Every Dropship Gets This Wrong (Except Aliens)

Going down is free. Coming back up is where rockets go to die. We put seven movie dropships through the same three inspections (the drop, the hover and the climb back to orbit), and only one passes all three. The proof is a number said out loud in a different movie, seven years earlier. Another day in the yard! Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Elysium, Prometheus, Interstellar, Avatar and Aliens, with The Martian as the honest climb. The real physics comes from Apollo, the Space Shuttle, NASA's Morpheus lander and the rocket equation Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote down in 1903. Spoilers for all eight films. CHAPTERS 00:00 Every dropship gets this wrong 01:43 The rules: drop, hover, climb 04:09 Star Wars and Starship Troopers 05:40 Elysium 07:23 Prometheus 08:25 Interstellar 09:52 Avatar 11:33 The Martian, the honest climb 13:06 Aliens 17:34 Who pays the bill Narrated by: Me :) SOURCES AND FOOTAGE CREDITS Aliens (1986), dir. James Cameron (20th Century Fox). Alien (1979), dir. Ridley Scott (20th Century Fox). Every film line quoted is from the film itself. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002, Lucasfilm) · Starship Troopers (1997, TriStar) · Elysium (2013, TriStar) · Prometheus (2012, 20th Century Fox) · Interstellar (2014, Paramount / Warner Bros.) · Avatar (2009, 20th Century Fox) · The Martian (2015, 20th Century Fox) · Edge of Tomorrow (2014, Warner Bros.) Pandorapedia — Valkyrie shuttle (the official Avatar encyclopedia) https://www.avatar.com/pandorapedia/valkyrie-shuttle NASA NSSDCA — Apollo Lunar Module (the descent stage as the launch platform) https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1970-029C Universe Today — 13 more things that saved Apollo 13 (the reentry blackout) https://www.universetoday.com/articles/13-more-things-that-saved-apollo-13-part-6-the-mysterious-longer-than-expected-communications-blackout NASA — The Space Shuttle https://www.nasa.gov/space-shuttle/ The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 (Kip Thorne) https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/summary/ AFRL — Rocket Cargo https://afresearchlab.com/technology/rocket-cargo ARCHIVAL AND PUBLIC-DOMAIN FOOTAGE NASA — Atlas Failure and Success (1961) · Mercury-Atlas 1, July 1960 NASA — Artemis I Orion reentry (2022), via The Launch Pad NASA — Apollo 17 lunar liftoff from the rover camera (1972) NASA — Apollo 16 ascent filmed from the LM (1972) NASA — Apollo 11 Saturn V launch camera E-8 (1969) NASA — Apollo 4 stage separation (1967), via Retro Space HD NASA — Gemini 7 onboard film, rendezvous with Gemini 6A (1965), via Cosmosphere NASA — Final Space Shuttle launch, STS-135 (2011) and solid rocket booster camera NASA — Morpheus lander free flight 15 (Kennedy Space Center) NASA — Apollo 11 Mission Operations Control Room film (via Destockd / archive.org) U.S. Army — Mobile Riverine Force, Mekong Delta (via Destockd / archive.org) AFRL — Rocket Cargo concept film Ronald Reagan — State of the Union, 1986 (Orient Express) NASA — Apollo 13 recovery and Mission Control photographs · X-30 National Aero-Space Plane concept art · Apollo 11 LM "Eagle" (AS11-44-6642) NASA Ames — Stanford torus interior, Rick Guidice (1975) Konstantin Tsiolkovsky portrait (public domain) · Kip Thorne (CC BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons) · Andy Weir (Wikimedia Commons) MOVIE REFERENCES Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001, Warner Bros.) · The Matrix (1999, Warner Bros.) · Halo Infinite (2021, 343 Industries / Xbox Game Studios) · Battlestar Galactica (2004, Universal Television) · Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016, Lucasfilm) PHOTOGRAPHS (Wikimedia Commons / NASA) Syd Mead — lukeford.net (CC BY-SA 2.5), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASyd_Mead_LF.JPG Neill Blomkamp — Natasha Baucas at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdnatasha/ (CC BY 2.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANeillBlomkampCCJuly09.jpg Christopher Nolan — Georges Biard (CC BY-SA 4.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChristopher_Nolan_Cannes_2018.jpg James Cameron — Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJames_Cameron_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg Ed Fendell at the INCO console, STS-7 (1983) — NASA JSC (Public domain (NASA)), https://images.nasa.gov/details/s83-34270 Osmium crystals — Alchemist-hp, www.pse-mendelejew.de (Free Art License), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOsmium_crystals.jpg Apollo Guidance Computer DSKY — ArnoldReinhold (CC BY-SA 4.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AApollo_DSKY_CHM.agr.jpg NASA — Apollo 9 Lunar Module 'Spider' (AS09-21-3181), public domain Texas outline — U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary data (public domain)