Does E = mc² or mc³? The Science in Bond Films Thread

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• Gerard

  May 2018 Posts: 5,812

  Without me.
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  May 2018 Posts: 7,976

  I'm still considering the Liparus question. The water in the hold would move with the movements of the ship and wouldn't form any problem at all in high seas if you ask me, as it is redestributed with every move. It might however make the ship dive over high waves. Th problem woulde be the submarines, especially if they aren't secured. If the Liparus is heavy enough (the bottom of the Liparus should be below the bottom of the subs with water in between) the floating of the subs wouldn't be a problem and the bow doors would just close. After al the ship doesn't change the density of the water.
  
  
• TheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'

  May 2018 Posts: 9,117

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_surface_effect
  
  This is what water sloshing around inside a ship does. It's one of the worst things that can happen.
  
  Unless the Liparus is a catamaran the moment you open the bow doors its going down.
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  May 2018 Posts: 7,976

  Well the Estonia wasn't carrying water from the start, nor supposed to. We can safely assume the Liparus is, as she's designed to pick up subs. SO it's also safe to presume she's balanced out in the compartments behind the sub-compartment. That's also the only way she would be able to move foreward with opened bow doors. The effect is a contributor, but seldom the sole course of the accidents. Considering the proposed size of the Liparus, the hight of the waves and thus movement of the centre of gravity should be relatively small. Of course she could be a catamaran, but she certainly doesn't look like one.
  
  And seeing this picture when she's carrying a huge giant the world has never seen before, it's easy to see she isn't.
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  I'm reintroducing the James Bond Shower item, with Fleming passages.
  Surely that can convince @Gerard to give it a try.
  
  

  Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953.
  

  Chapter 8 - Pink Lights and Champagne
  
  Bond walked up to his room, which again showed no sign of trespass, threw off his clothes, took a long hot bath followed by an ice cold shower and lay down on his bed. There remained an hour in which to rest and compose his thoughts before he met the girl in the Splendide bar, an hour to examine minutely the details of his plans for the game, and for after the game, in all the various circumstances of victory or defeat. He had to plan the attendant roles of Mathis, Leiter, and the girl and visualize the reactions of the enemy in various contingencies. He closed his eyes and his thoughts pursued his imagination through a series of carefully constructed scenes as if he was watching the tumbling chips of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope.
  
  At twenty minutes to nine he had exhausted all the permutations which might result from his duel with Le Chiffre. He rose and dressed, dismissing the future completely from his mind.
  

  Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming, 1954.
  Chapter III – A Visiting-Card

  …
  He was given a military haircut and was told that he was a New Englander from Boston and that he was on holiday from his job with the London office of the Guaranty Trust Company. He was reminded to ask for the 'check' rather the 'bill', to say 'cab' instead of 'taxi' and (this from Leiter) to avoid words of more than two syllables. ('You can get through any American conversation,' advised Leiter, 'with "Yeah", "Nope" and "Sure".') The English word to be avoided at all costs, added Leiter, was 'Ectually'. Bond had said that this word was not part of his vocabulary.
  
  Bond looked grimly at the pile of parcels which contained his new identity, stripped off his pyjamas for the last time ('We mostly sleep in the raw in America, Mr. Bond') and gave himself a sizzling cold shower. As he shaved he examined his face in the glass. The thick comma of black hair above his right eyebrow had lost some of its tail and his hair was trimmed close across the temples. Nothing could be done about the thin vertical scar down his right cheek, although the FBI had experimented with 'Cover-Mark', or about the coldness and hint of anger in his grey-blue eyes, but there was the mixed blood of America in the black hair and high cheekbones and Bond thought he might get by — except, perhaps, with women.
  
  Naked, Bond walked out into the lobby and tore open some of the packages. Later, in white shirt and dark blue trousers, he went into the sitting-room, pulled a chair up to the writing-desk near the window and opened The Travellers Tree, by Patrick Leigh Fermor.
  
  This extraordinary book had been recommended to him by M.
  
  'It's by a chap who knows what he's talking about,' he said, 'and don't forget that he was writing about what was happening in Haiti in 1950. This isn't medieval black-magic stuff. It's being practised every day.'
  

  
  Chapter IV – The Big Switchboard

  …
  'Tell all "Eyes",' said a slow, deep voice,' to watch out from now on. Three men.' A brief description of Leiter, Bond and Dexter followed. 'May be coming in this evening or tomorrow. Tell them to watch particularly on First to Eight and the other Avenues. The night spots too, in case they're missed coming in. They're not to be molested. Call me when you get a sure fix. Got it?'
  
  'Yes, Sir, Boss,' said The Whisper, breathing fast. The voice went quiet. The operator took the whole handful of plugs, and soon the big switchboard was alive with winking lights. Softly, urgently, he whispered on into the evening.
  
  At six o'clock Bond was awakened by the soft burr of the telephone. He took a cold shower and dressed carefully. He put on a garishly striped tie and allowed a broad wedge of bandana to protrude from his breast pocket. He slipped the chamois leather holster over his shirt so that it hung three inches below his left armpit. He whipped at the mechanism of the Beretta until all eight bullets lay on the bed. Then he packed them back into the magazine, loaded the gun, put up the safety-catch and slipped it into the holster.
  
  He picked up the pair of Moccasin casuals, felt their toes and weighed them in his hand. Then he reached under the bed and pulled out a pair of his own shoes he had carefully kept out of the suitcase full of his belongings the FBI had taken away from him that morning.
  

  
  Chapter IX - True or False
  

  …
  He picked up the telephone and talked to the Overseas operator. 'Ten minutes' delay, she said.
  
  Bond walked into his bedroom and somehow got out of his clothes. He gave himself a very hot shower and then an ice-cold one. He shaved and managed to pull on a clean shirt and trousers. He put a fresh clip in his Beretta and wrapped the Colt in his discarded shirt and put it in his suitcase. He was half way through his packing when the telephone rang.

  Moonraker, Ian Fleming, 1955.
  Chapter XXIII – Zero Minus
  

  …
  She went through the communicating door. How extraordinary it was to see her familiar things again. It must be someone else who had sat at that desk and typed letters and powdered her nose. She shrugged her shoulders and went into the little washroom. God what a sight and God how tired she felt! But first she took a wet towel and some peroxide and went back and spent ten minutes attending to the battlefield which was Bond's face.
  
  He sat silent, a hand resting on her waist, and watched her gratefully. Then when she had gone back into her room and he heard her shut the door of the washroom behind her he got up, turned off the still hissing blowtorch, and walked into Drax's shower, stripped and stood for five minutes under the icy water. 'Preparing the corpse!' he reflected ruefully as he surveyed his battered face in the mirror.
  
  He put on his clothes and went back to Drax's desk which he searched methodically. It yielded only one prize, tha 'office bottle', a half-full bottle of Haig and Haig. He fetched two glasses and some water and called to Gala.
  
  He heard the door of the washroom open. "What is it?"
  
  "Whisky."
  
  "You drink. I'll be ready in a minute."
  
  Bond looked at the bottle and poured himself three-quarters of a toothglass and drank it straight down in two gulps. Then he gingerly lit a blessed cigarette and sat on the edge of the desk and felt the liquor burn down through his stomach into his legs.
  

  Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming, 1956.
  Chapter 22 – Love and Sauce Bearnaise

  …
  Bond looked quietly at her mouth and then kissed her hard on the lips.
  
  She didn't respond, but broke away, and her eyes were laughing again. She linked her arm high up in his and turned towards the open doors that led to the lift. "Take me down," she said. "I must go and rewrite my face, and anyway I want to spend a long time dressing the business for sale." She paused and then put her mouth close up to his ear. "In case it interests you, James Bond," she said softly. "I've never what you'd call 'slept with a man' in my life." She tugged at his arm. "And now come on," she said brusquely. "And anyway it's time you went and had a Hot Domestic. I suppose that's part of the subject-language you'll be wanting me to pick up. You subject-people surely do write up the craziest things in your bathrooms."
  
  Bond took her to her cabin and then went on to his and had a 'Hot Salt' bath followed by a 'Cold Domestic' shower. Then he lay on his bed and smiled to himself over some of the things she had said, and thought of her lying in her bath looking at the forest of bath-taps and thinking how crazy the English were.
  

  From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, 1957.
  Part Two – The Execution
  Chapter Eleven - The Soft Life

  The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline.
  
  In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.
  
  At 7.30 on the morning of Thursday, August 12th, Bond awoke in his comfortable flat in the plane-tree'd square off the King's Road and was disgusted to find that he was thoroughly bored with the prospect of the day ahead. Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.
  
  Bond reached out and gave two rings on the bell to show May, his treasured Scottish housekeeper, that he was ready for breakfast. Then he abruptly flung the single sheet off his naked body and swung his feet to the floor.
  
  There was only one way to deal with boredom---kick oneself out of it. Bond went down on his hands and did twenty slow press-ups, lingering over each one so that his muscles had no rest. When his arms could stand the pain no longer, he rolled over on his back and, with his hands at his sides, did the straight leg-lift until his stomach muscles screamed. He got to his feet and, after touching his toes twenty times, went over to arm and chest exercises combined with deep breathing until he was dizzy. Panting with the exertion, he went into the big white-tiled bathroom and stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then cold hissing water for five minutes.
  
  At last, after shaving and putting on a sleeveless dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt and navy blue tropical worsted trousers, he slipped his bare feet into black leather sandals and went through the bedroom into the long big-windowed sitting-room with the satisfaction of having sweated his boredom, at any rate for the time being, out of his body.
  
  May, an elderly Scotswoman with iron grey hair and a handsome closed face, came in with the tray and put it on the table in the bay window together with The Times, the only paper Bond ever read.
  
  Bond wished her good morning and sat down to breakfast...
  

  
  Chapter Seventeen - Killing Time
  

  It was seven o'clock on the same evening and James Bond was back in his hotel. He had had a hot bath and a cold shower. He thought that he had at last scoured the zoo smell out of his skin.
  
  He was sitting, naked except for his shorts, at one of the windows of his room, sipping a vodka and tonic and looking out into the heart of the great tragic sunset over the Golden Horn. But his eyes didn't see the torn cloth of gold and blood that hung behind the minaretted stage beneath which he had caught his first glimpse of Tatiana Romanova.
  
  He was thinking of the tall beautiful girl with the dancer's long gait who had walked through the drab door with a piece of paper in her hand. She had stood beside her Chief and handed him the paper. All the men had looked up at her. She had blushed and looked down. What had that expression on the men's faces meant? It was more than just the way some men look at a beautiful girl. They had shown curiosity. That was reasonable. They wanted to know what was in the signal, why they were being disturbed. But what else? There had been slyness and contempt---the way people stare at prostitutes.
  

  Dr. No, Ian Fleming, 1958.
  Chapter IV – Reception Committee
  

  …
  The Blue Hills was a comfortable old-fashioned hotel with modern trimmings. Bond was welcomed with deference because his reservation had been made by King's House. He was shown to a fine corner room with a balcony looking out over the distant sweep of Kingston harbour. Thankfully he" took off his London clothes, now moist with perspiration, and went into the glass-fronted shower and turned the cold water full on and stood under it for five minutes during which he washed his hair to remove the last dirt of big-city life. Then he pulled on a pair of Sea Island cotton shorts and, with sensual pleasure at the warm soft air on his nakedness, unpacked his things and rang for the waiter.
  
  Bond ordered a double gin and tonic and one whole green lime. When the drink came he cut the lime in half, dropped the two squeezed halves into the long glass, almost filled the glass with ice cubes and then poured in the tonic. He took the drink out on to the balcony, and sat and looked out across the spectacular view. He thought how wonderful it was to be away from headquarters, and from London, and from hospitals, and to be here, at this moment, doing what he was doing and knowing, as all his senses told him, that he was on a good tough case again.
  

  Goldfinger, Ian Fleming, 1959.
  Chapter Three - The Man with Agoraphobia
  

  …
  Beyond was the long, golden beach and the sea, and more men - raking the tideline, putting up the umbrellas, laying out mattresses. No wonder the neat card inside Bond's wardrobe had said that the cost of the Aloha Suite was two hundred dollars a day. Bond made a rough calculation. If he was paying the bill, it would take him just three weeks to spend his whole salary for the year. Bond smiled cheerfully to himself. He went back into the bedroom, picked up the telephone and ordered himself a delicious, wasteful breakfast, a carton of king-size Chesterfields and the newspapers.
  
  By the time he had shaved and had an ice-cold shower and dressed it was eight o'clock. He walked through into the elegant sitting-room and found a waiter in a uniform of plum and gold laying out his breakfast beside the window. Bond glanced at the Miami Herald. The front page was devoted to yesterday's failure of an American ICBM at the nearby Cape Canaveral and a bad upset in a big race at Hialeah.
  
  Bond dropped the paper on the floor and sat down and slowly ate his breakfast and thought about Mr Du Pont and Mr Goldfinger.
  

  The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming, 1962.
  Chapter Fourteen - Bimbo

  CABIN Number 3 was airless and stuffy. While James Bond collected our "luggage"
  from among the trees, I opened the glass slats of the windows and turned down
  the sheets on the double bed. I should have felt embarrassed, but I didn't. I
  just enjoyed housekeeping for him by moonlight. Then I tried the shower and
  found miraculously that there was still full pressure, though farther down the
  line many stretches of the pipes must have melted. The top cabins were nearer to
  the main. I stripped off all my clothes and made them into a neat pile and went
  into the shower and opened a new cake of Camay ("Pamper your Guests with Pink
  Camay—With a scent like costly French Perfume... blended with Fine Cold Cream" I
  remembered, because it sounded so succulent, it said on the packet) and began to
  lather myself all over, gently, because of the bruises.
  
  Through the noise of the shower, I didn't hear him come into the bathroom. But
  suddenly there were two more hands washing me and a naked body was up against
  mine and I smelled the sweat and the gunpowder and I turned and laughed up into
  his grimy face and then I was in his arms and our mouths met in a kiss that
  seemed as if it would never end while the water poured down and made us shut our
  eyes.
  

  On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming, 1963.
  Chapter 2 – Gran Turismo
  

  …
  His two battered suitcases came and he unpacked leisurely and then ordered from Room Service a bottle of the Taittinger Blanc de Blancs that he had made his traditional drink at Royale. When the bottle, in its frosted silver bucket, came, he drank a quarter of it rather fast and then went into the bathroom and had an ice-cold shower and washed his hair with Pinaud Elixir, that prince among shampoos, to get the dust of the roads out of it. Then he slipped on his dark-blue tropical worsted trousers, white sea-island cotton shirt, socks and black casual shoes (he abhorred shoe-laces), and went and sat by the window and looked out across the promenade to the sea and wondered where he would have dinner and what he would choose to eat.
  
  James Bond was not a gourmet. In England he lived on grilled soles, oeufs cocotte and cold roast beef with potato salad. But when travelling abroad, generally by himself, meals were a welcome break in the day, something to look forward to, something to break the tension of fast driving, with its risks taken or avoided, the narrow squeaks, the permanent background of concern for the fitness of his machine. In fact, at this moment, after covering the long stretch from the Italian frontier at Ventimiglia in a comfortable three days (God knew there was no reason to hurry back to Head quartets!), he was fed to the teeth with the sucker-traps for gourmandizing tourists. The 'Hostelleries', the 'Vieilles Auberges', the 'Relais Fleuris' - he had had the lot. He had had their 'Bonnes Tables', and their 'Fines Bouteilles'. He had had their 'Spécialites du Chef - generally a rich sauce of cream and wine and a few button mushrooms concealing poor quality meat or fish. He had had the whole lip-smacking ritual of winemanship and foodmanship and, incidentally, he had had quite enough of the Bisodol that went with it!
  

  The Man With the Golden Gun, Ian Fleming, 1964.
  Chapter 7 – Un-Real Estate
  

  …
  James Bond unpacked his few belongings and called room service. A Jamaican voice answered. Bond ordered a bottle of Walker's deluxe bourbon, three glasses, ice, and, for nine o'clock, eggs Benedict. The voice said, "Sure, sir." Bond then took off his clothes, put his gun and holster under a pillow, rang for the valet, and had his suit taken away to be pressed. By the time he had taken a hot shower followed by an ice-cold one and pulled on a fresh pair of sea island cotton underpants, the bourbon had arrived.
  
  The best drink in the day is just before the first one (the Red Stripe didn't count). James Bond put ice in the glass and three fingers of the bourbon and swilled it round the glass to cool it and break it down with the ice. He pulled a chair up to the window, put a low table beside it, took Profiles in Courage by Jack Kennedy out of his suitcase, happened to open it at Edmund G. Ross ("I looked down into my open grave"), then went and sat down, letting the scented air, a compound of sea and trees, breathe over his body, naked save for the underpants. He drank the bourbon down in two long draughts and felt its friendly bite at the back of his throat and in his stomach. He filled up his glass again, this time with more ice to make it a weaker drink, and sat back and thought about Scaramanga.
  

  …
  Bond got out of bed, gave himself a cold shower, and drank a glass of water. By the time he was back in bed, he had forgotten the nightmare and he went quickly to sleep and slept dreamlessly until 7:30 in the morning. He put on swimming trunks, removed the barricade from in front of the door, and went out into the passage. To his left, a door into the garden was open and sun streamed in. He went out and was walking over the dewy grass towards the beach when he heard a curious thumping noise from among the palms to his right. He walked over. It was Scaramanga, in trunks, attended by a good-looking young Negro holding a flame-coloured terrycloth robe, doing exercises on a trampoline. Scaramanga's body gleamed with sweat in the sunshine as he hurled himself high in the air from the stretched canvas and bounded back, sometimes from his knees or his buttocks and sometimes even from his head. It was an impressive exercise in gymnastics. The prominent third nipple over the heart made an obvious target! Bond walked thoughtfully down to the beautiful crescent of white sand fringed with gently clashing palm trees. He dived in, and because of the other man's example, swam twice as far as he had intended.
  

  
  Chapter 8 – Pass the Canapes!
  

  …
  Luncheon broke up, and the company dispersed to their rooms. James Bond wandered round to the back of the hotel and found a discarded shingle on a rubbish dump. It was blazing hot under the afternoon sun, but the Doctor's Wind was blowing in from the sea. For all its air-conditioning, there was something grim about the impersonal grey and white of Bond's bedroom. Bond walked along the shore, took off his coat and tie, and sat in the shade of a bush of sea grapes and watched the fiddler crabs about their minuscule business in the sand while he whittled two chunky wedges out of the Jamaican cedar. Then he closed his eyes and thought about Mary Goodnight. She would now be having her siesta in some villa on the outskirts of Kingston. It would probably be high up in the Blue Mountains for the coolness. In Bond's imagination, she would be lying on her bed under a mosquito net. Because of the heat, she would have nothing on, and one could see only an ivory-and-gold shape through the fabric of the net. But one would know that there were small beads of sweat on her upper lip and between her breasts, and the fringes of the golden hair would be damp. Bond took off his clothes and lifted up the corner of the mosquito net, not wanting to wake her until he had fitted himself against her thighs. But she turned, in half-sleep, towards turn and held out her arms. "James. . . ."
  
  Under the sea-grape bush, a hundred and twenty miles away from the scene of the dream, James Bond's had came up with a jerk. He looked quickly, guiltily, at his watch. Three-thirty. He went off to his room and had a cold shower, verified that his cedar wedges would do what they were meant to do, and strolled down the corridor to the lobby.
  
  The manager with the neat suit and neat face came out from behind his desk. "Er, Mr. Hazard."
  
  "Yes."
  

  
  Chapter 10 – Belly-Lick, etc.
  

  …
  In the back office, James Bond went quickly over the highlights of the meeting. Nick Nicholson and Felix Leiter agreed they had enough on the tape, supported by Bond, to send Scaramanga to the chair. That night, one of them would do some snooping while the body of Rotkopf was being disposed of and try and get enough evidence to have Garfinkel and, better still, Hendriks indicted as accessories. But they didn't at all like the outlook for James Bond. Felix commanded him, "Now don't you move an inch without that old equalizer of yours. We don't want to have to read that obituary of yours in The Times all over again. All that crap about what a great guy you are nearly made me throw up when I saw it picked up in our papers. I damn nearly fired off a piece to the Trib putting the record straight."
  
  Bond laughed. He said, "You're a fine friend, Felix.
  
  When I think of all the trouble I've been to set you a good example all these years." He went off to his room, swallowed two heavy slugs of bourbon, had a cold shower, and lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling until it was 8:30 and time for dinner. The meal was less stuffy than luncheon. Everyone seemed satisfied with the way the business of the day had gone, and all except Scaramanga and Mr. Hendriks had obviously had plenty to drink. Bond found himself excluded from the happy talk. Eyes avoided his and replies to his attempts at conversation were monosyllabic. He was bad news. He had been dealt the death card by the boss. He was certainly not a man to be pally with.
  

  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  

  
  The “James Bond Shower” Method: Cold Hydrotherapy And Its Impressive Health Benefits
  heartofcool.com/james-bond-shower-method-cold-hydrotherapy-impressive-health-benefits/
  by Cristen M. Mills 11 May
  
  
  
  So, a bit of a NEWS FLASH here folks. If you are like me and love your HOT baths and lava showers, you may want to reconsider your gilded daily ritual. I most certainly have. It appears that taking the good ol’ “James Bond Shower” (also known as the “Scottish Shower”), which is freezing cold, has more health benefits than steaming your mornings away as hot rain falls over your body. This news was brought to my attention by my trainer, jitsu teacher and good friend Rico (@artofwwaarr). And after doing my own research – here is what I found out.
  
  
  
  The advantage for our body and skin are tremendous and certainly worth a serious consideration to at least open ourselves up to re-programming the way we look at our pleasantries while keeping up flawless hygiene practices. Cold showers as opposed to hot showers burn fat, combats depression as well as the following:
  
  1. ELEVATES ALERTNESS:
  As a result of the shock responsive deep breathing that aids in creating warmth and increasing our overall oxygen intake, our mental sharpness is acute and ready to get us through all the puzzles a day has to offer.
  
  2. REFINES HAIR & SKIN:
  The cold water tightens our cuticles and pores and prevents them from being clogged. Additionally, the sealing of the skin and scalp, prevent dirt from seeping in.
  With cold water, hair follicles flatten and grip the scalp, generating shiny, strong and healthy hair as well.
  
  3. IMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT & CIRCULATION:
  Cold water is a catalyst for blood to surround our organs, which diminishes heart and skin issues. The more blood circulates, the more efficient arteries pump that blood, boosting our overall heart health according to Dr. Joseph Mercola. Our blood pressure lowers, arteries unblock and immunity reaches new heights all as a result of committing to the “James Bond” way.
  
  4. WEIGHT LOSS:
  Cold showers promote brown fat in our bodies, which is the good fat that generates heat to keep us warm when we are exposed to chilling temperatures. According to a 2009 study, one could lose up to 9lbs if they take cold showers for 1 year.
  
  5. MUSCLE RECOVERY & RELIEVES SORENESS:
  In an attempt to ease delayed-onset muscles soreness, cold showers are extremely effective. Similarly, a 2009 study revealed that immersing the human body for at least a 24 minutes, relieved sore muscles for one to four days after the body was exerted in physical exercise. The water temperature was 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 15 degrees Celsius.
  
  6. REDUCES STRESS:
  Our tolerance to stress and disease can improve immensely as a result of the hardening that occurs when we throw ourselves “cold turkey” into a cold substance. In a study conducted in 1994, a decrease of uric acid levels appeared after the body underwent a cold stimulus. An increase of glutathione (an antioxidant that ensures optimal performance of other antioxidants) also is apparent as a consequence of cold showers.
  
  7. RELIEVES STRESS:
  A large amount of electrical impulses are sent from the peripheral nerve endings to the brain from the severe impact of cold receptors when our bodies are submerged in cold water. This equates to a heck of a “pick me up”, boosting our mood and serving as a antidepressant. A 2008 study where cold hydrotherapy was practiced by taking showers that were 38 degrees Fahrenheit for two to three minutes, had an analgesic effect and proved to be a treatment for depression that did not cause human dependency.
  
  You know what I admire most about athletes and soldiers – their discipline and ability to sacrifice and stretch their bodies and minds in order to achieve greatness beyond measure. They face challenges and pain head on courageously in an attempt to make them irrelevant. In order to be successful at what they do, the honoring of their bodies is most imperative and the most important reality. With all of the pluses spelled out in taking cold showers, There is no mystery why athletes and soldiers take ice-cold baths and showers.
  
  It may seem horrifying at first, but know that EVERYTHING that one achieves in life, takes great sacrifice. Can we sacrifice 25 minutes of perceived pleasure for a lifetime of improved health? I KNOW I CAN.
  
  Perhaps we should embark upon a 30 day cold shower challenge. I think I like the idea of that. Stay tuned for details and be sure to watch the video of a Navy SEAL explaining why we should be ending our showers with cold water.
  
  HEALTH IS WEALTH.
  
  Love & Light,
  CRISTEN M. MILLS

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  
  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  May 2018 Posts: 7,976

  The thing is, though, I'm not a Navy Seal. Nor a gray seal or other sea-mammal tbh.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  Why not fact 7.
  
  

  
  9007 James Bond Asteroid
  https://www.universeguide.com/asteroid/9007jamesbond
  
  James Bond is an asteroid, a large rock that orbits the Sun mainly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They tend to be an irregular shaped but Ceres asteroid is known to be spherical in shape but because it doesn't clear its path round the Sun, it is only a dwarf planet.
  
  James Bond was discovered on Oct 5 1983 by Anton Mrkos. Its orbit takes 3.89 years to travel round the Sun.
  
  The absolute magnitude of the object is 13.9 which is the brightness of the object. A higher absolute magnitude means that the object is faint whereas a very low number means it is very bright.
  
  The Aphelion of the object is 2.84994 A.U. which is the point in the orbit that is furthest from the object that it is orbit. At this point, it will then return back to the orbit target. The Perihelion of the object is 2.09805 A.U. which is the point in the orbit that is closest to the object that it is orbit around.
  
  The Semi-Major Axis of the orbit is 2.47399, which is the furthest point from the centre to the edge of an elliptical point.
  
  The orbital inclination, the angle at which James Bond orbits in relation to the orbital plane is 5.859 degrees. The orbital eccentricity is 0.15196, it is the degree at which James Bond orbits close to a circular (0) orbit as opposed to an elliptical (1) orbit.
  
  Agent James Bond, 007, not 9007
  
  The asteroid is named after the worlds most famous and popular M.I.6. secret agent, James Bond. It was chosen to honour the spy after the ID of the asteroid ended in 007, the agent's code number. It was not sponsored by EON Productions or M.G.M., the distributors.
  
  Type: Asteroid
  Date of Discovery Oct 5 1983
  Discoverer Anton Mrkos
  Orbital Period 3.89
  Absolute Magnitude 13.9
  Aphelion (Furthest) 2.84994 A.U.
  Perihelion (Nearest) 2.09805 A.U.
  Semi-Major Axis 2.47399
  Orbital Inclination 5.859
  Orbital Eccentricity 0.15196

  
  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  
  (Not to be confused with Meteors--fragments of asteroids. Or Meteoroids--those entering the Earth's atmosphere and vaporizing. Or Meteorites: those that don't fully vaporize, and survive the trip to the Earth's surface.)

  

  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  May 2018 Posts: 7,976

  Now there's a story for Bond 25: Villain threatens world by altering James Bond's path with a trajectory into earth. Will Bond stop Bond?
  
  #Casinoroyale67- part deux.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  More film-related, finally.
  
  

  
  The Meteorite Crater that Wasn’t: Reflections on SPECTRE
  Posted on November 24th, 2015
  trueanomalies.com/the-meteorite-crater-that-wasnt/
  

  

  The James Bond franchise — with all of its womanizing and improbable escapes — has never held much appeal for me. So when my dad asked me if had seen the latest movie last week, it should surprise no one that I responded with the text equivalent of a blank stare.

  

  
  It turns out he had a specific reason for asking:

  

  
  Having spent the last several years studying impact craters and their history on the Moon and Earth, I was intrigued…

  

  
  
  Now I was really intrigued. Was it possible that some of the minute details to which I’d devoted my grad years had rubbed off on one of my closest relatives, to the point that he would notice the difference between a volcano and an impact crater in a James Bond film? After a bit of quick googling, I had my answer: YES!
  
  
  
  SPECTRE‘s “meteorite crater” (lair of the evil villain Blofeld, né Oberhauser) was actually filmed in an extinct volcano outside the Moroccan city of Erfoud named Gara Medouar.1 Not having seen the movie itself, I did find a behind-the-scenes look at a massive (and apparently record-breaking) explosion filmed for the movie that gives us a good look at the outside of the ancient caldera. Even with just that brief glimpse, we can already say a lot about this crater.2 An impactor striking the surface at planetary speeds (several to tens of kilometers per second) carries a huge amount of kinetic energy, all of which suddenly has to go somewhere. The resulting explosion almost always creates a circular depression (regardless of the original impact angle) with a raised rim and ejecta blanket that thins out the further away you get. The dimensions of the crater — its diameter, the depth to the floor, the height of the rim — are not random, but closely related to each other and the total energy of the impact. If you spend enough time looking at examples of lunar and terrestrial impact craters, you get a sense for the ones that look “wrong,” and this one just doesn’t look right.
  
  First, as my dad noted, the outer walls are very steep and rugged. For a crater of that diameter, they stand far taller than you’d expect an impact throw them.3 I can’t tell how deep the crater is from the explosion clip, which is why I asked my dad if he got a sense in the movie for the ratio between depth and diameter. He estimated the depth-to-diameter ratio as about 1:2, which is much more exaggerated than any real impact craters on the Earth or Moon, which have depth-to-diameter ratios closer to 1:5.4 Then there’s the sloping layers of volcanic-looking rock making up the rim and the large gap leading into the cavity. By themselves, these are not necessarily indications of a non-impact origin, but you’d have to have a pretty specific and complicated sequence of post-impact tectonic or erosional events to explain the crater’s current appearance. Finally, a satellite view of Gara Medouar — revealing a decidedly asymmetric cavity — seals the deal: it’s a volcano, folks.[UPDATE: It’s actually NOT a volcano! Or an impact crater! It seems to be an erosional crater instead – had me fooled, but it’s always nice to learn something new!]
  
  
  Gara Medouar from above, thanks to Google Maps
  
  
  Fig. 7, Crater of Vesuvian type, with the central cone.
  Features due to erosion are omitted.

  

  
  Fig. 4, Varieties of Lunar Craters as related to size. The uppermost
  sketch represents the form of the smallest craters,
  the lowermost the form of the largest.

  

  
  Thinking about this “meteorite crater,” I can’t help but be reminded of the controversy over the craters on the Moon, especially the arguments made by geologist Grove Karl Gilbert in 1896, when most scientists weighing in (astronomers primarily) argued for a volcanic origin. Making a detailed comparison between the volcanoes of the Earth and the craters of the Moon, Gilbert made a case for the impact hypothesis instead, concluding:
  

  Ninety-nine times in one hundred the bottom of the lunar crater lies lower than the outer plain; ninety-nine times in a hundred the bottom of the Vesuvian crater lies higher than the outer plain. Ordinarily the inner height of the lunar crater rim is more than double its outer height; ordinarily the outer height of the Vesuvian crater rim is more than double its inner height. The lunar crater is sunk in the lunar plain; the Vesuvian is perched on a mountain top…Thus, through the expression of every feature the lunar crater emphatically denies kinship with the ordinary volcanoes of the earth.

  
  That Gilbert felt like an outsider — a geologist trespassing on astronomers’ territory — is clear from his introduction to The Moon’s Face, and he got a frosty reception from the astronomy community. His fellow geologists weren’t exactly thrilled either, since the Moon (being so remote) was considered too speculative a topic for a solid geologist to spend time on. Yet he persisted, convinced that he was precisely the sort of scientist who ought to be studying the features on the Moon, given his experience with the features of the Earth. “[T]he problem is largely a problem of interpretation of form, and is therefore not inappropriate to one who has given much thought to the origin of the forms of terrestrial topography.”
  
  Gilbert may not have changed many minds in his own time, but impact studies have come a long way, thanks in part to his disciplinary transgression. In fact, if anything the planetary pendulum has swung toward impact as the default interpretation for most features in the solar system, and evidence of volcanic activity is heavily scrutinized. Admittedly, I am biased, but I think it’s a bit sad that 120 years after Gilbert’s work, the difference between an impact crater and a volcano is given such short shrift on so public a stage. There’s even a real impact crater just over the border in Algeria6 that would have made a stunning backdrop for Bond’s adventures. Somewhat ironically, the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice actually involved an extinct volcano (another Blofeld lair), but it was filmed on a massive purpose-built set at Pinewood Studios. Oh well. Gara Medouar would have been perfect for that, except I suppose that there’s no roof to hide the heliport/missile launcher/command center.7
  
  Ouarkziz crater, near the Algerian/Moroccan border

  

  
  Blofeld’s volcano lair from You Only Live Twice (1967)

  

  
  
  Anyway, I can understand bowing to the logistics of filming locations and permissions and passing off a volcanic feature as an impact crater, but what about the “meteorite” itself? Here’s a quote from the scene between Bond and arch-villain Oberhauser (Blofeld):

  Oberhauser: Do you know what it is?
  
  Madeleine Swann: It’s a meteorite.
  
  Oberhauser: Yes, exactly. The Kartenhoff, the oldest in human possession. The very meteorite which made this crater. Think about it: so many years up there – alone, silent – building momentum until it chose to make its mark on Earth… a huge unstoppable force.
  
  James Bond: Except it did stop, didn’t it? Right here.

  
  Ok, so we’re meant to believe that the “meteorite which made this crater” (more on that later) is also the oldest meteorite in human possession…really? Not having actually seen the movie, I asked my dad what the meteorite in the scene looked like.

  

  
  Those melted depressions are called regmaglypts, and they’re formed as the meteorite is passing through the atmosphere. All of that air rushing by at high speed creates a huge amount of friction, and some material is ablated (vaporized) away, leaving these little thumbprint-like hollows. The problem? My dad is describing an iron meteorite, like this one:

  Iron meteorites, like this one, are pretty alien looking.
  

  
  
  Iron meteorites are thought to be the cores of once-mighty proto-planets that have broken apart in some violent collision and eventually made their way across the solar system to land on Earth. By definition, they have melted and recrystallized — they’re not the oldest meteorites! That title goes to the least altered, most primitive samples we can find, the carbonaceous chondrites. Visually, they are less stunning, perhaps not even immediately recognizable as meteorites, but inside they contain the birth records of the solar system. Analyzing these meteorites is the best way we have of understanding the original composition of the pre-solar nebula,8 out of which the Sun and the planets and ultimately you and I formed. We are made of star stuff, yes, but what star stuff? Carbonaceous chondrites tell us that. Some of them, like the Tagish Lake meteorite, even contain unchanged stellar dust particles, grains that predate the Sun. Now that’s OLD.

  Tagish Lake meteorite, possibly the oldest meteorite in human possession,
  looks like a boring Earth rock.
  

  
  
  But what if Oberhauser meant “this meteorite is from the oldest-known impact“? That assertion doesn’t make sense either. The oldest identified impact structures on Earth don’t really look like craters anymore, thanks to our planet’s tendency to rough up its landmasses via plate tectonics. One candidate for the oldest terrestrial impact structure is Vredefort crater in South Africa. Only the central dome survives, the rest of the crater having been eroded and filled in over the two billion years since its formation. Compared to the relatively pristine Barringer Meteorite Crater (Meteor Crater) in Arizona — a sprightly 50,000 years of age — Vredefort is hard to spot. It takes geological evidence in the form of impact-generated mineral phases, glass spherules, and shattercones to identify the oldest craters.
  
  Vredefort Dome, 2 billion years old

  

  
  Meteor Crater in Arizona, 50,000 years old

  

  
  
  It’s not the oldest meteorite, and it’s not the oldest crater. Either Oberhauser has been badly misled when it comes to his collection, or the writers really didn’t care very much about getting the science right in this case. Does it really matter? Perhaps not, but it’s certainly a missed opportunity. With just a little bit more research, they could have turned real science facts into support for their story. It wouldn’t even have been that hard. Oberhauser seems to be talking about himself in this scene, using the meteorite as a convenient vehicle to talk about his own journey and motivations. Call me crazy, but incorporating some dialogue about refining a central iron core that’s ultimately flung onto a crash course with humankind by a violent event deep in the past doesn’t sound completely out of line with the Bond villain archetype. It’s a far more fitting metaphor than “the very meteorite which made this crater,” seeing as the parts of the (much bigger) impactor that actually made the crater wouldn’t be around any more to provide a backdrop for this conversation.9 The meteorite is the part that survived — the resourceful, resilient fragment of a much larger entity. Given a chance, the science here really could have augmented the story, but SPECTRE passed on that chance, and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that it did.
  

  1 Fans of The Mummy (1999) might recognize Gara Medouar as Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, and it was also featured in The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). ↩
  
  2 The word “crater” itself can apply to an impact structure or a volcanic caldera. Fun fact: although it’s commonly used by scientists in the impact context today, it started out purely in the volcanic realm and was first borrowed to describe lunar features by Johann Schröter in the late 18th century. The volcanic connotation of the word influenced the interpretation of lunar and terrestrial craters well into the 20th century. ↩
  
  3 For impact craters, the height of the rim above the surrounding plane scales approximately as 4% of the crater’s diameter, less than half what we see here. ↩
  
  4 That’s for simple craters, which are relatively small. Complex craters, which have diameters above ~15km on the Moon and ~2-4km on Earth, are even shallower. ↩
  
  5 Gilbert’s first biographer described this work as his “lunar excursion.” ↩
  
  6 All right, fine, it’s hundreds of miles away and in a completely different country, so that’s not probably not feasible for filming. ↩
  
  7 Sigh, James Bond…see what I mean? ↩
  
  8 The composition of the Sun itself is another good clue, but it’s hard to measure some elements, so we turn to meteorites to learn more. ↩
  
  9 Impact energies are so large that much of the impacting body doesn’t survive the impact. ↩

  He's crazy! About science!
  
• Revelator

  May 2018 Posts: 2,896

  Either Oberhauser has been badly misled when it comes to his collection, or the writers really didn’t care very much about getting the science right

  
  Or Blofeld.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  May 2018 Posts: 13,036

  Of course! ...
• GoldenGun Per ora e per il momento che verrà

  May 2018 edited May 2018 Posts: 6,790

  TheWizardOfIce wrote: »

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_surface_effect
  
  This is what water sloshing around inside a ship does. It's one of the worst things that can happen.
  
  Unless the Liparus is a catamaran the moment you open the bow doors its going down.

  
  Another example of this is the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster on the Belgian coast in 1987 which caused almost 200 fatalities.
  
  The ship left the harbour with its bow-doors open causing it to flood within minutes of departure.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  May 2018 Posts: 7,976

  @RichardTheBruce actually an interesting article. I think the writer's right, they should take more care. But then again, it was P&W, so it's no wonder.
  
  @GoldenGun setting sail with bowdoors open is never a good idea, especially if the ship isn't designed for that. However, following the story we may assume the Liparus is designed to do it's job, hence a balancing system should be in place.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  July 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  
  

  Science & Tech
  Aston Martin unveils 'sports car for the skies' at airshow
  thejakartapost.com/life/2018/07/19/aston-martin-unveils-sports-car-for-the-skies-at-airshow.html
  Matthew Stock - Reuters
  Farnborough, England | Thu, July 19, 2018 | 08:05 pm
  
  
  A model of the Aston Martin Vision Volante Concept aircraft is displayed at the Farnborough Airshow, south west of London, on July 17, 2018. (AFP/Ben Stansall)
  
  James Bond would love it. Aston Martin, maker of the luxury sports cars favored by the fictional British spy, has now come up with a futuristic personal aircraft it has dubbed “a sports car for the skies”.
  
  Aston Martin unveiled the three-seater hybrid-electric vehicle this week at the Farnborough Airshow and, though the concept remains for now the stuff of science fiction, believes it could help one day to revolutionize travel.
  
  The Volante Vision Concept design has vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities and will be able to hit speeds of around 200 miles per hour (322 kph), “so you can go from the center of Birmingham to the center of London in about 30 minutes,” Aston Martin’s Simon Sproule told Reuters.
  
  Aviation and technology leaders are working to make electric-powered flying taxis a reality, including Airbus, U.S. ride-sharing firm Uber and a range of start-ups including one backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, called Kitty Hawk.
  
  Aston Martin believes it could corner the market for luxury flying vehicles in the future.
  
  “The same way that you have Uber and you have an Aston Martin, you’ll have ‘Uber in the skies’ and you’ll have ‘Aston Martin in the skies’,” said Sproule, adding that such an aircraft won’t come cheap.
  
  “This is clearly a luxury object - it’s a sports car for the skies - so pricing is going to be commensurate with that, so certainly into the seven figures.”
  
  “Feels like a fighter jet”
  
  The company has partnered with Cranfield University, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions and British jet engine maker Rolls-Royce to develop the concept vehicle, including artificial intelligence-powered autonomous capabilities.
  
  “It feels like a fighter jet but at the same time it has the Aston Martin luxury,” said David Debney, chief of future aircraft concepts at Rolls-Royce.
  
  Commenting on how to pilot the vehicle, Cranfield’s Helen Atkinson said: “You’ve got to detect what’s going on in the external environment and then turn that around incredibly quickly in the computer system with the artificial intelligence built in to actually achieve the necessary level of autonomy.”
  
  Separately at Farnborough, Rolls-Royce unveiled plans for a flying taxi - an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) vehicle which could carry four to five people at speeds of up to 250 miles (400 km) per hour for approximately 500 miles.
  
  The company said it was starting a search for partners to help develop a project it hopes could take to the skies as soon as early next decade.

  
  
  
  
• Gerard

  July 2018 Posts: 5,812

  One question about TND, re : the PTS : Could it really be possible for a man ejected from a plane to go through the floor of a plane directly above him ? Me, I think that he would be squashed, given that a human body is more fragile than an airplane.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  July 2018 edited August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  Surely it would kill the ejected. But I can rationalize the ejector seat itself could punch a hole in the fuselage of the other plane and come to rest as it did on screen.
  
  With a (darkly) comic effect of course.
  
  
  
  
  Did MythBusters try this?
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  July 2018 Posts: 7,976

  Gerard wrote: »

  One question about TND, re : the PTS : Could it really be possible for a man ejected from a plane to go through the floor of a plane directly above him ? Me, I think that he would be squashed, given that a human body is more fragile than an airplane.

  
  As @RichardTheBruce rightly mentions there would be some remains coming through with the chair. However, iirc he's depicted as ending up in the back seat position. The chances of that happening, when that space is taken by an (albeit empty) ejector seat are none. It's quite the mass to replace.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  August 2018 edited August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  I dunno, it's movie magic and a visual joke but the inserted ejector seat seems to push out and replace the one overhead. Then there's the strapped in but helmeted occupant of the ejected seat. So I'm still rationalizing what appears on screen.
  
  
  
  
  8:47
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  August 2018 edited August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  How dangerous are Skyfall's komodo dragons?
  jamesbondmemes.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-dangerous-are-skyfalls-komodo.html
  Monday, 13 May 2013
  
  Visit London Zoo and you have the chance to meet, and even adopt, one of the stars of Skyfall, but I wouldn't ask for his autograph. Raja the komodo dragon makes his screen debut in a scene in Macau's Golden Dragon Casino. The reptile was measured and filmed in his London enclosure and recreated in the casino's komodo dragon pit using the magic of CGI. In the scene, James Bond falls into the pit and fights off a casino thug before escaping by jumping on to the back of a komodo dragon and leaping to safety. Meanwhile, a second komodo dragon rushes out from the shadows, grabs the thug by the leg and drags him away and presumably eats him.
  
  To me, the scene, incorporating a bizarre death by exotic animal, captures the essence of the Bond films. Raja the komodo dragon takes his place alongside, among other animals, the piranhas of You Only Live Twice, the sharks of Thunderball, the alligators and crocodiles of Live and Let Die, and the scorpion of Diamonds Are Forever in the Bond villain's menagerie of dangerous animals. Indeed, director Sam Mendes had Bond step on to the komodo dragons in tribute to the scene in Live and Let Die in which Bond uses the backs of crocodiles as stepping stones.
  
  But seeing the komodo dragon reminded me of the decision to replace the giant centipede that crawls up Bond's body in the novel of Dr No with a tarantula in the film version. Raymond Benson suggests in The James Bond Bedtime Companion that the producers felt that the threat posed by the centipede, not the most well-known of creatures, would have been lost on most audience members, whereas tarantulas are popularly perceived to be deadly (although one can imagine practical problems filming with a centipede). In reality, giant centipedes are about as dangerous as the most venomous species of tarantula; both are harmful to humans, but neither is (usually) deadly. As for the tarantula in Dr No, it appears to be the pink-toed tarantula, which is venomous enough to kill frogs, but not James Bond.
  
  In the same vein as the centipede, I wonder whether the impact of the komodo dragon scene is reduced, and that the peril faced by Bond not fully appreciated, because of uncertainties about how dangerous komodo dragons actually are to humans. In fact, while cases of komodo dragons attacking, let alone killing, humans are rare, they are by no means unknown. In their native habitats on the islands of eastern Indonesia, komodo dragons hunt small and domestic animals, such as snakes, chickens, goats, cats and dogs, and occasionally larger animals, including water buffalo. And in areas of human settlement or activity, attacks on humans have inevitably been recorded. Recently, two workers at Komodo National Park were bitten by a komodo dragon that entered a park office. The men were immediately transferred to hospital; the saliva of Komodo dragons is toxic, and if bites are untreated, septicaemia can set in. Worse cases were recorded in 2007, when a boy of nine was mauled by a komodo dragon in Komodo National Park, and in 2009, when a farmer was mauled after falling from a tree. Tragically, both died later from their injuries.
  
  So to answer the question posed in the post’s title, the komodo dragons in Skyfall do pose a threat to James Bond, and deserve as much respect as a dangerous animal as do sharks, piranhas and crocodiles.
  Posted by Edward Biddulph at 13:21

  
  

  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  3D World
  Behind the scenes: Skyfall's Komodo dragon
  https://creativebloq.com/behind-scenes-skyfalls-komodo-dragon-7133741
  By Creative Bloq Staff July 31, 2013 3D World
  Cinesite’s Jon Neill tells Mark Ramshaw about the creation of the first all-digital creature to feature in a James Bond film
  
  Casino Royale and A Quantum of Solace [sic] were both lauded for wiping the slate clean and thereby reinvigorating and revitalising James Bond, but it is Skyfall’s canny ability to draw on classic iconography while still presenting 007 as a thoroughly modern spy that has given the franchise its biggest commercial and critical hit so far. The film ticks all the boxes – a larger-than-life villain, a femme fatale, Q, Moneypenny, and a return for the legendary Aston Martin DB5 – and even finds time to resurrect the familiar Bond-versus-lethal-creatures trope. Times have changed, however, as evidenced by the fact that the Komodo dragons in the film, while based on real lizards from London Zoo, were entirely computer-generated.
  

  “Skyfallcinematographer Roger Deakins was reviewing CG creature reels and stopped it when he saw CG close-ups of bees and flies from a documentary we’d worked on previously,” says Jon Neill, VFX supervisor at Cinesite. “This opened the door for us, but they were still worried that a CG creature might not be up to the realistic quality that was required.” Neill says that while a Komodo dragon was the ideal animal, a crocodile was also under consideration as an alternative as, unlike the dragon, a real one could be shot on the set for some live coverage. Cinesite’s first task, therefore, was to establish whether a convincing CG dragon was actually possible.
  
  “This meant going through the whole process of modelling, texturing, animation and look development before the sequence was actually awarded,” says Neill. “I knew that the sequence in the movie was going to be in candlelight, so we decided to do the test with broad daylight – which is even more challenging. They liked what they saw and we were given the go ahead.” Reference for building the dragon came both from the internet and creatures in captivity at London Zoo. From the web, Neill and his team were able to infer just how varied the dragons could be, with a wide variety of shapes, and sizes affecting general bulk, wrinkles around the neck and so on. More directly, the creatures at the zoo yielded invaluable texture and animation reference.
  
  “We were able to get access to a side enclosure where we painted the walls white and put white drapes on the ceiling,” recalls Neill. “Once we had set up our lights, we could get in and shoot handheld and get in really close to take extremely highly detailed textures. For the animation we also set up three HD cameras at different angles to show what was happening as it walked along.”
  
  Neill admits that the creatures posed something of a challenge for the animation team. “Most of the time Komodo dragons don’t move and when they do it’s very slow, unless feeding or fighting,” he explains. “And it’s difficult to make a mainly static creature look alive. So we focused in on the subtle movements like eye blinks and breathing and how they looked at their environment.”
  
  In contrast to the more fanciful creature threats of old-school Bond, director Sam Mendes wanted the Komodo dragons sequence in Skyfall to be relatively low key, with the creatures lurking in the background, waiting to pounce. Cinesite performed a full HDRI capture of the scene before live shooting began, in case time restrictions didn’t allow for any later on, although in the event they managed to get fresh captures for every single shot.
  
  “The lighting was generated by four banks of flickering candles and an overhead paper lantern,” explains Neill. “The aim was for the sequence to have a dark, dramatic and sinister atmosphere, with the Komodo dragons silhouetted, rim lit and looming out of the shadows.”
  
  When it came to modelling the dragons – with all the details of their ribs, wrinkles and folds in the skin – the basic shapes were initially modelled in Maya and then the finer details were enhanced in Mudbox. “We ended up modelling the shape based on the more rugged wild Komodo dragons online, and used the textures from our zoo shoot to get the resolution required,” says Neill.
  
  “Simply desaturating the colour map would not give us the proper displacement shapes due to the amount of different tones, and because it would just push out from the surface, ignoring the underside and concave parts of the creature. Instead each scale and nodule needed to be hand-sculpted. We made a much higher resolution model for this, and this dense mesh was taken into Mudbox along with colour map as a guide.”
  
  The artists then manually pulled out each individual lump on the creature’s body, upping the resolution from 2,000 polygons to 10 million. “The mesh was so dense we couldn’t bring the whole model into one scene,” admits Neill. “We had to break it up and work on one limb at a time. Once we had sculpted each part of the body, we extracted a displacement and stitched them together in Photoshop.”
  
  While believability was essential, Neill says that they were encouraged to make the dragons appear as dangerous, menacing and malevolent as possible; this was for a Bond movie, after all. “We wanted to exaggerate their aggressiveness so we added scars to their head and bodies. The clients also wanted them to have eye glints, like cats’ eyes in the headlights – again to make them even more evil-looking and also so that the audience could pick them out in the dark. But we still had to make sure they stayed on the sinister side and not become too fantastical.”

  
  VITAL STATISTICS
  Title: Skyfall
  Released: 18 February (UK), 12 February (USA)
  Formats: Blu-ray/DVD
  Distributor: MGM
  Watch out for... the Komodo dragons, and Bond’s close shave with one of the them in a Chinese nightclub

  
  
  

  
  News in Brief
  Publicist Confirms Komodo Dragon From ‘Skyfall’ Pregnant
  https://entertainment.theonion.com/publicist-confirms-komodo-dragon-from-skyfall-pregnan-1819579693
  3/06/17 1:08pm
  

  

  
  BURBANK, CA—Unable to keep the news under wraps with her client’s bump visibly showing, the publicist of the Komodo dragon from Skyfall acknowledged Monday that the lizard was indeed pregnant. “Roxanne is thrilled to announce that she is expecting little dragons of her own,” said Janet Kresbaum, adding that People magazine had already secured the rights to the first photos of the dragon’s clutch of eggs. “She is resting quietly in her nest for the time being while she focuses on keeping her developing babies incubated. She has requested that, beyond the information I have just provided, her privacy be respected in order that her new family not be cannibalized by other Komodo dragons.” At press time, co-star Daniel Craig sent his best wishes on this joyful occasion.

  
  
  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  August 2018 Posts: 7,976

  So now we know Dr. No first thought Bond was working for the deuxiemme, the French Intelligence Service. As both the centipede and Tarantula are deadly to frogs...
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  August 2018 Posts: 7,976

  That's the guy!
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  August 2018 Posts: 13,036

  Bond gets credit for helping popularize new (20th Century) watch-related quartz technology.
  
  
  

  
  A timeline of inventions
  An overview of the inventions which have changed the course of history [1900-1944]
  https://telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/4751183/A-timeline-of-inventions.html
  12:00AM BST 06 Jul 2000

  Quartz timekeeping [1927, Warren Marrison]

  Wearing a watch on the wrist became fashionable for women following the late-19th-century craze for cycling, when leather wrist "converters" were designed so that women could securely hold their small fob watch on the wrist. The fashion soon outgrew the need of an accompanying bicycle and spread to men, who overcame their initial hostility to wristwatches. Soldiers found them useful in the First World War.
  
  In 1925, Hans Wilsdorf, a German-born English national living in Switzerland, purchased a Swiss patent for a waterproof winding button, and a year later the first successful waterproof watch, the Rolex Oyster, was born. Two years earlier, John Harwood, an Englishman, pat-ented a system of automatic winding that led, in 1928, to a successful automatic wristwatch.
  
  However, the most significant development in modern watchmaking happened in 1927, when Warren Marrison, a Canadian-born engineer working at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in America, built the first quartz-crystal controlled clock. The quartz in the Marrison clock vibrated 50,000 times a second; by using a combination of electronic and mechanical gearing at a ratio of three million to one, this oscillation was used to move the second-hand through one rotation every 60 seconds. Capable in observatory conditions of losing only one second in 10 years, quartz technology produced a leap in accuracy, but needed the corner of a small room to house the workings.
  
  Research into electric-powered watches began in the 1940s and the Hamilton Watch Company of America launched the first, the Ventura, in 1957. It was a tremendous success and other manufacturers in France and Switzerland soon followed. These new electric watches were still part mechanical and culminated in the first quartz wristwatch. The first 100, made by Seiko, went on sale on Christmas Day 1969. Advances in miniaturisation technology allowed the quartz workings to be squeezed into a watchcase, a feat that cost the consumer $1,250 a piece at the time, the same as a medium-sized car. Within 20 years quartz watches would be given away free at petrol stations with a tank of petrol.
  
  In 1972, the Hamilton Company developed the first all-electronic wristwatch, the Pulsar. It had flashing red light emitting diode (LED) digits in the place of hands on its dial. Its main disadvantage was that a button had to be pressed to read the time.
  
  By 1977, permanently visible liquid crystal display (LCD) had become the most popular way of showing the time. Sufficiently powerful small batteries were a big problem with the early models and much research went into their improvement. Watches with small electric generators powered by wrist movement were invented, as were watches powered by body heat. Solar-powered watches appeared in 1973, and battery design has improved so that many can run for two years or more.
  
  In 1990, Junghans produced a wristwatch controlled by super-accurate caesium atomic clocks in Germany, England and America. It is accurate to one second in a million years, as long as the watch can receive a radio signal from the atomic clock.

  

  
  
  

  James Bond Watches Blog
  jamesbondwatchesblog.com/2015/04/21/quartz-watch-changed-the-world/#more-4378
  by Dell Deaton - Apr 21
  
  Quartz watch “Changed the World”
  
  
  Popular Science magazine, "100 Inventions That Changed the World," contents (June 2015 issue)
  
  Beginning with the very first sun- and water-based devices created by man, everyone agreed that the fundamental value of a timekeeper rested with its accuracy.
  
  In 1969, consumers had the opportunity to experience this in apogee with wristwatches that were suddenly a hundred-times more accurate than those regulated by balance wheels. EON Productions partners Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman immediately saw where the future was headed — the quartz time basis — and its value to the “James Bond” character of their movie franchise.
  
  Thus the Quartz Revolution began with Agent 007 as one of its leading advocates, through Live and Let Die (1973).
  
  Now, a special issue of Popular Science has named the quartz wristwatch as one of the “100 Inventions That Changed the World” (cover dated June 19, 2015). Citing “thousands of years” of “imprecise” approaches to timekeeping, the history summarized in this magazine centers on evolution of mechanical clocks from the early 1500s until 1927. It then closes with Warren Marrison and quartz-tech, which finally delivered wristwatches truly “able to maintain a consistent, reliable movement.”
  
  Albert R. Broccoli chose quartz for Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, his first solo outing as EON producer. He then stayed with quartz for all-but one of the movies that followed during his lifetime, ending with GoldenEye in 1995. That watch was originally rated accurate to within -0.5 and +0.7 seconds per day. James Bond has never since worn a wristwatch more accurate.
  
  For those who know horology and study James Bond watches, the Popular Science validation of the Quartz Revolution comes as no surprise. Equally fascinating is the number of other top “100 Inventions” here that wouldn’t have been possible without the advent of precision-electronic accuracy as well.
  
  Would anyone be surprised to see a quartz clock on the dash of James Bond’s next Aston Martin in SPECTRE?
  
  Or in any number of rooms in his London flat?
  
  And supporting the high-tech functioning of his MI6 quartermaster at Q-Branch?
  
  Of course not. Today, quartz accuracy is a given; so completely relied-up that it’s taken for granted.
  
  — Dell Deaton
  JamesBondWatches.com

  
  
  1972 Hamilton Pulsar, worn in Live and Let Die.
  

  

  1977 Seiko LC Quartz wristwatch used in The Spy Who Loved Me.
  

  

  1978 Seiko M354 wristwatch in Moonraker.
  

  

  1982 Seiko G757 Sports 100 model. Used with a tracking mechanism in Octopussy.
  

  

  1995 Omega Seamaster Professional 300m
  

  

  2015 Omega Seamaster 300 in Spectre
  

  

  
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  September 2018 edited September 2018 Posts: 13,036

  
  Darpa Moves a Step Closer
  to Its Flying Humvee
  https://www.wired.com/2010/09/darpa-moves-a-step-closer-to-its-flying-humvee/
  Author: Spencer Ackerman - Security - 09.29.10 07:42 am
  
  
  In the spring, the futurists at Darpa rethought troop transport. Instead of adding armor or changing the shape to deflect bomb blasts, the agency reasoned, why not let it leap into the sky at the first sign of danger or inconvenience? That's exactly what Darpa's "Transformer" project is supposed to be: a mashup of a helicopter, plane and armored truck. And it just came a step closer to reality.
  

  AAI Corporation, a Maryland-based aerospace and defense company, won a $3.05 million contract with Darpa to see if it the technology behind the Transformer can, well, get off the ground, Aviation Week reports. Based on so-called "compound helicopter" technology that the company is developing with Carter Aviation Technologies, the gist is that AAI's design for the Transformer envisions it to carry four soldiers on the road as a car, but the rotor blades on top allow it to take off vertically into the air. The car's takeoff functions are supposed to be automated, so soldiers or marines don't have to be aviators to get it off the ground.
  
  That's not all. As Danger Room emerita Sharon Weinberger reported in June, it releases DeLorean-like retractable wings, allowing it to fly faster than a conventional helicopter. "Envision a Humvee-like vehicle with wings that fold out from the side and attach just above the rear door," AAI Vice President Steven Reid told Weinberger. Elements of three vehicles in one.
  
  Darpa laid out the need for the Transformer in an April request for proposals. With the threat of improvised explosive devices on the rise, the defense agency wanted an "unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions." That meant, basically, a flying car – one that could perform all manner of tasks, from "strike and raid, intervention, interdiction, insurgency/counterinsurgency, reconnaissance, medical evacuation and logistical supply." Oh, and it has to be able to climb to 10,000 feet and travel 250 miles on a single tank of gas, meaning it's got to be green.
  
  For fuel efficiency, it uses a ducted fan in the back to propel the Transformer forward. According to Weinberger's account of AAI's design, the fuel supply is in its wings – which might be an enticing target for an insurgent hoisting a rocket-propelled grenade or a shoulder-mounted missile.
  
  And speaking of: Darpa's "desirable" design considerations only specify that the Transformer carry a load of 1000 pounds and be "capable of handling small arms fire." What kind of armor should it have to protect the troops inside? A soldier in Afghanistan recently e-mailed to quip that as cool as flying cars are, he doesn't have any desire to travel in a flying casket.
  
  Armoring questions – and others, like what kind of gun the thing should carry – are preliminary for now. AAI's $3 million from Darpa takes it through the first phase of the contract, which covers feasibility studies for the company's design in terms of "propulsion, adaptable wing structures, lightweight materials, advanced flight control system, air/ground configuration designs and energy storage and distribution."
  
  That lasts until about fall 2011. If AAI passes its tests, it still won't have to produce even a partial prototype until 2013. And this isn't the first time Darpa's tried to get defense companies to build a flying car – remember the Personal Air Vehicle Technology car-plane? – so even if AAI's design hits a snag, it's probably not going to be the last, either.
  
  Image: AAI

  
  Pentagon's Flying Car Program Takes Off
  Author: Katie Drummond - Security - 04.14.10 11:45 am
  
  
  The Pentagon's far-out research agency has unveiled more details of their plan to create a shape-shifting, multipurpose car.
  
  Flying cars have been tried before, dozens of times. And a few of the efforts have even succeeded. But the Pentagon concept is several steps ahead of existing vehicles, like the Terrafugia Transition, which is more like a lightweight plane that can, by folding up its wings, operate on land. The Transition also needs runways for takeoff and landing, and can't fly in harsh weather.
  
  And, in what could either mean revolutionary progress or massive failure, this initiative has out-there military agency Darpa behind it. In January, the agency, who has been toying with the flying car idea since at least 2008, hosted a proposer's day workshop for their new Transformer (TX) project. At the time, details were sketchy: Darpa wanted a "morphing vehicle body" that could operate largely autonomously, reducing the chance of human piloting error in high-risk war zones. Plus, the agency's initial documents noted, a hovering car would be able to cruise over obstacles and avoid areas rife with IEDs.
  

  Now, Darpa's released a solicitation calling for prototypes, which they want to be testing in the air by 2015. The vehicles, which will have the all-terrain abilities of SUVs, should also boast a 1,000-pound capacity, and carry four fully suited troops or a stretcher and a medic – suggesting the agency hopes for a fleet of flying ambulances, too.
  
  Darpa also wants a vehicle that can perform vertical takeoffs and landings (no runway required), and attain an altitude of 10,000 feet – and do it all while traveling 250 miles on a single tank of gas. That means less Humvee, more Prius: The agency suggests that proposals would be wise to include ideas like "hybrid electric drive, advanced batteries, adaptive wing structures, ducted-fan propulsion systems [and] advanced lightweight heavy fuel engines."
  
  All that, and no pilot: Any troop able to drive a military road vehicle could operate a Transformer, because the vehicles will include "automated takeoff and landing," and be "fully autonomous" in the air and on the ground.
  
  It's a lofty plan, albeit one with a relatively small budget: Darpa's allotting around $55 million to the development and testing of prototypes.
  
  Photo: U.S Air Force

  
  

  
  How Flying Humvees Will Work
  https://auto.howstuffworks.com/flying-humvee.htm
  by Jamie Page Deaton
  
  
  AVX Aircraft Company
  
  It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a 5,900-pound (2,676-kilogram) armored vehicle with rock-crushing off-road capabilities, a 5,100-pound (2,313-kilogram) payload capacity and … wings? A flying Humvee? Seriously?
  
  While a flying Humvee may seem like something doodled on the back of a sixth grade boy's notebook, it's actually something the U.S military is pushing for. The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is behind the development of some cutting-edge technology, especially where cars are concerned. The DARPA Urban Challenge, for example, is a program to encourage the development of driverless cars. DARPA specializes in projects that are high risk and high reward. That means that DARPA focuses on encouraging the creation of technology that could radically alter how the military engages in its mission. Driverless cars may sound great for commuters, but they could also potentially save soldiers' lives by allowing them to conduct patrols from the safety of a base.
  
  Of course, DARPA focuses on high-reward technology, but the other side of the coin is that DARPA projects are high risk -- that is, the technology may be so far out there that it never gets built, or can only be built at great cost. Flying Humvees may seem like they fall into both of those categories, but DARPA has a tendency to get the tech it wants. For instance, the Urban Challenge started in 2004 and now the world is tantalizingly close to driverless cars.
  
  Want to know how a flying Humvee will work? Keep reading.
  
  Humvee Basics
  
  Before you can understand how a flying Humvee works, you need to understand what a Humvee is. Humvee is the common spelling for off-road, armored, truck-based military vehicles, but the technical spelling is HMMWV, which stands for High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle. The first Humvees were built in 1983 by American General. The military was looking for "a family of versatile, technologically advanced, cross-country vehicles capable of performing both combat and combat-support roles. The basic chassis was to be capable of being modified into a number of variants. It was also to be diesel-powered, consistent with the Army's desire to use diesel fuel throughout its tactical vehicle fleet, and it was to have an automatic transmission" [source: American General].
  

  Today's Humvees don't stray far from those requirements. Compared to the first Humvees, today's Humvees have bigger engines, better towing and payload capacities and better reliability. There also more heavily armored. As improved as today's Humvees are, however, they can't live up to the requirements the Pentagon has for flying Humvees, namely that they be able to fly (for a start), drive on roads, carry personnel and cover 250 nautical miles (287.7 miles or 463 kilometers) in flight while carrying 1,000 pounds (453.6 kilograms) of payload with a maximum altitude of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). DARPA also wants it to be "somewhat green" [source: Wired]. That will be tough for a vehicle that only gets about 14 miles per gallon (5.6 kilometers per liter). So, while we call these flying Humvees, the end product will have little in common with the ground-only Humvees the military uses today.
  Who Says Humvees Don't Fly Already?
  
  Sure, today's Humvees may not fly under their own power, but the U.S. Military has gotten Humvees airborne for years. In fact, here's a short video of a Humvee air drop.

  
  Why Flying Humvees?
  
  A U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter transports a Humvee.
  Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
  
  Given that developing a flying Humvee will be expensive, time consuming and risky, you may wonder why DAPRA wants to create one at all. The U.S. Military does a good job of ground patrols with conventional Humvees, and helicopters do a good job patrolling airspace, engaging in aerial combat and providing air support for ground troops.
  
  Safety is the main reason the Pentagon is developing flying Humvees. The conflicts that today's military engages in don't follow traditional rules of battlefield and combat. Instead, the military has to contend with loosely-organized urban fighters who blend in with the civilian population. That makes ordering airstrikes from a helicopter difficult. The risk of hurting civilians is high.
  

  At the same time, ground troops in a conventional Humvee can easily become the victims of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and roadside bombs. In some cases, hostile forces use IEDs and roadside bombs to not only injure American troops, but to also lure more troops to the area, since troops that are hit with IEDs will call for help. Since IEDs are on the ground and can be triggered by contact, a patrol vehicle that can fly might keep troops safe from them, or allow them to evacuate safely and quickly if they're attacked. Flying Humvees would also allow troops to get to an area where they're needed quickly and safely. Also, if ground troops needed intelligence on an enemy's position, rather than calling for helicopter support, which would take time and allow enemies to regroup or hide, they could just get airborne and see for themselves where to concentrate their fire.

  Of course, a vehicle that can keep troops safe, drive on the ground and fly is a tough thing to engineer. Keep reading to see just how a flying Humvee will work.
  
  How Flying Humvees Will Work
  
  The AVX TX on the ground
  AVX Aircraft Company
  
  The project name for the flying Humvee is Transformer, and some of the capabilities of the flying Humvee sound like they came out of the Transformer universe.
  
  The most startling thing about the flying Humvee is the pilot: There won't be one. DARPA specifies that the flying Humvee be robotic. The Transformer will have wings that fold out of the roof and a foldable center rotor as well. A ductable fan on the back provides forward propulsion. Fuel for the Transformer will be stored in the wings.
  

  Three main contractors are working on the flying Humvee: Rocketdyne, Lockheed Martin and AAI Corp. Rocketdyne will create the engines and already makes jet and transport plane engines for the Airforce. Lockheed Martin is the largest defense contractor in the country. The main design comes from AAI.
  
  Right now, designs are in the first phases. AAI has a $3 million contract from DARPA to cover feasibility studies, wing studies, propulsion, materials and flight controls. The first prototypes aren't expected until 2013 -- and those prototypes are expected to be partial prototypes. The full development phase is expected to cost $9 million. That's a pretty steep total for just the first phase of the project, which is has a total budget of $40 million.

  
  Retractable wings, robot pilot, ability to fly 250 nautical miles (287.7 miles/463 kilometers) and drive on the ground like any other military vehicle. It sounds like science fiction, but if DARPA has its way, flying Humvees will be hitting war zones soon.

  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  September 2018 Posts: 13,036

  

  

  
  
• CommanderRoss The bottom of a pitch lake in Eastern Trinidad, place called La Brea

  September 2018 Posts: 7,976

  Ut's a little bit more advanced these days:
  
  https://www.pal-v.com/en/