What disturbed me most in the movie - besides the unnecessary sex scene - was the fact that basically all the Germans and Russians (everyone) spoke perfect English with British accents. Vassily was even writing/spelling in English. Kinda removed the 'authenticity' of it all.
Having everyone speak with british accents is fine, but the fact that the odd character (Kruschev, for instance) was speaking with a fake Russian accent was kind of distracting.
The part with Danilov correcting Zaitsev's spelling was pretty stupid though, it's hard to misspell words in russian, even for someone who is semi literate, and nearly impossible to use the wrong consonant (Danilov said there was no K in a word, but there is only one consonant in Russian that has a K sound).
^..^ ( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
They could have paid more attention to language
on
Enemy At The Gates
·
· Score: 1
Yeh, it's silly when they have everyone speaking english, but with a fake Russian/German accent to make it seem more realistic. They could have paid a little more attention to language issues though. For instance, just to nitpick, the character Mrs. Filipov should have been called Mrs. Filipova, since she is a woman. Actually, you would never call an aquaintance Mrs. anything in russian, she should have been called by her first name and patronymic. Things like that bug me more than Russian snipers with cockney accents.
^..^ ( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
A spectacular opening does not make a good movie
on
Enemy At The Gates
·
· Score: 2
It seems that starting with "Saving Private Ryan", directors think that a spectacular battle in the opening act can carry an otherwise mediocre film. After Spielbergs ultra-violent opening (which, i say, he lifted directly from the big castle battle scene in Kurosawa's Ran, rent it if you don't believe me) that movie degenerates into a run-of-the-mill 50's war flick, minus Van Johnson. Ridley Scott did the same thing with "Gladiator", and now Annaud tries with "Enemy at the Gates". It's becoming a cliche.
You said:
The Russians are too often portrayed in WW2 movies as nazi cannon fodder. The russians fought like hell in WW2, shit, the germans didn't have a chance of beating the Soviet Army, one front, two fronts, doesn't matter. Stalingrad was absolutely apocalyptic: two million casualties. Think about that for a minute.
Actually, this is accurate. The company depicted, though, must have been one of the luckier ones, many of the units had only one rifle to share between 10 men. It didn't always matter, because alot of the fighting was hand to hand with knives and such. And the Germans did have a very real chance of beating the Soviets. The casualty figures were closer to 1.3 million, with the Soviets suffering about 1 million of those. It was a very costly victory for the Red Army. To get to Stalingrad, the German army had already advanced 2000 miles through Russia, sweeping aside Soviet defenses like they weren't even there. Stalingrad was close to being the final objective, once the Russians were forced across the Volga Hitler felt Stalin would agree to a peace treaty. He was probably right, as the Russians would have no hope of making a counterattack across the Volga. The Soviets were simply able to hold out long enough for the German 6th army to run out of supplies and then counterattack.
Although the Soviet officers were very brutal, they were very short of men in Stalingrad before the counter attack took place. I doubt seriously they were gunning down their own soldiers at that point.
This too is accurate. Behind every attacking Soviet unit, there was an NKVD unit to ensure that no one turned back without orders. more than 13,000 "cowards" were executed by the NKVD in this manner.
The Soviets had IIRC roughly two rifle divisions defending the entire city against the entire German Sixth Army. This is horrendous odds - yet they held out for several months, even after the german Operation Hubertus, which was their final push to take the factories near the Volga. The movie doesn't give you a sense of how desperate this was, or why the Soviets won.
Actually, at the beginning of the German attack, Stalingrad was defended by a single NKVD division, which was nearly wiped out. Reinforcements were quickly sent in. 2 Divisions could not have held out for months as you say, and 2 divisions is not nearly 1,000,000 men and women, the number of casualties suffered by the Red Army.
as for set design and FX, it could have been better. CGI always looks fake to me, and was over used, although the Stukas didn't look too bad. And though I don't read Russian too well, it seemed like none of the grafitti really said anything. Also, there seemed to be too many clear paths through the rubble and too many people walking around in the open without getting shot.
It is better than this, but that whole picture stinks of revisionist history. It seems that even in German war movies, the Nazis are the real bad guys. The whole point of that movies seems to be to say "look, our regular soldier weren't such bad guys". Well the facts of the German campaign in russia tell a somewhat different tale. The German footsoldiers really did believe that the russians were subhuman. I've heard this said over and over again in interviews with German soldiers from officers to privates in an attempt to justify their actions. The Germans crimes against the Soviet people were just as horrific as those against the Jews, but were carried out, in general, by regular german army soldiers, not just the SS. And I didn't buy the end either, I don't think any german soldier in his right mind would have tried to save a Russian soldier, especially a Jew, no matter how hot she was, after the hell the Russians had put them through. The movie did do a better job portraying the Russian winter though. and everyone spoke the proper languages too, which is always a bonus.
He says: "turns out to be a fairly typical Hollywood war yarn, the heroes spending as much time mooning over the girl as they do fighting"
this was an entirely European production, not a hollywood flick.
Much like "Saving Private Ryan" the opening sequence is pretty spectacular and brutal, and much like "Saving Private Ryan", the movie turns to crap right afterward, with Annauds use of melodrama and absurd plot devices to replace the actual history of the story. His bizarre casting choices don't help much either. Only Bob Hoskins (Kruschev), Ron Perlman (Kulakov) and Ed Harris (Koenig) don't seem totally out of their depth. Harris is actually kind of frighteningly convicing as a Nazi, maybe it's his blue eyes.
If you aren't familiar with the story, Zaitsev was a real person, so were Danilov and Kulakov, although unlike in the movie, all three survived the battle of Stalingrad. Koenig may have been real, but probably not. In most accounts I have read, the German sniper's name is Col. Thorvalds, although some do identify him as Maj. Koenig. There are no records of either having been at Stalingrad, so most historians believe the whole story of the duel to be a fabrication of the Soviet press. Zaitsev himself never confirmed nor denied it. There is a written account of a similar showdown that is often attributed to him, and cited as proof, but it identifies neither him nor his german counterpart by name. What is known is that Zaitsev was a real Soviet hero, he did kill at least 142 German soldiers at the battle of Stalingrad (some accounts put the number at over 200) and altogether he had over 400 kills attributed to him throughout the war. By all accounts, he was not the naive shepherd boy portrayed in the movie, but a hardened professional soldier (who looked alot more like Ron Perlman than Jude Law). He set up a training school in the ruins of Stalingrad and trained hundreds of soldiers to employ the sniper tactics that became such a thorn in the side of the German army. Danilov was the political officer who "discovered" Zaitsev and turned him into a legend amongst the Soviet troops. In reality, it is doubtful that he tried to get him killed. Kulakov, at least in the legend of the duel, was Zaitsev's parter and was with him when he killed the German. There are several accounts, complete with references, available online. Just search Google for "Zaitsev".
The story is so good that, even though it is probably not true, it has become a legend. Annaud thinks he can make it better. He is wrong. He turns the whole thing into, of all things, a love story. In the process he loses sight, not only of the "facts" of the story, but of the enormous sacrifice made by the Red Army and the unimaginable suffering of the civilians who were forced by Stalin to remain in the city to starve. Everyone in the picture looks pretty well fed, clean and no one ever looks cold (it was -30C during the winter). It was so bad,it is said, that city's dogs tried to swim across the Volga to escape, only people stayed behind. After 50 years of movies that portray the Americans (who lost about 290,000 men) as the saviours of Europe, its good to see a major movie that attempts to give credit to the 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians killed defending their country, but it falls short.
If you want to see a movie that more accurately portrays the misery of the Stalingrad battle (although from a German perspective) see the 1993 movie "Stalingrad". That movie has its own problems (a somewhat revisionist view of the conduct of German soldiers for one thing) but it's much better as a war movie than "Enemy at the Gates". If you just want to see some blood and guts, and 3 seconds of Rachel Weisz's bare ass, then "Enemy at the Gates" might be for you.
It seems this would just transform highly dangerous radioactive waste into highly dangerous radioactive bacteria. Unless of course they've developed a way to train the bacteria to carry the stuff away to a dump site.
They did hand out all that cheese. anyone could get a free 5 pound chunk of crappy american cheese, you didn't even have to be poor. My parents got some. Mmm, grilled cheese sandwiches for weeks. I think they also handed out huge tubs of peanut butter and buckets of honey, but most people just remember Government Cheese. I think atari was still popular around this time.
10 years from now, when us kids that grew up with atari start hitting out 40's and feel the need to reclaim our lost youth, this guy will make a mint. Fortunately for myself, i have the forsight to realize this, so i picked up my atari 2600 10 years ahead of this schedule, yesterday to be exact. Other Gen X kids would be wise to get theirs while they are still cheaper than they were new. check out ebay, if you want one with all the controlers and some cool games, your gonna fork over at least $100. With the recent return of The A-Team to syndication, I wouldn't be surprised to see an Atari craze sometime soon. If Mr. T can make a comeback, surely the most popular gaming system ever can
^..^ ( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Isn't one prize enough?
on
Space Diving
·
· Score: 3
These folks are obviously trying to win both the X-Prize and a Darwin award in one go. Thats getting a little too greedy if you ask me.
Problem is, when you get up that high, there is no atmosphere to slow you down or give you any sort of attitude control. From that height, you fall at supersonic speed. You tend to tumble and spin rather violently. In Project Man-High, the USAF tried to avoid the problem by using a drogue chute to stabilize parachutist, but on one jump, Capt. Joseph Kittinger was nearly killed when he entered a high speed flat-spin that caused him to lose conciousness. I used to jump out of planes in the army, and I understand the attraction of doing dangerous and foolish things, but this is just plain crazy. Thrill-seeking is one thing, but suicide is quite another. I don't foresee this sport becoming very popular. Maybe among the type of fools who like to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but not among your more average daredevils.
This is only effective for boost phase intercept, which means the plane would have to be over enemy territory to be effective. any enemy capable of launching ballistic missiles is also going to have pretty sophisticated air defense capability. Survivability of the multibillion dollar system, therefore, seems problematic. A 747 is a pretty big, and slow, target.
I remeber when CD players came out, every9one i knew that had one wanted to show me just how cool the damned discs looked, even before demonstrating the sound quality. I know several people who use junk CDs as decorations. oh, and my brother recently got a Sony DVD player. the feature that finally tipped the scales in favor of the Sony model was the cool blue LED indicator on the front, which was also the first feature he pointed out when showing off the unit. (huh huh, I said unit...) never underestimate the power of shiny things und blinkenlights.
Hmm, this could only mean that those monkeys that got evolved by the monolith have made it to Jupiter and are now waging a submarine war for control the oceans of Europa. It's the only logical conclusion, this is 2001, after all.
With the two 80 foot satellite dishes pointing toward the sky. probably really is for static protection, though i bet the whole place is surrounded by a faraday cage for tempest shielding.
Both Arthur C. Clarke and the estate of Stanley Kubrick should sue. This is clearly someone trying to use their intellectual property for his own gain. Despicable.
CNN Says these items are currently all the rage with world leaders. according to the article Queen Elizabeth, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush all own one. Am I the only one that finds this disturbing? There was an article in The Sun last year about how Queen Elizabeth likes to entertain guests by singing duets with hers. I wonder if Her Majesty also enjoys Nascar and pro wrestling.
Didn't they find the monolith in 1999 on the moon (i assume before the moon was blown out of earth's orbit by that massive nuclear waste explosion) in the movie? apparently, someone was just too lazy to pay attention to details. I mean come on, we've know how to get stuff to the moon since the late sixties. nobody puts in any effort these days.
There is technology in development (already exists for terrestrial telescopes) called very long baseline interferometry. it's a widely used technique in radio astronomy, and is one of the latest things in visible/infrared observing. basically, you can combine the images from 2 widely separated apertures and the resulting resolution is the same as for a single aperture equal in diameter to the distance separating your two small apertures. there are plans to launch some of the interferomters for astronomical observation using baselines from 1-10km. it is likely that instruments like this can be used in the opposite direction, for terrestrial recon from space (and, perhaps already are). even a 50 meter baseline at orbits aroind 700 km would give you sub-centimeter resolution. of course, taking into account the other limitations of satellites at this altitude, that in itself probably wouldn't be very useful. the real kicker would be that this would allow imaging from geostationary orbits, so you could continuously cover the entire globe with a fleet of maybe 20 or so satellites, instant data on any location on earth, from several different angles, anytime you want it. It might even make aerial recon obsolete. pure speculation, of course, but i think this might be the most interesting explanation for the retirement of the SR-71 fleet. it would certainly be a more elegant solution than the so called aurora spyplane.
Actually, turning Hubble around is a pretty accurate description of the NRO satellites. The idea is to cram a mirror as large as can be carried by current launch vehicles. Hubble is 2.4 meters, so it's a pretty good guess that recon birds are around this size. To get higher resolution, you need a bigger mirror. Keyhole sats have a resolution of around 10 centimeters. to get 5 centimeter resolution, you would need an objective twice as large, which wouldn't fit in a launch vehicle, not if it was a one piece mirror. objectives much larger than current ones aren't very practical, something 2x larger could be 10x heavier, and resolution of 10cm is fine for most military needs. sure, it would be cool if you could read a license plate from orbit, but why would you want to? granted, the military does seem to buy lots of stuff just because of the coolness factor, but at some point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, even for the pentagon (or kremlin, or mossad, MI5 or whatever). And your point about atmospheric disturbances is correct as well, in some cases, these satellites are limited to performance 10x worse that their maximum theoretical resolution because of atmospheric turbulence. and performance drops to 0% if the target is obscured by cloud cover.
actually, that is exactly what most of these NRO satellites are, Hubble-class telescopes pointed at the ground. the best ones currently have a resolution of around 10 centimeters from normal altitudes( about 400-500 miles), so i'm sorry to tell you that the performance of Hubble isn't quite that impressive. see my earlier response to this thread for a more detailed description.
The resolving power of any telescope can be calculated by the formula Theta = 115.8/D,
where Theta is angualr resolution expressed in seconds of arc, and D is the diameter of the objective of the telescope/camera, which is what a spy satellite is. Now, the Hubble telescope has an objective of 2.4 meters, which is probably pretty close to the maximum diameter that will fit inside current launch vehicles, so the NRO satellites can't be much bigger than this. so that works out to around.05 seconds of arc.
to figure out actual size from angular size and distance use the formula
angular size(in degrees) = 57.3*actual size / distance
which works out to right around 10 centimeters, if i've done the math right. so unless they have multi-segment meirros for their satellites or some other unknown capability that is about hte theoeretical limit of their resolution. Interestingly though, atmospheric turbulence (what astronomers refer to as 'seeing') limits actual performance to.5 seconds of arc in most cases, although i'm not sure this is as critical for taking pictures of terrestrial objects as it is for astronomical ones. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
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What disturbed me most in the movie - besides the unnecessary sex scene - was the fact that basically all the Germans and Russians (everyone) spoke perfect English with British accents. Vassily was even writing/spelling in English. Kinda removed the 'authenticity' of it all.
.^
Having everyone speak with british accents is fine, but the fact that the odd character (Kruschev, for instance) was speaking with a fake Russian accent was kind of distracting.
The part with Danilov correcting Zaitsev's spelling was pretty stupid though, it's hard to misspell words in russian, even for someone who is semi literate, and nearly impossible to use the wrong consonant (Danilov said there was no K in a word, but there is only one consonant in Russian that has a K sound).
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Yeh, it's silly when they have everyone speaking english, but with a fake Russian/German accent to make it seem more realistic. They could have paid a little more attention to language issues though. For instance, just to nitpick, the character Mrs. Filipov should have been called Mrs. Filipova, since she is a woman. Actually, you would never call an aquaintance Mrs. anything in russian, she should have been called by her first name and patronymic. Things like that bug me more than Russian snipers with cockney accents.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
It seems that starting with "Saving Private Ryan", directors think that a spectacular battle in the opening act can carry an otherwise mediocre film. After Spielbergs ultra-violent opening (which, i say, he lifted directly from the big castle battle scene in Kurosawa's Ran, rent it if you don't believe me) that movie degenerates into a run-of-the-mill 50's war flick, minus Van Johnson. Ridley Scott did the same thing with "Gladiator", and now Annaud tries with "Enemy at the Gates". It's becoming a cliche.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
You said:
.^
The Russians are too often portrayed in WW2 movies as nazi cannon fodder. The russians fought like hell in WW2, shit, the germans didn't have a chance of beating the Soviet Army, one front, two fronts, doesn't matter. Stalingrad was absolutely apocalyptic: two million casualties. Think about that for a minute.
Actually, this is accurate. The company depicted, though, must have been one of the luckier ones, many of the units had only one rifle to share between 10 men. It didn't always matter, because alot of the fighting was hand to hand with knives and such. And the Germans did have a very real chance of beating the Soviets. The casualty figures were closer to 1.3 million, with the Soviets suffering about 1 million of those. It was a very costly victory for the Red Army. To get to Stalingrad, the German army had already advanced 2000 miles through Russia, sweeping aside Soviet defenses like they weren't even there. Stalingrad was close to being the final objective, once the Russians were forced across the Volga Hitler felt Stalin would agree to a peace treaty. He was probably right, as the Russians would have no hope of making a counterattack across the Volga. The Soviets were simply able to hold out long enough for the German 6th army to run out of supplies and then counterattack.
Although the Soviet officers were very brutal, they were very short of men in Stalingrad before the counter attack took place. I doubt seriously they were gunning down their own soldiers at that point.
This too is accurate. Behind every attacking Soviet unit, there was an NKVD unit to ensure that no one turned back without orders. more than 13,000 "cowards" were executed by the NKVD in this manner.
The Soviets had IIRC roughly two rifle divisions defending the entire city against the entire German Sixth Army. This is horrendous odds - yet they held out for several months, even after the german Operation Hubertus, which was their final push to take the factories near the Volga. The movie doesn't give you a sense of how desperate this was, or why the Soviets won.
Actually, at the beginning of the German attack, Stalingrad was defended by a single NKVD division, which was nearly wiped out. Reinforcements were quickly sent in. 2 Divisions could not have held out for months as you say, and 2 divisions is not nearly 1,000,000 men and women, the number of casualties suffered by the Red Army.
as for set design and FX, it could have been better. CGI always looks fake to me, and was over used, although the Stukas didn't look too bad. And though I don't read Russian too well, it seemed like none of the grafitti really said anything. Also, there seemed to be too many clear paths through the rubble and too many people walking around in the open without getting shot.
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
It is better than this, but that whole picture stinks of revisionist history. It seems that even in German war movies, the Nazis are the real bad guys. The whole point of that movies seems to be to say "look, our regular soldier weren't such bad guys". Well the facts of the German campaign in russia tell a somewhat different tale. The German footsoldiers really did believe that the russians were subhuman. I've heard this said over and over again in interviews with German soldiers from officers to privates in an attempt to justify their actions. The Germans crimes against the Soviet people were just as horrific as those against the Jews, but were carried out, in general, by regular german army soldiers, not just the SS. And I didn't buy the end either, I don't think any german soldier in his right mind would have tried to save a Russian soldier, especially a Jew, no matter how hot she was, after the hell the Russians had put them through. The movie did do a better job portraying the Russian winter though. and everyone spoke the proper languages too, which is always a bonus.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
First off, an obligatory shot at Katz:
.^
He says: "turns out to be a fairly typical Hollywood war yarn, the heroes spending as much time mooning over the girl as they do fighting"
this was an entirely European production, not a hollywood flick.
Much like "Saving Private Ryan" the opening sequence is pretty spectacular and brutal, and much like "Saving Private Ryan", the movie turns to crap right afterward, with Annauds use of melodrama and absurd plot devices to replace the actual history of the story. His bizarre casting choices don't help much either. Only Bob Hoskins (Kruschev), Ron Perlman (Kulakov) and Ed Harris (Koenig) don't seem totally out of their depth. Harris is actually kind of frighteningly convicing as a Nazi, maybe it's his blue eyes.
If you aren't familiar with the story, Zaitsev was a real person, so were Danilov and Kulakov, although unlike in the movie, all three survived the battle of Stalingrad. Koenig may have been real, but probably not. In most accounts I have read, the German sniper's name is Col. Thorvalds, although some do identify him as Maj. Koenig. There are no records of either having been at Stalingrad, so most historians believe the whole story of the duel to be a fabrication of the Soviet press. Zaitsev himself never confirmed nor denied it. There is a written account of a similar showdown that is often attributed to him, and cited as proof, but it identifies neither him nor his german counterpart by name. What is known is that Zaitsev was a real Soviet hero, he did kill at least 142 German soldiers at the battle of Stalingrad (some accounts put the number at over 200) and altogether he had over 400 kills attributed to him throughout the war. By all accounts, he was not the naive shepherd boy portrayed in the movie, but a hardened professional soldier (who looked alot more like Ron Perlman than Jude Law). He set up a training school in the ruins of Stalingrad and trained hundreds of soldiers to employ the sniper tactics that became such a thorn in the side of the German army. Danilov was the political officer who "discovered" Zaitsev and turned him into a legend amongst the Soviet troops. In reality, it is doubtful that he tried to get him killed. Kulakov, at least in the legend of the duel, was Zaitsev's parter and was with him when he killed the German. There are several accounts, complete with references, available online. Just search Google for "Zaitsev".
The story is so good that, even though it is probably not true, it has become a legend. Annaud thinks he can make it better. He is wrong. He turns the whole thing into, of all things, a love story. In the process he loses sight, not only of the "facts" of the story, but of the enormous sacrifice made by the Red Army and the unimaginable suffering of the civilians who were forced by Stalin to remain in the city to starve. Everyone in the picture looks pretty well fed, clean and no one ever looks cold (it was -30C during the winter). It was so bad,it is said, that city's dogs tried to swim across the Volga to escape, only people stayed behind. After 50 years of movies that portray the Americans (who lost about 290,000 men) as the saviours of Europe, its good to see a major movie that attempts to give credit to the 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians killed defending their country, but it falls short.
If you want to see a movie that more accurately portrays the misery of the Stalingrad battle (although from a German perspective) see the 1993 movie "Stalingrad". That movie has its own problems (a somewhat revisionist view of the conduct of German soldiers for one thing) but it's much better as a war movie than "Enemy at the Gates". If you just want to see some blood and guts, and 3 seconds of Rachel Weisz's bare ass, then "Enemy at the Gates" might be for you.
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
It seems this would just transform highly dangerous radioactive waste into highly dangerous radioactive bacteria. Unless of course they've developed a way to train the bacteria to carry the stuff away to a dump site.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
They did hand out all that cheese. anyone could get a free 5 pound chunk of crappy american cheese, you didn't even have to be poor. My parents got some. Mmm, grilled cheese sandwiches for weeks. I think they also handed out huge tubs of peanut butter and buckets of honey, but most people just remember Government Cheese. I think atari was still popular around this time.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
10 years from now, when us kids that grew up with atari start hitting out 40's and feel the need to reclaim our lost youth, this guy will make a mint. Fortunately for myself, i have the forsight to realize this, so i picked up my atari 2600 10 years ahead of this schedule, yesterday to be exact. Other Gen X kids would be wise to get theirs while they are still cheaper than they were new. check out ebay, if you want one with all the controlers and some cool games, your gonna fork over at least $100. With the recent return of The A-Team to syndication, I wouldn't be surprised to see an Atari craze sometime soon. If Mr. T can make a comeback, surely the most popular gaming system ever can
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
These folks are obviously trying to win both the X-Prize and a Darwin award in one go. Thats getting a little too greedy if you ask me.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Problem is, when you get up that high, there is no atmosphere to slow you down or give you any sort of attitude control. From that height, you fall at supersonic speed. You tend to tumble and spin rather violently. In Project Man-High, the USAF tried to avoid the problem by using a drogue chute to stabilize parachutist, but on one jump, Capt. Joseph Kittinger was nearly killed when he entered a high speed flat-spin that caused him to lose conciousness. I used to jump out of planes in the army, and I understand the attraction of doing dangerous and foolish things, but this is just plain crazy. Thrill-seeking is one thing, but suicide is quite another. I don't foresee this sport becoming very popular. Maybe among the type of fools who like to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but not among your more average daredevils.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
and can you hammer a six inch spike through...
.^
oh, nevermind.
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
This is only effective for boost phase intercept, which means the plane would have to be over enemy territory to be effective. any enemy capable of launching ballistic missiles is also going to have pretty sophisticated air defense capability. Survivability of the multibillion dollar system, therefore, seems problematic. A 747 is a pretty big, and slow, target.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Do their competitors actually make employees pay to go to the toilet or something?
.^
Huh...?
Oh, peering, sorry, nevermind.
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
I remeber when CD players came out, every9one i knew that had one wanted to show me just how cool the damned discs looked, even before demonstrating the sound quality. I know several people who use junk CDs as decorations. oh, and my brother recently got a Sony DVD player. the feature that finally tipped the scales in favor of the Sony model was the cool blue LED indicator on the front, which was also the first feature he pointed out when showing off the unit. (huh huh, I said unit...) never underestimate the power of shiny things und blinkenlights.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Hmm, this could only mean that those monkeys that got evolved by the monolith have made it to Jupiter and are now waging a submarine war for control the oceans of Europa. It's the only logical conclusion, this is 2001, after all.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
With the two 80 foot satellite dishes pointing toward the sky. probably really is for static protection, though i bet the whole place is surrounded by a faraday cage for tempest shielding.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Both Arthur C. Clarke and the estate of Stanley Kubrick should sue. This is clearly someone trying to use their intellectual property for his own gain. Despicable.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
CNN Says these items are currently all the rage with world leaders. according to the article Queen Elizabeth, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush all own one. Am I the only one that finds this disturbing? There was an article in The Sun last year about how Queen Elizabeth likes to entertain guests by singing duets with hers. I wonder if Her Majesty also enjoys Nascar and pro wrestling.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
Didn't they find the monolith in 1999 on the moon (i assume before the moon was blown out of earth's orbit by that massive nuclear waste explosion) in the movie? apparently, someone was just too lazy to pay attention to details. I mean come on, we've know how to get stuff to the moon since the late sixties. nobody puts in any effort these days.
.^
^.
( @ )
Soylent Foods, Inc.
There is technology in development (already exists for terrestrial telescopes) called very long baseline interferometry. it's a widely used technique in radio astronomy, and is one of the latest things in visible/infrared observing. basically, you can combine the images from 2 widely separated apertures and the resulting resolution is the same as for a single aperture equal in diameter to the distance separating your two small apertures. there are plans to launch some of the interferomters for astronomical observation using baselines from 1-10km. it is likely that instruments like this can be used in the opposite direction, for terrestrial recon from space (and, perhaps already are). even a 50 meter baseline at orbits aroind 700 km would give you sub-centimeter resolution. of course, taking into account the other limitations of satellites at this altitude, that in itself probably wouldn't be very useful. the real kicker would be that this would allow imaging from geostationary orbits, so you could continuously cover the entire globe with a fleet of maybe 20 or so satellites, instant data on any location on earth, from several different angles, anytime you want it. It might even make aerial recon obsolete. pure speculation, of course, but i think this might be the most interesting explanation for the retirement of the SR-71 fleet. it would certainly be a more elegant solution than the so called aurora spyplane.
.^
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Actually, turning Hubble around is a pretty accurate description of the NRO satellites. The idea is to cram a mirror as large as can be carried by current launch vehicles. Hubble is 2.4 meters, so it's a pretty good guess that recon birds are around this size. To get higher resolution, you need a bigger mirror. Keyhole sats have a resolution of around 10 centimeters. to get 5 centimeter resolution, you would need an objective twice as large, which wouldn't fit in a launch vehicle, not if it was a one piece mirror. objectives much larger than current ones aren't very practical, something 2x larger could be 10x heavier, and resolution of 10cm is fine for most military needs. sure, it would be cool if you could read a license plate from orbit, but why would you want to? granted, the military does seem to buy lots of stuff just because of the coolness factor, but at some point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, even for the pentagon (or kremlin, or mossad, MI5 or whatever). And your point about atmospheric disturbances is correct as well, in some cases, these satellites are limited to performance 10x worse that their maximum theoretical resolution because of atmospheric turbulence. and performance drops to 0% if the target is obscured by cloud cover.
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should have specified that.
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actually, that is exactly what most of these NRO satellites are, Hubble-class telescopes pointed at the ground. the best ones currently have a resolution of around 10 centimeters from normal altitudes( about 400-500 miles), so i'm sorry to tell you that the performance of Hubble isn't quite that impressive. see my earlier response to this thread for a more detailed description.
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The resolving power of any telescope can be calculated by the formula Theta = 115.8/D, .05 seconds of arc.
.5 seconds of arc in most cases, although i'm not sure this is as critical for taking pictures of terrestrial objects as it is for astronomical ones. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
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where Theta is angualr resolution expressed in seconds of arc, and D is the diameter of the objective of the telescope/camera, which is what a spy satellite is. Now, the Hubble telescope has an objective of 2.4 meters, which is probably pretty close to the maximum diameter that will fit inside current launch vehicles, so the NRO satellites can't be much bigger than this. so that works out to around
to figure out actual size from angular size and distance use the formula
angular size(in degrees) = 57.3*actual size / distance
which works out to right around 10 centimeters, if i've done the math right. so unless they have multi-segment meirros for their satellites or some other unknown capability that is about hte theoeretical limit of their resolution. Interestingly though, atmospheric turbulence (what astronomers refer to as 'seeing') limits actual performance to
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