Planet of the Apes (1968 original) question
- Thread starter Maltz
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Except Bellatrix is 250 light-years away. Although I have an older reference that puts it at 360 ly, so I guess the distance estimate was less accurate in the past, and it could've been believed to be 320 ly at the time PotA was made.
But there's no way in hell Earth's Sun could be mistaken for a blue giant like Bellatrix, even if a blue giant could last long enough to support inhabited planets in the first place.
But there's no way in hell Earth's Sun could be mistaken for a blue giant like Bellatrix, even if a blue giant could last long enough to support inhabited planets in the first place.
They never say what the intended destination was, but when Landon asks Taylor why he's not more broken up about Stewart's death, he replies that she's been dead nearly a year. Landon then says that would mean they've been away from Earth for 18 months. "Our time," Taylor adds.
Of course, that figure adds another fly to the ointment. According to the ship's clock, they were in flight for 2006 years (1972 to 3978). Do the math on the time dilation for those figures and there's no way they would only have traveled 320 light years. To cut 2006 years down to a year and a half, they would need to be moving at 0.9999972c; that would have sent them about 5 light hours short of 2006 light years from home. It's just another one of the things about the movie that just don't quite add up.
^Well, this is a movie where evolved apes thousands of years in the future speak 20th-century English -- and yet an astronaut hearing them speak English doesn't realize he's still on Earth. PotA isn't a hard-SF story where the science is logically worked out, it's a Serlingesque social commentary where the sci-fi scenario is symbolic and allegorical.
Anyway, it's odd that the script referenced "Dr. Hasslein" as the originator of the time-dilation theory rather than Einstein. Though didn't Escape follow that lead and include Hasslein as a character?
Anyway, it's odd that the script referenced "Dr. Hasslein" as the originator of the time-dilation theory rather than Einstein. Though didn't Escape follow that lead and include Hasslein as a character?
Yep, played by Dr. Forbin.
A few year's ago I came across a fan-edited version of POTA that turned it into an episode of Twilight Zone, complete with Serling narration. I wonder if it's still out there somewhere....
It pretty much is a Twilight Zone episode already, just 2 hours long, in color, and with a much bigger budget.
). It's pretty good.
Another question: I know that there were a fair amount of alternate versions/abandoned scripts for the 2001 remake. Are any of them available to read online?
No. Dodge says the star (that the unknown planet that they are on is orbiting a star that) might be Bellatrix, which is one of the stars in the constellation Orion (The Hunter). To which Landon replies, it's too bright to be Bellatrix. The star Bellatrix is 243 light years away from Earth.
Here is a wiki link about the constellation Orion (The Hunter).
Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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Oops, I see others beat me to answering this question up thread.
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Yes, it was actor Eric Braeden who played Dr. Otto Hasslein in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" released in 1971 and he played Dr. Charles Forbin in "Colossus: The Forbin Project" released in 1970.
Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
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MLJames,
You are assuming that Taylor's ship traveled near the speed of light on a linear flight path for 2,006 years. However, I don't believe it was programmed to do so. A possible explanation would be the ship was programmed to enter the star systems of some of the stars in the constellation Orion to scan for Earth type planets in a habitable zone (the "Goldilocks Zone" - not too hot and not too cold) for liquid water to exist and life as we know it to exist. The ship would have to slow down or stop to make course adjustments for each new star system destination and then accelerate to near the speed of light toward each new star system. Then once the ship finished its survey of the targeted star systems in the constellation Orion, it would select one of the Earth type planets that was in a habitable zone and land there, which according to Taylor was 320 light years away from Earth. This assumes the ship had already past the selected Earth type planet earlier in its flight and after its survey of the targeted star systems, turned around and headed back towards the selected Earth type planet.
Furthermore, Landon states they were not programmed to land in the water, yet they did, indicating a computer malfunction, possibly a computer programming error. In the 1960s Professional Computer Programmers did not type their programs on punch cards, they hand wrote their programs on blank coding sheets and the coding sheets were given to Keypunch Operators (sometimes called Data Entry Operators) who typed the programs on 80 column punch cards. This sometimes led to programs compiling into machine language successfully but executing incorrectly due to a Keypunch Operator's typing error.
Due to Taylor's ship crashing into the water and sinking Taylor did not have time to review the data to verify where they were.
Here is a real life example of a computer programming error occurring on a spacecraft, the Mariner 1 Space Probe, described at the http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=MARIN1 webpage:
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