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From: spcecdt@deeptht.santa-cruz.ca.us (John DuBois)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Shuttle Movies (was Re: Rescue a shuttle?)
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.025253.23261@deeptht.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Date: 16 Mar 91 02:52:53 GMT
References: <14694@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> <697@newave.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Armory
Lines: 30

In article <697@newave.UUCP> john@newave.mn.org (John A. Weeks III) writes:
+On a related note, I saw "Moonraker" the other night.  The movie got
+off to a bad start--they show a shuttle ignite its main engines while
+riding on the back of a 747.  No wonder the average person is so mis-
+informed about the space program.
+
+A bunch of us at work tried working out alternate openings for the shuttle
+theft at the start of Moonraker (during coffee break, of course).  The best
+suggestion was having the shuttle de-mate from the 747, then glide down and
+mate up with a new Soviet stealth cargo plane.  This solves the problem of
+having the shuttle engines fire, and it explains how the shuttle was able to
+fly out of the area.  Gee, nothing unrealistic about that 8-).

    If the OMS tanks were surreptitiously filled before moving the shuttle,
those engines could be fired... (still leaves lots of problems, though).

+The rest of Moonraker was pretty good provided that you were willing
+to let your mind accept a few more unrealistic shuttle operations.

    Am I the only one who would swear that when Moonraker first came out,
the shuttle launch they showed didn't include any SRBs?  It came out before
there had been any real launches, so perhaps the general public wasn't well
enough informed to catch it.  I saw it recently and it was certainly more
realistic than that.  But I've had others swear to me that the first release
*did* show SRBs.  Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I have this recollection
of seeing it and knowing it was *wrong*...

	John
-- 
John DuBois	spcecdt@deeptht.santa-cruz.ca.us	KC6QKZ