Seven Bond Villain Schemes that Defy Science

where is the article!? I can never find these.

Your article links are frustrating. The "FULL ARTICLE" link goes to 3 short paragraphs. Is this really the the "full article"?. This happens regularly and I've abandoned trying to navigate this site. Your hypertext links in general should be redesigned to be more intuitive, honest and straightforward.

George M. White, Ph.D.

the article can be found by clicking the hypertext link "Here" in the last sentence.

At least they fixed the megagoods roundup. Its a lot better now.

James M. Clarke, Ph.D (I'm so great)

Movies are made in order to acquire money.
The movie makes more money if it is more entertaining.
Movies are typically a poor source of history, science, data, or facts.
Over thinking the process results in a loss of revenue.
They "can" be interesting "what if" vehicles - but, usually the "what if" involves violating vast numbers of physical laws... time and space, thermodynamics, speed of light, etc.

The Bond genre, as entertainment, is fine.
The less one knows about science or engineering - the more entertaining they can be.

Goldfinger works on a premise that a gold standard exists...
At the time of the movie release, we didn't actually "have" a gold standard. We had abandoned silver, gold, platinum, diamonds, etc. in favor of wampum.... paper money with pictures of dead presidents - soon to be replaced by 1's and 0's in a computer. Today the economy is driven not by metals, currency script, or digital accounts - but, by credit. No nuke can toxify a credit rating - that requires a sub-prime mortgage. The viewers probably assumed that gold was involved as an international monetary standard. So, in theory, it kinda works... For those who understood how international banking worked at the time, it was less convincing.. Not that gold, silver, and diamonds can't be a means of exchange... It's just that banks don't use them.

For MoonRaker, there exist a host of technical errors. One, shuttles a damn heavy. A 747 with a stripped empty shuttle can barely make it off the ground. Next, shuttles aren't designed for low altitude horizontal flight... They cover quite a horizontal distance for landing - but, that is an unavoidable consequence of going from mach 18 to a dead stop. That extended horizontal travel is a belly flop that bleeds speed. It is "not" powered flight. In order to equip a shuttle for a powered Landing - there is added weight + a a flight crew. And, the killer here is no fuel.. The shuttle is a glorified internal combustion steam engine...
It burns oxygen and hydrogen making steam. Granted, it is very energetic steam - but, steam none the less. Where is the external fuel tank? There has never been an internal fuel tank (say inside the shuttle bay). And, if there had ever been one, - and, had it been installed in the MoonRaker shuttle - and, had it been loaded down with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - the aggregate mass would have kept the 747 pinned firmly to the ground. Had the runway met up with an interstate the pair could have rolled to its destination - but, flying would have been out of the question. The boil off of oxygen and hydrogen in the shuttle bay would not have resulted in a happy ending either.

The entertainment industry has trotted out an endless string of evil genius's. All it takes is a really, really, smart villain and the plot takes care of itself - no one is going to review the science.
In real life, the really, really smart super villains aren't all that much of a problem. They are constrained by the same physical laws and engineering limitations of everyone else.
What pays off for Hollywood is not good writing, technical advisors and genius - but, quite the opposite = public education. The products of public education can gleefully sit through hours of cgi drivel without blinking an eye - because they have not been damaged by an education.
This keeps the bar low for the entertainment industry.

In summary:
For entertainment, go to the movies.
For an education (any degree of academic enlightenment), go to a real school..
Try to avoid schools that major in arrogance (feeling good about not having the right answer - or, that are satisfied with no answers at all).
Those should only exist in the movies.

Movies are made in order to acquire money.
The movie makes more money if it is more entertaining.
Movies are typically a poor source of history, science, data, or facts.
Over thinking the process results in a loss of revenue.
They "can" be interesting "what if" vehicles - but, usually the "what if" involves violating vast numbers of physical laws... time and space, thermodynamics, speed of light, etc.

The Bond genre, as entertainment, is fine.
The less one knows about science or engineering - the more entertaining they can be.

Goldfinger works on a premise that a gold standard exists...
At the time of the movie release, we didn't actually "have" a gold standard. We had abandoned silver, gold, platinum, diamonds, etc. in favor of wampum.... paper money with pictures of dead presidents - soon to be replaced by 1's and 0's in a computer. Today the economy is driven not by metals, currency script, or digital accounts - but, by credit. No nuke can toxify a credit rating - that requires a sub-prime mortgage. The viewers probably assumed that gold was involved as an international monetary standard. So, in theory, it kinda works... For those who understood how international banking worked at the time, it was less convincing.. Not that gold, silver, and diamonds can't be a means of exchange... It's just that banks don't use them.

For MoonRaker, there exist a host of technical errors. One, shuttles a damn heavy. A 747 with a stripped empty shuttle can barely make it off the ground. Next, shuttles aren't designed for low altitude horizontal flight... They cover quite a horizontal distance for landing - but, that is an unavoidable consequence of going from mach 18 to a dead stop. That extended horizontal travel is a belly flop that bleeds speed. It is "not" powered flight. In order to equip a shuttle for a powered Landing - there is added weight + a a flight crew. And, the killer here is no fuel.. The shuttle is a glorified internal combustion steam engine...
It burns oxygen and hydrogen making steam. Granted, it is very energetic steam - but, steam none the less. Where is the external fuel tank? There has never been an internal fuel tank (say inside the shuttle bay). And, if there had ever been one, - and, had it been installed in the MoonRaker shuttle - and, had it been loaded down with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - the aggregate mass would have kept the 747 pinned firmly to the ground. Had the runway met up with an interstate the pair could have rolled to its destination - but, flying would have been out of the question. The boil off of oxygen and hydrogen in the shuttle bay would not have resulted in a happy ending either.

The entertainment industry has trotted out an endless string of evil genius's. All it takes is a really, really, smart villain and the plot takes care of itself - no one is going to review the science.
In real life, the really, really smart super villains aren't all that much of a problem. They are constrained by the same physical laws and engineering limitations of everyone else.
What pays off for Hollywood is not good writing, technical advisors and genius - but, quite the opposite = public education. The products of public education can gleefully sit through hours of cgi drivel without blinking an eye - because they have not been damaged by an education.
This keeps the bar low for the entertainment industry.

In summary:
For entertainment, go to the movies.
For an education (any degree of academic enlightenment), go to a real school..
Try to avoid schools that major in arrogance (feeling good about not having the right answer - or, that are satisfied with no answers at all).
Those should only exist in the movies.

And the Bourne movies were better anyway.

I dunno NASAWFF , the Stargate SG-1 Series is pretty fun to listen to when Samantha Carter is talking Science jibber-jabber! =)~

Hi imongi...

I beat the concept to death in the earlier diatribe.

Yeah, it would be "fun" to have Samantha Carter jibber-jabber - anything.
She could jibber-jabber sports scores, lawn mower engine specs, or jibber-some-jabbers straight out of the phone book..
That's what entertainment b 'bout... = "fun."

Cinema-Science is fun... hot cinema-science babes make it even - more - fun...
It still doesn't make it science.

Ya ever wonder why there are only extremely attractive women on major network news programs.. It's some how better to hear the bad news from a pretty face. Unfortunately, this criteria is not applied to the male news anchors....
Wild fires, mud slides, huricanes, tornados, earthquakes - call for a bubbly blue-eyed blonde.
Some how some old butt-ugly bald guy gets to break the Wall Street news.
Maybe that's just the way my TV works.
Ya think they'll fix it when they go digital - or, will I have to wait for the next version of WinWoes?

Breaking the laws of physics is often necessary to make a movie fun and entertaining. The thing that bothers me is when they go too far and do something totally ridiculous. There is nothing worse than when a good movie is ruined by a few scenes that are so obviously impossible that a child says "oh yah right" (the new Indiana Jones movie). Directors and writers need to think more about what they are doing and be careful to make impossible things at least seem possible.

I watched Quantum of Solace and this is just stupid WRITE BIGGER ARTICLES