just how gullible (and poorly educated, guess it says lots about the education system) people are.
I used to come to slashdot to get away from my co-workers blabbering about their favorite reality TV show over at the water cooler. I guess the joke's on me. Reality TV has invaded yet another aspect of my life. How about an Ask Slashdot on how we nerds can cease this relentless plague and restore balance to the Force?
But this show is something else!
Absolutely compelling stuff. And I speak as someone who can't stand 'reality shows'.
Every show so far, there is a hundred things that will make you laugh. I can't get over how dumb these people are. There has been some claims that perhaps the 'contestants' are themselves actors, but I don't believe it - no actor could be this stupid consistently without giving the game away.
The TV crew have even messed up a few times - the american guy who came over to lecture them on anti-gravity, gave away that they were in England (they're convinced they're in Russia) and they didn't even notice!
Last night they had to cancel the 'money shot' view of the earth from space, because a moth flew into the warehouse containing the space shuttle, and they thought it would be a giveaway if a big moth shadow fell over the earth.
Only, with these guys... I think they would just assume the earth was under attack by Moth-Ra or something.
Best show this year in the UK.
Damnit, I fell right into your evil plan of slowly taking over the world by encouraging missplelling.
Fellow Slashdotters you are now allowed to put me on ignore, for I have fallen prey to the lies that fall within the headlines.
We all know the British can hardly get someone up a ladder, much less to the moon.
"We're monitoring you on our instruments Squindon"
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
And no matter how low they fly, they'll still be over your head.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
To prevent the contestants catching on to the obvious inconsistencies, they've had to discount anyone with military training, physics education and anyone with even a cursory interest in space science.
It's basically taking the thickest 3 people they could find - I'd be suprised if any of the contestants even had any A-levels.
Either that or the most gullible 3 people they could find, who, blinded by their desire to become famous, are willing to believe anything, however nonsensical it sounds, just to get on the telly.
And since the entire idea of the show is to laugh at stupid/gullible people I see little point in it. I do wonder how they explained away the huge smoke cloud visible across large swathes of England at the moment though.
Where do channel 4 get the idea that this is good entertainment?
FGD 135
that sure was infor/\/\ative!
What if the people on this show are just actors? Who would be the idiot then?
I wonder if this is how they faked the original Apollo moon landing?
No kidding. We don't need to watch the Capricorn One sequences in which these nitwits are faked out by the producers; just show us the moments when a prospective "space tourist" showed that glimmer of intelligence and skepticism, only to be promptly whisked from the room to avoid contaminating the other hopefuls. As with American Idol (supposedly), the early elimination rounds would be the most watchable.
But I never watched "Idol" because the idea of the early shows bugs me, and I hate this, actually.
A show in which people volunteered to go through a *real* space training program, say the equivalent of NASA shuttle crew training, could have been interesting and would have taught the audience something. It also could easily have put the audience through the same voyeuristic "look at human nature" experience reality shows are supposed to be good for. (Whatever.)
Instead we get yet another show by, for, and about mean and stupid people. What's the point of tricking the dufuses this way, other than to ridicule them and to show you can do it? That's sociopathic programming. Oh, wait... Maybe that's the "reality" part.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
In order for the hoax to stand a realistic chance of succeeding, the Cadets would have to remain unaware of the true nature of the show, even given any production mistakes and implausible explanations. As such, a strict set of criteria were applied to filter out inappropriate applicants:
The intention was to obtain a group of Cadets who were highly gullible, conformist, and ignorant about the show's subject matter; and also ideally suited to appearing in a Reality TV show (e.g. uninhibited extroverts, "wacky personalities", or characters otherwise able to capture the public interest).
Ohnoes! Scuttlemonkey is also CmdrTaco!
From the article:
"(rather than outer space where the wightlessnes is)"
You came real close to spelling "weightless" as "witless"
I'm just sayin'
A goal is a dream with a deadline
This actually sounded like much better idea for a reality TV show than most, until I RTFA. Why do they insist on making all these things redicioulously cheasy? More importantly, why do we enjoy seeing the monotony of our daily lives mirrored in front of us so much? To stroke our egos!?
Gravity generators? Why bother, why not just give them Heavy Boots to wear?
We must act immediately to close the Stupid Gap!
Most people wouldn't point and laugh at retarded kids, and the difference between them and these guys is only a matter of degree. How high an IQ does someone have to have before it's okay to mock them for being stupid?
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
No way! Many American reality shows and even the concept of reality tv are borrowed from Great Britain. Yes, though many Americans would hate to admit it, the US is still culturally reactive to Britain and Europe at large.
Well, it is from Rip Aster Onkey.
Of course the "astronauts" know it's just a show.
Of course they know they're not in space.
What you are witnessing is the first real reality show backlash. The TV programmers have figured out that there are enough gullible people in the world who watch and believe these shows that they can hire a basically competant series of actors who go through the motions of a reality series. Come on, they've been able to study the reactions of reality show participants for months if not years.
The real "participants" in this series are the audience who laugh at "players" they think are stupid enough to believe what they are going through and post messages on blogs and sites like Slashdot being so witty about America not being the only stupid country. The producers can then show all these blogs and the reactions of audience members who they've interviewed before revealing the that the joke is on them.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The Real World: Space Castmates will get drunk, have sex, break things and try to hold down a job WHILE IN SPACE!!! I hope the producers at MTV aren't getting any ideas...
they licensed the patent.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Hah. How can they fool them like this? They need to start another show, namely Moral Responsibility...
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I say, Dr. Merkwurdigeliebe, an interesting idea you have there.
Sorry, 19 year old TV middle-ish attractive chick who whines alot. We've decided that for the greater good you have to bail. You can take it two ways. Either with a helmet where you slowly run out of air or no helmet and it's quick. Your call.
Now that I would watch. What are the 5 stages of reality TV grief?
Begging
Figthing
Urinating
Yet more drama
Hugging
Wins a car
If you tell someone that there is the existence of a gravity generator, is that so far fetched? It seems like everything they have told these people might be at least slightly believable to anyone who isnt in the science field.
Dammit, if I wanted to watch idiots being fooled by a large corporation, couldn't I just go to the mall?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
From what I've heard all the people on it are more interested in being famous and on tv than going into space. Your usual loud, annoying and incredibly talentless fare. I refuse to watch any reality tv.
I would bet they know it's all fake, but are going along with the joke. Most "reality TV" applicants are not just John and Jane Public. They are attention-whores who want to get on TV, usually people who are dying to be actors. So they will lie as needed to reach their goal.
It's all fun and games until the episode where they stage a Columbia style 'accident' and two of the tourists die of a heart attack while warning sirens blare.
Then it's freaking hilarious.
(from the 'Cadet Profiles')
Andrew is also scared of moths.
Billy does not believe in ghosts but claims to have seen an alien.
She [Sara-Jane] also dislikes bees, big wild animals, cockroaches, creepy crawlies, rodents, sharks and snakes.
Let's see... space moths. Check. Aliens. Check. Bees. Check. Let the fun begin.
Will be the one where one of the tourists gets ejected into space but manages to hold his breath long enough to make it back inside. Also, thankfully, the gravity generators work outside the ship.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
They would run for the space suits when they saw the Windows BSOD displayed on the window.
Fight Spammers!
At least they're making fun of their stupid people, we tend to put our morons on pedestals.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
From the About the Show page. These people must really be dumb...
Ride the skies
Many American reality shows and even the concept of reality tv are borrowed from Great Britain.
I take minor solace in knowing no American was stupid enough to think up the concept of reality TV.
No. Gravity is everywhere. The "weightlessness" is an artifact of being in an orbit. The Earth is pulling you down, but you are also moving perpendicular to the Earth's surface, so the ground falls away from you with the curve of the Earth. It's free fall. You just fall continuously over the horizon. It's falling with style, to quote Buzz Lightyear. ;-)
Build a stationary tower with it's top floor at the level of a space orbit, and you'll just feel the Earth's gravity.
That's how the shuttle gets back down. They do a burn to cut their velocity and start falling toward the Earth instead of over the horizon. Such is the way of all orbits. Move faster to get to a higher orbit. Move slower to get to a lower orbit.
Anyone got any dehydrated ice cream?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Or the dumb blokes who watch reality TV show actually thinking those are real people?
On a more positive note, I think you'd be great on this show.
>without GCSE's
this has got to be a typo, surely, "with up to 14 recent GCSE's" is more relevant
low orbit (rather than outer space where the wightlessnes is)
It's a little known fact, but this is why things always fall off the bottom of the moon.
The whole thing is a retarded TV con, one of the supposed contestant / victims - not the one who is officially undercover for the program - but a supposed 'reality' TV entrant is currently appearing in a Blood Donor advert, they are all actors - it is a sub-Jerry Springer farce.
..Space Race rides you!
Can they be voted out the airlock? I'd pay to watch that.
You seem to have missed the joke.
Each of the contestants gets £5000 A DAY they're on the show...
Or in the White House....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I haven't felt as horrified about a TV show's premise since the WB's Superstar from a couple of years ago. On the rare moment when I did watch I literally looked at the TV through my fingers in a pathetic attempt to appease my conscience. Oh it was funny, even hilarious, but I felt bad the entire time watching otherwise good people used as comedic cannon fodder. I stopped watching after the second episode when I had friends walk out of the room in disgust.
Something tells me though that all is not as it appears with this new show and it may end up being a hoax on the viewer when we find out that the astronauts are really actors playing a part. Who knows?
The pinnacle of this genre will be when they get together a bunch of uncreative and obnoxious producers that put together strings of increasingly offensive and contrived shows and see just what the stupid viewing public will put up with while making the producers obscenely wealthy. I predict it will be a long running series.
Everybody seems to think that these people are really stupid. But firstly, I think people on slashdot are into technology, and therefore know what is and isn't possible. Also, these people have no reason not to believe the producers aren't telling them the truth. The Milgram Experiment show that people will do stuff that they don't want to do, just because some guy in a white suit says that they should. I believe this shows that people are going to believe the guy in the white suit, even if what he says is a little far fetched.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Technically speaking, all objects are gravity generators :).
This is even worse than the one where took all these wannabee performers with no talent and let them to believe they did. It's just plain mean.
For this show, wouldn't it be a better idea to create a totally immersive virtual environment where, say, 5 person crews operate and live-aboard a virtual "starship". Teams could compete against each other from within this virtual world while actually living on the set the entire time. Of course, it would all be understood that this is a simulation.
I could be a very popular show, and it would promote teamwork instead of "laughing at the dupes".
A goal is a dream with a deadline
This is just several kinds of stupid, all at once.
We're still holding on strong. The whole thing, including the cadets, is a huge hoax on us, the viewers. Though the brits fell for this one too, so we'll call it even.
Ride the skies
Having lived in both the UK and US for extended periods, I have to disagree with you. Both influence each other and neither is the sole source from which culture flows. Case in point, I was rather suprised to see Kenny Rogers have a number one song in the UK charts when I was there in the eighties.
-AC
Where can I get one of those gravity generators? I wanted to embed one in my shoes so I can work out all day. Then put one in my apartment so can increase gravity both an an exercise program and anti-theft system.
Fight Spammers!
Explain the huge smoke cloud? Why explain it? It's obviously the engine exhaust from their takeoff.
We must act immediately to close the Stupid Gap!
I assume you mean "Stupidity Gap".
For all non-UK Slashdotters, this forum will bring you up to speed on what has been happening in the last week. - http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.p hp?f=139
p so some of the training looked familiar and it brought back some happy memories.
I usually hate reality TV shows, but this one has me hooked, maybe because we have done the fantasic ATX http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/visitKSC/atx.as
BTW, they are either the stupidest people ever.. or brilliant actors.
Jonathan
Oscar The Grouch Does California, Nevada & Arizona - http://www.mccormackj.fsnet.co.uk/oscarthegrouch
Actually, "gravity generators" do exist - stuff that exerts centrifugal force. ;) So, if the ship was rotating, the hull would technically be "under floor"... so there go your "gravity generators".
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
...where the producers assure the participants that this time they really will be going space. Honest, really.
Psych!
they already had us beat with that show where the guy wears a clown wig and runs around kicking people in the balls
"my friend, youve just been kicked in the balls"
*victum begins laughing*
oh yea right its funny now..
"dumbest show ever"
Every thing generates gravity.
If they didn't exist, neither would gravity.
The Admin and the Engineer
Maybe this is just the beginning P.R. for a plan like the one described in Kornbluth's classic story "The Marching Morons".
I wonder if the soap-root is indeed 'soapy'...
Its past time for this, IMHO.
You obviously haven't seen any Japanese game shows....
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Better quote from site:
Entering the Kingdom of Uranus
The Cadets find their entrance into the Kingdom of Uranus to be a very moving experience.
So maybe this whole thing is not idiocy, just harmless hilarity.
The conspiracy theory is that the "cadets" know the show is fake, and the hoax is actually on the audience. It seems hard to believe that 3 people could really be this gullible, but I suppose if they're carefully fed information, who knows...
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Do they have to watch B-movies and crack jokes, then come up with a new invention every week?
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
Asked what it was like being the only girl on the Shuttle, she replied, "It's horrible! I really needed to do a number two this morning but I'm really aware there are five guys outside that can hear and smell everything."
Keri thought the situation wouldn't bother the guys too much, as they tend to revel in matters of the bottom.
However, that was the only issue with being the only lass. "I enjoy the lads' company. I wouldn't mind a girly chat, but I'm not complaining."
"I don't mind being the only girl with five guys and some of my friends say I like man attention, so..." she added.
Apparantly it is. The core audience of Slashdot, I mean. If you'd RTFA (or even paid attention to the summary), you would have realised that that is the explanation given to the participants in the show, not the public. And is it really that hard to believe people will accept it? The large majority of people still believe a heavier object will fall faster than a light one.
Anyway, I've been watching the show, and it's by far the best "reality TV" I've seen (maybe doewn to Johnny Vaughn's presance, actually). And the poor people being conned? They get to be on TV, get advertising deals, have had a great experince, as well as getting paid £5000 a day for their time in space.
I don't think the creation of "reality" tv is something anyone should be proud of.
I'm happy to disavow any knoweldge of or claim any credit for the horrific crap that is reality tv
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
"We must act immediately to close the Stupid Gap!"
I assume you mean "Stupidity Gap".
Yes, apparently it's worse than we thought.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
However, I have been close up to bar gravity generators. Oddly though, there was always one area on it's surface that never worked and just always happened to be where a double Bacardi and Coke was sitting.
Curiously that area always seemed to be where I happened to place my glass. I don't know if there is some anti-gravity aspect to glass. But needless to say, after N+1 of those and the gravity field would always flux so that it caused me to fall off the barstool.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
You can watch direct scenes at http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsite s/S/spacecadets/
one of the best scenes of the week was this one (no signup required for link below)
http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?i d=d04_1012_minsky_lecture&vert=spacecadets
The guy thats trying dead hard not to laugh was actually an actor, they placed 3 actors in the group in order to influence the rest of them a bit in the right direction.
lol
my favourite one has a guy strapped to a bungie cord on a catapult, and his clothes are firmly attached to the catapult itself, so that if he gets catapulted while attached to a bungie cord, his clothes stay on the catapult base.
his partner has to answer trivia questions, and three wrong answers and the other guy gets catapulted.
that's what I love the most about the Japanese.
Na mate
:-)
You want an "Alien" chest exploader.
Now that I would pay to see
The scariest time will be when all of the windows crash with BSODs.
When tasked with the highly difficult job of blowing up a balloon for science, one of the "crew" had a problem...
"Keri told Capcom she couldn't see any instructions on animals.
"Have you taken the instructions out of the envelope?" asked Capcom.
She had not."
*sigh*
...welcome our new space fairing underlords.
$1 gets you in the pool, start bidding on how long this farce is going to last. I'll put money on half a season, anyone else care to wager?
Resistance... is futile.
So I'm wondering, how easily could we get green cards for highly talented British individuals with astronaut training and TV experience?
Look at this gem: "Keri had been concerned to see debris falling from the earth. "I thought it was space junk but Drew said it was ice." Am I reading this right, did she believe that crap falling off the fake earth was ice?
But there's some differences too. For example, the `gravity' at your head would be less than the gravity at your head, which is true on the Earth too, but the effect would be much much larger -- large enough that you might notice it. And if you were to jump straight up off the floor, your path up would not appear to be a straight line. Apparantly people's inner ears can tell the difference too, which I guess might explain how spinning things at the circus make you puke :)
But sure, if people think there's gravity because they're in `low Earth orbit' (when in fact as long as you're in orbit, you feel practically no gravity, no matter how low your orbit is) then I guess they won't be looking for those subtle effects. The ISS is only 200 miles up -- it's hard to get in a lower altitude than that above the Earth and actually stay there for any length of time -- and the astronauts float around just fine :)
Still, the whole thing sounds like a stunt, like the people MUST know they're not actually in space. Could they just be actors? Is this the new Joe Schmoe? If not, I really feel sorry for them when they `land' -- the whole world will know just how naive they are.
Channel 4 seems to come up with the most awful spirited programming, I don't know why? maybe it's what the yoof of today want?.
But I guess this program maybe a double bluff, I have not really followed the program other than when I was channel surfing the first episode where the victims were chosen. I spotted 12 actors, more actors than "victims" which did not make the grade. I cannot believe that they would audition actors without letting the viewer know, so I therefore assume that they were all actors and were paid to pretend to be gullible "victims".
Some of these TV shows have had problems with the aftermath of these sort of twisted humiliation programs. I have heard of a suicide that was linked to this sort of TV humiliation, and I think jerry springer was linked to some murder, all sorts of law suits with that transexual miriam thing, etc....
I cannot believe that the producers would leave themselves open to these possibilitys?
But then again I could be wrong, I have been told there is no lower limit to human intelligence?.
embedded linux
Let's take three tv show producers and put them alone on the Mir space station.
Leave them there for six months to solve "real problems" like leaks, power outages
and other life threatening shit. Then save the return trip cash because those
assholes are frozen corpses.
The highlight of the film is when they realize they can't fix anything and are
sure to die. Then through the intercom the announcement for the spectacularly low
ratings arrives.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
I just put the show on (it's live on E4).
One of the 4 is American and was eulogising on the power of the human brain.
The girl has just said "I lived in Birmingham all my life, until I was 17".
A bloke says "I waited until I was 22 before I met my wife"
It's pretty obvious these people are as thick as the proverbial 2 short blanks. Watching one of them explaining about G-forces in a fighter plane while not noticing they are in a wooden "space ship" was very funny.
Somebody should found a religion like that. I'd join.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And I found out how to build one online!
Bye, slashdot. I'm sick of your 'tude. Hello
I guess mods think that this story became much more interesting now than it used to be back on nov 21 when I first submitted it...or perhaps my title was not catchy enough.
So are there really little ghouls with pitchforks and lots of fire there?
I vote for making the Earth shatter in front of their faces and then cut all communications to the spaceship. Let see how long it takes them to f**k like rabits because they are the only human beings alive.
Obama = Socialism.
Its Euronaut.
Hmmm - judicious use of quote marks makes your statement meaningless. Toss in a wink - and you might as well not hit the Submit button. There's no such force at "Centrifugal" - it is correctly known as "Centripetal" force. It doesn't have anything to do with gravity. But it would allow the study of the corresponding Coriolis force with ease.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Two points to the winner!
I'm surprised no one else had said it..
Now, where exactly would they find something of sufficent mass and density to simulate 1G on something the size of the space shuttle? They wouldn't, and actually be able to move it.
But hey, if they want to believe, they will.
When I was a kid, I went to Space Academy at the Huntsville Space and Rocket center, twice. It was fun. It was geared more towards beginners, but still, it was fun.
Someone else linked This Page, which shows that the folks in the simulation aren't regular kids being fooled. They're actors being paid to act like they believe the whole thing.
The simulation sounds really cool though, if it's as realistic as their site portrays.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Maybe they have attached a huge multi million ton weight under the spaceship to get artificial gravity. :)
I don't know much about this show and have never seen it, but I think it would be funny if this whole reality show turned out to be fake. That way, at the end of the whole thing, after the viewers have laughed and gasped at these people's 'stupidity' and at all the crazy and tragic things that have happened, the actors and producers can stop and announce, "This whole thing is fake" and laugh at the viewers. I don't know enough about the show, but it certainly would not surprise me to hear that something like this was all staged, with actors playing stupid.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
No more so than Britain and Europe at large are culturally reactive to America.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Technically speaking, all objects are gravity generators :).
Especially the fat american ones.
Actually, America lost the monopoly on stupid earlier this year, when a ringtone captured the #1 spot on Britain's pop charts. That's right. A fucking ringtone.
How can anyone have a monopoly on human stupidity? Its spanned the globe as long as humans have.
Just because America's media has always been stupid and free enough to make their stupidity an international claim to fame...
So, if this is true, then they're following in the spirit of Contest Searchlight?
Denis Leary, and some very funny comedians parody "Project Greenlight." The scripted story follows a "reality" show, where the actors are all comedy hopefuls are creating a new show for Comedy Central. Its incredibly funny, but generally I think people didn't quite get the fact that it was *not* a real show with real people.
Michael C. Hollinger
Some of these TV shows have had problems with the aftermath of these sort of twisted humiliation programs. I have heard of a suicide that was linked to this sort of TV humiliation, and I think jerry springer was linked to some murder, all sorts of law suits with that transexual miriam thing, etc....
To be fair, they do seem to have gone to great pains to make sure their victims are emotionally stable and will appreciate the joke.
They aren't experiencing weightlessness due to a combination of being in a low orbit (rather than outer space where the weightlessness is)
Augh! I hate it when I see statements like this. This may be technically correct, but the implication is wrong.Astronauts even in high orbit experience weightlessnes not because they are outside of the influence of the Earth's gravitational field, but because they are in free fall.
The Space Shuttle goes into low Earth orbit, yet the astronauts experience weightlessness. Why? Because the Shuttle is in free fall-- it is falling at a rate that exactly matches the pull of gravity, so the environment around the astronauts (the walls of the shuttle) fall at the same rate as they do. They're also in orbit-- they're falling at just the right rate so that they never hit the ground. (It's reasonably valid to think of it that they are falling towards the ground, but also moving sideways fast enough so that they get out of the way before the hit the ground.)
-Rob
Meanwhile, the Russians used a pencil. Also, it's worth pointing out that they're not supposed to be in Russia, it's Kazakhstan. Admittedly, Kazakhstan was the Soviet center for space work, so it's an easy mistake to make.
Well, at least he didn't use that oh-so-girlish anime smile.
Actually, they're just wearing really heavy boots
The beauty of it is that they ARE using the one object around big enough to generate a 1G gravitational field, and it is indeed beneath the floor of their craft.
For the record, I despise reality TV, and therefore I don't watch it.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
I wonder if thinking "rudimentaries" is a word would have un-disqualified you ...
Now, where exactly would they find something of sufficent mass and density to simulate 1G on something the size of the space shuttle? They wouldn't, and actually be able to move it. :)
1G is a measure of acceleration. It is trivial to simulate 1G. Ever heard of a centrifuge? You need only lift a counterweight (which doesn't even be the same mass as the end with your fake 'gravity'), and you could probably even build a small one within the confines of the shuttle or build a pod of some sort that rings around outside the shuttle. (You would need two, actually, but that is beside the point.)
It is not, as you probably meant, likely that we could achieve 1G of gravitational force without at least putting someone down on an object with roughly the same mass as the earth (the necessary mass would depend on the size and density distribution of course).
From another perspective, although making fun of people is, for some, despicable (unless the people being made fun of are American), after looking over the website and looking at the great lengths this show went to in order to convince these people that they really were going into outer space, I started to wonder about the "thrill ride" aspect of the whole experience.
Think about it, we go to places like Cedar Point, Disney World, Universal Studios, etc, to enjoy immersive experiences. We spend billions on immersive video games like God of War, as well. There was a hit movie made about paying for someone to be "fooled" into believing they were having a spy/intriuge experience: The Game, with Michael Douglass. We pay big money for experiences all the time.
For the time being, these guys are on the biggest thrill ride on earth. Sure, some of them may feel like chumps when it's all over, but, then again, they may just be "thrilled".
No "suspension of disbelief" here. However, looks like the producers could only get away with this once; maybe twice. After that, everyone already knows, and so, no-one can experience the thrill of believing. How much would someone pay for a thrill ride that convinced them, for the time being, that they were actually on a space shuttle for five days?
...or mod them Funny
I'd like to take this opportunity to note, on behalf of the British public, that the general intellectuality is far greater than those 4 individuals.
Dumb bumbling god fearing pig eyed hicks should not be entertained with the idea they can run countries, let alone continents. D'Oh!
:-(
Still better than the one we got though
Under-floor gravity generators?! I need one of them!
Well, you'll have to apologize me on that one. The translation I got from Google and Babelfish both gave me "centrifugal" (how's that for judicious use of quoting), which is quite close to the wording in my native language. I'm sure you did understand what I meant, so not all was lost (maybe bandwidth).
And of course it does have lots of things to do with gravity. They are both forces (by definition both exert acceleration based on mass), and given a large enough radius you can use one to mimic another. As for the Coriolis force, can't see how that is related to the subject, seeing as you can't really feel it, just watch its effects (unlike gravity or a centripetal force).
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
I saw the opening for this.. they went out of their way to pick stupid and gullible people. I mean outright "Erm.. should I run at that brick wall?" stupid. Taught them next to nothing and basicly recorded them doing it. The whole thing is "look we're idiots" basicly.
But then these people all signedup for "a secret reality TV show", they had no idea what it was.. so they deserve all they get for being so dumb as to just want to whore themselvs on TV.
In short : I won't be watching, I hate the concept and I don't enjoy idiots.
I like muppets.
Well, at least it's nice to be reassured that stark raving idiocy isn't an exclusively American trait. Apparently, any prospective 'astronaut' who showed even the slightest glimmer of comprehension of the rudimentaries of physics was automatically disqualified. leaving us with the pick of the litter...people who are stupid enough to believe that 'gravity generators' exist, and that exposure to 'near space' will make you shorter and increase your lung capacity.
Other good qualification questions concern disbelief in evolution, belief that it is possible in our lifetimes to build a 'universal constructor', and near-certainty that the human race will experience a 'technological singularity' within the next 50 years.
In other news, American President George W. Bush announced today a new program to curtail the dwindling number of the country's morons with his new No Stupid Person Left Behind program. The President declined to comment on the diverting of funds from the No Child Left Behind and NASA spending programs to this new plan, but did state that he planned to "nip this epidemic in the bud."
[End of Line]
Spot on for the differences (although you could kinda get around that with a large enough radius and propper angular velocity).
;)
Although those might be requisites for entering a reality show, you don't really have to be dumb or stupid to believe this - just ignorant (which is really not a crime). I know tons of really bright and successful people who simply do not have any kind of formal training in physics. I don't think any of them would join a reality show though.
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
Didn't Einstein prove that gravity and acceleration are interchangeable?
Absolutely correct. Because the phenomenon of weightlessness is, in fact, a result of being in free-fall, which all orbiting objects are.
You can experience the exact same thing in anything else that's in free-fall, like an airplane descending at the same rate as gravity (9.81m/s^2) or some amusement park rides.
Movie sets always have that element like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom blooper where the huge unmovable boulder rocks at the lightest touch?
Surely you would realize that your in a set that just doesn't feel solid enough to go up into space?
The fact that some of the contestants have previous acting experience means nothing. Countless people sign themselves up as extra's and the kind of extroverts that would be selected for a reality show especially. Introverted nerds would not be accepted or even apply. Same reason there are no "leaked" photos of bill gates posing nude to pay his rent before he made it big (like 99% of female celebs)
Oh well it sounds like an insane stunt yet it being the audience being fooled can't be discounted. I has been done before on the BBC where they faked a fake haunted house that turned out to be real. Or so the audience thought. I just like to know how they are going to explain the contestants never actually seeing the rocket.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
this would mean none of the journalists reporting on this have cared to do basic fact checking. or anyone who would be in a position to confirm your theory is also an actor. of course it would be neat if the production team was able to pull that off, but how likely is that? surely it's not true that the audience _couldn't_ know they're being duped.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but, as I said to my friend midway through slagging off the participants and the stupidity of the show, "Who the fuck is "piloting" this thing?".
_ANYONE_, who is stupid enough to buy that the "ship" is on autopilot is clearly a complete fucking idiot...
"Battle of the Network Stars"
1970's.
Bzzzzt! Sorry, thanksforplayingSmithersreleasethehounds.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm guessing if Endemol go ahead and do the US version, they'll now have to add another test into the mix which checks if they read slashdot regularly...
On the otherhand, with the ratings it's got so far in the UK, that's about as likely as them actually being in space...
In fact, perhaps the only way this show could get any more entertaining is if the viewing public were allowed to vote on which indignity the 'astronauts' would have to suffer next.
How about voting who to kick off the shuttle?
"I was rather suprised to see Kenny Rogers have a number one song in the UK charts "
I hear ya, I'm always surprised to see Kenny Rogers have a number one song anywhere.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I'm afraid acting alone won't do it. We need real, live, drooling stupid people. Now, where can we find a bunch of them right away, and get them all green cards?
Now if they had gone to acting school or been in some real productions of even multiple minor roles that would be something. But a single ad and an extras page. Nah, just normal for the kind of people.
The BBC could pull a double hoax but not channel 4. To much a risk people boycott the channel in anger.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Jay Leno: "What is outer space?"
Jaywalker: "It's like, um, er, when you are high and spaced out and all"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That would be real, not artificial, gravity.
Dammit, what are they teaching kids nowadays?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think you mean 'cosmonaut'
Space Cadets is a hoax. The official SC website has information on each contestent. In particular "Ryan McBride" occupation is described as "electrician":e s/S/spacecadets/cadets/ryan-mcbride.html
:)
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsit
However he also appears on a TV advert to give blood (near the end, you see him 3 times):
http://www.blood.co.uk/pages/flashAdvert5S.htm
The rumours cirulating among the illuminati is that the jokes on you! the viewers and this will be revealed on the last episode. You will be the ones who are stupid enough to think other people were stupid enough to think they were going into space
> Though technically that's not gravity, though it's a reasonable approximation.
Yes and no. IANAP, but I believe Einstein's claim was that gravity wasn't just similar to inertia, i.e. resistance to acceleration, but that they were exactly the same phenomenon. You are travelling through the 4-dimensional spacetime continuum at the speed of light (and hence, if you move faster thru space relative to something else, movement along another dimension must give, hence speed through time slows down.)
In any case, gravity is a warpage in this 4-d spacetime continuum; you are accelerating while standing still in spacial dimensions.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And technically, the shuttle occupants ARE orbiting in space..
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
Maybe its a tripple bluff :P
Or in charge of moderating technology-oriented discussion forums. . .
Yea, we call them celebrities and we throw lots of cash at them for whatever they do or say. Then they actually think that because they have this spotlight and all this fame and wealth that they have some deep profound insights that they insist on inflicting upon the lowly non-celebrity (i.e. the rest of us
I hate sigs (especially yours which is a waste of my bandwidth)
If they could project a constant impression that they are spinning, they could explain away the "gravity" as centripetal acceleration. Assuming the "ship" is big enough that you wouldn't feel a difference between the forces at your head versus the forces at your feet, I think even clueful applicants might fall for it. The question then would be if they can make a believable projection that will hold up for days or weeks, but this is certainly a doable proposition (eventually, if not now).
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Alternately, perhaps the participants know it is fake and choose not to let on. I always suspect this when I see a hypnotism show. I think many of them aren't really "under," but it's a matter of peer pressure, and "hey! I'm on stage in front of everybody!" TV exposure is valuable, and I think a lot of the "reality" shows get overwhelmed by wannabe actors who just want to parlay an appearance into a career in entertainment.
I'm getting deja vu here....
:)
Did anybody else read Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Rocket", many years ago?
It's the final story in his compilation novel _The_Illustrated_Man_.
I won't give away any spoilers, but after reading this story, I feel like I don't need to watch this TV show at all.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
and you could probably even build a small one within the confines of the shuttle
You'd have excessive coriolis effects, and the gravity differential between your feet and your head would be very noticeable. You would fool no one and in fact your "passengers" would be quite ill. At that size you would probably be spinning at 6-10RPM.
-everphilski-
It's Mind the Stupid Gap!
Though technically that's not gravity, though it's a reasonable approximation.
Technically, anything which can produce a centri-petal/fugal force ALSO exerts gravity. Massive objects, you know.
This just tells us how sorry the state of education is. Artificial gravity generators? Not 0-G because their orbiting at a low altitude?
Free MacMini
The Real World was around long before Big Brother, americans were just stupid enough to think of it but too stupid to actually implement it.
even the concept of reality tv are borrowed from Great Britain.
Example? It would have to predate the 1972 broadcast of An American Family... and even the 1992 release of MTV's "The Real World" might be tough to beat.
Ohh, centrifugal force is the term for the outward pulling that occurs when you spin something - the point is that said force does not exist. Rather, when spinning an object, the outer points are constantly accelerating towards the middle in order to maintain that rotation. Hence, the term is "centripetal acceleration". The "force" is the tension of the object holding everything together.
If you were rotating something huge, like Niven's Ringworld, then the differences between that and the Earth's gravity would be hard to detect by a person without any special gear, but in a rotating space ship of a size that we could reasonably create today, the differences would be rather obvious, things that I've already mentioned.
You could also create gravity on a space ship by including a floor or some other object below you that's SO massive that it creates enough gravity and attracts you down that way, but then your ship would have a mass of a small moon or so and that's not very practial (we're talking sci-fi stuff here.) And if the mass were really dense (I'm talking neutron star dense here, which would be needed to make the ship a reasonable size), the tidal forces might be noticible to a person, or how the gravity always points towards the center of the ship. Maybe -- I'd have to pull out a calculator and start working on some real numbers.
In any event, the sort of people who believe that you do experience almost full gravity in LEO and who don't doubt the existence of `gravity generators' aren't likely to notice that absense of any of the differences in gravity that one might expect in a spaceship that generates gravity (or the illusion of gravity, depending on how you see it) in any way.
It also makes me wonder what they're going to do with the people they vote out. Eject them from the airlock? (So far, every reality show I've ever seen has ejected somebody each week or so, a convention that Survivor started that has stayed around.)
That would be great fun, to put somebody in the airlock, letting them think they're about to die, and then opening the door and they walk out into the sun :)
Its on TV here in the UK. (in 2 minutes in fact). They're not all actors, there were a few actors mixed in with the 10 or something they started out with, just to smooth things over in case anyone started getting clever and curious. There's 1 actor (excluding the "pilots") in the "space shuttle" and the other 3 are real people thinking theyre in real space.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Well I guess artificial gravity is an oxymoron then, as any gravity would have to be "real". But some of us prefer to use the artificial moniker to distinguish between natural and man-made.
Taken from the Channel 4's site, a few of the TV "Adverts" the crew recorded before hand After a few stuttery starts the crew gathered to record: "Hi we're the first civilian crew on Earth Orbiter 1 and you're watching KL2, Russia's only gymnastic channel." Next up, Capcom got the crew to dance, presumably to the music in their heads, and say: "We're the crew on Earth Orbiter 1, and we're loving this funky tune." Finally, with Keri pretending to shoot Charlie, while strangling Billy at the same time, the ad friendly four recorded: "And next on KBB4, Murder She Wrote..." http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsite s/S/spacecadets/news/story.jsp?id=235
Why bother with the elaborate double-bluff? Why hire crappy actors - one of whom is only known as an extra from some advert, another who only appears in some catalogue of crappy actors - and try to get them to become good enough actors to maintain the pretence?
Wouldn't it actually in the end be easier to just find some authentic idiots? God knows there are enough of them around.
I suspect that what's happened here is that they have on their hands a collection of desperate wannabes. Reality TV can be your launchpad into the glittering world of C-list celebrity. For someone who works most of the time as an electrician and occasionally gets work as an extra in a 'Give Blood' campaign... well, it's the big opportunity to become a star, right?
It just seems... stupid... to do it on purpose. What are they going to do? Tell the watching millions 'sorry, the whole thing has been a fake, they're all actors'? Potentially turn them all off from the entire suddenly-discredited reality TV genre and derail the gravy train? Why would they do that?
You can do what you like to your contestants, but don't insult the public. They'll respond by not tuning in next time, and that's the last thing you want.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
To close the stupid gap, you have to work from both ends of the spectrum. Duh.
Really, if somebody thinks they're in space when they're really on a TV set, they don't need any further confusion :)
cue british accent:
all right then, Mind the gap
I read an article about this show before it aired. They did intensive physiological tests on the contestants to ensure they chose people who were susceptible to suggestion. These people actually turned out to be of *higher* than average intelligence.
Intelligence is not necessarily knowledge of how a spacecraft might behave. They're probably not geeks like us, so they probably have no idea of the state of space technology.
I'm too cool for a sig.
for the final episode, they'll find out they accidentaly brought a crate full of spiders on board, and will have to find a way to eject the arachnid menace into the vaccuum!
Mod this (-1, pedantic twit)
the REAL reality TV that we'll all be laughing at will start when the show ends and the contestants sue for the damages that have been caused.
Tune in after the show for the court sessions, because reality TV doesn't get any more real than this.
What convinces me that this is a hoax is that the actors are only rewarded for not breaking character, ie "not discovering the truth." If they were being fooled, it really wouldn't be fair to puish them for catching on to the joke. If any actor can not break character for 5 days straight in an absurd situation, they deserve public accolade.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Keri, a college administrator, was concerned when she saw debris "falling from earth" until Drew told her it was ice.
This is truly pathetic and mean-spirited; this "adventure" will follow these poor people the rest of their lives. It's not nice to make unwitting people the laughingstock of the world.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
He's not quite got over his whitespace addiction, though.
Not at all. Someone talking about "Artificial" gravity would usually, incorrectly, use it to mean simulated gravity, created by some other means to accelerate you or your surroundings. The most common one beeing the circle motion of a centrifuge or spacewheel, though linear acceleration or magnetism could also be used.
I guess technically, "artificial gravity" would refer to gravity created without mass, which at the moment is kind of unpossible. Or would that be synthesized gravity?
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
I dont mind the gap.
Building an 'artificial gravity device' even in weightless conditions is easy if you've got a sufficiently tall room spinning at constant angular velocity. (no need to feed some fantastic new technology line to the hapless "astro-nots").
:/
It seems plausible to simulate convincingly to most everybody a launch and orbit under fake-spinning room artificial gravity.
Consider faking this with a nicely decorated cardboard exterior capsule. You load the poor rubes into a capsule. You've gone over all of the stages above with them. You shut the doors to the outside, provide fake video feeds inside of 'travel to the launch site'. Meanwhile outside the prod. crew rips the fake cardboard off the outside and carts the 'capsule' via pickup truck to a field somewhere. Attaches it to the modified carnival ride centrifuge so the back are toward ground and feet away from direction of angular acceleration. The whole 'capsule' is on pivots so the "back" direction follows the changing gravity vector.
Now if the centrifuge angularly accelerates slowly enough then the temporary force against the feet (during angular acceleration only) is possibly unnoticeable (any shaking of the capsule can further disorient). Spin 'er up. Then slow it down, shake some more, say "Congratulations on the terrific launch, you're in free fall orbit now but due to a few experiments (...), we regret we must maintain earth level gravity at all times."
Poke it with sticks to simulate various 'space junk collisions' w/ dust. Video footage of Earth below/above/wherever, stars around, the moon etc. I'm not sure how to simulate even part of the reduced return trip without a drop off a nearby cliff or something though
I think it would be very hard for anybody to tell the difference with enough care put into the simulation.
Funny you should mock these "idiots," when you're the one who is fact the ignorant one.
I'm being technical here, but only because you were such an elitist prick. So, FYI... there are such things as gravity generators, and low-orbit DOES have gravity. This paper clip in my hand generates gravity. This mouse i'm using generates gravity. The sun that warms my house generates gravity. And... low orbit DOES have gravity. Since the Sun still has a pull on anything in low-earth orbit, then there is actually gravity in low-orbit. Mock those who you call "ignorant," and you'll only be found to be a fool yourself. You asked for it (in the italicized clip above).
... but we do have a patent for it on the way.
But we can't elect Bush a 3rd time.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
You apparently never saw the Joe Schmo show.
There was only one non-actor on the whole show. The joke was on him.
You're right, this show is different in that the joke is on the audience. But it's far from the first show to riff on Reality TV.
Didn't that show (or at least idea) with Shatner going to Iowa to pretend to film a movie precede this (Invasion Iowa) too?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Big deal. In fact, it seems like an exceptionally weak punch line to me. Would even a single viewer feel stupid for mistakenly believing that someone else is stupid? I don't think so. The whole point of a prank is to get someone to believe something crazy. Is it crazy to think that a bunch of strangers are stupid?
I can think of a much better joke: find a bunch of people so stupid they think they've been launched into space. Now that's funny.
All the producers had to do was borrow that anti-gravity generator the makers of the Bailey's Irish Cream "Weightless Bar" commercial used.
:)
Then they'd be able to fool everyone!
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
people who are stupid enough to believe that 'gravity generators' exist
'Gravity generators' do exist. They range in size from the extremely small (smaller than the tip of a pin) to the extremely large (bigger than a Volkswager. In fact, almost everything I have contains a gravity generator of one sort or other. The gravity generators often go unnoticed as they are relatively weak. I heard a scientist talking about these 'gravity generators' at one point. He refered to them as mass. I told him I wasn't Catholic.
Please note, this is my humble attempt at humor.
Everphilski's reply is right about the ring inside the shuttle, even if you built it in the cargo bay. You couldn't make it large enough to do much good.
The counterweight idea is interesting, but that's going to be one heavy weight, and one strong cable. The orbiter weighs 240,000 pounds. This could be compensated by a long cable, and a lighter weight, but even still it would have to be one heavy freakin' weight. And they'd still need enough fuel to move the orbiter in a circle, plus start the weight spinning at the desired rotational speed. I don't think the orbiter has a single mount point strong enough to hold the full 240,000 pounds, and it wouldn't be safe to settle into a sling, because they'd end up crushing the heat tiles.
If they wanted a 1G environment in space, I think the smartest thing to do would be to find something already floating around (old large mission parts), and attach a pressurized area to it. That would be a bitch to dock with though. Their docking procedure is so damned slow, they'd never manage it without constantly firing the OMS engines. But anyways, that goes beyond the scope of the show, where they're suppose to be in the real shuttle at 1G in LEO.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Right. Next you'll be telling me that all the people on "The Office" reality show are actors too.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I have to say the launch was a real let down. The first episodes were great, the flying around the north sea for hours, the Russian base complete with guards and Russian bureaucracy it was absolutely brilliant and the attention to detail was awe inspiring. It just went down hill from there, its like they ran out of money and so everything else is a load of crap. Its a shame because they really could have pulled it off, when they came off that plane and were escorted to the base they were totally convinced they were in the middle of Russia.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I thought the "fake earth" was digital special effects projected (or something) on a big screen outside their window. How would something be "falling off" an image on a screen, unless it was specifically built into the image shown ... unless of course she got a glimpse of that pesky moth in the studio.
Another thing .. "falling from the earth"? To where? Someone really needs to sit poor Keri down when this is all over and have a little chat with her about this thing we call gravity. (It's not just a good idea; it's the law.)
Of course I'm perfectly willing to accept that Keri is just acting the part of being stupid for the sake of the show.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Brilliant! It's a hoax within a hoax. Misleading the public to believe that we're misleading our contestants, eh? Wouldn't that be ingenious?
----------
Floccinaucinihilipilification - the action or habit of judging something to be worthless
In other words, everything they "learned" about spaceflight from this little "voyage" they will have to unlearn because it's probably made-up hooey to perpetuate their ignorance. Assuming these kids are as dumb as they're playing on the show (which is debatable), what's happening to them is cruel, not funny.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
+5 Funny??? +5 Insightful! Why don't I get mod points any more? :-(
"To be fair, they do seem to have gone to great pains to make sure their victims are emotionally stable and will appreciate the joke."
Noone is REALLY "emotionally stable", most mental health practitioners couldn't tell a bannana from half a fruit loop.
You also seem to be assuming that I am wrong in my supposition that all involved are actors. Most can easily be traced to the backgrounds of east enders, hollyoaks, and some even seen in other so called "reality shows" such as dragons den, how clean is your ass, etc.....
I suppose it is true that the only people with the spare time to go to these type of show auditions are students, the unemployed, and out of work actors. But these type of people would generally go along with anything if there is the chance of earning a crust. Even if there is no direct collusion with the producers I am sure the 'victims' realise that the longer they keep up the pretense the more they earn.
NOTHING is real on TV even reality.
embedded linux
http://coolsmartphone.com/index.php?option=news&ta sk=viewarticle&sid=1981&Itemid=2
Why would anyone want to go into orbit without being able to experience weightlessness for at least a small duration of the experience.
Besides some scenic views there's not much point. It's not as if you are going to a specific destination like the Moon or Mars. You're not even cruising around the Earth's neighborhood looking for space alien chicks.
Weightlessness is going to be a huge attraction to space tourism until space travel becomes routine. Then business class sections will need to offer the luxury of artifical gravity
Technically, we're all orbiting, and at FTL speed. It's all relative to the point of reference.
Go ahead and ask, "Huh?"
We're on this planet moving at about 1,000 mph (depending on latitude). The earth is rotating around the sun at 67,000 mph.
The mikey way galaxy is rotating at roughly 490,000 mph.
So, at just the right point in our year, when all those vectors are going the same way, you could be traveling at 558,000 mph, relative to an object which is moving in the same direction we are from galactic center, but not following the motion of the milky way galaxy.
I could go on, but... Right now, my motion relative to my desk is 0.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
They had "The Real World" before any other reality/big brother tv show.
Then they had "Laguna Beach" the actor based "reality" show that this program seems to be copying. That is if the previously linked article proves to be true.
This just proves that in the general public has on better taste in television than a 13 year old girl. (this sentence may just be my opinion)
That's right, fear. Fear that this kind of thing might someday happen to THEM, and they're humiliated on national television for thinking the sun revolves around the earth, handing $5000 to a Nigerian email scammer, being sucked into an obvious pyramid scheme, saying global warming doesn't exist, and thinking evolution is a myth. We need a show that humiliates and pokes fun of every capable human that doesn't get basic logic, finance, economics, and science.
...ahhh, that feels better. Rant off. Some might argue that stupidity is an economic necessity - no one would ever make a profit on any consumer thingie if no one was susceptible to advertising and social pressure. Oh well.
Frankly, I'm glad that rational humanism is finally winning out over caveman superstition and stupidity, and we the scientists aren't going to get another shot at stamping out stupidity and fundamentalism.
I want Judy and Joe Q. Lowest Common Denominator secretly thinking "I might be getting secretly recorded by hidden cameras for a nationally televised reality show" EVERY TIME THEY GO OUTSIDE. I want her to imagine the muffled laughter of a studio audience at her expense every time she can't figure out a 15% tip without a calculator. I want him to cringe at invisible cameras when he talks about Jewish plots to take over the world with his drinking buddies. I want her to mentally cower before a hyperkinetic Ashton Kutcher yelling "you got PUNK'D!" when she buys the latest Louis Vuitton bag made by Sri Lankan children for 1000x what the raw materials cost. We need to associate idiocy, ignorance, gullibility, and intolerance with public humiliation.
Make Joe and Judy fear public humiliation, and they'll eventually educate themselves instead of blindly going along to get along.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Imagine how much more the shows producers could have got away with.
Ru/\/\or has it that he sucks like a champ. Confirm?
Ignorance and proffit.TV deliver the ignorant to the takers.
n/t
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Quick! I wanna call in and vote for explosive decompression.
How stupid do these people have to be? A gravity generator? Are you freaking kidding me? And "low orbit" not giving you weightlessness?
Please tell me that the "winners" of this thing are the people who figure out that it's bogus and that the "prize" is getting to keep your reproductive organs.
America has officially lost its monopoly on stupid
Not quite true, we [America] still have to deal with George Bush, Jr. for the next 3 years. If foreigners actually knew how most Americans thought about the current leader of its country, then they truely would understand the embarassment we feel from the lack of intelligence displayed by our current President. Certainly, it can be implied by the multitude of Bushisms, that "W" is not an intellectual giant. "W" even admitted, jokingly, that he had "to knock on a lot of doors to follow in the old man's footsteps" to attend Yale University....."and for those of you with a C-average, you too can become President of the United States of America."
in front of their televisions, watching "reality tv."
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
...when I misread the post as "In the last reality show on British TV". Now I have realised my mistake and am depressed.
Carthago delenda est!
Having never seen the show and not caring one bit whether or not it is real:
I have just one question- Why? Why bother to try to hoax an audience? What's the point? Pissing off the viewers? What the fuck does that accomplish? "Hahahaha everyone who watches out show is stupid!" I can see how that would be a fantastic marketing gimmick- No one would ever watch anything from these producers again. Moreover how do you know you succeeded? Everyone will just claim to know it was a joke and then what are you left with? It's complete idiocy.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." People these days are stupid- not just ignorant but downright stupid. That you could trick someone into believing they were being sent into space hardly seems like a difficult task to me.
-sirket
Worse yet, they could have done this properly. Make it a major event, not a two-week joke show. Something on the scale of Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity. Establish your UK-based space camp, don't lie about it, run the basic training. Examiners nominate people to be kicked out - opportunity here for Simon Cowell levels of nastiness. After a couple of weeks, the last n contestants go to Russia. Cue much fun on the centrifuges and things, and more people get sent back to Blighty weekly. At the end of the series, the last contestant gets a trip in a for-real Soyuz. spaceadventures.com charges $20m for that. That's, what, £12m? Chances are you'd get a fair discount for giving them publicity on such a scale.
It would surely have been the biggest prestige show ever made. Would it cost a lot? Sure. A lot for TV, but nowhere near typical Hollywood budgets. Would it make that money back? Hell yeah. The whole damn world would have copied the format.
But no. The show we've got is just a 'let's look at the freaks' game. It's a real pity.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Right you are, Ken.
Oh come off it, they're actors. They've been paid to do it. They know what's going on.
Otherwise they'd come out to all the humiliation and Channel 4 could legitimately be sued for the psychological stress and stolen time.
in a cunning twist, it's the viewers who will be revealed to be gullible.
You see, it's Channel 4, so it has to edgy, self-referential and provocative, or shit as the less sophisticated among us would call it.
Check out this link for photos and more information:
http://www.solarguard.com/tccast5.htm
Unfortunately for these early space cadets, gravity generators had yet to be invented.
Why not extended the elevator 'shaft' well beyond GEO, then vessels could fly off the far end at extreme velocities and reach outside our solar system a lot faster than any chemical rocket could manage. The earth's got plenty of rotational kinetic energy to spare...and everyone's always griping they need more hours in their day anyway. ;-)
IIRC, "microgravity" is due to tidal forces and it falls off as 1/R^3.
In something closer to English, imagine you're floating in the center of a falling elevator. The floor is slightly closer to the earth and therefore has a slightly higher gravitational attraction than you. The ceiling is slightly further from the earth and has a slightly lower gravitation attraction than you.
From your perspective as you fall, there's a slightly gravitational attraction to both floor and ceiling, with the effect becoming more pronounced as you approach either.
It's more complicated when you're moving and have to use orbital mechanics, but you get the same qualitative results.
IIRC, the tidal forces in earth orbit may a few thousandths of a 'g'. That's easily overwhelmed by air circulation, etc., so the astronauts probably don't even notice it. It can be enough to affect sensitive experiments.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
The crazy Russian pilot should tell them that the oxygen supply is running low, and it's not enough to maintain the entire crew. So one of them has to get discarded out the airlock, which consists of a large steel door with no windows. Somehow, one of them is chosen (or "voted off the island"), put in the airlock behind the steel door. Once the inner, steel door is closed, the outer door opens, and crew from the TV show grab the person and shut the outer door again. After half a minute or so has passed, the Russian opens the inner door to show the rest that she's really gone. The russian then leads them into a wonderful drinking game, which lasts the remainder of the trip.
- shadowmatter
I don't usually do this but - I don't watch this crap on British TV and I'd prefer you don't post it on slashdot, whatever the reason. The more we ignore it, the quicker it will go away.
Now, that would be a good show. Hire a bunch of contestants, and tell them that the whole thing is actually a hoax, and to pretend that they believe that they're actually being launched into space, and then (here's the tricky part) actually launch them into space.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
That's a nice idea. 0g sex, easy to clean. But, under the floor to increase gravity to build muscle and 20G when you are not home, so anyone breaking in would be stuck to the floor.
Fight Spammers!
In the last episode, a large fly crawling around an open access panel short-circuits the cabin power supply, and they crash into the Moon.
sic transit gloria mundi
Carbon116 is right; the guy across the street from me when I was a kid had a master's degree in biology and worked for a large company, but was completely clueless in every other respect, a complete and utter idiot.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
all objects are gravity generators :)
Not in C++, gravity_generation() is just another method.
So this is a TV show... with actors. Is this really news? "The Blair Witch Project" was supposedly real, and I was silly enough to believe it until I saw them list the "written by" credit. It almost made it an interesting movie. This sounds like an amusing show; so was "The Simple Life", in my opinion, despite the slapstick amateur acting of a pair of rich girls. You know what would be fun? A gladiatorial reality show. Not like "American Gladiator"; no, like the Roman coliseums. Offer people fantastic prizes to survive ten minutes with a hungry, angry tiger, or to murder each other with tridents and stuff. Or stage a naval battle just for the hell of it. You could never get approval to do a show where people would actually die, I suppose, so you'd have to do it with - hey, actors! Hm, I wonder where I can get a stuntman who's good at acting mauled....
Especially as they are paid £5,000 for each day of the "mission" they complete. Play dumb and collect the cheque.
It is well documented that whenever there is a TV show or whatever where the audience knows something that the contestants do not, there must be some sort of hoax going on and perhaps it is the audience who is being fooled. And sometimes these theories themselves come under scrutiny.
So in terms of this programme I can see different conspiracies that may be occurring, each getting more complicated than the last.
1. Basic - The contestants are the ones being fooled, we (the audience) is fully in the know. We know they are on earth, they think they are in space.
2. Secondary - It is the audience who is being hoodwinked, the contestants are all actors or at least in on the plot. They and we know they are on earth, we don't know that they know.
3.Tertary - We don't know that they don't know we know. The "contestants" (actors) think that they are actually fooling us into thinking they are in space, we just think they are idiots.
4. Quaternary - We don't know that they know they are actually in space. The contestants are actually in space; we think they are on earth.
5. Quintinary - (my personal favourite) we don't know that they know that we are all actually in space and they are still on earth, possibly laughing at us.
I think it highly unlikely that these people were hired to act in the show. You'll find that all of these reality shows put out a call through the casting agencies for contestants. It's an easy way to get access to a bunch of outgoing people without having to dredge through thousands of complete mutants after putting out a public advert.
A couple of years ago I heard about Mark Burnett (Survivor creator) trying to put together a show where the contestants would go through Russian Space Camp and the winner would be sent for a trip to the Russian space Station Mir. It was all I could talk about. Friends said they wouldn't fly in a Russian shuttle, but I didn't care. So worth the risk. I don't have money for space tourism.
As for the idea that the show is a cruel hoax: I wish I was in it. At least I could have thought I was in space. The fact that it was fake doesn't take away that it would be great fun. Of course even if interviewed (and British) I would probably have been rejected since I would have been fascinated by the science they would need to make up (gravity generator) and ask too many questions.
Confir/\/\ed. His skills in de-chroming trailer hitches is the stuff of legend.
...and if they decide they don't want to be a part of the "mission" anymore, they get tossed out the "airlock" in their underwear...
:b
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
The whole show seems it may be a joke on the viewers, and not the people on the show... Apparently, Two are actors.
Remember how much $$$ Armageddon brought in?
Something about two space shuttles docking simultaniously to a spinning Mir space station. I had to leave, I was getting a headache, especially when were walking around in a spinning can, in space. The first thing that came to my mind was something about the special effect dept running out of funding for this scene.
Anyway, my point...
If that movie can make that much money it is very possible that these 'astronauts' actually beleive they are in space.
In India there was a Reality show , in which the TV person would do things like open up a fake barber shop. When the customer comes in he will take a hacksaw chainsaw etc., Later it was found out it was all faked. The "gullible customers" were paid in advance to walk the talk. This happens in many other "Reality Shows" etc., where the real people who are stupid are the audience. "The gullible space tourists" and the "TV channel" are the one who will walk away with big money, as you watch them and think "How stupid"
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
I remember one where a bunch of girls were in a house and they competed to see who could cry the most in a month. The tears were collected in little test tubes. The girls were insane, and would hit themselves and such to make themselves cry. They would also get really upset if they dropped a tear on the ground. They'd even hold their eyes open for hours just to water them up.
It was really, really pathetic and scary. I don't know what they were competing for, but on Japanese TV shows it's never more than like a weeks vacation somewhere, or a small pittance.
Just a note -- I didn't mean they were literally insane. What do you want? It's 2 am and I'm studying for my Japanese and real analysis finals for tomorrow.
Ha ha ha, where are my mod points ... brilliant ...
I'm personally still of the opinion that any show titled "Survivor" should be about people actually living through something... Like being infected with the ebola virus, or having to swim through pools of frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their frickin' heads.
Rabid wombats, fussy pre-schoolers, or even some ill-tempered sea bass would do.
Ugh... I despise television.
-z-
-z-
I'm just waiting for the moment when they all find out they've been had and attack Jonnie Vaughn beating him into a coma with their helmets. Seriously due to the selection process they used they've not ended up with a group of contestants that could be said to be wired up correctly have they? I can see one or more of them suffering a psychotic break when they find out that they've been the laughing stock of a nation for the past 10 days. They'll probably end up suing the BBC for emotional distress afterwards.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
i'm not saying its utterly implausible that none of the journalists reporting on this did proper fact-checking; in fact it would be great if they were outed and ridiculed for mindlessly propagating press releases and passing them off as facts. but on the other hand, consider this: the producers were looking for people who are suggestible, not interested in physics (and avionics, space flight etc.), like to be on TV, haven't got anything better to do (like a full time job), and don't mind doing embarrassing things with strangers watching. some of the people they got were amateurish actors who've been on TV one or two times before. there is not necessarily a contradiction there; for a 'reality show', that's par for the course.
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
Give them lots of unpleasant tasks to do, and see which one's the first to try to walk out in disgust.
Assuming these contestants really are just stupid, then they should sue the makers of the show afterwards for the hoax, and force them to either keep their contract to send them into space or to give them equivalent monetary compensation. Not to mention damages for the pain and suffering from being humiliating in front of millions of people.
Unless, of course, it says clearly in the contracts they signed that this is all a hoax. But then they'd have noticed that, wouldn't they? Unless they're really, REALLY stupid.
Bruce
You may be right, but tell me which show you think more people would watch:
The flight sim show would lose its appeal after one episode.
"A Christmas Story" has returned many times its original investment. "Jingle All the Way," by contrast, is mean and stupid and failed miserably. People do recognize decent stuff.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I'm interested to see that no conversations on this subject mention the potential psychological effects of this show. It's very easy to state that you would under no circumstances believe that you were in space but, for most people I've challenged when saying this, they have some knowledge of physics or technology. The selection process here deliberately weedled out those with this kind of knowledge.
Take a look at hoax emails, viruses, worms - these are all propogated by naivety, you don't have to be dumb to be affected by it. It's easy to have a lapse in your vigorous checking and fall foul.
Ok, now extend that to a three week subterfuge. Sustaining an illusion for a length of time this long can only amplify and cement it further. By throwing enough false information, concealment and illusion at a person you can muffle any potential questions. By deliberately selecting those who have a tendancy to translate their own feelings into those which fall in with their peers you can ensure there is no potential for personal conviction getting in the way.
Adding it all up: technologically this format is flawed but psychologically it's got it right.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i'd thinnk the obvious way to dock with a rotating space station would be to have the port in the middle
possiblly even have the port non-rotating and have some kind of transfer chamber (e.g. you crawl into the transfer chamber close the door and then it would match rotation with the rest of the station open another door and you crawl out)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The full fledged circular designs that I've seen in movies and technical drawings was like this. Actually, I believe the center can rotate, and your craft can match the rotation. It would seem trivial to make the docking platform spin on bearings and make no motion.
Balance would still seem to be very important. If all the inhabitents or too much payload ended up at one part of the wheel, it would make the entire wheel off balance. Think of your laundry washing machine walking across the floor due to an unbalanced load.
You can build a perfect machine, but human error is a bastard.
I remember a carnival ride called Gravitron. Ahhh, the wonders of the Internet. It exerts 4G, and the control booth is in the middle, where the operator doesn't feel anything.
The really notable problem is that if you turn your head while it's running, it can make you nauseous. I suppose that's because you're being pulled by 4G horizontally, and 1G vertically. Obviously the 4G horizontally is the more noticable force.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Well I wasnt talking about necessarily building a big spinning ring inside the space shuttle.. just a compartment big enough for one person to sit in and experience 1G. You only need to lift the counterweight of one person or maybe less depending on how big you can really get it. The gravity difference between your feet and head would indeed be large enough to make it non-feasable but it still might work.
As far as the counterweight/ouside the shuttle idea.. Again I was not talking about faking gravity aboard the whole shuttle.. Just build a little pod and a counterweight for it that you can deploy out of the cargo bay and then spin them both around the shuttle at a distance... You would need some sort of bearing that goes around the outside of the shuttle. In any case you would probably need an equal setup spinning the other direction or else you are not going to be able to properly accelerate the contraption without just spinning the shuttle itself.
Really, those four people are so lucky! They'll be off the planet when the Enormous Mutant Star Goat arrives!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
While they've lost much of their initial popularity, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and "Saddam's in League with Al-Qaeda" shows still seem to be playing fairly well on the "Enemies" network in the US an UK.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
What's even better is that we convince them that we're not hoaxed by their hoax, and that we're actually enthralled by the show. But instead we're watching Gilligan's Island reruns. But maybe they know we're not watching. But, unbeknownst to them, we have been taking small quantities of reality TV for years, and so have become immune to the effects of lame melodrama, and can watch the show while appearing to not watch the show.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Your monopoly on stupid is in no danger of being challenged, however.
I don't get it. But I'm a Japanese guy named Ken?