"The Saturn Propulsion System" Project Apollo Rocket Engines has been added as a related post - related requested by oritteropo on that post.

MR. President! We CANNOT allow a Saturn 5 gap!

It's a little quicker off the line than the original Saturn V

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>> ^qfan:

I guess my first question to Bill would be, who are you to tell people how to raise their children, if what they are doing is fine by the law?

Well, aside from being a well-respected science educator, he's also a private person and thus entitled to an opinion. The same way that religious people seem to think they should be able to tell other people not only how to raise their children, but what their children should be taught in science class.

Bill is entitled to his opinion, the religious are entitled to theirs and we are entitled to judge them for their opinions.

>> ^qfan:

The second question would be, do you have any proof that believing in creation always leads people not to think innovatively?
Wernher von Braun was a Biblical creationist and one of the original rocket scientists, even working [edit: chief architect] on the Saturn V which took the recently deceased Neil Armstrong to the moon.

If Von Braun had believed in a biblical theory of "intelligent falling" instead of gravity, his rockets wouldn't have gotten far. If he had actually studied the science, his conclusion might have been very different, but there's not a lot of call for evolutionary science when designing rockets, so he basically ignored an area of science that conflicted with his belief system because it didn't affect his work. You can be damn sure he benefited from the study of evolution though, given it's the backbone of a lot of medical research.

A common condescending view many evolutionists seem to be taking over creationists these days. I guess my first question to Bill would be, who are you to tell people how to raise their children, if what they are doing is fine by the law? The second question would be, do you have any proof that believing in creation always leads people not to think innovatively?

Wernher von Braun was a Biblical creationist and one of the original rocket scientists, even working [edit: chief architect] on the Saturn V which took the recently deceased Neil Armstrong to the moon. A single example and there are many others.

Seems like he might not be abiding by the empirical method.

Saw MIB3 this weekend on impulse. It was okay, wouldn't necessarily recommend it unless you want a seriously breezy and disposable movie. Definitely better than the 2nd one, which is not hard to do. If they make another one they need to open up the scale a bit. This movie's budget (admittedly with marketing) is reported at $250 million. That is insane. There are only two real money sequences: a chase to end act 2 that looks like the Obi-Wan and Darth Grievous chase in episode III, and the climax which takes place at the launch of the moon mission at Cape Canaveral in 1969 and looks a lot like Apollo 13.

This movie has some really dumb and small-scale choices. Smith's character is equipped with a device that requires him to plunge from a height in order to gain enough speed to "time-jump". The movie climaxes with Smith literally standing on top of the saturn rocket lifting off for the first manned moon landing. You'd think they'd have a money shot with Smith jumping off the rocket as it lifts off. Those things went pretty slow to start, you could survive the first 30 seconds it takes to get up to any kind of speed, and then jump off for an awesome looking stunt. Or, hell, if I were writing the movie, have him just stay on the rocket until it reaches the necessary ascent speed (something like 100 MPH or some shit.. I remember thinking it didn't sound far from 88MPH), which wouldn't take long after the rockets fire. Then Smith is transported into the future thousands of feet in the air and you have a post-climax gag where he's falling apparently to his death only to have Jones' character sweep in at the last second and save him in a flying car or flying alien bubble pod more likely. Smith's character would be like "How in DA HELL you know I was gonna falling through the air over Florida man!?!?" and Jones' character would put up the video feed that only MIB had access to of Smith riding the rocket and disappearing from 1969's POV. "We had a lot of eyes on that mission" or some shit. Do I have to write this crap for you Hollywood? It flies out of my butthole effortlessly. Instead Smith's character jumps into an evacuation basket and rides it down a zip-line... and this is not even filmed in an interesting way. A whole lot of this movie looked sort of non-commital, like 2nd unit did the whole thing.

They added a "poignant twist" to the time travel aspect which is the same problem with so many movie series these days... Star Wars, Star Trek, Spider-Man.. in a sequel, everything is revealed to have been previously connected.. connected from the start in fact! Oh yawn... more than 30 years later people are still trying to re-create the "I am your father" buzz from Empire Strikes Back. Always at the expense of cheapening the overall franchise and sapping meaning from the actions the characters took in preceeding films. What's worse, they layered on some spiritual/karmic hokum to support another cliche forced by executive interference.

It's crazy to think the first movie turns 15 years old this year. I thought it would be an eternal classic, but the last time I watched it, which might actually have been when MIB2 was coming out a whole ten years ago, it did not hold up.

A most excellent related video.

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They can send a space probe to Saturn, but they can use a decent audio encoder.

It's certainly no moon.>> ^critical_d:

They are Star Destroyers.
Mystery Solved.

Man, Saturn and Jupiter get all the love.

How 'bout some Mercury and Neptune attention round these parts?

At 350x up on a quality scope, Saturn is breathtaking. Particularly in binoviewers.

>> ^deathcow:

Awesome find... my telescope made a woman cry once, no, not hitting her with it, she was looking at saturn. It's a real excellent target for scopes, very high contrast with easily perceived colors.


I don't know if this is the right terminology, but what magnification was yours? If I wanted spoil myself one day, what (once again, I don't know the lingo) magnification would give me an impressive view of the great ringed wonder?

Awesome find... my telescope made a woman cry once, no, not hitting her with it, she was looking at saturn. It's a real excellent target for scopes, very high contrast with easily perceived colors.