Posted by Nick Haysom on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/Can-some-body-tell-me-tp1504157p1504202.html

This is all very well but surely it would have been in the interest of the
aliens to develop a stun gun given their purpose for coming to earth? Even
if it was only a dart gun it would make a whole lot more sense than filling
humans full of lead (or whatever).

The argument from realism opens a whole can of worms. After all, the
"rationale" for the aliens' interest in earth wasn't rational, it was
lunatic. But then sci-fi invasions are peculiarly prone to being senseless,
witness THE INVADERS or V. Then again, neither of these came close to true
SF anyway: the first was really "Cousin of The Fugitive", the second a
childish "What if?" revolving around Naziism. At least the Mysterons were
motivated by something one could believe in: they were mad as hell and
weren't going to take it any more.

The great thing about UFO was the fact that the writers realised pretty
quickly how limiting the concept was and thought outside the box, creating
some adult drama in the process, sensibly relegating the "rationale" to a
McGuffin.

Then of course only 19 years on from the time of UFO even *we* had developed
blast guns...

Nick

----- Original Message -----
From: <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 3:17 AM
Subject: Re: [SHADO] Can some body tell me


> Okay, here we go again of the explaination why the Alien have smallarms
that
> fires projectile when their spacecraft has a engery type weapon.
>
> It takes a lot of power to make a laser work. You may or may not remember
> that one of the ideas to make the so called "Star Wars" defense system
work was
> to fire lasers into space from Earth by setting off nuclear weapons to
> provide the power for the beam. Now that is a lot of engery. The new
laser they
> have been testing that is taken up in a Boeing(hey Marc a plug<g>) 727
type
> aircraft uses a more conventional power supply, batteries. But they take
up most
> of the plane. Now while the aliens have got the power suppy right for the
UFO
> to use a laser type weapon getting the power supply small enough and long
> lasting enough to make a hand weapon is long jump in technology. And why
do the
> aliens have to have beam type hand weapons just because they travel in
space
> and have one on their ship? In Enterprise the crew have only a few
> fuctioning Phasers. This is a newly created weapon to them although they
have been
> traveling in space for quite some time. In UFO the aliens supposedly come
from a
> planet that is dying perhaps they see no reason to waste resources on
making
> a laser type weapon when a old fashion bullet will get the job done
cheaper.
>
> Oh, Griff, the recoil would not knock Foster back 30 feet. You
said
> it yourself. the Moon only has one sixth our gravity. If it would knock
him
> back 30 feet on the moon it would knock him back 5 on Earth. Recoil is
figured
> by the weight of the projectile times the velocity of the projectile times
> 4000, then you have to find the weigh of the weapon times the mass of
gravity
> acceleration which is always 32 feet per second even on the moon then
divide
> the two . And in the case of the moon you have to reduce the weight of
the
> bullet, and the gun by 6. Just do it regular and then divide the result
by 6.
> In other words a gun that like the .460 Weatherby Magnum which produces
100
> foot pounds of recoil on Earth would not produce 600 on the moon but only
16.7
> foot pounds of recoil. But as the person firing it would now only weigh
one