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My-Rho In reply to CB1964 [2017-04-20 18:30:36 +0000 UTC]

Yeah!

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My-Rho In reply to Shiny-Fan [2017-04-20 18:30:59 +0000 UTC]

But only ONE shot to stop the UFOs...

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My-Rho In reply to Crowe-le-retour [2017-04-20 18:32:02 +0000 UTC]

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Shiny-Fan In reply to monsterp63 [2017-04-21 19:38:46 +0000 UTC]

I personally found the one-shot idea made sense. I can imagine Straker in a meeting with a designer. "Ten years? We need interceptors now, damn it! By the time you've built your first prototype this war could be over! Get something, anything, functional now, and build your perfect ship when we have a working defence."

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monsterp63 In reply to Shiny-Fan [2017-04-21 21:30:19 +0000 UTC]

lol.
That does sound like something Straker would say... 

But the submarine interceptor (I don't remember the name), would shoot at leaste 2 missiles, and they were a lot smaller and as efficient than the "Little Boy" size of the moon intercrptors missiles.

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Shiny-Fan In reply to monsterp63 [2017-04-22 15:04:49 +0000 UTC]

You mean SkyDiver. Sky was the interceptor, Diver the submarine.

As I see it, the weapons fired by Sky were like modern day homing missiles. They could self guide onto the target. Not all the time of course, a fast moving UFO is hard to hit. So the chance of a direct hit is relatively high. Even a near miss would be effective. Many modern anti aircraft missiles detonate near the target, sending out a wave of shrapnel that does damage.

But in space, where there is no air for fins to work on, manoeuvring a rocket is a lot more difficult, near impossible. So instead of trying to actually HIT the UFO, you need to get the missile fairly close, give it an absolutely massive warhead, and hope that the explosion is powerful enough to damage or destroy the target (In fact, some series publicity suggests that destroying the UFO is considered so difficult, SHADO has a different tactic. Firing missiles into the UFO's approach vector will cause it to take evasive action, diverting it enough that it's trajectory takes it away from Earth. Even if it manages to return to it's home world and try again, that's one Alien mission SHADO need not worry about).

Of course, as the series went on, we did see UFOs destroyed by Interceptors. But the basic idea makes sense.

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monsterp63 In reply to Shiny-Fan [2017-04-22 15:49:35 +0000 UTC]

 I will not enter a “knowledge war” here, I’m sure to loose. You obviously are a very hard fan of the series. The last time I saw it was some 40-some years ago. It’s only bits of memories, some awesome scenes, great SFX (for the time), and some puzzling/debatable conclusions/consequences/ideas.

And I saw it translated in french, so a lot of the technobabble that made sense in english, lost its meaning in french.

And spaceships are maneuverable in space. Babylon 5’s Star-Furies were the perfect, realistic, Newtonian maneuvering spaceships (they got praised by NASA). But that takes place in 2260, not in 1980… Technology evolves… and so the laws of physics, obviously.

Anyways, I don't think My-Rho's page is the right place to debate UFO...
If you sltil want to discuss thoughts about it, just PM me. I'll be happy to contribute.

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Shiny-Fan In reply to monsterp63 [2017-04-22 23:37:20 +0000 UTC]

Sorry, didn't mean to lecture!

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My-Rho In reply to monsterp63 [2017-04-20 18:31:57 +0000 UTC]

Thank you! Didn't know anything about that Space 1999 sequel stuff...

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Shiny-Fan In reply to My-Rho [2017-04-21 19:44:31 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, the Moonbase episodes of UFO were the most popular, so for the planned second season SHADO would relocate to a new, much larger base on the moon. The Anderson's then had the idea of an alien attack blasting the moon out of orbit.
As it became apparent that there was little interest in a second season (mainly because of poor scheduling and publicity resulting in low ratings) they dropped the UFO connection to make it into an all new series.

A pity, in my opinion. I always found Space 1999 to be either dull (first season) or silly (second season, though Catherine Schell at least made it watchable). I'd much prefer to see more UFO.

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My-Rho In reply to LapinDeFer [2017-04-20 18:32:22 +0000 UTC]

...strangers in the night.

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My-Rho In reply to Tharcion [2017-04-20 18:32:31 +0000 UTC]

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