The Nimbus falling in BBS

[:]

Okay, I made the stupid mistake of asking this on Youtube but...

Okay.  I watched this scene and I always found it EXTREMELY weird looking.  The Nimbus has its engines PWN'D by the golden death star.  Then it drops like a stone.  Away from the Earth.
Considering most of the writers are science/maths graduates, and they say they will 99percent of the time they like to keep things like this as accurate as possible... can someone explain how this works?  Is the ship meant to be falling towards the equator?  If that's the case... (I really don't have much knowledge of physics in outerspace except what I actually absorbed in GCSEs) why is it falling away from the earth and plummeting like a dropped stone in space?  Why would destroying the ship's engines (that were facing away from the earth) make it fall down like a stone?

I made the mistake of asking this on youtube, and I am getting a reasonable explanation every now and then (but when I ask further on it, they never reply) but mostly it's "STFU its a cartoon"

This scene always bugged me, so I'd like someone to explain how this scene worked. 

[#1 :]

Strange, I've picked up on this too, but never thought about mentioning it.

I think that they are just really close to Earth's atmosphere/gravitational pull. The ships can fly and stuff, but as soon as the engines blow out, they get pulled down by gravity. Same thing happens to Sal's ship.

[#2 :]

But were they really that close?  They looked like they were in orbit, and the ship plummeted like a stone.   I could have bought them being blasted backwards by the impact.

If they were falling towards the eqaitor, I might be able to buy that.  I suppose you could chalk it up to Reality looking Unrealistic.

[#3 :]

But were they really that close?  They looked like they were in orbit,

"Orbit" covers a multitude of gravitational possibilites. Let me take a look at the clip and see if I can figure this one out for you.

[#4 :]

I was hoping Tnuk would explain this.   Ill try looking up the clip now.

[#5 :]

1:14:18 is where it happens. The Nimbus looks to be somewhere between LEO and Geostationary, so it's reasonable to assume that something so massive would fall towards the Earth.

What you're seeing is an angle shot. You're looking straight down (more or less) at the Earth. Anything falling towards it from that height is going to do so in a decaying orbit, ie: not forwards from your POV, but towards the bottom of the screen.

The angle shot pans downwards, so we can see this effect in action.

From the side it would have looked something like this:

[#6 :]

Tnuk said it all. It is easy!

[#7 :]

Tnuk said it all. It is easy!

What the fuck.

[#8 :]

It's me!

[#9 :]

It's me!

That means fuck all. Stop playing games.

[#10 :]

Stop talking to yourself, Donnydanny.

[#11 :]

It's not me, tnuk. I'm not this annoying.

Yeah, yeah, I know what's coming...

[#12 :]

I made the mistake of asking this on youtube, and I am getting a reasonable explanation every now and then (but when I ask further on it, they never reply) but mostly it's "STFU its a cartoon"

Did you mention to them that you are a chick? That will have the side effect of gaining a few stalkers, but at least you should get the reponses you want quickly. But posting on PEEL is always an option, as well. All the creeps here are appearently dead set on Gorky('s virginity) already.

[#13 :]

The detail on the death star is fantastic.

[#14 :]

Tnuk said it all. It is easy!

What the fuck.

This is hilarious, DonnyJC14 is my favourite thing ever.

[#15 :]

Ooh, another tnuk-diagram. It makes sense!

The detail on the death star is fantastic.

In the movie or the diagram? I noticed that about the diagram and wondered how much time was spent bedazzling the little yellow circle.

[#16 :]

Oh boy do I feel stupid now.

I will be deleting my comment on youtube, because I am sick of the STFU ITS A CARTOON comments.  Plus now I can't even act smug, because my query has been completely squashed.

So in short, it's a case of Reality looking Unrealistic, right?

Funny, the golden death star on tnuk's diagram looks like a golden version of Dark Matter from the Kirby games.

[#17 :]

Ooh, another tnuk-diagram. It makes sense!

The detail on the death star is fantastic.

In the movie or the diagram? I noticed that about the diagram and wondered how much time was spent bedazzling the little yellow circle.

The diagram.  I wondered the same thing.

[#18 :]

About three minutes. I sketched it quickly using the paintbrush tool as a series of large coloured blobs and then shrank it, and cropped to a circle. Cleaned up a little, and BAM! Detailed little bugger, aint she?

[#19 :]

About three minutes. I sketched it quickly using the paintbrush tool as a series of large coloured blobs and then shrank it, and cropped to a circle. Cleaned up a little, and BAM! Detailed little bugger, aint she?

She's smashing.  I'm sorry Aldaraan didn't get blown up in style by this beauty.

[#20 :]

This is hilarious, DonnyJC14 is my favourite thing ever.

[#21 :]

1:14:18 is where it happens. The Nimbus looks to be somewhere between LEO and Geostationary, so it's reasonable to assume that something so massive would fall towards the Earth.

That doesn't match up with your picture, though; the Nimbus should be headed directly towards the center of the Earth, unless it had some remaining momentum. (All the other mass is negligible.)

If you liked this thread, you might want to check out Tom Roger's book Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics which talks about why, among other things, you don't want to explode a spaceship in outer space. (He ranks The Core as the movie with the slipperiest grasp of physics and science.)

[#22 :]

That doesn't match up with your picture, though; the Nimbus should be headed directly towards the center of the Earth, unless it had some remaining momentum. (All the other mass is negligible.)

The Nimbus falls towards the Earth along a trajectory defined by its direction and velocity at the start of the fall. Since the Earth is moving in the background, this means she's not in Geostationary orbit. Since it's moving slowly, it means that she's close. Nothing on GSO falls directly towards the Earth, because to be at that point, you need to have a certain amount of momentum and hold onto it. Otherwise your orbit decays. The Nimbus is under power until she's holed, therefore she's holding position and has some momentum. It is logical to assume that this momentum is translated along the vector at right-angles to the blast, just like a gyroscope (the arrangement shown is effectively a gyroscopic one). This follows the trajectory described by the falling ship.

You'll also note that my diagrammed trajectory is much longer, and more exaggerated than the one shown in the movie... I did this partly to illustrate what's happening more obviously and simply. The Nimbus doesn't actually fall in a shallow arc. It's fairly steep. She's falling directly toward the Earth's centre of gravity (not necessarily the same thing as the centre), but she's also following a course described by her initial momentum and the force applied to her by the blast from the Gold Death Star.

I did think about this before posting the picture y'know. It's not perfect, given that there are some assumptions involved. But they are reasonable ones. It's not exactly rigrous, but it's rigorous enough for a comedy sci-fi cartoon movie, IMO.

[#23 :]

Aww that's so cute you called the Nimbus "she".   Not many people call ships and trains "she" anymore.

Though if Love and Rocket are anything to go by, the Nimbus could actually be female in the literal sense and not just the nautical.

[#24 :]

Aww that's so cute you called the Nimbus "she".   Not many people call ships and trains "she" anymore.

Sorry, ladies, but there's no way I can resist that saying :
“Ships are like women.... expensive to rig, and difficult to steer”

[#25 :]

ROFL at that diagram, the sheer notion that someone took the time to draw some half baked diagram is f'ing hilarious.

I took the time to sign up just to comment on the diagram.....that made my day!

[#26 :]

I think you saved yourself from tnuk raging at you with that second line.

[#27 :]

Welcome to PEEL, Speedmetal.  Stick around: it's an interesting place.  And geeky and weird, and you might need a thick skin and a relaxed attitude at first, to be sure, but it is interesting.

[#28 :]

ROFL at that diagram, the sheer notion that someone took the time to draw some half baked diagram is f'ing hilarious.

It's a lot easier to explain things via a diagram than it is to make sixteen wall-of-text posts that outline the concepts involved in something every single time the same old questions keep popping up. So I now have quite a range of PEEL diagrams that (hopefully) explain complicated answers as simply as possible, and save me from typing several thousand words only to have somebody reply "what?" or "tl:dr".

Here is a selection of the stuff I've made to explain things to PEEL recently.


Finally, all my diagrams are at least three quarters and sometimes as much as 95% baked, you obnoxious little fungus.

[#29 :]

In a perfect world, you'd be paid for your posts.

[#30 :]

In a perfect world, you'd be paid for your posts.

In a perfect world, I'd be independantly wealthy and wouldn't have to think about money, ever.

[#31 :]

That'll always be the dream... [/wistful sigh]