Posts by feralharbor8

No. Does the series cover Cooper's flight?

He was the lead in the movie, and his mission was one of the most interesting parts of the Mercury program, so I'd love to know if they include it.

Linda Price5 said:And which ones, specifically, and why? 😁

Why, for instance, are we reading Russians when we aren't reading any Americans?
What does Toni Morrison lack that some local author might have—a Nobel Prize, perhaps? 😳
What are sixteen-year-olds supposed to gain from pretending to read a book written in a dialect that I, someone significantly older and reasonably literate, can barely decipher?
Why pick some old regional classic over Neil Gaiman?
Why shouldn't young children have a picture book that actually won a Caldecott medal on their required reading list?

And honestly, given that the whole point of education seems to be something you just power through because it won't make your career any better—nor will anyone at work care if you feel like writing a tedious report any more than school cares if you feel like doing your reading—I find myself wondering why we bother sending kids to school at all, let alone forcing them through several pages of this. 😁

Wasn't Mark Twain excluded?

Gerald Hill said:

Disgusting. It doesn't look any more painful than the fried shrimp scene from Ichi the Killer.

Great movie. For me, the best part was:

Sean Bailey75 said:Right now, only Russia has a proven and established technique—not just technology, but actual physical vehicles capable of traveling into Space—for human missions, and China will have it soon too.

Sean Bailey75 said:For everyone else, it's just too expensive right now. It's actually cheaper for Americans to buy transport services from the Russians until Elon Musk gets those Kuznjecov rocket engines (bought from the Russians) fully operational and runs the full SpaceX program without rockets falling down.

Americans deal with internal organizational issues that result in space projects being buried under paperwork that costs more than the spacecraft themselves, and there isn't even a price cap on the vehicles.

SpaceX uses its own engines and they are planning to launch next month with an improved version of the Merlin 1D engine at full thrust (they’ve been avoiding full thrust until now just to be safe). That one Falcon 9 that crashed had a bracket failure due to a quality control oversight. They will fix that now that they know what happened, and the new rocket version includes safety upgrades addressing issues encountered during the Falcon 1 program.

It is possible you mixed them up with Orbital ATK, who actually use Russian engines on their Antares rockets. They also had a rocket crash while supplying the ISS, so they are working on improvements too. (A few days later, the VSS Enterprise crashed as well)

By the way, Antares rockets are outrageously expensive compared to the Falcon 9. An Antares costs about $300-400M but carries less payload and can't return anything to Earth since it's basically used as a trash incinerator. Meanwhile, the Falcon 9 is $150M and carries twice the payload while being able to return cargo to Earth.

The Russians themselves lost their Progress M-27M mission to supply the ISS, which launched right before the failed SpaceX mission. Everyone has had a rough time lately regarding launches.

Edit: I'll stop the off-topic comments too.

Richard Wilson4 said:Don't spoil it for me, but what qualifies as Martian SF?

I thought from the trailer it was going to be something like Gravity.

Sci-Fi needs to have at least some of these:
- robots and AI
- time travel
- aliens
- lasers
- fast space travel and visiting multiple planets
- futures that are post-apocalyptic, high-tech, etc.

Sci-Fi must explore the potential future application of scientific principles and their consequences. A lot of cliché adventure Sci-Fi doesn't actually do this, or does it poorly. Even if they are sold as Sci-Fi and are often very entertaining, they aren't the foundation of the genre.

Sci-Fi is also split into Hard and Soft. Hard Sci-Fi leans toward scientific accuracy (that includes The Martian, which is pretty extreme Hard Sci-Fi since it doesn't deviate much from today's technology and is set only slightly in the future). Soft Sci-Fi doesn't care as much about scientific correctness, though by the classic definition, Soft Sci-Fi focuses more on sociology and the humanities.

http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html

Mark Cruz15 said:I haven't seen it either, but it's obvious—they have advanced technology we don't have yet. Americans aren't capable of getting to Mars yet, and probably wouldn't survive.

Right now, it's mostly a matter of implementation details. SLS, for example, isn't ready and is quite inefficient (that's the rocket the Americans use in the movie and book). It's not very sophisticated. Andy Weir is personally against developing that rocket, but he expected it would be built for political reasons, so it's in the book. Other usable technologies are currently under development.

Amanda Garcia57 said:I'm talking about movies like The Martian. Films that deal with fantasies that have nothing to do with real life, yet they thrill audiences to the point of near fanaticism. That’s what I mean. It's concerning to me: having no connection to reality while building a massive following of fanatics.

Hold on, how does The Martian have nothing to do with reality? The movie shows a possible future. The mission to Mars in that film is based on the Mars Semi-Direct mission architecture, which is currently the standard plan for sending humans to Mars.

Do you really think everything has to be about the daily life of an average person?

Edward Price6 said:I think people who insist on strict realism are just limited. Think how much humanity would have progressed without Sci-Fi (Jules Verne, anyone?).

Verne actually insisted on being quite realistic.

Richard Wilson4 said:In principle, the last X-Men had small but good Sci-Fi parts, and Guardians of the Galaxy is just nice entertainment, and that's that.

Guardians of the Galaxy is basically a comedic version of Riddick's Chronicle.

Most stuff out there is trash anyway, but if more Sci-Fi movies get made, more good Sci-Fi movies will follow. The Martian is finally one good hard Sci-Fi film.

This might be the best scene:


By the way, the movie is 🤦
.
zapravo, this is also 🤦. The acting is on par with an American Star Trek.

Deep Impact is better. ☕

The only good part of this movie is Russ. ☕

cosmicgull said:How do you explain surviving the same day by traveling through time? That’s my point. The story is pure fantasy. There isn't a logical explanation for it, and it ignores the laws of physics and how the universe actually works.

By that logic, Star Trek is just fantasy. They never explained how artificial gravity works on their ships. Neither do force fields. And let's not forget telepathy. ☕

It might be better to just accept those soft Sci-Fi elements. There's no sense in overanalyzing them.

cosmicgull said:Spider-Man - there is zero explanation for how he defies gravity; he just flies. It’s completely unrealistic. What is actually powering him? Based on everything we know, it's just his willpower. That tells us enough to categorize him as pure Fantasy.

Did you mix up Spider-Man and Superman?

Regarding Gravity, it functions as an alternate history, which is obvious since the US doesn't have a Chinese space station in reality yet. As for the movie itself, there are some good shots at the beginning, but beyond that, it's totally unwatchable.

BTW, Superman is basically a rip-off of John Carter, which falls under early Sci-Fi from over a century ago. It's just flipped; instead of a man from Earth being stronger than people on a smaller planet, we have an Alien from another planet who is stronger than humans.

Drew Lee3 said:I’ve never really bought into this idea that humans are inherently sadistic. I don't walk around feeling an instinctive dread of my surroundings, and honestly, I’ve never once felt that creeping sense of insecurity or fear—not even when walking home alone in the dead of night. If there were actual reasons to be terrified, I’m pretty sure that over the years, I would have picked up on something in the words or actions of the people around me that signaled I should be on high alert. But I haven't. Maybe once or twice, I've caught a vibe from someone that they just lacked empathy, or that they got a little too much of a kick out of being cruel. But compared to everyone else I know? It’s negligible. Though, I do notice that certain parts of the world seem "denser" with these cold, unfeeling, sociopathic types who thrive on antisocial mob mentalities. Why is that? Is it because certain environments tolerate deviant behavior more easily, is it purely genetic, or is it something else entirely? Who knows, I’m hardly an expert.

Also, seeing how a few individuals acted toward the end of the "performance" doesn't actually prove anything. That whole setup might have just attracted the wrong crowd; extreme social experiments often act like magnets for sociopaths and psychopaths. I really feel like I need a more detailed breakdown of this study. Was there a massive surge where almost everyone turned on her, or was it just a handful of outliers—like 10 out of 100? There’s just too little information to go on...

Wait, how can social behavior be considered asocial?

On that note, here is a practical experiment regarding herd mentality:


By the way, a recent replication of the Milgram experiment looked at people who refused to shock others to death under authority. They found these were mostly asocial rebels who don't conform to society. The only group that didn't shock anyone was women who had experience organizing factory strikes. Normal, well-adjusted people who fit into society perfectly all followed orders and shocked the subject to death.

It’s likely more about the desire to belong than enjoying the torture itself.

Actually, it comes down to one-on-one influence from an authority figure.

For me, the theatrical cut of LOTR: The Fellowship is the best version. The fight scenes in the extended edition just don't feel as convincing.

I once saw some guy promoting Hapkido, doing demonstrations, and then he stabbed himself with a knife. I wasn't particularly impressed.

The timestamps are just wrong, even when I'm logged in.

silentharbor77 said:Hello there! It is truly a pleasure to be here. I hope you’re all having a wonderful day so far!

I’ve been scrolling through this forum for a little while now, just soaking everything in, and it really got me thinking—does anyone here happen to know of a solid self-defense course specifically geared toward men? I'm looking for something substantial.
I’ve found myself in that exact spot more times than I care to admit—you know, those moments where you desperately want to step up and help someone out, or maybe just de-escalate a heated confrontation, but instead of finding your voice, you just... freeze. It’s like my entire body decides to go on strike; my legs turn to lead, I can feel my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it’s practically thumping in my ears, and suddenly, my brain just shuts down. You’re standing there, completely paralyzed, staring at the situation while your pulse races, and you have absolutely no clue what move to make next. It’s incredibly frustrating to feel that disconnect between wanting to act and being physically unable to move.
I honestly just want to find a way to break free from these mental brakes—to finally shake off this paralyzing fear once and for all, no matter what it takes.

Thanks so much for the help!

That freezing probably saved your life. ☕

If you were alone in a confrontation and didn't escalate things, you likely came out better off than if you had tried to act. ☕

Pine's solution works well. 👍

casualharbor9 said:... great topic... an alternative to 😍

Not at all. There aren't any scientists there. This is a scientific topic after all.😁

Inspired by this article on arXiv, I wanted to pose a question to help flesh out a concrete methodology for tracking zombie populations. It seems like the current approach loses its effectiveness as the zombie count rises and the percentage of living humans drops. Plus, we have to account for dead phone batteries and the high likelihood of cellular and landline networks collapsing entirely.

Are there any other complications I might be overlooking? Do you have any suggestions for better research methods?

A message from the zombies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOlznuyPOeM