[Question] Why not dock with Icarus I on return?

[vichar]

Hi Folks,

I loved the movie Sunshine. I think the Pinbacker portion of the movie really detracted from its overall impact, but I still think Sunshine deserves a lot of praise for transporting the viewer to a different reality. This, for me, is all I really ask of my Science Fiction Movies.

Onto my question:

First, forgive me if this has been asked already in this forum.

When Capa is asked to decide whether or not to rendezvous with the Icarus I, why didn't he simply suggest that they stick to the plan and dock with Icarus I only after and if their initial mission failed?

Reasons why I would have suggested that:
1) Any deviation from an intricate plan, on involving astrometric calculations, is a huge risk. Logisticians would have reviewed their plans many times before they took off, and for the crew to risk deviating from that plan seems unnecessary.

2) Looking at the way the crew portion separates from the payload / shield, it looked like the crew portion would be just as capable of aligning with the airlock on Icarus I. The crew portion looked like it could hide under the shield of Icarus I to faciliate boarding.

3) The two payloads looked like they were almost identical. There's no reason to believe that a second try with an identical plan would be any more successful. If the first payload failed, would they even be able to analyze and correct for error? How would they know what they needed to do differently? My understanding of the unknowns as described by Capa were the uncertainties about the theoretical realities at the relativistic speeds the payload portion would reach on final approach into the Sun.

4) One opposing argument is: maybe the first payload would have some adverse effect that killed the crew. Well, if that happened, they wouldn't have a second chance at delivering a second payload anyway.


Thoughts? When I saw the movie for the first time, and the crew decided to agree with Capa and intercept the Icarus I before first trying their attached payload, I was incredulous. I knew that horrible things would happen as a result of docking, and that was the inevitable direction of the movie, but a part of me thought that reasonable professionals would have opted for the lowest-risk plan--the plan most likely to succeed in saving humanity.

Thoughts?

[kaliszewski]

Honestly, I'm with you all the way on all four of your reasons. There was no logical reason for them whatsoever to drop by the Icarus I when they did. I'll even add a reason of my own:

5. It really doesn't appear that, design-wise, the Icarus ships are meant to dock with anything other than their launch gantries. This isn't that nifty little mini-sub from The Hunt for Red October, the one that could "mate with just about anything." Icarus I and II are clumsy, spindly, easily breakable beasts, and, as you pointed out, bringing them together on pretty much a whim and a guess seems the height of foolishness.

So why stop and dock at all?

I will remain convinced now and forever that Alex Garland was grasping for a way to get the plot rolling, and that this was the easiest way to get it done. We drop in Capa's lap a decision he really shouldn't have to make, pilot Cassie makes nary a peep about how ill-advised this maneuver is, Trey fudges the navigational calculations, setting off an avalanche of bad luck and blunders, and BOOM! PRESTO! HEY! It's DRAMA!

Which might seem harsh, but, no, straying that far from the original mission parameters wasn't something I would expect of highly trained professionals on a last-ditch mission to save the Earth (Capa's line "two last chances are better than one" actually sets my teeth on edge-- way to punt, Mr. Genius Scientist!). I think Garland should have worked more with the incredible dangers inherent in the environment and left a bit of the human error and fallability out. No, people aren't perfect, but the people we would send to save the world ought to be a little more perfect than the people we see aboard the Icarus II.

There's my ten cents' worth!

[vichar]

Thanks for your ten cents worth, kaliszewski! I agree with your point #5 as well--I guess I can sort of suspend belief enough to think that maybe they made the ships with a generic, all-purpose docking mechanism "just in case".

There was maybe one legitimate reason that the crew came up with that made sense to me. It still wasn't enough to justify the risk, in my opinion, but it went like this:

The first mission failed. That is all the folks back home on Earth could go on. The reasons for that failure were therefore unknown to the crew of Icarus II. Knowing that the first mission failed for some reason, perhaps they thought that reviewing the mission logs of Icarus I might allow them to figure out what went wrong on the final approach and thus avoid the same mistake themselves. It's a decent reason to want to dock, but I still would have chosen to continue with the mission as planned.

Hindsight is 20/20, but the ending implies that if they hadn't docked they would have succeeded in their mission and made it home OK in time for a hero's welcome. I suppose saving the planet is suitable for martyrdom.