# Armageddon (1998)



## OzScaper (Mar 5, 2001)

URL: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120591

Plot Outline: When an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for Earth the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.

Stars: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler


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## markpud (Mar 5, 2001)

I liked this film.  Although it was a fairly far fetched idea, sending miners into space, and some of the scenes, esp the stuff on the asteroid itself were pretty unbelievable...but the overall effect of the film was good, the cast is first rate, and the effects also..

The interaction between the characters is good, plenty of humour, esp the early scenes between Willis and Afleck, concerning AJ's relationship with Grace..


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## OzScaper (Mar 6, 2001)

spoiler space
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Alrighty then

I jsut have to say that I found the ending, where Harry (Bruce Willis) takes A.J.'s (Ben Affleck) place to be the one to stay back on the asteroid. I don't know what it was about it, I just found it incredibly touching.

That's all


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## peachy (Mar 6, 2001)

i thought the ending was really sad too, i kept thinking 
harry would find a way to detonate the explosion, without having to sacrifice himself...peachy


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## Krystal (Mar 9, 2001)

> _Originally posted by peachy _
> *i thought the ending was really sad too, i kept thinking
> harry would find a way to detonate the explosion, without having to sacrifice himself...peachy *



I like the movie, was very interesting and keep the attention of the viewer.  Also find the scenes
between Afleck and Willis fun to watch.  And the end make me cry a lot, I  too was expecting
to see at the end that he will survive somehow.


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## Small Mel (Mar 12, 2001)

Okay Dudes

*Who's your favourite Character/Actor?* 

This can be any character in the whole film... the person that walks by in the backround sipping a coffee... anyone.  

My favourite is typically one of the main parts... Bruce Willis. I adore this man! My main acting goal is to be in a movie with him.. thats my ultimate..

So of course I love his part! 

Although I am partial to Ben Affleck's looks 

*So who's yours?* 

Mel


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## peachy (Mar 12, 2001)

oh i would have to go with bruce willis as well. followed very closely by ben afflick. i thought B.W was great in this film, but then i tend to like any film he does...peachy


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## Starling (Mar 23, 2001)

hmmm, Bruce Willis...hmmm, Ben Affleck humina humina
i have the sound track to this awsome film an it's wonderful!

starling :laugh: :smokin: :naughty:


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## Krystal (Mar 31, 2001)

My favorite character or actor in Armageddon,  you wouldn't guess......... Bruce Willis.  
I like Ben Affleck but Bruce was awesome in this film, is a shame that he have to die. 

Krystal:laugh2:


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## Curupira (Jul 16, 2001)

This movie mad me really mad...had to kill Bruce Willis huh? Jeez. That made me cry..but then again I cry in every movie! Even the Disney ones! (which can be very sad by the way)   Couldn't they kill Ben Affleck instead?


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## Curupira (Jul 16, 2001)

Bruce Willis!! No contest. He's the greatest thing since sliced bread


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## OzScaper (Jul 16, 2001)

kill Ben Affleck noooooooooo


anyway just thought I'd say I thought it was incredibly brave for Harry to sacrifice himself for not only his daughter, but the entire human race. I guess he figured that his daughter would have ben longer than she would have him 

it was really sad though


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## Curupira (Jul 17, 2001)

Too right! It was the right thing to do. God knows I wouldn't do it! lol I'd get my butt back in the ship and get the hell outta there!


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## OzScaper (Jul 18, 2001)

I dunno, I guess you'd have to be in the actual situation before you could say what you would do


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## Curupira (Jul 18, 2001)

lol yeah. Maybe I'd do it...if they pushed me outta the ship... then it'd be pointless not to do it...unless I was mad cause they pushed me out...what am I yammering about? :rain:


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## OzScaper (Jul 20, 2001)

never fear, yammering is allowed


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## Curupira (Jul 24, 2001)

:laugh2: Good, cause it's all I seem to be able to do


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## OzScaper (Jul 25, 2001)

hehe

I have that problem sometimes too :


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## Curupira (Jul 25, 2001)

hmmm.... I was thinking...(uh oh, time to get scared :rain: ) I know everybody says Deep Impact copied off of Armageddon, but didn't Deep Impact come out in theatres before Armageddon?


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## Diamond9697 (Sep 4, 2001)

okay...dare to be different right?  I likes Rockhound and Truman best *shrugs*


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## Chilly (Mar 27, 2002)

ehhe ok this is hard.....
i liked the guy steve buscemi played coz he was genuinely funny! bu i thought ben was best........lol


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## Chilly (Mar 27, 2002)

*k*

my theory is that the script for armageddon got leaked. so we end up with 2 movies almost identical. it has 2 be sai armageddon was by far more superior.


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## sarahksg1 (Apr 8, 2002)

bruce willis without a doubt!


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## rde (Apr 9, 2002)

I liked any character in the film who didn't have any dialogue. The rest all got on my nerves.


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## angelle myst (Jul 14, 2002)

I absolutely adore this film, not only cos the acting is way cool and the humour and drama are well balanced, but because it still has the same affect on me as it did the first time i watched it. I still cry when Harry stays behind, and he's on the video monitor talkin to Gracie, and sometimes films make you cry the first time you watch it, or make you react in a different way or whatever but then you watch it the second time and the sparks gone, but Armaggedon doesnt lose anything on a second, or even third viewing, which is what, in my opinion, makes it special 

:fangs:xxx:smokin:


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## Shaun (Jul 14, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Sammy O'Neill _
> *I absolutely adore this film, not only cos the acting is way cool and the humour and drama are well balanced, but because it still has the same affect on me as it did the first time i watched it. I still cry when Harry stays behind, and he's on the video monitor talkin to Gracie, and sometimes films make you cry the first time you watch it, or make you react in a different way or whatever but then you watch it the second time and the sparks gone, but Armaggedon doesnt lose anything on a second, or even third viewing, which is what, in my opinion, makes it special
> 
> :fangs:xxx:smokin: *


I know how you feel (except for the whole crying bit), it still has the same effect on me whenever I watch it. I've seen it about five times and I'm still not bored with it.


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## angelle myst (Jul 14, 2002)

*I'm in 1 of those silly moods i get in when i'm real tired, kinda like a coffee high!*

Enough with the whole macho man thing  ppl are supposed to cry at sad films, so go cry!

I dont think Armageddon could really get boring unless you watched it every day for a year or something lol, its a buzzin movie 

:fangs:xxx:smokin:


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## Shaun (Jul 14, 2002)

I don't cry at movies or tv shows, they aren't real. And if you're going to cry during Armageddon, why is it for Harry? He dies doing what he wants to do, saving his daughter aswell as the whole world. What about the others that died during the mission, don't they matter? My mind wont let me cry for one character; its either all of them or none.


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## angelle myst (Jul 14, 2002)

I was using Harry as an example, and no i didnt cry at the others, i usually cry for main characters because they are the ones we get to know, and the whole reason we get to know the main characters is so that when the twist comes in the plot involving the main character, we know what they're going thru, and can relate etc and stuff like that, so when he dies, you feel Gracies pain, you feel AJ's pain, or well, not _feel_ their pain, but you feel sorry for them or whatever.

Harry dies doing what he wants and stuff, but it doesnt make it any less sad 

:fangs:xxx:smokin:


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## Shaun (Jul 14, 2002)

We got to know they others pretty good so enough with the macho man thing and go cry for them.


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## angelle myst (Jul 14, 2002)

lol, i'll stop teasin' now because i know the males of the species do find it harder to express emotion than us girlies....ahh, i'm only j/king with ya babe 

:fangs:xxx:smokin:


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## Legolas (Jul 18, 2002)

*Which is easier...*

Which is easier - teaching a bunch of diggers how to be astronauts or teaching a bunch of astronauts how to dig? I think the second one would be better, although it wouldn't be possible as of course...its a film...

But i don't like this film much. If I'd have seen it after Deep Impact I probably would have liked it. But the constant 'Lets drill that hole!' phrases just got really annoying...It just seemed really ...whats the word...ambitious to teach diggers how to be astronauts in such a short time that I got fed up with it.

:flash:


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## Tabitha (Jul 18, 2002)

Interesting question Leggy.  I think teaching astronauts how to dig would be the obvious easier answer, but it isn't really like Bruce Willis and co really had to do that much astronauting - it's not like they had to know how to pilot the ships or whatever.  I suppose the argument would be that that kind of digging is as complicated, if not moreso, in it's own way as is piloting etc


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## Diamond9697 (Jul 18, 2002)

it most likley would be easier to teach a pilot to dig although there is a science to doing deep core digging.  Although all they had to teach the Roughnecks was how to move in space and stuff and it might have been more complicated to teach the astronauts to dig the type of hole they wanted in that short of an amount of time.  Besides, most people would rather root for the everyman than someone trianed to be in space I would think for film purposes.


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## Diamond9697 (Jul 18, 2002)

This is another one of those core movies I can watch a lot and not get bored with.  Good Flick all in all even if it was a bit farfetched.  I don't know about the rest of you but when Ben got the short straw I was thinkin to myself something along the lines of...oh no...that ain't gonna happen...no one gets to be the hero in a Bruce Willis movie but Bruce.


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## Legolas (Jul 19, 2002)

Yeah well it's a film...o course they gonna take the hard way and teach diggers how to be spacemen..

But I hated this film. It was just so annoying with 'lets dig that hole!' 'lets dig that hole! 'lets dig that hole' all the time. Also I thought it was a bit closely related to deep impact. kinda like Antz and a Bugs life. Too closely releated to be released at the same time.
:flash:


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## Shaun (Jul 19, 2002)

They didn't need to teach the miners to be astronauts, they only taught them the basics. The miners didn't need to fly the shuttle or anything, just learn to walk around. Plus they're the best in the business, able to adapt to whatever the asteroid has in store for them.


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## Status (Jan 19, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Shaun _
> *I know how you feel (except for the whole crying bit), it still has the same effect on me whenever I watch it. I've seen it about five times and I'm still not bored with it. *



I totally agree on this, I bought it so I could watch it whenever I wanted. Guess must be over half dozen times now and still has the same impact on me as the first time.


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## khatab (Feb 5, 2005)

To be honest I believe it is an insult to Sci-Fi to call Armageddon a Sci-Fi film as throghout it's entirity it bared no resemblence to any sort of reality what so ever. 

I think a film like Van Helsing is Principa Mathematica manifest as a cinematic feature when compared to Armageddon.

Not to mention all the continuity errors like when both crews go up the single lift to the shuttles and split up to go left and right, yet when the shuttles take of the launch paltforms are like a mile apart.

Notwithstanding the fact that NASA would never in a million years launch 2 shuttles that close to each other and program them to flly next to each other and risk jettisoning their booster rockets into each other.. then theres the concept of surgically slicing a asteroid into two pieces with a Nuke. hahahahahaha A NUKE!!!! which is basically an uncontrolled fission or fusion reaction... Well done script writers and producers, you really showed your grasp on reality.... Anyway I could go on for ever here...

It seems like this film was made to tug at the heart strings of sentimental teenage girls and effeminate men, cos all the guys i know were like "Oh, please come on" "Aren't you dead alredy, come on man, and why is that dumb bimbo allowed into mission controll? to **** everyone off, get outta here ho!!".

Now Deep Impact is infintely more credible and you actually believe that such a scenario could play out. It may not be as essentially "Hollywood" as Armageddon but at least it's palusible.


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## ray gower (Feb 5, 2005)

Have you tried watching either Deep Core or The Core?

Science Fiction of any sort must alway twists or creates a reality to suit itself, or it is not Sci/Fi. I don't see Armageddon as any worse than say Riddick or Day After Tomorrow in this respect?


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## khatab (Feb 5, 2005)

> _Originally posted by ray gower _
> *Have you tried watching either Deep Core or The Core?
> 
> Science Fiction of any sort must alway twists or creates a reality to suit itself, or it is not Sci/Fi. I don't see Armageddon as any worse than say Riddick or Day After Tomorrow in this respect? *



Hi Gower...

I think you just helped me make my poiunt there....

Riddick was such a disappointment after what seemed like a promising Pitch Balck.. It was really a terrible film...
The day after tomorrow might as well as never been made as it was the worst film i watched that year..
And don't get me started on the Core... that made about as much sense as Michael Moore... lets just strap some extra Uranium to this Nuke to make it more powerful!!!! Hello.. you'll just make a gaint dirty bomb!?!?! Even when ignoring the sheer ludicriousness of the plot they still manage to make a film that i can aonly categorise as "Wishful thinking Fiction" not Science  Fiction...


So yes I totally agree with you that Armageddon is the same as those films there, and you want to know another thing.. I do believe they are all absolutely rubbish... And thats is my honest truth to God opinion... They all suck and are not even entertaining unless you a teen girl or 7 years old...

Thank you for agreeing with me...


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## ray gower (Feb 5, 2005)

Problem is that Armageddon is not as fanciful as the ones I listed.

In general the only real problem with Armageddon is they send a bunch of wheezing oilmen up to do the work, when everybody knows it ought to be Irish Navvies with shovels to have any chance of getting it done in time!

NASA has the facilities to launch two shuttles (they have three nominally serviceable and two launch rigs).

Colliding with things coming down is a mathematical possibility that is easy to negate (the two launch pads point in opposite directions).

Flying in formation is easy enough, pilots do it all the time!

I won't deny that Deep Impact is a better film, there is nearly as much atmosphere as in the original When Worlds Collide. 

But remembering it took twenty years to dig a rat hole to France, or 10 for the Americans to build their money no obstruction NORAD complex, creating a vast underground complex to keep 800,000 people safe is not going to be achieved in less than 100 years!


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## khatab (Feb 5, 2005)

> NASA has the facilities to launch two shuttles (they have three nominally serviceable and two launch rigs).
> 
> Colliding with things coming down is a mathematical possibility that is easy to negate (the two launch pads point in opposite directions).
> 
> ...




Hang on a second there..  Flying in close formation is not easy enough it takes a lot of training, I am an aircraft enthusiat and have flow a number of light aircraft. It is also dangerous to fly in close formation.

Now if you had only one shot to send up the 2 teams you are not going to risk them colliding with each other or jettisoning their fuel tanks into each other... You'll send them up 10 miles apart. Plus it doesn't matter how many launch modules NASA have you would not launch them with in 10 miles of each other. What happens if one of them malfunctions on launch and shrapnel damages the other vehicle?


What are you talking about launch pads point in opposite directions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
We are not launching fire works here.. these are space shuttle that takes months even years to program a mission and minimun a week to uplad all the information and configure the shuttle to a particular orbit.. then you have to wait thill the rotation of the earth is in the right place before you launch.. if you miss your window you wait another 2 weeks or so...

Shuttle launches have small tolerances for variability, so they would have to point in the same direction if they want to hit anything like the same orbit (or piece of space for that matter)..


And a shuttle is not flown by the guy in the cockpit.. yes they can take over, (like or re-entry) but it's flown by mission control and the on board flight computer..

And the damage the shuttle must have suffered as it approached the asteroid.. there must have been a lot of damaged ceramic tiles.. i think it' safe to say that they never set foot on earth again... anyone remeber what happened to Columbia????


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## ray gower (Feb 5, 2005)

Didn't say flying in formation doesn't take training, I said pilots do it all the time. I am a retired RAF chief rigger with over 20 years line experience, Having spent time pulling bricks and trees from out of undercarriages, I know pilots and what they did to my aeroplanes!

In the RAF the monkeys at the stick used to reckon on a formation of about  60 yards between aircraft on day to day jobbing, while the Dead Sparrows regularly pass within 30 during their aerobatic displays. The Air Ministry  placed a minimum distance of 20. Meanwhile Tornados nav gear can have the aircraft doing 500 knots at less than 20 feet above the ground (air frame limitations permiting). For a computer to keep two shuttles a few tens of miles apart in what would generally be almost ideal flying weather is not  difficult.

When a shuttle is launched they do not go straight up. With the launch towers pointing in different directions, by the time the shuttles are far enough up to jettison hardware they are miles away from each other. You should also note that the other 3 space agencies, Russian, Chinese and European have all achieved multiple launches (I understand the Chinese hold the record of 6 in a day).
I suspect in real life NASA would stagger the launches, if only to ensure they are in the same region of space when they arrive, but that need not be by any great length of time as far as lighting the touch paper is concerned. So yes we are looking at shooting off fireworks.

Otherwise flight planning is not, in general, a long task. You cannot plan your launch until you know what the weather is going to do. While in the days of Saturn rockets they calculated their launch for a weather condition and waited for weather to match, now the computation can be done to suit the forcasted weather a few hours ahead.
It is mission planning that takes the time. Pinging rockets into space is an expensive activity, unless you know exactly what you are intending to achieve.

You have also omitted to take into account the incentive of panic. You can achieve a lot when the world is throwing money around, there is something to concentrate upon and you can otherwise relax rules that only ever make sense in peace time.

As for getting anybody back from the mission, well yes there would be a real risk that something important might get hit and the film should perhaps have taken some of that into account..

Columbia blew up because of faulty materials. It has been the only fatality in some 400 shuttle operations. Not bad results for a dangerous hobby.


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## khatab (Feb 6, 2005)

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you on a couple of points..

For a start planning a launch does take time. If a window is missed it's generally 2 weeks till a new launch window opens up weather permitting....
And if NASA had attempted to send a rescue party to Columbia whilst it was still in orbit I clearly remember a NASA spokes person saying that even if they had another shuttle on a launch pad it would take a minimum of at least a week to configure the shuttle for launch. So yes it is complicated business to launch a shuttle.

Yes shuttles do launch straight up but then they roll over onto their backs as they power into the sky... if they were launched underside to underside facing each other they would probably diverge and fly into different parts of space.. And I would guess that it's essential that a shuttle achieve escape velocity and not have to bleed energy in manoeuvring though the sky after being launched in the wrong direction...  And I don't honestly know how manoeuvrable a fully laden shuttle, tank and boosters really are...

Certainly not  as manoeuvrable as the Tornado  GR's and ADV's  you probably service; which in actually fact do not manoeuvre that well..  well thatâ€™s of course  if you compared their low speed high alpha capability compared to a MiG 29.. anyway thatâ€™s beside the point and well off topic..

Well staggering the launches sound plausible but then they'd probably have to be staggered by two weeks for the reason i explained.. unless for some bizarre reason they are affected by a phenomenon that presents them with an unusually large window..


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## ray gower (Feb 6, 2005)

Actually I wrote APU's for Tornados, my little ones were Hunters, Bucaneers and Hawks, otherwise it was much bigger hardware. MiG 29's are high altitude air superiority fighters, flying at a hundred feet they are in serious trouble. But that, as you correctly observe, is OT.

The two weeks is required to get the launch point pointing in more or less the right direction to achieve a similar orbit pattern. A few degrees variation in orbit can be accomodated with little burn. Larger variations requires more fuel, money and unnecesary complications. Which brings us back to launching shuttles at close intervals to save on the mucking about.

Which leaves us with finding a useable launch date, that avoids using too much fuel and getting two ships ready. For which they had well over a week, assuming they started preping as soon as they decided what to do. It would be tight, but could be done- Overtime is a wonderful thing and it was only Willis and his crowd that had 3 days to prepare. NASA had already spent time trying to do it themselves, then more time trying to find the Willis crew and get them back.

I would agree that the film has used some time compression, but it has not really fantasised anything here. Merely a slightly rosey view on the efficiencies of NASA, which within the scope of film making must be sensible?

Now can you explain how they can create a vast underground complex in six months aka Deep Impact?


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## khatab (Feb 6, 2005)

The underground complex could have been a modification of Chyenne mountian, who knows, but thats an issue of time rather than science, but yeah.. it's pretty unrealistic, i used to work for a mining company and i can appriciate the logistics of such a scheme..

As for MiG 29.. I agree with your description of a high altitude air superiority fighter (all weather interceptor designed specifically for air superiority in close air combat), but I am refering to an interview i watched with John Farley OBE - the first western pilot to fly the 29, which was at Farnborough 1990.. he describes a ride in two seat variant and is talking about the Russian Pilot showing of the aircrafts abilities - "he pulled the nose up to lose airspeed and suddenly rolled the aircraft and pulled hard through; a fighting turn reversal done at very low speeds and altitudes that he knew that i knew our aircraft could not do" "this was not surprising as i expected the aircraft to fly like that since i have seen it flying 45 to 47 alpha" (John Farley speaking)... "

yes of topic but my passion for aircraft makes me a sucker for aviation talk..

here's where the vid is:
http://www.patricksaviation.com/videos.php?page=3

and the clip is:
MiG-29 as displayed by A. Garnajev-by RedSkies 

anyway it's 700 mb but great footage..

anyway back to Armageddon..lol..

I still think that Deep Impact is still the better movie. As an individual with an interest in science i find it difficult to accept film like Armageddon for what it is and could never forgive it for what i consider to be spitting in the face of science.


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## ray gower (Feb 6, 2005)

Thanks for the link! 
The Mig is a great aeroplane, superior in many ways to anything we or the Americans have, when doing its thing. But so too is the Tornado, when doing its. Flying fast ultra low it would be a challenge for any fighter to bring down.

Our debate here has been a good one. 


Armageddon is a fun action film, it will stretch the credibility, but not necessarily the science.

By and large I think we can agree that many of the aspects of Armageddon are not a major breach of science. Even blowing up the lump of rock from inside is solid sense, as opposed to Meteor banging whizzbangs on the surface.

Having said that- Putting people on the rock to do the deed would be asking rather too much of lady Luck, even when we have the technology to do it. The current shuttle can not (the film used a next generation shuttle), but who knows what the new shuttles NASA have on the board for the future Mars expedition could do? (There is one waiting for funding).

But isn't that what Science Fiction is about?
Fantasising over what ifs?

And yes Deep Impact is a better film, not for the science, but for the drama it presents.

Welcome to Ascifi. I look forward to many more similar debates!


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## khatab (Feb 6, 2005)

You know, I actually agree there, it's not so much the science that's the problem, but the sheer mathematical improbability of what they are trying to accomplish and the manner in which they go about it.

I guess most things that happen could probably happen but are not like to....

By the way my fave are the Flanker series, and i love the asthetics of the f -16, it's a very "pretty" aircraft.. I am not fond of delta wing config or the new stealth tech influences on aircraft design..  (f-22, JSF)


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