Shotguns!
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charlenelv — 19 years ago(December 22, 2006 07:03 PM)
I guess it's kind of like folks still smoking cigarettes. At almost $5 a pack now, I wonder how much they would cost on Io. I'm always comforted by the fact that even in far distant future, people still enjoy smoking!
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Etherdave — 15 years ago(August 20, 2010 12:58 AM)
The french fries would probably cost more, by virtue of weight and space. It's comforting to think that in the future, man's greatest enemy will still be tobacco.
Getting back to the shotguns: simple, easy to make, reliable. Yep. -
Chalcosoma — 15 years ago(August 31, 2010 07:52 PM)
Essentially the same? Flintlock weapons and modern automatics?? The materials and mechanisms are way different and so is the ammo. The only thing they have in common is that they are portable and shoot projectiles using explosives. It's like saying that a 70's pocket calculator is essentially the same as a modern computer and fireworks the same as an intercontinental missile :p.
Also, you forget that technological advancement occurs with an increasing pace (law of accelerating returns). Not only does technology advance exponentially, but the exponential advance itself, increases exponentially as well.
About current laser weapons being cumbersome: take a look at computers from the 50's. They were darn cumbersome too - and slooow. Now I ask you, how long did it take to make them into the fast and portable machines of today? Centuries? Nope, mere decades.
Another advantage of energy weapons could be the possibility of continuous beams. That could definitely come in handy. And why not a diverging beam? That would be comparable to a shotgun. Also, bullets take more time to travel through air and would be harder to fire accurately on high gravity planets. I'd say energy weapons could constitute a technological paradigm shift in firearms still within this century, unless something better is invented.All that we see or seem. Is it but a dream within a dream?
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scotbpens — 16 years ago(December 05, 2009 11:32 PM)
the movie takes place on jupiter's moon. space travel in the movie could go well beyond our galaxy.we could only guess.
Our own Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years across and contains billions of stars. Even traveling at warp factor 6, as in
Star Trek
, it would take almost a week to travel from Earth to the nearest star, Proxima (Alpha) Centauri, which is only 4 light-years from our solar system.
Forget intergalactic travel. Our own galaxy is plenty big enough.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be? -
marsodyssey2010 — 19 years ago(August 09, 2006 03:42 AM)
I don't know about the tech of the future, but I do know that the post production costs of adding a single laser blast effect in those days were astronomical.
For example in V, which was made several years later, the laser blast effects were said to cost about $1000 per shot in post production. Which was the 'real' reason that most of the resistance characters continued using M-16s instead of just stealing the aliens guns.
Still, lots of futuristic films still have conventional guns in the. All 4 Aliens films used conventional weapons, rigt down to pump action shotguns, as with the new British series of Dr. Who. They show them using bull-pup rifles with caseless bullet 1000s of years in the future when they have matter transporters etc.
English Language Anime: Dub it, don't pervert it. -
grendelkhan — 19 years ago(November 20, 2006 05:57 PM)
No, this is not Steampunk. Steampunk centers around the Victorian era, where steam driven machines are the basis of technology. This is standard science fiction: a near-future setting, with extrapolated technology, based on current developments and societal structures. Steampunk is a look to the past, with the introduction of current technology into the steam era.
If you want Steampunk, look at the works of Jules Verne (and the movie and tv adaptations), as well as The Wild Wild West, Steamboy, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (comic, not crappy movie). Granted, Verne wrote in the Victorian era, so his work is technically specultive fiction, but it provides the template that Steampunk authors attept to emulate.
Here, we have basic space travel, industrial mining centers, computer analysis, and designer drugs; which are window dressing to what is essentially a remake of High Noon. -
marsodyssey2010 — 18 years ago(December 09, 2007 01:05 AM)
Take a look at the landing pad battle between Han Solo and the Storm Troopers at the spaceport in A New Hope. That scene was almost textbook for a man shooting with a sawn-off.
English Language Anime: Dub it, don't pervert it. -
pablok-ramos-1 — 19 years ago(October 25, 2006 11:47 AM)
A shotgun is actually a very clever weapon for an enclosed space. Depending on the gunpowder charge, and the size and type of shot used, it could be discharged in a close, presurized space without risking blowing a hole in the structure that keeps the air and pressure inside.
there are in my view more obvious misses:
The SF of the time suffers from the "black screen, green DOS characters" computers effect that went away in the late 80's. also, computers, like Telex machines ot teletypes, whirr and make noise as they display characters. (Alien!) Imagine what real computers will be in, say, 2050, where this movie is apparently done.
also, the biggest problem they face: Graviti. Io is much smaller than even our Moon, yet gravity is earth-like.
..oh well -
tgemberl — 19 years ago(November 11, 2006 03:51 PM)
I agree pretty much with carter627. And actually, I don't know if it's even true that this movie is about the DISTANT future. That's the great thing about Outland, that it really depicts realistically (within some limits) what life in outer space would be like for the foreseeable future: dangerous, claustrophobic, and monotonous. It's a great corrective to the rather magical image of space travel that you see in Star Wars or Star Trek. As his son says to O'Niel before he and his mother are to leave for earth, it takes a year to get from the space station to earth. That is a pretty realistic estimate of what the travel time is likely to be for the next few centuries, whenever we do actually start to travel to other planets in this solar system.
"Intergalactic" travel is probably extremely far in the future. Who knows when we'll ever be able to do it. Even in Contact, Carl Sagan did not suggest that the benevolent extraterrestrials actually travelled to earth. Rather, they sent messages of some kind to us, allowed a sort of interstellar "telepathy." He realized that there wasn't any realistic way to conceive travel to other solar systems.
Outland is a great "environmental" film. It really makes you appreciate the earth. We're meant to live here, not out in space.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice." -
scotbpens — 16 years ago(December 05, 2009 11:42 PM)
Outland is a great "environmental" film. It really makes you appreciate the earth. We're meant to live here, not out in space.
Humans are meant to live wherever our tools and technology enable us to live. That's why we have a reasoning brain, an endless curiosity about the universe around us, and a set of thumbs. Earth is the cradle of humanity, but all infants must eventually outgrow the cradle.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be? -
phindar — 19 years ago(December 23, 2006 04:13 PM)
They mention the gravity in the opening text, and all the exterior shots show them bouncing around in moon-like conditions. In the scene early on when the drug dealer Sean Connery caught was in the floating prison cell, it says on it "No Artificial Gravity", indicating that the base had some sort of artificial gravity working.
Though I would agree that the reason the base had artificial gravity was it would have been far too costly and cumbersome to have everybody floating around on wires.