Timeline for Why did the Endurance crew bother landing on Miller's planet?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
26 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 17, 2016 at 6:22 | comment | added | Zommuter | ..."closest" is what I would call that planet which when passed would have wasted least time and fuel when visiting the next one - think TSP in spent time instead of distance | |
| Mar 17, 2016 at 6:19 | comment | added | Zommuter | @kasperd "closest" is relative when it comes to Relativity | |
| Mar 16, 2016 at 13:47 | comment | added | kasperd | @Zommuter Apparently it was the closest of the three. | |
| Jan 2, 2016 at 6:38 | answer | added | Ana | timeline score: 10 | |
| Sep 28, 2015 at 7:23 | comment | added | Zommuter | The question I'm wondering about is why they chose that planet first, despite knowing they could spend years on any other one before coming here and still only having "wasted" a few local hours... | |
| Apr 19, 2015 at 2:17 | answer | added | guest | timeline score: 8 | |
| Mar 16, 2015 at 22:10 | comment | added | Organic Marble | Yep. It's been months since I saw the movie but I thought the diagram showed circular orbits. | |
| Mar 16, 2015 at 21:57 | comment | added | martinkunev | @OrganicMarble For any given radius, there is a single circular orbit, but many elliptical orbits. The body will stay in orbit as long as its speed is below the escape velocity for the given radius. By increasing the speed, the eccentricity increases. The body leaves the orbit when it reaches eccentricity of 1. | |
| Nov 25, 2014 at 14:26 | vote | accept | Kris Harper | ||
| Nov 20, 2014 at 1:53 | answer | added | jamaicanworm | timeline score: 29 | |
| Nov 18, 2014 at 17:33 | comment | added | Kris Harper | @OrganicMarble Right, I see what you guys are saying. I was under the impression that they were using fuel to maintain their orbit, and that's why when Cooper and Brand came back on board, they had to make a choice between the remaining two planets. They explicitly said they didn't have enough fuel left. However, it is somewhat unrealistic to expect what fuel they had to sustain their orbit for 23 years. | |
| Nov 18, 2014 at 14:49 | comment | added | Organic Marble | @Kris Harper As Hypnosifi states in general orbital period increases with radius. That's why the ISS (close in) takes 90 minutes to orbit the Earth, geosynch sats (middle distance) take a day, and the Moon (farther out) takes a month. Without the application of some force (constantly firing an engine or whatever) there is no way for bodies in orbits with different radii to have the same period. I don't think "geosynchronous" has any meaning in the movie's situation. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 22:00 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | @Kris Harper - Kepler's third law says that orbital period increases as the radius of the orbit increases (that's for Newtonian physics, but something similar is apparently true in relativity). The surface of the Earth isn't moving with the same speed that an orbiting object at the same distance as the surface would have to move, that's why it's possible for a more distant orbit to have the same period as the Earth's rotation. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 21:03 | comment | added | Kris Harper | @OrganicMarble Wouldn't that just be a geosynchronous orbit? I don't quite see why having the same orbital period is impossible. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 20:58 | comment | added | Organic Marble | It sounded like the ship was in an orbit centered on Gargantua with a radius slightly larger than Miller's planet's orbital radius, and yet had the same orbital period as Miller's planet. I was baffled by that when the diagram was drawn in the movie and I remain baffled. | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 19:53 | comment | added | Neo42 | My further question on this topic is why would this planet have a thumbs up anyhow? | |
| Nov 17, 2014 at 13:44 | comment | added | Kris Harper | @JonKiparsky I think the explanation for that is that the Endurance wasn't actually orbiting Miller's planet, but sitting out in space far enough away. They made a point of saying that they weren't actually going to orbit the planet. | |
| Nov 16, 2014 at 17:06 | comment | added | Jon Kiparsky | Because clearly physics is not consistent in the universe where this was filmed - just to pick a local example, why did the Endurance, which was orbiting Miller's planet, not experience the same time dilation that the landing crew did? | |
| Nov 13, 2014 at 8:47 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackSciFi/status/532817132937936896 | ||
| Nov 13, 2014 at 8:36 | comment | added | teair | On the other hand,they were landing really close to Miller and her data AND there was no obvious threat. Theoretically they could have collected everything from Millers expedition within minutes. | |
| Nov 12, 2014 at 17:49 | comment | added | Kris Harper | So the Endurance is floating above Miller's planet, and they tell Coop (and the audience) that one hour down there is seven years elsewhere. At this point they know Miller left Earth something like 15 years ago so they should know he's only been there for a couple hours. How long he's been gone and the time dilation are both known quantities. | |
| Nov 12, 2014 at 17:29 | comment | added | Brian Warshaw | If Miller had left Earth however many decades earlier, how would it be obvious to them that he's not been on-planet for longer? I'm not saying it isn't a plot hole—certainly could be—but I'm not seeing it as being as obvious as you're saying it should have been. | |
| Nov 12, 2014 at 17:23 | comment | added | Kris Harper | The way they were talking about Gargantua and the time dilation made it seem like they knew the details ahead of time. But even if they only found on when they got there, they had all the information at that point. Even the audience could have done a back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate how long Miller had been there. | |
| Nov 12, 2014 at 17:07 | comment | added | Brian Warshaw | Did they have all of the information that they needed, though? I'm not saying you're wrong—I've only seen it once—but once the Endurance crew went through the wormhole, their transmissions were unable to make it back to Earth. Whatever information they had about "the other side" would have been limited, no? | |
| Nov 12, 2014 at 16:01 | review | First posts | |||
| Nov 12, 2014 at 16:42 | |||||
| Nov 12, 2014 at 15:56 | history | asked | Kris Harper | CC BY-SA 3.0 |