Moonraker (film)/Headscratchers

Drax's evil scheme could have been pulled off without the use of spaceships. Firstly, it would have been much cheaper to build his Ark underground, environmentally sealed, than to build a space station in orbit. Secondly, Drax could have used aircraft to deliver the toxin. Why? Because he runs an aero space company, and he had a radar jamming system for his space station. And even if it couldn't be fitted on a plane, stealth wasn't a complete unknown back then. Putting stuff into space is insanely expensive, up to $10,000 to put one kilogram into orbit, which is why you didn't take your last holiday at Utopia Planetia, Mars. But I guess this was all discarded in favour of footage of space shuttles docking, undocking, and performing course corrections.
- Two reasons:
  - Expense is nothing to a man willing to ship a French mansion to California stone by stone and rebuild it there.
  - And Drax was insane.
    - Insane, but also a genius. The cost of transporting a mansion from France to the US is infinitely smaller than the cost of putting a giant space station in orbit, building half a dozen space shuttles to supply it, and, say, getting enough people and supplies up there to repopulate the planet. And what about when they have to land? There are only a few airports in the world that have a runway long enough to accommodate a space shuttle, and there would have to be people on the ground waiting for their arrival. So why not have everyone on the ground? Drax could have built a secret city underneath the Amazon and just used the shuttles to distribute the virus (meaning Bond would have to go up and shoot them down). It's just a blatant cash-in on Star Wars, and by God it shows.
- Maybe Drax didn't have the idea until he had already built a space shuttle program and working space station, and at that point it would have been cheaper to put everything in orbit rather than build an underground ark.
- The space station could serve future purposes; given that he wants to remake human society, one of his pet peeves might be that we should be devoting more time and money to space travel, and his new world will do that. Plus, the man has a God Complex; he probably couldn't resist the idea of raining down death from the Heavens. As for money, he is planning to annihilate the human race. If he succeeds (or if he fails and is caught), money isn't going to be all that important anymore (it would also be harder to get caught, for various reasons).
- More simply, if you are going to end all human civilization do you care about your unpaid credit card bills? Drax can borrow as much money as banks will lend him, sucker in as many investors as he can string along under false pretenses -- none of it matters. Since his plan is to end the world, none of the people he's taking money from will live long enough to need paying back. So expense really is no object for him, as he's running on deficit spending.
So in Moonraker, lasers are small and lethal enough to be used as an infantry and anti-air (anti-space?) weapon. We also have shuttles that can be launched in under an hour, and marines trained in space-borne operations. Why didn't this show up anywhere else in the franchise?
- Pure Fan Wank here; the training of the space marines ran parallell to the whole space shuttle programme and Moonraker was the first time we saw them being used. Despite their critical role in saving the world, the political fallout from the massive loss of life and the cost of continuing the operation meant that funding was withdrawn from the project. Hence no space marines to take out the satellites in GoldenEye and Die Another Day.
The falling out the airplane stunt early in film.... completely ridiculous and totally unnecessary. It looks as if it was added in post-production because the rest of the film was so terrible.
- But all of the later Roger Moore films featured an over-produced teaser with eye-popping stunts. It's in line with those.
- Likewise, James Bond in space shooting lasers.
Countdown to a space shuttle launch is 48 HOURS. Far be it for me to expect realism in a Bond film, but the speed at which the troops responded to Bond's signal was ridiculous.
- I don't particularly care for this movie either, but... It should be pointed out that this film was released in 1979 (so it was filmed / developed in the '77-78 time frame). At the time, NASA's position on the Space Shuttle included the following (all figures from Dennis Jenkins's "Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System The First 100 Missions, 3rd Edition", ISBN 978-0963397454):
  - The expected manifest showed that [circa 1974], with the requested fleet of 5 orbiters (never happened), there would be ~60 missions per year. To be clear, each orbiter was expected to fly once a month.
    - Actual best 12 month period was 12 launches -- and one of those was the Challenger accident. Admittedly, there were only four orbiters, but obviously the flight rate was far lower than expected.
  - The turnaround time (landing -> takeoff) was expected to be 14 calendar days, based on 2 shift operation.
    - Actual best turnaround time was ~50 days (pre-Challenger -- afterwords, the time spent in turnaround only increased)
  - The cost / pound to orbit was expected to be $175 / pound (based on a total cost per flight of $10.5 million, FY 1972 $).
    - Actual cost / pound (FY 2000 $) was $8000 / pound (based on total cost per flight of $357 million).
  - Thus, judged by the standards of its time, the movie wasn't quite as silly as it seems today. For example, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect a shuttle to be launched within 2-4 days in an emergency situation. And it might be feasible for a sufficiently wealthy person to purchase a space shuttle (or 12, which is what Drax did -- he only stole the shuttle that started the whole movie because one was damaged / destroyed or lost [don't remember which]). And constructing an elaborate space station is much more reasonable at $175 / pound to LEO.
  - Drax's explanation for stealing a Moonraker was that the intended one had developed a flaw during construction, and so had proven unusable. To further defend Moonraker, given the above: Drax ran an international Mega Corp that was making space shuttles - if any one private person could get his hand on space shuttles in the world presented in the James Bond movies, it'd be that kind of person.
- Which raises another question. Why did Drax steal the Moonraker back, thus attracting the suspicion of the CIA and the SIS? Why not just repair the fault, after all there's not as if there's any particular timetable he has to follow. And what would have happened to the two mooks in the shuttle if Drax hadn't have ordered them to retrieve the Moonraker?
  - The mooks are likely astronauts who joined him in the space station, and they were obviously hiding in there only after Drax found out about the flaw (or more likely, after the Moonraker was arranged to be shipped. As to the timetable thing- yes, he did have one. He would have needed one because the longer he put it off, the greater the chance either his secret launching pad, his space station, or worst of all his Weapon of Mass Destruction would be found out, not to mention his whole plan involved gathering the best of humanity at their physical peak, so the longer he waited the more likely they would succumb to age or injury, not to mention anyone involved might get cold feet and rat the whole thing out. Above all there is his controlling nature, which means faced with the choice of seizing control of the situation or accepting the hand fate dealt him, he'd go with the former. The "attracting suspicion" argument has the same flaw as the "how much did this cost" argument- its a moot point, when within days he expects to succeed in his plan to wipe out mankind. And he's too smug and elitist to even contemplate the possibility that he might not succeed.