Space Policy: Why Mars should be our top priority.

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
dakotatelephone...


Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:


Reminds me of space bugs in the movie version of Stormship Troopers. They
apparently could far glowing gas balls out their arse at near relativistic
speeds.

Yeah, I couldn't make heads or tails of that either; how were those asteroids
getting to Earth anyway?
My God, those things could fart with more accuracy than a sniper can fire
bullets. :-)
In the animated version of SST ("Roughnecks") the bugs were running around up
on Pluto sans spacesuits.
Apparently in Europe the movie was considered a parody along the lines of
"Bill, The Galactic Hero", poking fun at the Gung-Ho Americans*.
(I have to admit when you watch it with that concept in mind, it is pretty
damn funny,



I think the original movie had just that concept in mind, not the US, but
humanity.
The very last scene in the movie made the satire clear. Remember, the entire
premise was that we were being invaded/infected by hords of mindless bugs
instinctively attacking and dying en masse as if moths to a flame. And we were
only holding them off with our 'advanced' technology. But in the very last
scene, when
they had captured the brain bug, they showed our 'scientists' trying to figure
out how
they think by ...ramming things it's throat...right! We were the ones
invading/infesting
their system. And our troops were the ones mindlessly going to their slaughter
en masse.

WE were the bugs/animals...THEY were the intellignent beings with the advanced
technology, which was so far above us we couldn't begin to comprehend how
they did it.

That was great sci-fi imo.


as they take the story and kick it up that extra notch into absurdity, rather
like "Space, Above And Beyond" unintentionally did.... yeah, your flight
commander carries a Kamikaze prayer around with him, and you are going to fly
with _him_ into battle?)
In my series "Space Command Ultra Marines ("SCUM") we shall see the dropping
of the troops onto Glitch, the moon of Fubar in the Gremlin System, under the
command of Commander "Snafu" Burnside...his bold plan of having the troops
free-fall into the atmosphere and open their parachutes at around 500 feet
would have worked brilliantly if only Glitch had _had_ a atmosphere.
But the attack was not a complete failure, as much Flunki** military equipment
was destroyed by the kinetic energy of the Space Marines striking the surface
at around 2,000 mph, like human earthquake bombs. And even today on Glitch the
craters they made show the outstanding accuracy of their drop pattern...as
well as greatly simplifying the construction of "The Glitch Memorial Cemetery"
which merely required tombstones to be added to the pre-excavated graves.






* If that's the case, then Heinlein's ghost must really be ****ed.
He saw BTGH


BTGH? Back to God hour?


as a direct slap military sci-fi in general, and his work in
particular, and didn't ever talk to Harry Harrison again after it was
published.
To see SST turned into a parody would have _really_ torqued him off.

** A slow-moving but fast-talking race of intelligent giant millipedes bent on
galactic conquest - one foot at a time.

Pat