Technical / Procedural Advice for Film

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:
"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
(Joseph) wrote:

This is what everyone is saying. But for dramatic purposes it has to
be noticed, preferably by people in the shuttle or space station.
(It's pretty hard to make a movie about radar blips.)

Not when you have writers who can write, and actors who can act, and
directors who can direct.

I submit you might profitably watch 'The Enemy Below' and 'Run Silent,
Run Deep' for movies made mostly about fighting shadows never seen.

Or if you want a scifi one... the ST:TOS episode Balance of Terror.

Well, William Shatner breaks the 'actors who can act' portion of the
specification, but otherwise yah.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...

"triples" wrote:

as the movie "Contact" pointed out.

Relying on a movie for information is a dangerous business at best.

Weren't you the guy who just recommended a couple movies, including
"Run Silent, Run Deep"?

For education on how to write/produce/direct/act, not as a reference
for technical, political, or historical matters.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Joseph wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote in message .com...

Joseph wrote:

I'm an indie filmmaker working on a screenplay about a mysterious
alien object that suddenly appears in Earth orbit. In the story it is
first spotted by the space shuttle and then confirmed by radar and
telescopes on the ground.

I am trying to get a sense of the types of procedures people in the
space and SETI communities would go through in the first few minutes
and hours after discovering it.

As long as it is not very big (please no ID4 size ships) it is
unlikely to be detected approaching and entering orbit. Being first
seen by the shuttle is extraordinarily unlikely. It would have to pass
close enough to notice it and make out what it is. Passing in orbit
that close, probably no less than a couple miles just to be noticed
and then quick to the binoculars if any are on board to make up it is
odd is a very low probability. Then multiply by the fraction of the
year a shuttle is in orbit. A very dramatic scene is possible but it
was unlikely when SG-1 and Outer Limits did it. It won't get any more
likly for you.

This is what everyone is saying. But for dramatic purposes it has to
be noticed, preferably by people in the shuttle or space station.
(It's pretty hard to make a movie about radar blips.)

There are real SF stories and then there are 90% classified as
action/adventure or drama. If want SF the devil is in the details,
being creative within realistic limitations.

Set it ten years in the future. Put it in the new coordinating center
for deep space radars and telescopes looking for asteriods that might
collide with earth. Do some handwaving, computer industry
billionaire's pet project, but they detect something. As it is heading
for orbit they say it is going to hit, press release, panic, rioting,
looting. It is closely watched, dramatic pauses, countdowns, waiting
for impact ... nothing happens. Damn it took up orbit! The world is
focused.

The object will be large enough, and WEIRD enough, that it will be
noticed and fairly quickly identified as non-terrestial.

So how big should I make it? Would making it highly reflecive increase
the chance it is seen?

Flat white is best. Shuttle color. Highlights are smaller than the
object itself. You can make a passing nod to real SF that it was
assumed to be huge because it reflected so much light as it was
expected to be dark like asteroids. So it can be a reasonable size
once in orbit.

It is unlikely anyone is going to be looking for it. It should
eventually show up on the junk tracking radar. It will be a decent
size and not explainable. For the life of me I don't know how to get a
picture of it unless a spy satellite can be retasked to get a
picture. We see the best NASA has when they follow the shuttle after
launch. I have never seen an image of more than a bright object at
twilight when it is in orbit. Neither of the space station which is
much larger.

Many countries can send rockets into orbit. I know there are even
amatures working on it. How difficult would it be to send a camera up
specifically to look at it?

There are very limited orbits for launches mainly because they have a
tendency to fail and fall on people. So the launch locations are where
down range is over water or sparsely populated areas. If you launch a
rocket just right it can fall on you after one orbit. For example,
Canaveral as a fairly wide range of orbits but not polar which are all
out of Vandenberg.

So have a dramatic meeting with the US gov deciding if it is worth
the risk of falling on New York or something. "If we don't take the
risk, Russia or China will" is one position. "They came all this way.
They will talk to us when they are ready. We can't force them to let
us in if we go up there" is another position. Then throw in all the
obvious cliches about if they want us to be there, might think it is a
hostile act and the rest.

The difficulty it getting into an orbit that might approximate it
with something equiped with enough manouvering fuel. Unlikely. And
cameras with lenses good enough to take long distance pictures are not
off the shelf.

If really depends if you have action, drama or SF in mind. If not SF
your main requirement is to do it differently from all the many ways
it has been done before. The shuttle seeing it first is a cliche.

But lets see. A space walk goes wrong. The guy, make it a woman for
melodrama, floats away, hope is given up. A big object shows up and
nudges her back towards the shuttle. Nickname the aliens the dolphins
until we finally see them.

--
If it was moral to overthrow Hussein then it is immoral not to
overthrow anyone like him. Supporting anyone like Hussein makes
the US just as guilty. The lesson is, don't make moral arguments
unless you know what you are talking about.
The Iron Webmaster, 3075

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...

Or if you want a scifi one... the ST:TOS episode Balance of Terror.

Well, William Shatner breaks the 'actors who can act' portion of the
specification, but otherwise yah.

Personally I've always been a fan of Mark Lenard.

And in TNG... after watching Patrick Stewart act in the episode Chain of
Command Part II, I could never watch Frakes in the same scenes as Stewart.



D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Note: the following is constructive criticism, if I seem harsh,
it is only because I am eager to see you get it right.


(Joseph) wrote in message . com...
I'm an indie filmmaker working on a screenplay about a mysterious
alien object that suddenly appears in Earth orbit. In the story it is
first spotted by the space shuttle and then confirmed by radar and
telescopes on the ground.

Wrong. The shuttle does not have the right equipment
for this, nor are its operations even remotely optimized
for cataloging objects in orbit. This kind of thing is
done with ground based equipment almost exclusively,
mostly large radar systems mixed in with some optical
systems. It would be far more likely that NORAD and/or
SPACECOM would spot it first if it just mysteriously
appeared in orbit. Most probably by radar. They spend
every second of every day looking at the sky tracking
satellites in orbit, space junk in orbit down to the
size of nuts and bolts, and looking for incoming
ballistic missiles or other such threats.


I am trying to get a sense of the types of procedures people in the
space and SETI communities would go through in the first few minutes
and hours after discovering it.

Wouldn't matter. It would be spotted by an entirely
different community than those which now concern
themselves with extraterrestrial life. First though,
how do they know it's extraterrestrial? What sorts
of information are they going to have that's proof
that it doesn't have a human origin? This is
especially problematic if the object simply appears in
orbit. The most logical assumption would be that it's
a man-made satellite. Perhaps it's a top secret spysat
from some country or other which had been using some
sort of "low observable" technology (like a radar /
light absorbing shroud over most of it) that
malfunctioned or was removed for some reason. Until
there's absolute proof it's alien the assumption will
be that it's human.

If the object flew into orbit from the outer Solar
System and very obviously made a propulsive manouver
into Earth orbit, that would pretty much cinch the
extraterrestrial origin. In that case it would
probably be spotted on its journey toward Earth
either by amateur astronomers looking for comets and
asteroids (unlikely, depending on how "bright" it is),
or by automated near earth object tracking systems
(such as NEAT and LINEAR), which would tag it as a
very, very close "near-miss" asteroid. Most likely,
due to errors in the determination of the object's
solar orbit from the crude, initial data it would be
tagged as having a sizeable impact risk. That would
garner rapid followup observations which would pin
down the orbit more accurately and show it was just
a very close miss. More observations would inevitably
occur, by many amateurs as well as professionals, as
the "asteroid" was at closest approach, since that
would be were it was brightest. If it braked and went
into Earth orbit, that would not go unnoticed, and
that's when the gasp would come. It would be THE news
story immediately after. Depending on how bright the
object was it may not be detected initially until only
a few weeks or days before closest approach to Earth.


It is my understanding that SETI is only prepared to identify an
incoming signal as "not natural" and has no specific procedures in
place at all regarding what message to send out.

SETI would reject signals from the spacecraft as a source.
SETI looks for signals outside our Solar System, if they
are in our Solar System and especially within Earth orbit,
they are almost always culled as being of human origin.
How would SETI know that a signal from a satellite in Earth
orbit is from an alien spacecraft rather than from one of
the kajillion known and several more or less unknown man-
made satellites? There are no specially set aside radio
bands for alien broadcasts. In short, there is no easy way
to tell that a satellite is of alien origin or not unless
there are other clues (see above).


Which is fine, they probably don't need one. But what if an alien
object appeared? What would people do? Form a committee and discuss it
for a year before contacting it?

Maybe, the committe would be irrelevant though. Keep in
mind that for an object in Earth orbit, there are
*literally* (and I mean "literally" literally) millions of
organizations and individuals on Earth capable of
communicating with it via radio or observing it via
telescope. The question is quite apt, what would *people*
do. They would, I would imagine, do a wide variety of
things, some of them probably unpredictable, many of them
unorganized.


I assume the Military would get involved and would want to determine
if it was a spy satellite, or some other kind of threat. Would they
have the power keep it a secret? Would people at NASA keep it a
secret? Would SETI even be informed?

It could not be a secret. Note that the most secret of
spy satellites, a multi-billion dollar "low observable"
spy satellite that involved a faked launch failure as a
ruse to keep it secret was tracked by none other than
amateurs with backyard telescopes and ham rigs. There
are loose communities who keep track of satellites as a
hobby, if a new one popped up it would be noticed.

"Joseph" wrote in message
om...
I'm an indie filmmaker working on a screenplay about a mysterious
alien object that suddenly appears in Earth orbit. In the story it is
first spotted by the space shuttle and then confirmed by radar and
telescopes on the ground.

Suppose it switched from an equatorial orbit to a polar orbit. It would
take a tremendous amount of rocket fuel to do that. Suppose it did some
maneuvers that are so fuel inefficient, they couldn't be done with standard
chemical rockets. That would imply alien origin, but it isn't proof of
alien origin, because China might launch a nuclear rocket. The alien object
could chase the shuttle and fly by it on purpose. Ground control might tell
the shuttle astronauts to look out the window.

(Joseph) wrote in message . com...
This is what everyone is saying. But for dramatic purposes it has to
be noticed, preferably by people in the shuttle or space station.
(It's pretty hard to make a movie about radar blips.)

Sure you can. Here's a scenario:

You have a large spacecraft, big solar panels would
help, I'm thinking the size of a house or bigger.
It's spotted by an automated near earth object
survey maybe a week or so away from closest approach.
For extra fun let's say it has a hyperbolic Solar
Orbit, which means, automatically, that it does not
naturally belong to our Solar System and came from
outside of it. At first, due to the inaccuracies in
the crude, early data used for detection, the
uncertainty in the object's orbit at closest approach
to Earth is such that there's a chance it will hit
Earth. The closer to Earth this thing will come the
greater the estimated impact risk will be for any
given uncertainty. If you peg it at a few hundred
miles altitude distance from Earth, then it'll be
hair raising for some time. Even more so because
of its extra-solar origin. This would probably be
enough to start some gears turning, slowly mind you,
that this might be an alien craft, the chances of
both a very close approach and inter-stellar
trajectory would be too much. The top levels of
governments might even pay attention even at this
point. There would be a mad rush to pin down the
orbit more accurately through more observations with
better equipment. There would probably be a news
splash due to the impact risk and whatnot. After it
was determined to merely pass by very closely and not
hit Earth, the hubub would die down somewhat, though
not entirely.

Then, for a few days you have a whole slew of
observations of the object, but it's unlikely any of
them would be able to conclusively say it's alien
yet. If it were transmitting via radio that might
get picked up, but really it's unlikely anyone who
had the equipment to localize the transmissions to
this object alone would be listening, and everyone
else would just assume the transmissions were
from other satellites. Assuming that the
transmissions are strong enough to get picked up at
that distance in the first place. Anyway, when the
object reached closest approach to Earth it would
appear the brightest and be moving the fastest
across the sky, so it's a no brainer target for
amateur astronmers. It would also be observed by a
few pro's who do that sort of thing routinely.

If it approached Earth closely, couple hundred miles,
it would probably also be spotted by satellite
tracking radar systems in the US, Russia, and
elsewhere. When the craft starts applying thrust
and braking, it would be noticed that it was in the
wrong spot relative to where it should be. If it
went into orbit, it would be noticed that it stuck
around rather than pass by. These facts would be
noticed within hours at the most by the amateurs and
professionals observing the object. The conclusion
at that point would be obvious and quite dramatic.
Maybe a professional astronomer who's studying
near Earth asteroids is in the observatory taking
pictures of this as it passes overhead. Those
shots would be automated but the astronomer would
be able to see them pretty quickly (within minutes).
Perhaps they notice that the object is drifting off
of where it should be headed. Then, after analyzing
the errors they notice that they are consistent and
look a lot like continuous thrust. Then maybe they
notice that the estimated amount of velocity change
would be enough to put the object in orbit, so they
do a few quick calculations to estimate what that
orbit would be and figure out where the object is
now. Then maybe they call up someone at a friendly
observatory in a position on the other side of Earth
to image the object now, or they wait an hour or a
few hours for it to pass their way again (though if
it's in a really low orbit it may not pass within
sight of the same spot on the ground on the next
orbit). Then after the chaos of tracking the thing
settles down, there would probably be quite a few
phone calls made. Probably they'd call the minor
planet center which would then notify the government.

Meanwhile, the military / NORAD may have tracked
this object as it manouvered into orbit. This would
definitely be a notable occurance for them. Note
that they are tasked with determining whether stuff
like this is a threat (e.g. a missile attack) within
a handful of minutes. I'd imagine quite a lot of
bustle and quite a lot of shouting as they worked
out what it was, then got higher ups involved who
needed to be involved (joint chiefs, president,
etc.), then proceeded to find out more about it and
figure out what to do.


The object will be large enough, and WEIRD enough, that it will be
noticed and fairly quickly identified as non-terrestial.

So how big should I make it? Would making it highly reflecive increase
the chance it is seen?

Yes. For example, it's likely that the near-Earth
asteroid 2004 FH is actually a piece of "space junk" from
the Apollo program that has been rambling about in Solar
orbit for decades. It is actually a fairly small piece
of metal (only about 20-30ft in dimension), but it's
painted white so it would appear as large as a 100ft
diameter asteroid, which we can spot some fair distance
away (days away).

"triples" wrote ...
I'm an indie filmmaker working on a screenplay about a
mysterious alien object that suddenly appears in Earth
orbit. In the story it is first spotted by the space
shuttle and then confirmed by radar and telescopes on the
ground.

The astronauts (even when they are in space) don't spend
much time looking out the windows

Yeah as pointed out several times already the order of events
isn't plausible unless it is set up to happen that way.

In other words the alien craft is using advanced stealth
technology of some sort, _lets_ itself be seen by the Shuttle.

This is actually a reasonable course of action. If I was an
alien visiting a strange planet I'd like to open contact with a
small, unarmed, manned craft in orbit. For a start it would
seem likely that the people in there would be more intelligent
and probably less likely to be xenophobic than those down
on the ground.

In sci.space.policy Joseph wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote in message .com...

This is what everyone is saying. But for dramatic purposes it has to
be noticed, preferably by people in the shuttle or space station.
(It's pretty hard to make a movie about radar blips.)

The object will be large enough, and WEIRD enough, that it will be
noticed and fairly quickly identified as non-terrestial.

Just make it emmit lots of noise in a band that is unlikely to remain
un-noticed. It wants to talk to humans, right?


So how big should I make it? Would making it highly reflecive increase
the chance it is seen?

A bit.


Joseph

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

"Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)" wrote:

"Derek Lyons" wrote in message
...
"triples" wrote:
The military is very poor about keeping any secrets anyway -

Except of course for all the ones they *have* kept.


And which ones would those be? :-)


The ones which instead of blabing about or leaving in lost laptops
the sold off?

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++