Monday 16 May 2011

Another day, another explosive decompression

That's right, It's the greenhouses turn to shatter the laws of physics...


As assassin number two carelessly fires a single shot at one of the windows in the greenhouse...

That's right windows, I mean don't let little things like physical construction of what is probably something like transparent aluminium at all, let alone to such size, thickness and quantity as to make a entire greenhouse that could stand the heat and pressure difference between tropical greenhouse and outer space get in the way

or again the ridiculously phenomenal expense to ship that all those hundreds of thousands of miles to IO and installing it etc

and the lack of any real reason to actually have glass as the sun would be a rather rare visitor here and most certainly not to the extent that it could actually entice anything to grow

let's ignore all of that...


and instead marvel at the incredible ability for just one bullet, just one mind you - to explode the whole entire contents, glass and all into outer space

Let us side step that one bullet would hardly be likely to make much of an impression on transparent aluminium built to withstand the rigors of space and assume it must have been the bullet to end all bullets

and lets also assume that having spent all that money on the greenhouse with its implausible windows at the hind end of space that the budget for any protective measures in the event of decompression, self sealing chambers, shutters, emergency doors, force fields or anything similar wasn't there so none of that was fitted either

Even ignoring all those things - the greenhouse screen is still pretty hard to swallow as it is played out much along the lines of the cliched bullet fired inside a airplane scene from a lot of movies

One shot is fired, it goes straight through the glass cleanly and air starts to woosh out in gales, cracks form in the glass as the pressure increases eventually shattering the entire window in question and taking whomever directly out of the plane on a one way ticket to the ground

Being in space of course you presumably have the added element of your head exploding or instantly liquifying on exposure to space or something similar as already seen in this movie earlier

we would also have to ignore that the pressure differential in space would be a lot different to a plane at 10,000 feet off the ground there would be no "pulling" (outside atmosphere) force at all

The fact is even if a bullet did go cleanly through one window (which is implausible enough by itself) an explosive decompression would never be the consequence, air would escape certainly but not at the gale forces shown and certainly not to the extent to cause a entire window to go out and with enough force to pull a person out at high speed

The only way that would be possible is if the entire structure was completely hollow and built of fairly lightweight and feeble materials, like sucking the air out of a aluminium (not steel as thats too strong) coke can. In short the building would have to have little or very bad structural integrity to explode so dramatically



Once again its all a hollywoodisation, a plane is built strong enough to cope with almost anything and certainly more than strong enough to withstand instant loss of all pressure if such a thing was actually possible

that aside our assassin now exploding out the window is also conveniently not cut to shreds by the glass exploding around him, if we was to play devils advocate and agree that the force shown could occur, then the glass would shred the assassin into little bits, especially if it was the thickness of plexi glass or transparent aluminium

I am surprised that that was missed, this being a 80's shock / gore movie (of sorts)

So many ways for this assassin to die, but none of them are real

But in the story, at least the assassin is dead - so that's it right?

O'Neil has polished off both assassins, he got hit in the shoulder by assassin 1 but he has survived to save the day, yes?

hmmm..

I direct you to the ending of Ridley Scots Alien - and ask you - when the Nostromo was blown up and Ripley was in the shuttle - was she alone?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.