BillKowalski

Wow. Great catch. To run that much propulsion for that long would take a fantastic quantity of fuel. It's a fine example of the common movie practice of starting with the premise there is normal earthlike gravity in a space vehicle (to prevent a need for zero g special effects) and working backwards to figure out how that works. It's a sci-fi trope, like always portraying space flight as aerodynamic rather than ballistic, and making a big deal out of getting to speed but showing the process of slowing down as gentle coasting. Everybody does it. In "The Martian" they were so confident in their centrifugal gravity effect they had ordinary water glasses in their artificial gravity zone. In a spacecraft. Makes no sense.

Did anyone notice the British news announcer mispronounced "Halley" when he mentioned Halley's Comet? Surely in Britain they would know it's not pronounced Hay-lee, but instead Hall-lee. I haven't seen this movie but I assume (silverback alpha nerd that I am) I would find many more nerdy reasons to be offended. Harrumph! In spite of the extraordinary female attributes of Mathilda May, harrumph!

Paul, could you please not say "mano y mano" any more? I believe you said it in this episode, and you have also used that expression in a few previous episodes. "Mano y mano" means "hand and hand". We sometimes hear the more familiar phrase "mano a mano", meaning "hand to hand", used incorrectly when the context is more of a man to man thing, not bare-handed fighting as the phrase suggests. I think people have mistaken mano for the Spanish translation of man, whihc it is not. "Hombre" is the Spanish word for man. Taking the misappropriation up a notch by using "y" instead of "a" doesn't help. If you want to say "man to man" in Spanish, though, you could say "hombre a hombre". But I love you, buddy, and I understand you never present yourself as an expert on the Spanish language. And for all males on the show, including the various guests, please let June finish a sentence sometime. June has interesting things to say and is killer funny. When everyone talks over her and keeps her comments squashed under a pile of progressively louder male voices, we don't get a chance to hear her. I noticed this was less common in the older episodes, and most common in the live shows. Let the woman say something once in a while! It grieves me to make these comments. I love HDTGM and have nothing but positive feelings about the show and everyone on it. Truly the best podcast ever.

I can still remember when this show premiered on network TV. As a kid I loved Star Wars so much I could barely wait to see it - it took about three minutes to realize it was an abomination unto all Star Wars fans. The feeling which came over me was about how a kid would feel finding Santa Claus dead in the front yard on Christmas Eve, with an axe sticking out of his head.