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Nodaisho:
--- Quote from: pilsner on 20 Jan 2010, 23:10 ---Saw the thingum tonight. Two thoughts:
(1) See it in IMAX if you can. If your town doesn't have IMAX, hop on a bus. IMAX makes this stupid, stupid movie worthwhile.
(2) When the fuck are they going to start putting bulletproof glass on the front of military helicopters? When??
--- End quote ---
Bulletproof glass (technically bullet-resistant, since if you use a big enough bullet, nothing is bulletproof) is made to stop bullets. Bullets are for the most part light and fast. Shotgun slugs and old buffalo guns (not as crazy powerful as you would think of a buffalo gun as being, due to old technology) will go through most glass we have with current technology that isn't ridiculously thick. Those bows looked like they were firing arrows closer to what we would consider javelins, a few pounds each and likely flying a hell of a lot faster than any human archer can sling normal arrows. Sure, it would be possible to design glass that will stop the heavier slower rounds, but why? Everyone is using light fast rounds now. 100 years into the future, certainly we could make better glass, maybe even make it weigh less (the weight of an aircraft is rather important), but we will likely still be using light and fast. Armor is designed to protect against the weapons that are expected to be used against it, sometimes to the exclusion of protection from weapons that they don't expect to be used, and they don't seem to have designed their weapons to be more effective on Pandoran wildlife, no reason to expect them to modify their vehicles either.
Alex C:
Yeah, armor is a funny thing. For example, it's a pretty common design for the outer layers of vehicle armor to be actually rather flimsy. That's because they want to save weight and because the purpose of the outer layer isn't necessarily to "stop" an attack, but rather to just cause anything that hits the tank to detonate early so the thick layers can hold up better. That's why you can find stuff like this out there if you look hard enough:
pilsner:
Yes, I suppose it is possible that 150 years in the future, mankind has mastered faster than life travel but opts not to use a composite in the windshield of a helicopter resilient enough to withstand a large piece of wood (maybe there's carbon fiber in the wood!!). It just seems odd. Especially when a puncture in the windshield has a fair chance of downing the vehicle what with the lethal gas it lets in and all.
This was hardly the most flagrant oddity in the movie, but it's funny because of the number of movies where a pilot gets perforated through the front of a flying vehicle. There's something about cockpits that makes directors and screen writers seem to want to blow a whole right through them. Firefly, anyone?
KvP:
--- Quote from: pilsner on 21 Jan 2010, 19:45 --- I suppose it is possible that 150 years in the future, mankind has mastered faster than life travel
--- End quote ---
Life moves pretty fast, if you're not careful you might miss it.
Inlander:
Anyone who's ever flown from Australia to anywhere knows that humanity's got slower-than-life travel down pat.
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