Armageddon/Headscratchers

• It never was addressed in the movie, but did NASA intend for Lev Andropov to go along with the team?
  • No. He was just going to refuel them, then they'd continue onward. Note how when they leave the station, the captain says they're "Heavy a cosmonaut," i.e., they have one more than they were supposed to.
  • But it still doesn't explain where he received his ACES suit, or EVA spacesuit if he wasn't intended to go along..
  • "Here at NASA, we double up on everything." Obviously they brought spares.
• What was General Kimsey's role in the movie? Was he a joint chief of staffs, or was he the chairman?
• Why didn't the Shuttle Pilots, plus Gruber and Halsey not wearing their Spacesuits when they were landing on the asteroid?
• More importantly, after landing on the asteroid, how come outside the confines of the shuttle, people quite literally walk like they're on the Moon -- in amplified movements because of low gravity -- but inside the shuttle, people seem to get around just fine as if they're on Earth? Has NASA secretly mastered the antigrav field at last?
  • Magnetic boots?
  • The shots would have been much more expensive and much more difficult to plot, frame, and execute if they'd continued using low/zero gravity. One of Michael Bay's things is that he tries to bring his movies in on time and under budget. So yeah, he probably just said "They have magnets in their shoes or it's part of the really advanced shuttles or whatever" rather than extending shooting time by weeks or months and spending millions of dollars to keep doing floating scenes.
• Why did the shuttles have to refuel at the space station? Shuttles leave from Earth fully loaded. Did they leave the internal fuel tanks empty or something? If they did, then how could they have enough power to dock with the station in the first place?
  • It's possible that they needed every bit of fuel they could get to do the maneuvers properly and safely escape the asteroid; what they were going to do was considerably more intensive than what a Shuttle normally gets up to, after all. Alternatively, maybe they just felt like the Russian could use some sort of human contact.
  • Aren't the tanks used as some sort of Boost for the real shuttles? Anyway, it's more than likely that this was the case with the X-71s. They needed the extra fuel to travel to the moon, maneuver around the moon in minutes to speed up with the asteroid, land, and then when the job was done, take off.
    • They needed to refuel because most, if not all, of the fuel in the shuttles was burned up at takeoff. The X-71s are a hell of a lot tougher, and therefore heavier, than any comparable space shuttle made of tinfoil and ceramics. And in most flights into space, the overwhelming majority of the mission's fuel, percentagewise, is spent just getting off the ground.
    • They had to travel past the moon on a shuttle. The last time humans went to the moon, they had to do so in two tiny spacecraft (weighing about 45,000kg) bolted to the top of a twenty-four story rocket to go 380,000km in four days. The fastest any manmade object has ever traveled to lunar orbit was in nine hours by New Horizons, mass 478kg. In contrast, the Space Shuttle weighs 2 million kilograms and usually only has to make it to maybe 300km if it's pushing itself. Given that the tanks on the X-71s look no bigger than usual and they have to get to the moon about five minutes after leaving the station, it remains one of the few points of lucidity in the movie that they would need extra fuel from somewhere.
      • Truman said it would take them about 60 hours, or the equivalent of 2 days and a half just to get to the moon.
  • Shuttles don't come with internal tanks, or at least not much of them. The fuel in the SR Bs and the big orange tank (burnt through the nozzles at the back of the orbiter) get you into space. After that you have a little fuel for the de-orbit burn. And of course you have whatever gases the RCS thrusters use. That's all. The Space Shuttle isn't a powered vehicle, it's a glider. So, once having used up almost all their fuel just to get into space, yes, they then needed to gas up again so that, when they tried to lift off from the asteroid itself, the engines would turn on. (It wasn't for the slingshot-round-the-moon burn, that's what they had the 2nd set of SR Bs for.) It's a bit depressing that they at least got this stuff plausible, when the whole rest of the movie was such crap.
  • So actually refueling at the station might make sense... but why does it have enough fuel to fill up too Space Shuttles on board in the first place?
    • Because they put it there while they were working on the shuttles. They'd been preparing for this mission for awhile, it wasn't some last minute thing that came together in the last couple of days.
• In the movie, it's shown that the Independence Shuttle crashed, and all the equipment save for the Armadillo was destroyed. So where did Lev, AJ and Bear get their orange jumpsuits from at the end? They surely didn't wear it under their Spacesuits..
  • Dude, I had the same question!

But I assume that the crews had extra jumpsuits and Spacesuits just in case something was to happen. So AJ, Lev, and Bear just took the extras and wore them..

• • • They should've just sit around in their underpants while riding the Armadillo.
      • well there was at least 1 extra set because the other air force guy died by being blown into space.
• Where exactly is Lev sitting inside the Independence Shuttle? i know there's not good lighting in the scenes where the cockpit is shown, but it only appears to be 7 seats ( 2 for the pilot/copilot, and the remaining 5 in some sort of v-shape, with the munitions specialist in the middle, and the members of harry's team seated 2 to each side of the console in the middle), unless there is a secret compartment with an extra seat..
  • That's what I aays wondered..

But if you remember, Lt. Watts, or during the scene where Sharpe radios back to houston where Harry tells him how much they drilled, he goes to a seperate room/compartment with computer equipment and a seat. So Assuming that the Independence Shuttle had the same configuration, that's where Lev most likely sat..

• Harry, a seasoned oil veteran firing a shotgun on an oil rig w/ flammable chemicals and vapors everywhere? Really?
  • So seasoned an oil veteran he probably knows exactly where it's safe to smoke and/or shoot on the rig and where it isn't. This troper's impression that a substantial portion of Harry's rage was just put on, and that he just wanted to scare the crap out of A.J.
  • As it happens, just firing a gun usually isn't enough to cause a huge explosion, even on an oil rig. It's not a good idea, but it's not as dangerous to the rig as you're implying.
  • Because when a bullet ricochets you get sparks ? and with buckshot, you really don't have to worry about penetration of anything substantial (except AJ's skin)
• The shooting: His ADULT daughter has sex consensual sex w/ another adult and that makes him angry enough to attempt to kill the man? Was there some subtext going on here that we may have missed?
  • Harry's own self-esteem issues. He doesn't believe oil workers are good enough for his little girl, which includes A.J. So when his own daughter starts having sex with one, it puts him into something of a tailspin. He's also a little immature emotionally, as his own daughter says.
  • Also, he's protective of his little girl. A lot of us tropers aren't parents, so it's hard for us to imagine, but-- Well, you know the Squick you get when you try, in total earnest, to picture your parents having sex? It's probably even worse when you think about your children doing it.
    • I, for one, have never attempted to kill either of my parents for having sex. And If I did, they'd call me crazy.
  • How are you unaware of two things that are not just tropes in fiction but icons of American cultural consciousness? The "shotgun-wielding angry father" routine and the "I don't care how old she is she's my baby girl" mindset?