Skip to main content

interstellar - Why did the Endurance crew bother landing on Miller's planet?


After the events on Miller's planet, it seems to come as a revelation to Brand that



Miller had only landed a couple hours ago, and died a few minutes ago.



The crew of the Endurance, even when they were back at NASA headquarters, had all the information they needed to figure out the time dilation and how long Miller had been on the planet. As such, they must have known that




Miller, even in the best case, would have only had a couple hours worth of data.



Why use all those resources (fuel and time) just for that?



Answer



Assuming the team knew that planet Miller would only have a few hours of data, visiting the planet was still a rational decision. They had 3 options, and they thought they would have enough fuel to try at least 2 before returning to earth. Edmunds was sending no signal, so the hope was that Dr. Miller, by not immediately ending her signal when she landed, thought the planet at least had potential.


As to why



Amelia Brand risked her life to obtain the probably worthless data,




that decision was likely a poor one even regardless of the time factor: they were already aware the planet was covered in water and plagued by massive waves.


One of the main themes of the movie is the contrast between humans innovating vs. behaving irrationally when faced with death ("the dying of the light"). This was an example of Amelia behaving irrationally, similar to



Tom keeping his family on the farm even when their lungs were clogging with dust



and



Dr. Mann opening the hatch to the Endurance even when he hadn't attached properly.



Amelia was probably frazzled by the danger they were in and the massive use of time, and (irrationally) hoped she could make the effort less futile by trying to save the data.



Eventually, the film favors the interpretation that despite our occasional irrationality, humans face death by innovating and helping each other, as evidenced by



Cooper sending Murph messages via the tesseract, her solving the gravity problem, future humans building the wormhole for past humans, etc.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more