Earth vs Soup Ep 288 - Conquest Of Space (1955)

Aaron and Darlene watch some classic sci-fi from the 1950s and '60s, good and bad. They talk about what makes these films memorable and fun, and if you should take a trip back in time and enjoy these films as well.

Feedback for the show?:
Email: [e-mail]
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisweekingeek
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thisweekingeek.net

Subscribe to our feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/3571037/episodes/feedi
Tunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-geek/id215643675
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Lit2bzebJXMTIv7j7fkqq

Website: https://www.thisweekingeek.net

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But aren't you fellows ever positive only about doomsday? What
could be worse than disappointing a little girl disappointing a
big girl.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I have other ways of securing your cooperation.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Sorry, miss I was giving myself an oil job.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
When was it just a zumbly as we've seen attitude
to it since we gave to a few low cabbages.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
An intellectual tarrot.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
That mind boggles you see you see your stupid lives.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Stupid, stupid, I said Santa Claus. Long enough, we will
bring him to Mars. I've been afraid a lot of
times in my life, but I didn't know the real
meaning of fear until until I kiss peck me. One
thing will be clear. It's not from man to interfere
in the ways of God's life.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
Good evening, everybody, and welcome to Earth versus Soup, Episode
two eighty eight. I'm Aaron Poullier and I'm Darling. After
what seems to us like a long time of watching
kind of movies that we didn't like, after the multiple
multiple movies that we walked watched Spanish horror movies that

(01:29):
we just did not like, and then the last movie
that we didn't like I thought, Okay, look, even though
this is not a five or ten, I'm gonna do
my best to find us a movie that is at
least passable, so we don't just completely like lose hope.
And that's not a good feeling to have, especially when
I know for a fact that just with hard science

(01:52):
fiction movies that firmly fit I shouldn't say hard, but
science fiction movies that firmly fit into the Earth versus
Soup category from the nineteen fifties only, we have at
least a couple hundred more films that we can do
from that decade alone from the United States. I know
we can keep going, and I didn't want to lose
hope this early on. So I found a George pal

(02:16):
produced movie, but not directed, so we don't get like
the stuff that he is kind of known for, like
his woody woodpecker stuff or the weird animations. This movie
is called Conquest of Space. It's from nineteen fifty five.
Darlene your normal kind of information that you tend to like.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
It released in April twentieth of nineteen fifty five. It's
eighty one minutes long. The budget was one point five million,
but it only got one million.

Speaker 5 (02:48):
One point five million in nineteen fifty five.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
I don't know. This is Wikipedia's that's.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
That is an insane amount of money. That's an insane
amount of money for one of these films. That being said,
there is a budget to this movie, so it's it's possible,
but that seems really high for a movie from nineteen
fifty five that is science fiction.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
But amusing today's figure out.

Speaker 5 (03:11):
I don't know it could actually that could legitimately be
it's actual budget. It's just it's a high budget movie
and it does show. It does show in this we
actually have some interesting details from behind the scenes. This
is based on a couple books, but one of them

(03:32):
is actually written by Werner von Braun Operation paper Clip.
You may know him from such features as Operation paper
Clip and designing the V two rocket that rained down
on Allied Allied cities during World War Two. He was
a he was an actual good engineer, and he became

(03:54):
a member of that specific party in Germany of the
nineteen thirties because that was the thing to do, and
he did some pretty bad things, let's put it that way.
But after the war he was taken up by Operation
paper Clip, which is the US effort to find Nazi
scientists and bring them back to the US and have

(04:18):
them work for us, and he started working for our
rocket program. So before this movie, he ended up writing
a few papers about how to get into space and
humanity's future in space. And I will say that Werner
von Braun I have many conflicting feelings about him, as

(04:39):
I'm sure you do. He is an evil bastard, but
he also helped progress humanity to be in space, So
I guess you have to understand the guy's kind of complex.
And it's okay if you don't like him. But what's
interesting about his as he did not directly write this movie, Okay,

(05:00):
I should say that you did not write this movie.
It's that ideas from some of his books and papers
are brought into this, specifically the rocket design, the spacecraft
design that is in this And you can immediately tell,
if you know anything about like retrofuturism from the nineteen

(05:21):
fifties and sixties pre Apollo, that a lot of like
Werner von Braun's ideas were published and a lot of
the artwork from that era was used. And it screams Werners.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
And launching from a space.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
Station, a ring station.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, a ring.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
Station is part of his thing too, right, Yes, because
ring stations are good for long term habitation because you
have artificial gravity that isn't like some sort of science
fiction grav plating like you have in Star Trek or whatever.
It's it's naturally produced centrifugal gravity, you know, and it

(06:01):
allows people to stay in space for longer. And again,
this is where I think maybe that one million dollar
budget one and a half million dollar budget is real
because they build sets in this that are pretty complex.
For just a single shot like a single was.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
A single shot that was really.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
The whole set gets tilted. It's almost like when you're
watching Hunt for o October when if you remember watching
that movie, there's times when the submarines are maneuvering and
everyone starts leaning in one way and you think, oh,
it's Star Trek. Everyone just was taught to be able
to lean certain ways in time, like they'd have signals. No,

(06:43):
they actually built the whole submarine set on a tilt
a tilting platform, so when the submarine would maneuver, the
boat would maneuver, you would actually get everyone properly tilting
or pitching like it they did that with one scene
in this movie that they that's all they needed to do,
but it was very impressive. We have some people in

(07:06):
front of this in front of the camera that are
kind of interesting here. A lot of people you would
kind of recognize if you're longtime Earth Versus Soup watcher
or listeners like Eric Fleming. But the person that really
stands out well William Hopper. You'd probably recognize William Hoppers.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
We've had Mikey SHANESSI but I've seen him in other
ones too. Something else.

Speaker 5 (07:36):
But one of the character actors in this is a
pretty well known actor. His name is Ross Martin. You
may know him from Wild Wild West who played Artemis Gordon.
So clearly in the TV show he is a pretty
well known actor because of that, at least in television.

(07:57):
Was he a good actor in this, Yeah? Yeah. But
other than that, you have you have George pell producing,
so you at least get the George Peal name there
to let the that the studios then would basically let
George Pall do things because they trusted him.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I do have to say they do have. What they
tried to do was have a lot of different nationalities
in this.

Speaker 5 (08:26):
But they also screwed up a couple times.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
And screwed up in a couple ways.

Speaker 5 (08:31):
But okay, so let's talk. Let's go through the movie,
and we'll probably stop and go and praise it or
like pull our hair out at times in others. So
we get we get your typical nineteen fifties harderer science
fiction opening, where you have the narrator talking about like
this is a story of tomorrow or perhaps the next day.

(08:51):
And I every time I hear one of these, I
immediately think of, you know, like Plan nine and Chris
Well doing his speech, you know, behind his desk with
the very very perfectly.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
I always have a oh the intros. It kind of
makes me shut down.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
So we have a spacecraft that's approaching a ring station
orbiting one thousand miles above the Earth, and we're told
that it is being used as a base for exploration. Okay,
no problem. The rocket blasts off into the unknown, and
we have credits George pal and we have the opening
special effect shot which shows the ring station and a

(09:33):
ship under construction. And I immediately drew this ship because
this is Bonbron Classic.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
It's a Delta.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
V, It's a Delta wing ship, delta.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Wing ship with a rocket and a bunch of fuel
tanks on the bottom of it.

Speaker 5 (09:51):
It's there's a stack, there's a stack of spherical reaction
mass tanks. There's some sort of of rocket nozzle at
the back. But it's a really complex delta way.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Look, it's very curbalastic.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
It's not curbal No, it looks very von bron Yes,
but it also because it looks like it is a
nineteen fifties car imagined as a rocket, and it's gorgeous,
but it's also incredibly practical because every single piece that
you see on there that you're like, well, what's that,

(10:26):
they explain what it is in the in the progress
of the movie. So again credit where credits due. I
drew this rocket going oh yeah, man, look at it. It
actually has like a detached center hull that's on like
a naceell, like a nacell pylon that goes down to
the delta wing. The delta wing has all these forward

(10:47):
facing what looks like ram scoops, but they're not. They're
actually they're actually like RCS type things.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
And when we get to it, there's a dialogue problem with.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
Well, sure, sure, sure, this thing so.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
You look at it and you're going, this has a
direct purpose.

Speaker 5 (11:08):
Everything.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
When you look at it, you're going, this has a purpose.

Speaker 5 (11:13):
You wouldn't have a oh yeah, well well yeah, we'll
talk about that when we get to the scene. So
on the Space Station, the crew observes a rocket launch
from Hawaii, and again some of these special effect shots
are really well, why do we know that it's a
rocket launch from Hawaii? I can see Hawaii on like
this cool effects, Like it looks like you're looking down

(11:33):
at the Earth from orbit. So it's not like you're
just looking downwards at a map of Hawaii that they're
trying to pretend you're directly above. No, you're looking at
it at like an oblique angle and the rocket is
coming up from the surface. So there was a rocket
launch from Hawaii. They're looking at it, and would that
makes sense? Why why wouldn't you be able to launch
rocket from Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
I'm just like where it's at, and that's fine.

Speaker 5 (11:58):
The closer to the equator you are, the better off
you are to launch that. So yes, while technically it
is better to launch from let's say Hawaii than Cape
Canaveral or you know, Florida, The point is is that
Florida is much easier to get things too. Okay, and yeah,

(12:20):
you can go to southern Texas, which is where SpaceX
is and all that. But again, at the time that
Cape Canaveral was you know what, when NASA was really
pulling up, they thought, no, you know, since we're launching
you know, west to east, we're launching east, right, if
there's an accident, we want to fall over a large
stretch of ocean that has nothing in it, which launching

(12:43):
from Hawaii would right, But if you're launching from southern Texas,
you have the Gulf oil fields that are all there,
so there's lots of these platforms, and then you're crossing
Hawaii in your launch profile. Most likely you're most likely
crossing not why Florida, I apologize, you're crossing Florida in
this launch profile and then going out to the ocean,

(13:05):
so it's better for Florida, and then you can ditch
out at Zaragoza, Spain. Remember the Shuttle actually had a
emergency emergency landing at Zaragoza. So anyway, we have the
crew they're complaining about like how they need to know

(13:26):
about exact timings, like seconds matter in space because it
means hundreds of miles or whatever. And we learned that
there are two people on board that are pretty much
our main characters. Okay, we have Samuel T. Merrit and
Barney Merritt. Barney Merritt's a captain.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
And at the start of it, Samuel is not the general.
He's a colonel.

Speaker 5 (13:53):
Yeah, in the credits he's listed as general, but he
has birds on his collars.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And what was going on here?

Speaker 5 (14:01):
Because we looked at the cast, yeah, and the.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
I will we will we should call it senior and Junior.

Speaker 5 (14:11):
Yeah, okay, because there is a very clear nepotism kind
of thing happening here, nepo baby type thing, because the
colonel is in charge of this ring station and his
son is like second in command, and no one questions this,
like it immediately ring ring alarm bells to me.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, And there was this dialogue somewhere I couldn't remember where,
but they're talking to each other and he's like, this
is your He's oh, that's probably in the next scene.

Speaker 5 (14:45):
It's probably the next scene. So yeah, they go off. Oh,
and we're told that there's a storm brewing over the Pacific.
Does it matter? No, I don't know why that was
in the dialogue. So, uh, we almost we almost get
to that scene that you're talking about, but we go
out to show people working on the rocket that's being built,

(15:06):
the spacecraft that's being built. They're all in micro gravity,
they're in spacesuits, they're building the spacecraft. One guy is
paralyzed by like a high voltage wire swinging in front
of him. And this is one of my criticisms of
the Farm. Yeah, Cooper. One of my criticisms of the
film is while all of these kind of side characters

(15:26):
are distinct, they all have distinct personality traits, they are
also completely unmemorable with what their names are. Like, I
don't think I actually wrote down anybody's name in my notes.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
I wrote down I tried to write them down because
I wrote Sergeant Jackie.

Speaker 5 (15:47):
Okay, there's there's Sergeant Jackie, who is Roy Cooper from
the Bronx, Roy Cooper, who is the guy that gets
scared of this high voltage wire swinging in front of him.
Sergeant Tony Okay, Sergeant Mahoney is he's us, but he's clearly.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Old school and he's attached to the colonel.

Speaker 5 (16:13):
He's almost like the Batman for not not like Batman Batman,
like a superhero, but like the assistant to the captain.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
He's the n CEO, that's to the uh for the colonel.

Speaker 5 (16:30):
He's the no, not the colonel, the captain colonel.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
He's been following the colonel's career.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
You're right, You're right. I apologize.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
And then there is Sergeant A.

Speaker 5 (16:43):
Mato Imato Imato. He's Japanese and this is he's an
interesting character.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Is the actual character.

Speaker 5 (16:54):
That the actor not character darling actor? Sorry, I don't
I don't know. I can look it up really quick
right here. Nope. He was born in Sacramento in nineteen sixteen,
so you know he was in an internment camp. Actually,
shouldn't say I know that he was, but I'm sure
that he was put into an internment camp because he

(17:17):
was living in.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
In California, in California.

Speaker 5 (17:22):
So anyway, we have him, and there are some problematic
things that they do with his character. I think, well
one thing, but we'll get to it when we get
to that.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
And there's Sergeant fold Door full Door.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
Okay, that's Ross Martin.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
That's Ross Martin, and he's supposed to be andre.

Speaker 5 (17:43):
Is he is he supposed to be Swedish or Finnish
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
I have no idea. There's somebody's supposed to be Swedish
and I don't get it. But he, uh, he's the
best character in this group, and he's the first one
that dies.

Speaker 5 (18:01):
Yeah, well, okay, we haven't even gotten to that scene yet,
all right. So they're they're talking, they're kind of bitching,
and then he freaks out, like Cooper freaks out, and
they call for a taxi. And again here we see
like both George pal saying no, this might look silly,
but it makes sense. We're gonna do what actually is realistic.

(18:22):
So they have like this little rocket scooter, right, and
it's a sled effectively like it looks like a ski
do basically makes sense. It makes complete sense. There's a
guy like writing on it, and as it comes in
it fires like rcs thrusters reacting control systems to slow up.
They like get Cooper onto the sled, but then they

(18:44):
just tie everybody else just ties themselves to it with
ropes to be pulled by it. Yep, and we're just
gonna go slowly back. So when the sled starts to stop,
you know, obviously everybody that's being pulled by it is
gonna continue at the original speed. So you slow down right,
and you let everybody grab onto the handholds at the

(19:06):
back end because you don't want to be next to
the RCS thrusters when they're firing like all the time,
because you're gonna get buffeted around anyway, they all tie
themselves and just get dragged back to the ring. It's
all at low velocity, so it's fine.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Makes completely low velocity and zero G.

Speaker 5 (19:22):
So a doctor starts talking to everybody, including the commander,
and he says, oh, look, you know, he just had
a momentary lapse and nerve function, and then he starts
talking about space fatigue.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, and when I saw what happened, it made sense
that he locked up because it had to deal with electrical.

Speaker 5 (19:42):
To me, yeah, like it electric.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
It made me think that with AC, you again, you
get you get locked up.

Speaker 5 (19:53):
But I don't think they would have AC in that system.
It would be DC DC. I think it depends, it depends.
I was just.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
What went through my mind was that he electrically locked up,
absolutely same. And then this doctor says this space fatigue,
and I'm like, what.

Speaker 5 (20:16):
What and he actually explains it, but I'm not going
to go into like the full explanation. It's basically your
classic case of space madness. That's basically what it is.
It's that when you're cooped up in space for too long,
you go a little crazy or you start acting funny.
And then I thought, wait a second here, folks, wait

(20:36):
a second, you're not cooped up everyone. First of all, everyone, okay,
maybe I should start. First of all, everyone that's here
as a volunteer. Okay. Second of all, these are the
guys that except for the sun, except for the son,
which we learn about and I'm actually again shocked about this.
But second of all, Cooper and these guys that are

(20:58):
building the actual spacecraft are actually getting out of the
space the space station way more than.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
The clothed because they're blue clothed.

Speaker 5 (21:11):
Yeah, they are like a complete different division.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, they're a complete different division. And you find out
that they are supposed to.

Speaker 5 (21:18):
Be they're being they're being trained to be the crew
of the spacecraft. It actually kind of makes.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Sense where they're eating certain different foods and stuff like.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
So these these people that are building the rocket, this
is my third point, would have been chosen for this
duty based on their ability to be in deep space
for a long time. So why are these people specifically
seemingly more susceptible to going crazy from being in space

(21:50):
for a long time. Everyone else is perfectly fine. I
think the doctor even says no one else has no
one else is really showing this. Now, I'm gonna say
fourth thing. The big problem with kind of getting a
little loopy in space is all the blood that's in
your head. You're not able to taste food properly because

(22:11):
of microgravity. Since all the blood goes to your head right,
and you kind of feel like you're stuffed up all
the time, and there's no up or downs, you have
no ability to really feel like you're connected. You feel
a little more disconnected from reality when you're in microgravity.
But they're all on a ring station. There's an up
and down. They have entertainment, they have like large areas

(22:35):
to move around in because it's a large ring station
with large windows. Why is this a problem, and why
are you keeping people on board that are suffering.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
From this, and why has Why isn't there a there's
just a doctor, not a psychologist.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
That I can understand that I can understand it. Think
that nineteen fifties. Think of the air Force of the
nineteen fifties, and you're in a high pressure just a second,
you're in a high pressure job. You're a pilot. And
if you say to somebody, Hey, you know what, I'm
kind of depressed. I'm feeling depressed. I might need somebody
to talk to you or lose your wings. So no

(23:17):
one is going to talk to a shrink. No one.
And you know, it's still a problem to this day.
It's still a.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Problem to airline.

Speaker 5 (23:30):
Yeah, exactly. It's a high pressure job that if you
admit to any kind of weakness anyone above and below Earth,
even if you're.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Trying to get the help you need.

Speaker 5 (23:41):
Yes, and if you watch enough things about about air
traffic disasters, this lack of feeling safe in talking about
your own your own like problems has resulted in plane
crashes that have killed hundreds of people. It has well
is the.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Next scene with Colonel of the colonel.

Speaker 5 (24:04):
Uh, it is almost But I have a couple other
notes here. Okay, I have written down. The sets are amazing.
I like the fact that there are bulkhead doors that
people walk through and reseal behind them again like on ships,
but you would want this in case of a hull breach,

(24:24):
which we get later. Yeah, and so you have these
sealed bulkhead doors. The worst that can happen is you
lose a section. I thought it was really smart set design. Okay,
so now we actually do go to the colonel. We
see the colonel walking to his office, but he starts
stumbling like he's dizzy. He takes some medicine and drinks it.

(24:45):
Now I think, okay, does he have cancer the is
he just like sick? No, here's the problem. He has
space fatigue too, and.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
He's taking some medicine without telling anyone.

Speaker 5 (25:02):
Yeah, because the doctor clearly doesn't know he's drinking liquor.
What what is implied to be liquor? Oh and now
let's be fair later on, after he gets promoted to
general later on, he is the craziest of crazy space
fatigue people out of everyone, like, he is the worst

(25:25):
person to be on this mission, the worst. So we'll
get to that. But they needed drama, and I actually
need to talk about what he does.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Because somebody saw him and did not report it.

Speaker 5 (25:41):
Yeah, I know, well, no, somebody did report it, but
to the sergeant, and since the sergeant's sergeant is in
the bag for the colonel, it never goes anywhere because
he respects the colonel too much to say anything.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
He's he doesn't, he's the colonel's yes man. I know,
I don't because even in the end that made me
pissed off.

Speaker 5 (26:11):
Oh yeah, there are problems with this movie, but I
think actually some of the problems that we have with
the movie are good story but bad bad reality. So, okay,
now we see him taking his medicine. We go back
to all the enlisted guys. They're all chatting in their

(26:31):
bunk room. Okay, And this is where we see one
of the issues, but also one of the cool things.
They are all a multinational force. That's cool. They have
flags up on their lockers that tell their country of origin.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
We see flag, we see a US flag, and.

Speaker 5 (26:51):
We see we see a World War two Japanese Army flag,
Imperial Imperial Army flag, and I'm like, why why is it?
First of all, you could maybe make a bad argument
for that flag to be there if the other flags
were of the services of the people that are there, Like, hey, look,

(27:14):
here's a US Air Force flag, here's a Swedish air
whatever their air force flag, and then that you could
make a bad argument. Then, but why would you have
a World War two and then it.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Still would be the civil.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
It would be the civil it'd be the Japanese self
defense for US or something like that.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yes, and that's clearly different.

Speaker 5 (27:37):
It is very different, very very obviously different. This was
so clear, even though it's in the background, it's so
clear what it is. I immediately saw the problem with it. Again,
we are World War two people. We immediately recognized what
that was, and it made us stop the movie for
a second. Ago, all right, this is not this is

(27:59):
not a writing problem.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
I went and looked up the flags so I could
find out if and that's where I found out if
he was using the military flag, he would have the
self defense force, which would have shown very.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
Very clear, very different. Even though it's similar. It has
similar colors there, it's clear enough.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
If it was the national flag, it would just be the.

Speaker 5 (28:25):
Red dot, red dot. Yeah, the red dot not offset
by one percent yet, because I think they offset it
by one percent later on. Anyway, it's the red dot
today is not perfectly centered in the flag. It's one
percent off anyway. I thought there were other little details
in this scene that were really cool, like the pin up,

(28:45):
the cutout of pin up girls on the wall, the
use of mesh grilling. Why I bring all this stuff
up in almost every movie that we talk about is
I have a firm belief that when movie making, details matter,
because if you're making a movie that is directed towards

(29:07):
a specific audience, let's say, fans of science fiction in
the nineteen fifties, you are most likely also going to
have a little bit of knowledge about World War two history,
especially if this is nineteen fifty five, that was ten
years in the past. Even if you're ten years old,
you probably have already grown up with dad talking about

(29:28):
it all the time and making models of the aircraft
and all that from the time, right or you are
an adult watching this because you're enjoying science fiction and
you were in World War Two and have enough knowledge
of this, and so today your average viewer probably wouldn't

(29:51):
even blink an eye at that little flag in the background.
But the fact is is that we did it.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Details me and beds in space should actually be able
to lock you down.

Speaker 5 (30:07):
Again.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I don't know if they did that or not, because
I can't remember.

Speaker 5 (30:13):
Yes, they have lips to them, but they're more like
lips on a submarine bed it was. But here's the thing.
You can make an argument that they wouldn't need it
because spin gravity, all right, But if spin gravity fails,
you have bigger problems than staying in bed. It's it's
the whole like, do you want to have straps there

(30:34):
all the time getting in your way When a disaster
will be extraordinarily rare, that would knock you out of bed.
But if you are knocked out of bed, you probably
need to be knocked out of bed anyway immediately to
know how bad the situation is. Get your ass moving
sort of thing. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just
saying like, Okay, I can I can see I can

(30:57):
see that. So we up having uh one guy this
one guy from the Bronx, Jackie Siegel says, I don't
think we're going to pile of the ship. Why would
they have us. We're just like the grease monkeys that
are that are building yet.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
And there's something about the cat. A cat's a cat
having six kittens on board?

Speaker 5 (31:18):
Oh they have a frankencecuse they're talking.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
About Oh, they're talking about he's talking. It's him that's
talking about.

Speaker 5 (31:26):
Radiation, and oh yeah, it doesn't seem to it doesn't
seem to hurt the cat on board that had six kittens,
And it's like, oh man, are they actually is this
where Red Dwarf got it's got the inspiration for cat
and like the whole cat species. Like he the cat
on board had a whole bunch of kittens. It's okay,
But yeah, he talks about, Hey, you know, if I
get a whole bunch of cosmic radiation and I glow

(31:47):
in the dark, at least it'll make you know, Rosie
able to find me in the dark better, you know, easier.
And I'm like, dude, him and Rosie from what from
having kids? Yeah, it'll just make it easier for me
to for her to find me in the dark. Dude. Wow, dude, Wow,

(32:07):
you're in space. You're in space. You would know a
little bit more about radiation events, Like if there's a
solar flare, you need to go to specified areas that
are more heavily shielded, because you can't heavily shield everywhere.
You know what I mean. You should know the dangers
of radiation. You're living in a post nuclear you know,

(32:29):
Hiroshima Nagasaki world. This is not something you joke about
when you're talking about having kids in the future. But
it made me laugh. At least it did make me laugh.
It was a funny joke. What was he in, Phil Foster?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, because I remember him being in something. I'll bring
Laverne and Shirley.

Speaker 5 (32:51):
Yes, okay, So he's Frank Difasio in one hundred and
forty eight episodes of Laverne and Shirley.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
There.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
Yeah, now you know where he's from, one hundred and
forty eight episodes of Laverne Tip. So they're joking around
and it turns out sergeant comes in, Sergeant mahoney. He
comes in and goes, it's chow time, and they go yes, mother,
and they all kind of march out, and we go
to the chow hall, which actually is a super cool set.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
This is the set that we were talking about before.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
So everyone in here is by the way, all these
enlisted guys have been bitching about the food, and I
even before we get to the scene, I was looking
at you, going, why would they have bad food here?
This would be like the perfect example of why you
would have good food to keep morale up in a
more difficult situation. This is why you have submarines have
good food.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Well, we see that they do have good food.

Speaker 5 (33:47):
They have amazing This is where we.

Speaker 6 (33:49):
Get where I say there's brown Oh yeah, they it's
in blue jackets.

Speaker 5 (33:56):
They're in a different division. They all march in and
then everyone else on this station are assholes. They all
have like big old hams, like with pineapple on it,
mashed potatoes and yems. It looks like it's a Thanksgiving dinner.
It's not, but like every table is filled with fresh

(34:17):
fruit dessert Christmas is what it looked like to me.
And these guys come in and sit down at a
completely empty table and the chef comes in with his
big chef hat, and I'm like, okay, at least they're
still using like regular people in the service to cook.
And he puts down a platter and it's just filled
with pills. And my immediate thing was looking at you

(34:41):
and saying, you know, a serious drug collection is easy
to get into.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Hey, that thing was it was neat.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
It was a oh yeah, yeah, it's a lazy Susan.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
That actually moves down the up and down.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
The table on tracks as well, so the whole table
can sit there and spin this tray of of Uppers Downers,
the Screamers, uh coffee. I'm like, oh, look, so yeah
the coffee pill and I'm like, those are just Bennies.
It was. It was It was like the back of

(35:15):
Hunter S. Thompson's convertible.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
What I thought of when I looked at it. I
was like, hmm, I hope those were Eminem's made by.

Speaker 5 (35:24):
The Uppers Downers spas.

Speaker 6 (35:29):
We we those were candies that they were.

Speaker 5 (35:32):
They were popping lots of pills during this and it
was just making us cracks and.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
They were making they were making jokes of what they
were too.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
Oh yeah, can you pass the coffee?

Speaker 4 (35:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (35:43):
Throwing freaking pills down at each other. I know they
were all Bennies like that. The coffee pile was just Benny's.
I don't know. Pills. I hate it when science fiction
does pills for food, Yes, absolutely hate it. It pisses
me off because while you can get vitamins from pills,

(36:08):
you can get like a lot of things from pills,
it's the fact that you're always going to feel hungry
unless there's specific pills that are there to also make
you not feel hungry.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
But again, like, but they're also feeding these people with
all this other food that you're smelling, which puts it
in a torture.

Speaker 5 (36:29):
You're specifically torturing these people. Yeah, and I don't like it.
Now Here, here's the thing that even is worse. Miss
Chef comes in to Cooper because Cooper Haad is the
guy that freaked out and puts down a plate full
of like a steak bike potato and he goes compliments
of the Kernel. And Cooper is like staring at, staring

(36:52):
at everyone is staring at.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
The guys are making fun of him, and and I
would eat it, you know, blah blah blah. And he
knows this is sentencing him to not be and he's
the one that wants to really go.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
They assume that they're being prepared to go on this trip. Yeah,
it's only the one guy that doesn't really believe that
they're Jackie that doesn't believe that they're gonna go. And
Cooper's like, no, I can't do it. I'm not gonna
wash myself out of the program. So he freaks out,
stands up, throws his like silverware across the room, and

(37:28):
runs out. Okay, you know what, I actually don't blame him.
That was a pretty shitty thing to do with the colonel.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yes, you would have actually took a person in. So
maybe they're showing right now, they're showing that he's not
doing good.

Speaker 5 (37:45):
Judgment calls the colonel, well, we know the colonel isn't
doing good. Good jobs.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
I don't know if this is bad writing to make
the jokes, or if this is supposed to show the colonel.
The colonel is is cracked.

Speaker 5 (38:02):
As soon as as soon as Cooper leaves, the station
takes a hit and everyone slides, and again this is
where I paused, and we watch this and figured out
that the whole set, the whole set is tilting. The
whole set is on a tilt because it's not everyone
just throwing themselves in a certain direction and and everything

(38:24):
starts sliding. So I thought, look, it's showing a deceleration
of the ring. That the ring is suddenly stopped and
it's wobbling. There's weird acceleration happening.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
And then they show an outside thing where there's sparks
coming off of it. Would that actually happen in space?

Speaker 4 (38:42):
No?

Speaker 5 (38:43):
Well, yes, there's possible ways of that happening. It's just
very unlikely. What it's probably trying to represent is just
outgassing from the holes in the hall because I don't
know what they what they even say it's because they
said they immediately start patching holes and then they they're.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
We do give a credit for that one. They come
in and puts that on this thing that is just poof,
it's patch and it's patch material.

Speaker 5 (39:10):
And actually, great, great job, and they're going They're not
like just running around in their skivvies doing that, They're
in spacesuits, like going to these holes and putting patch
material on it. I'm like, hey, excellent, that.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Made since we've we've read it in some science fiction,
but it's weir And then then we laughed because that's
what silverpace tape.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
Yeah, silver tape is silver space tape. It's the patching
material for micro meteorite hits. But in my in my mind,
if you took a hit that made you slide like
that basically get knocked off your seat sitting down and
suddenly you're you're completely thrown to the side, that's a
pretty heavy acceleration, which means that whole ring station, which

(39:56):
has a lot of mass just took a pretty hefty
kinetic hit. I would assume that people died in that hit.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah, there has to be at least one section that got.

Speaker 5 (40:13):
Yes, and anything that hit with the kind of the
kind of force that it would have taken to impart
that much momentum to the ring station as it was
passing through the inhabited areas, because what they're patching is
clearly a place that's supposed to be inhabited normally, it
would have ignited the atmosphere inside and burned everyone in
their alive.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah, an invisible isn't that invisible fire though?

Speaker 5 (40:38):
In No, no, no, you're thinking of hydrogen fires. You're
thinking of hydrogen fires. This would have just ignited anything
it hit, and it's it's the same thing we see
later on. I'm like, okay, well, a dude getting hit
by like something at speed at like orbital speeds.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Would have vaporized.

Speaker 5 (40:57):
I mean you would have been torn in Well, well,
you would have most likely just burst into flames inside
your suit. The oxygen rich environment, remember it's an oxygen
rich environment inside a spacesuit. Why so we can like
maybe educate people that are listening to this it's because
if you're in a spacesuit with one atmosphere of pressure,

(41:20):
it makes it very difficult to move any kind of
reasonably made spacesuit. Okay, because you're bubble boy, all this
is at pressure, your joints are going to be hard
to move because there's zero atmosphere outside. So the best
thing to do is to before you get into your
space suit, you start pre breathing pure oxygen. When you

(41:41):
get into your spacesuit, you pressurize the interior of your
spacesuit to like a third of atmospheric pressure, but pure oxygen,
so it's easier to move inside your spacesuit. You're not
having to work against all that interior pressure happening. Okay,
So in normal circumstances that actually is pretty smart. It

(42:05):
just takes a bit of time to acclimate to that
kind of pressure without like, you know, killing yourself. That's
why you have to pre breathe and lower the pressure slowly.
But in emergency situations where you're shot, like in for
All Mankind season two, where a guy is shot, uh
and he just explodes into fire inside his facesuit and

(42:28):
everyone like just stops in shock because this guy's burning alive,
inside his pacesuit from being just shot. He's not just shot,
he's shot in on fire. This kind of shit happens,
and you have to think about it. You have to
think about it.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
But this is before the space program.

Speaker 5 (42:49):
We now have we have another rocket that approaches.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
Approaches and they don't dock. They don't dock. They actually
just jump across. And I'm like, wow, see you take
the little guy that they had before.

Speaker 5 (43:10):
You take the you take the taxi across. Why because
just jumping out of your rocket at the ring station
that's like a couple miles away or whatever, you're going
to miss. Because none of these guys have RCS packs on,
None of them have ev A e v A systems on.
All they have is spacesuits. In fact, one guy is

(43:31):
just pushed out by somebody else pushing out with his
but on his butt, just pushing him out. There's any
and he tumbles and it's like, okay, all these people
are dead.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
That yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:45):
I was like, tether, why aren't you yeah, why aren't
you all tethered together? Why aren't you tethered to the rocket.
Why aren't you tethered? Why didn't they send like a
tether over from the station that you can hook like
a car beinger on and slide across. So you're not
just gonna fly around. There's so many ways to do
that way safer.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Wow, but there's one of our other problems of accuracy. Yeah,
don't do that.

Speaker 5 (44:13):
Don't do that because guess what you're going.

Speaker 6 (44:15):
You're gonna do re entry or you're just gonna float
float off into pace nowhere that the fact is, if they.

Speaker 5 (44:21):
Were like right next to the ring station and did that,
I'd be like, okay, okay, big deal.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
And they have mag boots, we noticed.

Speaker 5 (44:29):
Yeah, but they're not right next to the ring station now,
they're far away, very far away, and no, all right.
So it turns out one of the guys that comes
up is doctor Fenton, and he's gonna meet with the colonel.
He's the engineer who designed the rocket. I'm like, okay,
so he's our movies von Braun and he basically says, uh, well, okay.

(44:52):
So the colonel goes up to the design of the
rocket and he's like, I don't understand why this rocket
is designed this way. You're an idiot. Because we're going
to the moon. Why do we need this huge airfoil
like a delta wing. Why do we need this delta wing?
Why do we need all of this reaction mass. There
is way too much power to go to the moon
unless you want to punch through the moon. None of

(45:12):
this rocket makes sense. And the guy's like, eh, you
know what, it does make sense because we're changing the mission.
We're changing the mission so you can go to Mars.
General you're in charge, So it gets a field promotion.
And this is where again I pause the movie and
I go, okay, no, that was designed to try to
explain it. They do try to explain it, but I'm

(45:33):
again saying no.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Again, it's the it was designed for a purpose. Yeah,
I can see the purpose being Mars, not the Moon.

Speaker 5 (45:43):
You would you would be building something with incredibly hard
to get resources in orbit of the Earth, having to
ship everything up via rocket. Right If okay, if there
is an asteroid that's been parked in Earth orbit and
you're building something like that to go to the Moon,
no big deal. All those resources are right there, right,
no big deal. You can reuse the rocket afterwards. Most

(46:06):
likely point is they're having to ship everything up from
the surface of the Earth in small rockets, shipping it
up so instead of building a moon rocket, they build
something like twenty times too big. Because the original plan
was maybe we can go to Mars. That's how they

(46:26):
can They explain it, well, we thought maybe we could
go to Mars, but we didn't have the funding at
the time. Well, why don't you have the funding. You
built the rocket, which is where all the funding has
to go, because that's all the mass. It just that
did not make sense. But if you just look at
it as if they started the whole movie by saying, yeah,
we're going to go to Mars, the rocket perfectly makes

(46:49):
sense for that mission. Everyone would have looked at that.
The engineers would have been like, why do we need
three years worth of water supply on board the rocket
for the crew? Why do we need three years worth
of food supplies on the rocket for the crew? If
we're going to the moon, Why do we need a
transmitter that can transmit across the Solar system rather than

(47:10):
a low power you know?

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, they why do we thought they were going to
do on one of the things, the delay, Yeah, but
they didn't.

Speaker 5 (47:21):
They do at when they do in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
One time, but then it's.

Speaker 5 (47:26):
They do it all the way through the movie. They
do it all the way through the movie. They cross
talk a couple times where you hear mission control talking
but they're clearly not hearing what they're saying. Right now,
they're cross talking because of time delay. I actually thought
that was super smart what they did. But we're going
to get to that. So the now the generals like, sure, yeah,

(47:50):
you're going to Mars. The general starts explaining the mission
to Mars to all the enlisted guys, and the crew
is then chosen, and at this point we.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Get Jackie volunteers but doesn't.

Speaker 5 (48:04):
He's like, sure, I'll go whatever.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Four Door wants to go, and he gives this wonderful speech.

Speaker 5 (48:13):
No, it's it's a moto that gives the speech about
how my my nation did this horrible thing during during
the war. We you know, you don't know exactly what
my leadership was thinking. He tries to like apologize but
also not apologize, which is an interesting way of writing it.
It feels sort of real for the time, like this

(48:35):
is a guy that clearly had been alive during the
war right probably fought for the Imperial military, and is
trying to apologize for some of the things that happened,
but also doesn't want to be seen as weak or
totally in the wrong because he's like, no, everyone made misunderstandings,

(48:58):
you know, every there was misunderstandings with everybody. And I'm like,
this would not have actually rung well to the American
audience of nineteen fifty five. This sits weird today, but
it's understandable today. Oh.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
One thing I did not say a while back was
this is supposed to be the Space Corps. It is a.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
Different it's not the Air Force, it's not the Navy, and.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
It's it's multiple nations.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
And one of the things I've got to say is
I love their uniforms. They're not their uniform, their patch.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
Oh, their patch, and their rank.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Their rank in their patch is with the same thing
unless you're unless you're an officer and you've got the
regular officers ends on it with the patch, just as
without the rank. And I liked that.

Speaker 5 (49:57):
It actually looked legit, like a rank systems And here's
a legit mission patch.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
And here's the problem we have with they've planned the
delta wa Yeah, because that's part.

Speaker 5 (50:11):
Of the patch. The patch, Like you know that this
was the entire you spent so much time and effort
in material and time to build this giant rocket. You're
not going to the moon. It would be clear as
day to anyone on Earth looking up, because guess what
we get a news conference later on where they actually

(50:32):
show a view from the surface of the Earth, like
looking through I think it was Palamar telescope or something.
You can clearly see the ship and the ring station
in orbit through a telescope, clear as day. No one
on Earth that would know a dam about aerospace or
rocketree would think that that thing was designed to go
to the Moon. There's no way. They'd be like, no,

(50:54):
that's going to Mars or maybe even the asteroid belt.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Why would you need the as.

Speaker 5 (51:01):
I mean, you wouldn't for the asteroid belt. I'm just
talking about. But why would you Well, at this point
they wouldn't know that Venus was like such a hell hole,
but they kind of knew it was a hell hole.
The point is that, like I'm talking about the asteroid belt,
for the amount of delta V that was clearly represented
by those giant reaction mass tanks on the back end,
you have enough reaction mass to easily go to the

(51:22):
asteroid belt. You could go to the Moon like ten
times over with that ship. There's no reason without refueling,
you wouldn't need all of that. Anyway, they started, they
choose the crew. The TV show has lots of music
and dancing girls, and we actually get like a legitimate

(51:43):
movie from the time being played. I forget what it was.
I had looked it up. It was actually a real
movie and it was cute because they oh, it's called
Here Comes the Girls. It's from a movie called Here
Comes the Girls. And they're watching like dancing girls in
like Arabian air quotes costuming because it's it's a song
called Ali Baba. But it's actually kind of cute, and

(52:06):
all the guys are watching it and clapping and they're
clearly there are no women on board this ship, on
board the ring station. Excuse me, there are there any
women characters besides that we see on television. Nope, we
only see a girlfriend on television talking.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
And she's a piece of work.

Speaker 5 (52:25):
She is a piece of shit, is what she is.
And everyone knows it and starts laughing.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
At everybody knew before he did.

Speaker 5 (52:34):
Anyway, what we end up having.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Oh, there's also Proto's mother, Okay mother.

Speaker 5 (52:44):
Full it's faux door not fro do. He's not a
hobbit pho door. So we end up having like this
whole talk on television where members of their family talk. Yes,
we have photors parents talking to him, and he gets
all teary. Then we have we have what Jackie's girlfriend, Rosie,

(53:06):
and she's from the Bronx, and she's like a very
buxom blonde girl that is clearly inspired by like Marilyn Monroe,
but she is fully like professing her loved him. But
there's like a guy off camera early yeah, talking to
her saying, hey, come on, we're supposed to be on

(53:28):
a date. Why are we doing this blah blah blah,
And she's like s and just keeps talking and everyone's
laughing at Jackie, and I'm like, dude, dude, this isn't cool.
Why would you be laughing at this guy. This this
his girl is basically just openly cheating on him on
national television, Like this is horrific. Had been shut down,
it would have been shut down. It would have been

(53:50):
shut down right away because she's clearly.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Because it's not supposed to be just national TV, it's worldwide, international.

Speaker 5 (53:59):
And she basically comes across as a horrible human being,
but also it makes it makes Jackie look like shit.
Thus the crew look like shit, and the entire mission
look like their their their crewed by incompetence, which they are.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
You wouldn't have had you wouldn't have had this this
thing going on that they're going to do this on
live till without.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
Instructing exactly what the person Again again NASA wives right,
this is a very specific skill set and if you
don't have that specific skill set to be on television,
you are not on television, or you have a minder
there that basically is trying to made.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
It made sense of faux doors Fodors family family because
first the person talks to her in their native language, yeah,
and then they're translating, and then she starts speaking in
English to him.

Speaker 5 (55:09):
Yes, so where are we We are at the rocket launch.
We see incredible acceleration where I think they're just blowing
air in the people's face because they're all their faces
like pulled back and they they be painful. Yeah, they say, oh,
now we're moving at twenty thousand miles an hour. They

(55:30):
have magnetic boots. But we do see Jackie float a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Because he unzipped him get chewed out by.

Speaker 5 (55:38):
The and then yeah, and then we have we learned
that we have a stowaway, Sergeant Mahoney who is bleeding
out of his nose because he was not in an
acceleration couch for the launch.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
And I'm gonna pick on this thing.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
Because that made us angry to.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Okay, there's another part of it. It's not just there's
a now a weight that shouldn't be there. There's somebody
that you got to feed. There's a lack of oxygen.

Speaker 5 (56:06):
You don't have the life support for him. You don't
have the food, you don't have the water, you don't
have the reaction mass to take up that kind of
mass that he and he's a pretty good sized person
with a spacesuit, and likely he brought other things on.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Board, like his uniform.

Speaker 5 (56:22):
So this is a literal disaster of him being on board.
And realistically it is a literal disaster. Again, people almost
went to jail for a pistromi sandwich being snuck on
board some of these early craft and you're going to
Mars for years. You have killed this entire crew, Sergeant Mahoney,

(56:45):
you've killed them all.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
And then later on he threatens the sun Yeah with
Court Marshaling and Sergeant Mahoney at this point should have
been pushed.

Speaker 5 (56:59):
Out an airline so we get a say after a yeah,
but he would have already killed everyone on board because
of the lack of fuel. That the extra fuel that
they would have to use. But again, this it seems
like none of that is an issue because they engineered
this this craft not to just go to Mars, but
seemingly go to like Jupiter, because there is more than

(57:20):
enough fuel to waste on frivolous crap.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
I'm just like the You don't you think.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
I'm bitching about this movie? I am. I do have complaints.
I liked this movie. I actually really liked this movie.
I'd watch it again. I'm going out ahead to like
our final thoughts, I know, but we'll get there. If
you hear me complaining, it's not I'm not actually I
am complaining, but it's not my overall, we're just showing you.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
The problems of Yeah, if you're basing this on von
Braun's work, Von Broun would be like the hell the
hell you're doing.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Everything in space has to be measured, and on top
of that, you have to actually get it off planet,
which is a problem.

Speaker 5 (58:10):
So we get a scene where the General is reading
from the Bible and says, nothing is mentioned in the
Bible about going to other worlds, so maybe maybe we're
being sacrilegious by leaving the Earth. Bitch, you've been living
on a ring station four years, made.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Your son come up here for a year without being
able to go see his.

Speaker 5 (58:35):
New wife, which we are never mentioned to, by the way,
like Rosie on the television is the only time, and
the mom and Fodor's mom or the like the only
women we actually see on screen besides Rosemary Clooney in
the dance number. The dance number that was. Yeah, there's

(58:56):
nothing in the Bible that says going to the moon,
but you didn't have a problem with that, nothing in
the movie. And I'm sorry, there's nothing in the Bible
about living on a ring station in Earth orbit. You
didn't have a problem with that. And really, now I'm
gonna explain this.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
And religions have actually made.

Speaker 5 (59:18):
No no, I think I need to explain this, Okay.
In the nineteen fifties, there was a very small movement
all over the world, very small, like hundreds of people
total that believed that armageddon would fall upon us if
we left the Earth because God said we should live

(59:42):
here and nowhere else or something like that. It was
a really bad religious argument, and clearly only people that
weren't actually very well versed in their own religions, because
it's not just one specific religion that made these arguments,
it's multiple ones made these arguments. And it fell apart

(01:00:04):
once people started going into orbit and they realized God
wasn't going to come down and smack down everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Yeah, and even but supposedly even.

Speaker 5 (01:00:16):
Oh well, in the moms, the moms have actually talked
about how to pray in orbit.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Yeah, and where to point to because you're supposed to
go point towards Mecca.

Speaker 5 (01:00:26):
It's more difficult in orbit. It's more difficult in orbit,
but once once you're on a different world, it's actually easy.
You just face towards Earth in general. You don't have
to like be super specific about it's just face towards
Earth pray. Like in orbit, it's a little different because
then you're in Earth space, so to speak, and you
need to try to face towards Mecca specifically, which is

(01:00:47):
in a very different part of the sky depending but
you do your best depending on how you but.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
They've already done that with the space station.

Speaker 5 (01:00:54):
Yeah. So anyway, they're trying to reference this very small
movement that got notoriety and I didn't even know it.
Oh no, this is kind of on this. It was
even a more minor movement than the Contact E movement
about people talking about the space Brothers from Venus coming
and look up the Contact E movement. The contact the

(01:01:18):
movement was huge compared to these people. So let's seear
where are we.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
He bitches about religious stuff and I'm like, I totally
don't buy it. He's just a crazy person at this point. Yes,
So they fix a camera that's broken and they immediately
see a giant, spinning, glowing ball of rock that is
about ten times as wide as the delta wing of
the spacecraft.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Oh. I have a point to make on this one.
Wasn't he with his son when he was talking about
that stuff and his son did not question his mental capacity?

Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
Oh he should have actually removed him from command immediately
with what he said, because we see the consequences of
all that later.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:02:07):
So they see this giant glowing ball of rock that
is exactly on their trajectory. It's approaching from directly aft
of the ship. Okay, therefore it since it's on the
same trajectory, it left Earth orbit at a higher speed

(01:02:27):
and it's overtaking them. They maneuver very very quickly to
get out of the way as it passes them. Everyone
else on the outside of this ship that's still out
there where there was fixing the camera is holding onto tethers.
Again smart, They actually have tethers at this point, and
they miss They get missed by the big rock and

(01:02:48):
they're like, wow, boy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
That's dust behind it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:51):
There's dust and small rocks. Thenor takes a hit to
the chest and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Dies and he should have burned up in.

Speaker 5 (01:03:00):
Well again, do you want to show that if it's realistic, No,
that would be kind of horrific. I understand that. I
understand that. And then they leave him floating outside from
him on the tether for like at least hours because
everyone that's surviving comes back in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Because Jackie is flipping out because he keeps looking out
the window to seeing him.

Speaker 5 (01:03:22):
And he's just flowing. Why did they leave him out there?

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
I don't know what that. Then then the general takes
his bible goes out and does a ceremony out in space.

Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
Yeah. So they start referencing light lag and communications as
they approach Mars that they're not in perfect communication with
Earth anymore because they'll sit there and go misigan control,
mission control and then have to wait for a response.
But some of the times it gets through, some of
the times it doesn't, and then mission control when they
do hear them, can't respond effectively. Misigon control is an idiot.

(01:04:03):
They are idiots.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
This would have been trained by them.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
That you sing everything you need to say right away
and then repeat that. You don't just try to make
contact and wait for people to go, oh yeah, I
hear you over. No, you constantly make the same reports
the Mars.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
What was that movie that was Mars Knew what the Martian?
The Martian that really showed you where you sit there
and just talk, you talk, then you repeat it yeah,
and then you wait. And they even actually told you that.

Speaker 5 (01:04:42):
If you were having if you were having communications problems,
let's say just random communicating, there's like interference or whatever
is you saying, Misigan control, this is Mars one over?
Do you hear us over? That takes like five seconds?
Six seconds? Or are you going to sit there and
transmit your entire report over and over and over again,
taking minutes each time, because maybe you won't get blotted

(01:05:05):
out by interference. Over multiple minutes of transmitting the same
thing and then repeating it and repeating it and repeating it,
and waiting for Michigan Control to come back with their
updates that are long and long and long and long,
and you slowly pieced together the full message. You would
do the long transmissions to break through the interference, or

(01:05:25):
hope that something gets through. What basically both sides of
this conversation are doing is completely pointless and meaningless. That
being said again, it sounds like I'm complaining. I really
like this movie. There's just parts of it that are frustrating,
because there are other parts of it that are incredibly realistic,
and I really liked. That's why I'm kind of going, huh,

(01:05:46):
all right, So we're at Mars. The General is getting
even more nutty. I wrote down, he has clearly lost
his mind. Why is anyone even listening to this guy?
At this point? He is sos he the General goes
baddie on the mic. Oh yeah, he starts screaming, we

(01:06:06):
shouldn't be out here. We shouldn't be out here, and
they kind of look at him for a little bit,
then wrestle him away from the microphone.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Yeah, that's where he should have been.

Speaker 5 (01:06:16):
Oh it's yes, he should have been there, but it's
he should have been removed from command maybe before this,
but at this point he should have because of one
thing he said. What did he say, I need to
destroy the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Yes, and at that point he should have been removed
from command and put locked up. Because he's restrained, he's
going to sabotage.

Speaker 5 (01:06:41):
In what happens, Oh, look, they jennison the booster section
in orbit of Mars, letting it burn up. Then they
start aerobraking, which again good detail. There's the wing. They're
coming down into Mars's atmosphere. You're using the atmosphere of
Mars to slow down and using you know, aerodynamic lyft

(01:07:02):
to fly and find a landing spot. Excellent, good detail.
The general starts trying to abort the landing by firing
the rockets using more fuel. They have to sit there
and wrestle him away from the controls as he rants
that they should all die. But he's in command of
their landing, so his son is having to like reach over.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
And almost kills himself because if you actually did what
he did. Yeah, at that landing, he would have been
dead because he wasn't.

Speaker 5 (01:07:33):
He wasn't strapped in and they crash landed.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
They crash landed, and what were the the delta wing
just breaks up.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
Okay, but here's the thing about the delta wing. Every
part of the spacecraft makes sense because this remember how
he said, the central rocket, the central hull is on
like a nacell pylon. It's basically a naceell. So as
this this this delta wing lands on the surface, crashes,
the rocket pivots up so it's pointing straight up, and

(01:08:04):
he realized that's their return vehicle back to Earth. That
makes complete sense. You don't need to take this thing
back off. All your fuel that was stored in these
wings were used to slow down and get to Mars.
The fuel that's in the central central section is what
is going to get you back to Earth. So you

(01:08:25):
don't have to lift all of that extra fuel. Okay, smart,
So they raise the rocket back up, they go out
onto the surface, and here we have both really good
science and horrific science.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
Okay, first, you have only four coming out, So they
left the general.

Speaker 5 (01:08:44):
Leave the General alone on the.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Ship, alone with him. Not only did he on the
mic say that he was going to sabotage, but he
tried to sabotage.

Speaker 5 (01:08:57):
Then they leave him alone, unrestrained, on board the ship
while everyone else goes out. Now, you're doing this to
have some sort of drama, fair enough, But when drama
makes your crew look like this is a first order
idiot plot. The only reason most of this movie happens
is because everyone is everyone are idiots. They make the

(01:09:19):
exact wrong choice to make all of this happen, and
clearly a choice that is no rational human being would make. Okay, Now,
remember I'm not complaining that the general is doing this.
The general is crazy. You understand why he's doing what
he's doing because he's nuts, right, Yes, I would. The

(01:09:43):
crew is clearly out of their minds making the choices
that they make to just allow him to continue to operate.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
Yes, and his son allows him to do this, probably
because of Sergeant Mahoney that is not even supposed to
be on.

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
The and he and Mahoney keeps saying no, the General
can do no wrong. He's basically God on earth. Or
God in the heavens now. So everyone goes out in
the surface except the general, and we have Emoto without
gloves picking up soil, and he goes, this is good soil.
We could grow things from earth in.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
It, and gets out flower pack.

Speaker 5 (01:10:20):
He gets out a pack of flower seeds, and I
can plant flowers here. Oh, oh God, oh God, oh God.
Why okay, No, you would not do that because you
haven't even tested for native life. But you're now, you're
without gloves contaminating the soil with earth microbes because I
guarantee you your hands are not free of microbes. You're

(01:10:41):
now wanting to plant earth plants immediately, like you're not
doing tests. It gets worse. It gets worse. The rocket
starts dumping hydrazine fuel now.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
And the captain runs in, hold.

Speaker 5 (01:10:55):
On, I'm gonna pause. I'm gonna pause this. You won't
hear the pause. I'm I'm gonna show Darling what hydrozene
fuel does. Now we're back. Okay, Hydrozene's bad news, isn't it? Yes,
it is, okay, hydrozene's real bad news. It starts pouring
out the back end of the rocket. Now, remember everyone
out on the surface has no gloves on. They all

(01:11:18):
have bare hands. Hydrozene is pouring out onto the surface,
into the soil, into the soil.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Actually goes and plants up damn.

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Flower and so general is nuts. He's dumping the fuel.
He shouts at his son. They struggle for a gun.
The General dies because of course you're gonna send a
gun along with on a mission to Mars when every
kilogram counts, God damn it. They bury him on the surface.
They plant flower seeds in the soil contaminated by hydrozene

(01:11:51):
that is specifically in my notes.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
And Sergeant Maloney threatens the captain with.

Speaker 5 (01:11:55):
Court martial for killing the general.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
For killing the general, this is the stole away that
would have made this mission absolutely not go through.

Speaker 5 (01:12:07):
Yeah, I would be like, you know what, I didn't
kill my father. It was in a struggle. He was nuts.
You knew it. You're now threatening me, and you're a stowaway.
I'm a captain, you're a sergeant. Here's the gun. You're dead.
You're a threat to this mission. You've been a threat
to this mission since you stowed away.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
Well, then we find out there's a problem with water.

Speaker 5 (01:12:31):
They don't have enough water and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
They can't find water. There's none on Mars.

Speaker 5 (01:12:36):
There's none on Mars. And they have to wait at
least a year to launch back to Earth. And it's
more like two years, but fine, whatever, or a year
and a half, two years, something like that. So this
I write down in my notes. The Stoway Sergeant is
a piece of shit. And and at Christmas time it
starts to snow and they vacuum it up to replenish
their water tanks. Does it snow water ice on Mars? No,

(01:13:01):
it snows CO two ice.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
And only on the poles.

Speaker 5 (01:13:06):
Yeah it No, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
I don't even think it snows.

Speaker 5 (01:13:10):
I mean it does. It does snow. It does snow
CO two snow every now and then. But at the poles, yes,
they vacuum it up. Uh. They see a flower growing
from the General's grave and they're like, oh see life,
life finds away. Life is beautiful. And I'm like, I
I don't know. I don't get it. I don't get it.
So there's earthquakes and caverns start opening up below them

(01:13:33):
and tilt the rockets. They're not able to light off
the rockets to to get off world, even though they
were planning on leaving just at this time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
So they blest the rockets somehow and not take off.

Speaker 5 (01:13:47):
Yeah, they're throttling the rockets, like basically revving an engine and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Melt underneath so they can level out something.

Speaker 5 (01:13:57):
They can level the ship so it's pointing straight up.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
This does not make any logical sense. What'slever in my brain?

Speaker 5 (01:14:05):
Why can't you since you're on a launch platform, Yes,
you're at an angle. I get that. It would be
very difficult to launch at an angle. I do get that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Why don't you just extend one of your legs.

Speaker 5 (01:14:17):
Because they did have legs, didn't they? Yes, why don't
you tilt the other leg like because maybe they don't
have that option. I don't know, Like it makes sense
that they can't launch well off off straight up, but
they end up blasting the rock to like dig out
the ground underneath them because they're like, hey, look all
these sinkholes are opening up. Maybe there's caverns underneath. And

(01:14:38):
they're like, well, there would have to be a cavern
at the exact right position underneath the ship to retilt it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
And it just so happens to All I was thinking was,
didn't they just lose most of their fuel. Somebody used
some of their fuel on landing. They shouldn't have. You
gotta stole away. You have now a dump of of
your fuel. And how now you're using more fuel.

Speaker 5 (01:15:04):
To just basically gun the engines to blow out a
cavern underneath the rock.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Excuse me, you're not going.

Speaker 5 (01:15:10):
Home again again. Remember they over engineered this thing even
for Mars. That's that's my only explanation. So they launch,
they do launch, and they are none of them are
in their acceleration couches.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
So they all bleed on the floor.

Speaker 5 (01:15:26):
They all smack into the floor because it's launching it
like twenty g's or whatever. And I actually like that
detail because they're all like twitching on the ground as
the ship stops accelerating and they're all like bleeding out
of their noses and ears, and they're like, hey, good job, guys,
And I was. I thought that was actually kind of cute.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
And then comes my part that I really detest.

Speaker 5 (01:15:47):
Oh, the Sergeant's just basically like the general was a hero,
and he died a hero, sacrificing his life so we
could get off off ship. And that's the story that's
gonna be told. The end and it's the end. That's
the end of the the.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Movie that made me even angry. Okay, so because this
is the guy that on the way back would be
court martials, well.

Speaker 5 (01:16:11):
He definitely well he he he the dereliction of duty,
he left his post right aol. Yes, he was a wall.
He stowed away and threatened the entire mission. That the
mission should have been aborted.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
Somehow right there on that part they had.

Speaker 5 (01:16:27):
Enough fuel to actually burn back to Earth. They should
have actually burned back because they wouldn't have had an
Then he.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
Made sure that the general could be a piece of
work on sabotaging the.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
And now you're going to celebrate him as a hero
because you like him even though he actually almost killed
everyone more than once. And it's not like the son
likes his father. There was clearly always tension there because
he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, but
his father forced him. It's not like he has any

(01:17:05):
kind of reason to go along with this. No one does.
And you're going to be on board when we come back.
What's your explanation for being there? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Yeah, anyway, I think they would have had a board
right off the bat with him being on board.

Speaker 5 (01:17:26):
Yeah, because not enough food, water, fuel mass, you know
all that. It's just life support. It's not there. There's
not even an acceleration couch for him. Theoretically, it's just
because one dies, like, but still, you had x amount
of days where you were using more.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
And he isn't in a blue He isn't in the
blue uniform any at that time either, so he had
to have taken.

Speaker 5 (01:17:52):
His unif in the blue uniform, he was always in
the tan, he's.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
In the tan, so those had to have gone on board.

Speaker 5 (01:17:59):
Yeah, So anyway, I liked this movie too. It's a
long review. What worked?

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
I think the sets really work, that whole special effect
of slanting.

Speaker 5 (01:18:13):
The set and it was for one shot, one scene,
that's it really good.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:18:22):
The pacing was good, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
There's just so much that the models. The models were great.

Speaker 5 (01:18:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
The story needed to be less of a drama and
more realistic.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
Yeah, especially since you're trying to be like you're you're
paying trip, well, I mean you're using some of von
Braun's work, you know, it should be somewhat realistic. Yeah,
you're trying to do some drama and it's okay to
do that but don't do drama at the expense of
the story that you're trying to tell, like mankind going
to Mars for the first time, especially when you're doing
some really cool realistic sign it's at the beginning with

(01:19:02):
the ring station deceleration making everyone slide rather than like,
you know, because the whole ring decelerating it was really good.
The rocket design was good because it was based on
a von Braun design. What didn't work, I can't say
that the science doesn't work, because there's aspects of the

(01:19:22):
science that does that is really good. So I have
to put it in the category of it's whatever. What
doesn't work is the drama, Like the general just what.
There's no reason he should be in charge of anything,
let alone a ring station the way he is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
I'm surprised they didn't do evaluations before.

Speaker 5 (01:19:44):
No one would talk to us a shrink anyway, NaSTA shrinks.
You need to you have to go through a deep
psychological evaluation before you get onto a spacecraft because you're
in a little box with a dozen other people or
several other people, i'd say for months at a time.
If you're going to the space station, you need that
psych review.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
And you need to be on par with knowing how
to think outside the box.

Speaker 5 (01:20:12):
Yeah, and these none of these people.

Speaker 2 (01:20:14):
Are that because Murphy's Law happens.

Speaker 5 (01:20:16):
Yeah, I know, so what a lot of little things
don't work in this movie. It's generally around like the
General and his his ass hattery that he does mahoney, yeah, mahoney,
kind of being an over the top goof.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
And then there is the problem with the Jackie just
being just being goofy and being he doesn't take anything
serious and he's flauntced being out of order.

Speaker 5 (01:20:54):
Oh yeah, he's he's your typical like enlisted guy that
just doesn't give a shit so to speak. He's there
for the paycheck and like the glory.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
And he would never have been even on the Space program.

Speaker 5 (01:21:06):
No, no, he wouldn't have. But like there's a little
details in the background that again are like really awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):
The guy that was playing Cooper and how he portrayed
would have been, Yeah, in this.

Speaker 5 (01:21:20):
High high high achieving, high achieving, and you know what,
like he was ashamed of what happened. He was ashamed
of it and didn't want to even admit that it happened.
That was a good yeah, like something really good. Yeah,
that's good drama. I was into that. The pill thing
always pisses me off. But out of ten, what do

(01:21:41):
you give it? Actually? Should I say? Do we recommend
the movie?

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Yes, I recommend them.

Speaker 5 (01:21:45):
I recommend this movie. So what out of ten would
you give it?

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Oh, let me pass the buck to you.

Speaker 5 (01:21:52):
Okay, So out of ten I would give this a
six and a half. The reason is is it's a
little better than my like average, which is four to six. Obviously,
if it's between five and six, I recommend it. This
is a little higher than that. This is this is good.
I'd watch this again. I had fun watching it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
I was not bored.

Speaker 5 (01:22:13):
No, you weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
I was furious at some points.

Speaker 5 (01:22:17):
Yeah, and we were concerned about some of the details,
like the Japanese military flag World War two military flag
that was a little weird.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
We took a lot of time watching eighty one minutes.

Speaker 5 (01:22:29):
Yeah, eighty one minutes. I think we want we spend
a good two and a half hours, Yes, watching it,
but that's because we like pausing, or like going back.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
And sometimes looking up things.

Speaker 5 (01:22:41):
Yeah, and looking up information, especially when there's like cool
stuff on screen. Like think about when we talked with
Katie about like Cult to the Cobra, some of the
little details that are in the background that you're like, oh,
I want to look this up this specifically, and then
you kind of start diving into the background of like
the the specific Army Air Corps and where.

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
They let these people go.

Speaker 5 (01:23:03):
Yeah, we have been talking about this movie for a while.
You can tell we enjoyed this movie. Even if we
had our complaints, we did enjoy it. So what out
of ten?

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
But out of ten, I think I'd give it a six.

Speaker 5 (01:23:13):
A six, So okay, we'll leave it there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
I'm Erin, I'm Darlene.

Speaker 5 (01:23:16):
Good evening, and keep watching the Skies. At no point
in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to
anything that could be considered a rational thought.

Speaker 4 (01:23:29):
Thanks for listening to this episode of This Week in Geek.
Hungry for more, check out our website. If this Week
in Geek dot Net, you can subscribe to the podcast,
browse our Twitter and Instagram, and leave your thoughts on
today's topics. If you'd like to give us some feedback,
send us an email at Feedback at This Week in
Geek dot Net. Tune in next time, and remember, lower
your shields and surrender your listenership.

Speaker 5 (01:23:51):
We would be on a if you would join us.
Thank you for your cooperation.

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):
Good Night,