New scifi film "Apollo 18"

[Jason Thompson]

Just FYI, they used stock footage of a Saturn V night (or maybe early morning) launch in the movie.

Or, more precisely, they used stock footage of the only night time Saturn V launch.

I wonder where the landing site was supposed to be, since it might not have a suitable night launch wiindow either....

[Gillianren]

I have no problem with found footage as a concept, provided I think it's going to be used well. Nothing in this film's advertising has convinced me it's being used well, largely because nothing in the advertising has convinced me that anything in it is done well at all.

[Cycle]

I dont see why any country would want to launch a secret mission to the moon.
That would mean that Nasa was just a bottomless pit for taxpayers money.

[Terran]

I dont see why any country would want to launch a secret mission to the moon.
That would mean that Nasa was just a bottomless pit for taxpayers money.

There are those who argue that "bottomless pit for taxpayers money" is basically the definition of NASA

[Gillianren]

They have a very different perception of what "bottomless" means.

[Paul Beardsley]

There are those who argue that "bottomless pit for taxpayers money" is basically the definition of NASA

[citation needed]

[Orlagh Maher]

[citation needed]

Google 'nasa a waste of money' and select pretty much any response.

[BigDon]

So, if I understand, this movie and its forgotten footage is an explanation of why we don't return to the moon? What's next, a movie about a Concorde passenger who saw, (pick one) a ghost, an alien, a skeleton, bigfoot, an invisible elf.....?

I overheard a conversation about this movie, and I just mentioned, "hey, you guys understand its impossible to secretly launch a rocket into space, right?" And one guy looks at me and says, "Well, they would do it at night." I was dumbfounded, and could not reply as I was trying to save my IQ points that were being sucked into the black hole of total and utter ignorance.

TJ

Easy there TJ. They weren't even the first to come up with this one.

Charles Stross already did this with his modern retelling of the Cthulu Mythos. The Great Old Ones leave "obelisks" around the galaxy near life worlds for the simple fact that they are intellectivores. They sleep until a world shows potential to harvest. Sucks to be that world.

But think about this. How would the story 2001 a Space Odessy be different if the luner colonists:

A: used a tunnel instead of an open pit.

B: Realized it was an extraterrestrial signalling device waiting for someone to dig it up and expose it to sunlight.

My honest opinion?

Military coups and recoups, and at least one world war would go down before anybody would be allowed to activate it.

Not a single responsible world leader would go, "Gee whiz! Let's fire this thing up and see who answers!".

The only correct answer would be to re-bury it.

Gillian - It's like the One Ring. These kinds of things *want* to be found!

A behavior not seen in:

Car keys

Reading glasses

Socks, (fifty percent of the time).

[korjik]

Easy there TJ. They weren't even the first to come up with this one.

Charles Stross already did this with his modern retelling of the Cthulu Mythos. The Great Old Ones leave "obelisks" around the galaxy near life worlds for the simple fact that they are intellectivores. They sleep until a world shows potential to harvest. Sucks to be that world.

But think about this. How would the story 2001 a Space Odessy be different if the luner colonists:

A: used a tunnel instead of an open pit.

B: Realized it was an extraterrestrial signalling device waiting for someone to dig it up and expose it to sunlight.

My honest opinion?

Military coups and recoups, and at least one world war would go down before anybody would be allowed to activate it.

Not a single responsible world leader would go, "Gee whiz! Let's fire this thing up and see who answers!".

The only correct answer would be to re-bury it.

Gillian - It's like the One Ring. These kinds of things *want* to be found!

A behavior not seen in:

Car keys

Reading glasses

Socks, (fifty percent of the time).

While 'responsable world leaders' (ha, couldnt type that with a straight face) might just want to bury it, I would give it about 80/20 that any group of explorers would immediately expose it to the sun. Maybe 50/50 if it was a construction crew.

[fagricipni]

Just FYI, they used stock footage of a Saturn V night (or maybe early morning) launch in the movie. Perhaps the implication is that SA-513 launched this mission, and NASA faked Skylab?

Is it possible that someone writing this movie had the idea that while a night launch would not allow one to hide the fact that something was being launched, it could hide the exact type of rocket being launched; I know it doesn't work that way -- if nothing else the setup of the Saturn V on the launch pad takes so long that it would be noticed during a daylight period --; but maybe they didn't know that?

[SkepticJ]

Charles Stross already did this with his modern retelling of the Cthulu Mythos. The Great Old Ones leave "obelisks" around the galaxy near life worlds for the simple fact that they are intellectivores. They sleep until a world shows potential to harvest. Sucks to be that world.

Exactly, it's a retelling of the Cthulu Mythos, not how actual, incredibly advanced alien intelligences would behave. Would, could Martians eat human blood? Not likely.

But think about this. How would the story 2001 a Space Odessy be different if the luner colonists:

A: used a tunnel instead of an open pit.

B: Realized it was an extraterrestrial signalling device waiting for someone to dig it up and expose it to sunlight.

My honest opinion?

Military coups and recoups, and at least one world war would go down before anybody would be allowed to activate it.

Not a single responsible world leader would go, "Gee whiz! Let's fire this thing up and see who answers!".

The only correct answer would be to re-bury it.

Not at all. Well, assuming they were rational. If they weren't rational, and since we're talking about humans this is not an insignificant possibility, they might act as you suggest.

If they thought about it rationally they'd see that:

If the aliens left a signaling device on the Moon, they just as easily could have left a honking huge coil gun (or whatever) inside the Moon to ruin Earth's day.

Or a von Neumann war-machine inside an asteroid wrapper at the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 points watching our civilizations across the millennia using optical phased arrays splayed across the surface of the asteroid.

Or they could've dropped nanobots onto prehistoric Earth that could've sculpted our ancestors' genes to keep them from ever evolving into us. Or infected our central nervous systems during the same period, and we're witless puppets, our very sensory impressions of the real universe filtered to become only what they want us to see.

So many, many possibilities.

No, a Monolith would be a sign of peace.

[BigDon]

No, a Monolith would be a sign of peace.

Wow. Not only do I *not* come to the same conclusion, but nothing personal, I would use any and every means to stop you. Encluding inflicting personal extinction upon you if that was the only way. You are not worth the risk.

[Paul Beardsley]

I once stumbled upon a buried monolith. I exposed it to sunlight.

Fortunately it wasn't of alien origin.

It wasn't very big either.

[SkepticJ]

Wow. Not only do I *not* come to the same conclusion, but nothing personal, I would use any and every means to stop you. Encluding inflicting personal extinction upon you if that was the only way. You are not worth the risk.

What about my reasoning doesn't hold up to you?

Wouldn't you agree that everything I wrote is physically possible? For what reason would a Monolith destruction-trigger be preferred over simply leaving a watchful weapon itself?

You wouldn't build the machine from Contact either, would you?

[fagricipni]

You wouldn't build the machine from Contact either, would you?

The machine from Contact was a Trojan Horse; if we hadn't helped them build their wormhole to Earth, it would have taken them 50 years from an event on to them intervening; 25 years to see it, another 25 to reach Earth; instead we had to help them build the wormhole.

What about my reasoning doesn't hold up to you?

Wouldn't you agree that everything I wrote is physically possible? For what reason would a Monolith destruction-trigger be preferred over simply leaving a watchful weapon itself?

My reasoning about having us build a their Trojan Horse for them doesn't apply if they have already physically been here and thus been able to leave a machine(s) behind.

[SkepticJ]

The machine from Contact was a Trojan Horse; if we hadn't helped them build their wormhole to Earth, it would have taken them 50 years from an event on to them intervening; 25 years to see it, another 25 to reach Earth; instead we had to help them build the wormhole.

That's true, but it still wouldn't make rational sense to fear the Contact aliens because:

If they know how to create machines that can form wormholes, surely they could send an interstellar craft at close to the speed of light to Earth if they wanted to. Sending us the plans at c using radio and having us build it ourselves would only save a few years vs. just coming from Vega themselves.

And if they wished us harm, they could send that craft plunging into Earth at near light-speed.

Instead of flying themselves, they shared their wormhole-machine technology.

I don't buy the conceit that all hyper-advanced intelligent beings would be benevolent, but this sort of behavior would be difficult to spin any other way.

[Githyanki]

We all know Apoll 18 never happened because the Moon-landings were faked because I saw it once in a James Bond movie and James Bond wouldn't lie to me.


I saw Apollo 18 and it just didn't do it for me. I was more interested in the life-type of the aliens rather than the, "Horror" aspect or the fact it was filmed "Blair-Witch"-style.

[BigDon]

Okay, since I've cast myself as Gen. Jack D. Ripper allow in my defense the fact that I went from age 15 to age 50 pretty much continiously reffereeing role playing games. It's solidly in my nature to see the imp of the perverse in just about most situations. And if I could we'ed be splitting a pitcher of black lager while having this conversation. So that said:

All of your replies are way too anthropocentric to be a likely response. Simply because you are an anthropod. All the stories and news you have on them, the very idea of them, came from other anthropods. You and I can only think the way we do. It's physics. Same for ET.

And because of uncertainy and the law of unintended consequences you can't reduce the odds of disaster to fifty-fifty.

Even the 2010 story would end up with a Jupiter at least 77 times more massive than before. I'm sure that would have been no problem for the Monolith builders to adjust for. Too bad in OUR system it ejected all the other planets...

[SkepticJ]

Even the 2010 story would end up with a Jupiter at least 77 times more massive than before. I'm sure that would have been no problem for the Monolith builders to adjust for. Too bad in OUR system it ejected all the other planets...

Would it have to?

What I got from reading 2010 is that the mass of Jupiter doesn't change--conservation of mass/energy and all that, Jupiter just gets artificially compressed beyond what its own self-gravity can accomplish to ignite proton-proton fusion and become what would be a naturally impossible star.

How do the Monoliths do that? Who knows.

But it means that the dynamics of the solar system would stay similar to how they are now. Lucifer would intercept less asteroids than Jupiter because of its smaller cross section, and the radiation from the mini-star would influence the orbits of asteroids and comets, but these are pretty trivial.

[AstroFilmmaker]

No, not at all. The producers of Apollo 18 could have set the story in a fictional universe, but they chose not to.

If it took place in a fictional universe, then it wouldn't be any different from any other science-fiction alien attacks story.

I commend them for adding a spin to things, but doesn't make it any better. I think it's an attempt to help audiences connect to it more. Sure they could have made it in a fictional universe, but the fact that it's an 'apollo mission' and it's 'found footage' just proves they're trying to ride the success of Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity. It wouldn't have worked for producers if it took place in another world, another reality, or another time frame from that of which we are familiar with.

It does seem awful though.

[elly12]

It's a pretty good movie, period. It has a fairly original storyline. If you like mocumentaries & sci-fi/horror.....& if you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project & or Paranormal Activity, then you'll probably like this film. Actually, I think it's better than either of those films.

Vietnam Software Outsourcing

[R.A.F.]

...if you enjoyed The Blair Witch Project & or Paranormal Activity, then you'll probably like this film. Actually, I think it's better than either of those films.

That's really not saying much.



edit to add....and welcome to the board, elly12.