(Reuters) – Netflix Inc will carry more shows from Time Warner Inc, intensifying efforts by the video streaming company to attract more subscribers and beat back competition.
Netflix signed licensing deals with Warner Bros Television (WBTVG) and Turner Broadcasting System Inc for previous seasons of shows from Cartoon Network, Warner Bros Animation and Adult Swim for U.S. subscribers.
Shows such as Cartoon Network’s “Adventure Time”, “Ben 10″ and “Johnny Bravo”, and WBTVG’s “Childrens Hospital” will be available from March 30.
Adult Swim shows “Robot Chicken”, “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, and Sony Pictures Television‘s “The Boondocks” will also be available on Netflix.
The first two seasons of Warner Horizon Television-produced TNT series “Dallas” will be exclusively available on Netflix in January 2014.
Netflix said last week that it would carry previous seasons of popular shows such as “Revolution” and “Political Animals” produced by Warner Bros Television.
It also won a deal in December to stream movies from Walt Disney Co’s live action and animation studios, including those from Pixar, Marvel, and the recently acquired Lucasfilms.
Netflix shares were trading up 3 percent at $ 103.92 on Monday afternoon on the Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)
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About 27 million people in the United States have osteoarthritis, an incurable condition with few effective treatments beyond pain control. Some observational evidence suggests that vitamin D supplements might slow progression of the disease.
But a two-year randomized placebo-controlled study found that vitamin D did not reduce knee pain or restore cartilage.
In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association last week, researchers described a study of 146 men and women with painful knee arthritis who were randomly assigned to take vitamin D supplements or placebos. Vitamin D was given in quantities sufficient to raise blood levels to 36 nanograms per milliliter, a level considered sufficient for good health.
Knee pain decreased slightly in both groups, but there were no differences in the amount of cartilage lost, bone mineral density or joint deterioration as measured by X-rays and M.R.I. scans.
The lead author, Dr. Timothy McAlindon, chief of the division of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center, said taking vitamin D in higher doses or for longer periods might make a difference, but he’s not hopeful.
“Although there were lots of promising observational data, we find no efficacy of vitamin D for knee osteoarthritis,” he said. “There may be reasons to take vitamin D supplements, but knee osteoarthritis is not one of them.”
FRANKFURT — The economic stagnation in Europe has taken a significant toll on Germany, with government figures released Tuesday showing that the Continent’s flagship economy contracted in the fourth quarter of last year.
Ina Fassbender/Reuters
A ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Bruckhausen, Germany. Economists expect the German economy to resume growth quickly this year.
The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden estimated that the German economy shrank about 0.5 percent in the final three months of 2012, compared with the previous three months. The decline was largely the result of sagging investment by German managers worried about the future of the euro zone.
And despite reassurances from economists that growth would bounce back quickly in Germany, the data underlined how closely the country’s fate remained tied to its ailing euro zone allies.
“This idea that Germany is a powerhouse dragging the rest of Europe along with it is a bit of a myth, to be honest,” said Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. “You have a very weak periphery, and a core which is not as strong as everyone seems to believe.”
Throughout the European debt crisis Germany has managed to float above the bad news, enjoying record employment, rock-bottom borrowing costs and export-led growth that kept chugging in spite of the cloud hanging over the euro zone. But Germany’s European partners are also among its biggest customers, leaving it vulnerable to the Continent-wide slowdown made worse by the very austerity policies championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Portugal’s central bank on Tuesday cut its economic forecast for this year, saying the economy would contract more steeply than expected. France has probably missed its target for reducing the budget deficit, according to data published Tuesday, raising the prospects of deeper spending cuts and additional taxes. Meanwhile, elections pending in Italy next month have ground that country’s drive toward economic overhauls to a halt.
“The longer the euro crisis lasts, the more difficult the situation becomes for Germany,” said Stefan Kooths, an economist at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “We have always said Germany is not a Teflon economy.”
The German government is scheduled to release its report on the economy Wednesday and will forecast growth of 0.5 percent this year, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported, saying it had obtained a copy of the document. In the context of the euro zone as a whole, which is in recession with record unemployment, any growth is considered positive.
But most forecasts are based on the assumption that financial markets will remain calm. If anything were to shake investor confidence in the euro zone, like political turmoil in Italy or Greece, the weak growth rate would mean that Germany would not have much of a cushion against recession.
France is en route to missing its deficit reduction target this year, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the French government. Although the government aimed for a deficit of 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, data for November suggest the shortfall will be 4.8 percent, ING Bank estimated.
That means the French president, François Hollande, would have to find an additional €5 billion, or $6.7 billion, in revenue to meet the 2013 budget target, and could risk another downgrade of the country’s credit rating.
The data also indicate the challenge of keeping France’s overall level of debt from rising beyond its current level, which is already above 90 percent of G.D.P.
“Today’s figures underline how difficult the task will remain for François Hollande to keep the debt below 100 percent of G.D.P. during his mandate, and France’s rank in the core of the euro zone,” Julien Manceaux, an economist at ING, wrote in a note.
German public finances contrast with those of France. Together, German federal, state and local governments recorded a budget surplus for the year equal to 0.1 percent of G.D.P, the statistical agency in Wiesbaden said. That is the first government surplus since 2007, and it creates leeway for Ms. Merkel to stimulate the economy with public spending if the downturn is worse than expected.
The fiscal strength in Germany underscores the inequities within the euro currency union. Already, the government has been expanding a program that encourages companies to cut worker hours rather than eliminate jobs. The so-called short work program uses government money to compensate employees for some of the wages they lose by putting in fewer hours.
Within the region, Germany has served as a crucial counterweight to the struggling economies of Southern Europe, and helped to stabilize the euro zone as a whole.
Yesenia Rojas, vibrant in her purple shawl, sang with a voice so powerful it rose above the rest of the procession as they shuffled down the damp Anaheim sidewalk.
"Era mexicana. Era mexicana," they sang with a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe hoisted high, candlelight and street lamps illuminating their way. "Madrecita de los mexicanos."
The singsong serenade lauds the patroness, the mother of all Mexicans.
On this drizzly evening, Rojas led the group down Anna Drive, where she and her family have made their home.
In a city often defined by Disneyland and elegant sports venues, this street of working-class Latino immigrants has become an avatar of a lesser-known, voiceless Anaheim, one riddled with poverty and gangs.
When police shot and killed a 25-year-old alleged gang member who lived on Anna Drive, it stoked what had been a growing fire in the city. It was the latest in a spate of police shootings last year, which inflamed anger with law enforcement into a larger sense of resentment over ethnic and class fissures that divide Orange County's largest city.
Unrest — amplified by Occupy-connected protesters from outside the city — gripped Anaheim for days after the July shooting, followed by weeks of heated City Council meetings.
The wave of protesters demanding change has washed away, but Rojas has emerged in its wake. The 35-year-old mother of six, with short, wavy dark hair and a small frame that belies her force of will, has taken it upon herself to become the voice of Anna Drive.
Her family lives in a one-bedroom apartment just yards from where Manuel Diaz was shot that summer day. Rojas' 14-year-old daughter saw Diaz's body and has been traumatized since. Her mother can't let that go.
"I thought about leaving, and so did my husband, because of the children," she said. "But I said no. Because, first of all, we don't need to fear anyone, not even the police. The biggest thing right now is to stay on our feet and make things happen as a community. If we all leave, things won't change. They'll keep trampling us and humiliating us."
Rojas has a vision for her community that would seem bold if her wishes weren't so simple: She imagines playgrounds and community centers and political representation. But most of all, she sees respect for Anna Drive.
She balances two jobs, but she makes time for her community. She bends the ears of politicians. She organizes rallies encouraging her neighbors to register to vote and head to the polls. She plans events that she hopes will draw together a community that has grown accustomed to seeing itself as the backdrop of news cameras trying to highlight the city's ills.
And on this night, dozens gathered to pray a rosario in the tight courtyard outside her apartment, where the statue of the Virgin rested on an altar of roses and carnations.
As sirens echoed in the distance, the crowd stayed late into the night. They sang, they danced, they sipped cinnamon-spiced coffee.
And they prayed, petitioning the Virgin Mother for peace and for guidance.
"This is the community," Rojas said. "These are the people of Anna Drive."
::
Anna Drive, a collection of squat, modest apartment buildings, horseshoes off of a busy thoroughfare. On any given day, it pulses with life: children whipping down the sidewalk on scooters and skateboards, older boys tussling with one another and nanas and tatas watching it all unfold from chairs in their frontyards.
The street is clogged with cars and the vending truck that always seems to be parked along the same slice of curb, hawking snacks, produce and spices to the families who live on this stretch of tidy apartments and small, fenced-in lawns.
Rojas came to Anna Drive about a year ago, moving her family into the tight but comfortable apartment, its walls lined with family photographs. She was born in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, but she has lived much of her life in the flatlands of Anaheim. Her mother has lived in the same apartment, just a few blocks away, for decades.
The Fisker Karma is enviro-friendly sex on wheels. But what if you want the style without the the green cred? Say hello to the Corvette ZR1-powered VLP Destino.
The “V” stands for Gilbert Villarreal, one of the company founders and a friend of Henrik Fisker. The “L” stands for Bob Lutz, the petrol-blooded ex-GM, Ford and Chrysler exec responsible for some of the most intriguing automobiles to come out in the last three decades (think Viper, Camaro and Volt).
Together, they’ve struck a deal with Fisker to provide decontented “rollers” of the Karma, sans the dinky four-cylinder engine, battery pack and electric motors. In their place, VLP has fitted one beast of a motor: the Corvette ZR1′s supercharged 6.2-liter V8, good for 638 hp and 604 lb-ft of torque. If that’s a bit much for your taste (or lack thereof), they’ll put in the Z06 ‘Vette’s 550-hp LS7, saving you about $20,000 in the process. Oh, and you can get it with a six-speed manual.
All told, the Destino sheds over 1,000 pounds from the standard Karma, with Villarreal claiming a curb weight of 3,750 pounds. They’ve also fitted new front and rear fascias and a bulging hood to accommodate the V8′s supercharger.
The first two Destinos have been completed and sold, although the Auburn Hills, MI-based company still intends to take a knife to the interior. Twenty more are on order from Fisker, with Villareal saying there’s plenty of interest both from U.S. and Middle Eastern buyers.
As for Fisker’s take on this over endowed version of his baby, Villareal tells Wired, “we went and got their blessing.” And for $200k, you’ll need all the blessings you can muster.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The Academy has dramatically expanded the potential pool of voters in three categories, looking to increase voter participation just as its first-ever adoption of online voting has apparently led to unexpectedly high turnout.
On Saturday, AMPAS president Hawk Koch sent an email to voters announcing that all 5,856 voting members would be sent screeners of all the nominees in the Best Documentary Feature, Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film categories.
The change had actually been adopted by the Board of Governors more than a year ago, at a December 2011 meeting.
Academy rules still require voters in the three categories to see all five nominees before voting, but the rules no longer insist that members to view the films theatrically at special AMPAS screenings.
The third short-film category, Best Documentary Short Subject, is not affected by the new policy, even though the push to expand the pool of voters via screeners began in the Documentary Branch when it changed the doc-feature rules a year ago.
Branch governor Michael Moore told TheWrap he plans to push for changes in the doc-shorts category this year.
The new procedures have the potential to increase the number of voters in those categories from the low hundreds into the thousands. The Academy does not release the numbers of members who vote, but those who’ve participated in the process have long surmised that categories requiring members to attend special voting screenings may only attract a couple hundred voters.
This year’s nomination vote was beset by snags in the transition to online voting, with the Academy first pushing back the deadline for members to request paper ballots, then opting to automatically send ballots to every member who didn’t sign up for the online option regardless of whether they’d requested paper.
The week that ballots were due, AMPAS also pushed back the final deadline for nomination voting by one day, amid rampant speculation and anecdotal evidence that voters were confused by the new procedures.
Many people insisted that the earlier deadline and the different voting procedures would cause members to give up, and thus substantially depress the number of voters who cast ballots.
But according to three Academy sources, voter turnout was in fact the highest number in years in every category.
When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”
But the divorce rate in the United States is exactly half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well for this cherished institution.
While some divorces are clearly justified by physical or emotional abuse, intolerable infidelity, addictive behavior or irreconcilable incompatibility, experts say many severed marriages seem to have just withered and died from a lack of effort to keep the embers of love alive.
I say “embers” because the flame of love — the feelings that prompt people to forget all their troubles and fly down the street with wings on their feet — does not last very long, and cannot if lovers are ever to get anything done. The passion ignited by a new love inevitably cools and must mature into the caring, compassion and companionship that can sustain a long-lasting relationship.
Studies by Richard E. Lucas and colleagues at Michigan State University have shown that the happiness boost that occurs with marriage lasts only about two years, after which people revert to their former levels of happiness — or unhappiness.
Infatuation and passion have even shorter life spans, and must evolve into “companionate love, composed more of deep affection, connection and liking,” according to Sonya Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.
In her new book, “The Myths of Happiness,” Dr. Lyubomirsky describes a slew of research-tested actions and words that can do wonders to keep love alive.
She points out that the natural human tendency to become “habituated” to positive circumstances — to get so used to things that make us feel good that they no longer do — can be the death knell of marital happiness. Psychologists call it “hedonic adaptation”: things that thrill us tend to be short-lived.
So Dr. Lyubomirsky’s first suggestion is to adopt measures to avert, or at least slow down, the habituation that can lead to boredom and marital dissatisfaction. While her methods may seem obvious, many married couples forget to put them into practice.
Building Companionship
Steps to slow, prevent or counteract hedonic adaptation and rescue a so-so marriage should be taken long before the union is in trouble, Dr. Lyubomirsky urges. Her recommended strategies include making time to be together and talk, truly listening to each other, and expressing admiration and affection.
Dr. Lyubomirsky emphasizes “the importance of appreciation”: count your blessings and resist taking a spouse for granted. Routinely remind yourself and your partner of what you appreciate about the person and the marriage.
Also important is variety, which is innately stimulating and rewarding and “critical if we want to stave off adaptation,” the psychologist writes. Mix things up, be spontaneous, change how you do things with your partner to keep your relationship “fresh, meaningful and positive.”
Novelty is a powerful aphrodisiac that can also enhance the pleasures of marital sex. But Dr. Lyubomirsky admits that “science has uncovered precious little about how to sustain passionate love.” She likens its decline to growing up or growing old, “simply part of being human.”
Variety goes hand in hand with another tip: surprise. With time, partners tend to get to know each other all too well, and they can fall into routines that become stultifying. Shake it up. Try new activities, new places, new friends. Learn new skills together.
Although I’ve been a “water bug” my whole life, my husband could swim only as far as he could hold his breath. We were able to enjoy the water together when we both learned to kayak.
“A pat on the back, a squeeze of the hand, a hug, an arm around the shoulder — the science of touch suggests that it can save a so-so marriage,” Dr. Lyubomirsky writes. “Introducing more (nonsexual) touching and affection on a daily basis will go a long way in rekindling the warmth and tenderness.”
She suggests “increasing the amount of physical contact in your relationship by a set amount each week” within the comfort level of the spouses’ personalities, backgrounds and openness to nonsexual touch.
Positive Energy
A long-married friend recently told me that her husband said he missed being touched and hugged. And she wondered what the two of them would talk about when they became empty-nesters. Now is the time, dear friend, to work on a more mutually rewarding relationship if you want your marriage to last.
Support your partner’s values, goals and dreams, and greet his or her good news with interest and delight. My husband’s passion lay in writing for the musical theater. When his day job moved to a different city, I suggested that rather than looking for a new one, he pursue his dream. It never became monetarily rewarding, but his vocation fulfilled him and thrilled me. He left a legacy of marvelous lyrics for more than a dozen shows.
Even a marriage that has been marred by negative, angry or hurtful remarks can often be rescued by filling the home with words and actions that elicit positive emotions, psychology research has shown.
According to studies by Barbara L. Fredrickson, a social psychologist and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a flourishing relationship needs three times as many positive emotions as negative ones. In her forthcoming book, “Love 2.0,” Dr. Fredrickson says that cultivating positive energy everyday “motivates us to reach out for a hug more often or share and inspiring or silly idea or image.”
Dr. Lyubomirsky reports that happily married couples average five positive verbal and emotional expressions toward one another for every negative expression, but “very unhappy couples display ratios of less than one to one.”
To help get your relationship on a happier track, the psychologist suggests keeping a diary of positive and negative events that occur between you and your partner, and striving to increase the ratio of positive to negative.
She suggests asking yourself each morning, “What can I do for five minutes today to make my partner’s life better?” The simplest acts, like sharing an amusing event, smiling, or being playful, can enhance marital happiness.
Chrysler introduced a new Grand Cherokee in Detroit on Monday.
DETROIT — While its hometown rivals struggle to regain momentum, Chrysler is accelerating its unlikely product revival.
The smallest of the American automakers kicked off the annual Detroit auto show on Monday with new versions of two Jeep models, the Grand Cherokee and Compass, that have helped turn the company around since its government bailout and bankruptcy in 2009.
Chrysler outperformed the industry last year with a 20.6 percent increase in domestic sales in a market that grew by 13.4 percent. By comparison, sales increased just 3.7 percent at General Motors and 4.7 percent at Ford.
Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of both Chrysler and its Italian parent Fiat, said Monday he expected Chrysler’s upward sales trend to continue this year, particularly in pickup trucks and SUVs.
“I think there’s a general feeling that the U.S. market is in healthy shape,” Mr. Marchionne said in a meeting with reporters. “And we’re certainly going to improve in the market.”
Last year was a stellar one for Chrysler. Its bread-and-butter products like the Grand Cherokee and the Ram pickup had big gains, and new cars like the Dodge Dart began to mitigate the company’s traditional reliance on larger vehicles.
Now Mr. Marchionne is laying plans to build a new, entry-level Jeep at an underutilized Fiat plant in Italy – evidence of how the American company is shepherding its European parent company through difficult times.
Sales of Chrysler products now account for more than 60 percent of the total vehicles sold under the Fiat corporate umbrella, which also includes brands like Alfa Romeo and Maserati.
When Mr. Marchionne negotiated Fiat’s acquisition of Chrysler during its federal bailout, industry executives were skeptical that the American company could thrive after the failures of its previous owners, the German carmaker Daimler and the private-equity firm Cerberus.
Now, however, “it’s not Fiat saving Chrysler, it’s Chrysler saving Fiat,” said David Cole, a founder of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Mr. Marchionne said a key part of Chrysler’s growth will come from its iconic Jeep brand, which has updated its rugged image with better fuel efficiency and improved quality.
The company showed off the first diesel-engine version of the Grand Cherokee on Monday, which officials said could get 30 miles per gallon in highway driving.
A new version of the Jeep Liberty is scheduled to be introduced later this year. Mr. Marchionne said. The compact Jeep will be built alongside a Fiat model in the Italian plant.
The plan helps solve Fiat’s glaring overcapacity issues in Europe, where vehicle sales have dropped to their lowest level in years. It also represents an aggressive step to grow the Jeep brand outside the United States.
“The brand needs an entry-level Jeep” that people can get at a lower price point, Mr. Marchionne said.
Chrysler was also close to finalizing plans to build Jeeps in China, he said.
Mr. Marchionne said it was important for Chrysler to expand its product lineup to help Fiat weather the European sales crisis, which is affecting most auto companies there.
He estimated that mass-market carmakers in Europe lost a combined 5 billion euros last year, mostly because demand fell well short of supply.
Automakers have so far announced a handful of plant closings to address the overcapacity issue. But Mr. Marchionne has consistently argued for a broader reduction in the number of factories throughout Europe.
“The gap is too large,” he said. “You can’t close a 5 billion euro gap in operating profit by tweaking the machine.”
Mr. Marchionne said that he was driving Chrysler to make up the difference in profits as Fiat falters and as comeback plans for Alfa Romeo take shape.
“We are living with the consequences of a collective inability to resolve the issue,” he said. “But this is not for the fainthearted.”
He said that overcoming the “threat of complacency” is Chrysler’s biggest issue. After the Ram pickup won the truck of the year award at the Detroit show, Mr. Marchionne cut short the celebratory mood at the company’s exhibit.
“Celebration is fine, I’m delighted,” he said. “But it’s over.”
An Egyptian court granted an appeal by former President Hosni Mubarak and ordered a new trial into the killings of hundreds of protesters during the 2011 uprising, a move certain to inflame the political unrest that has upset the country’s democratic transition.
The ruling was a victory for the ailing Mubarak and his Interior minister, Habib Adli, who also won his appeal. Both men, who had been sentenced to life in prison, face other criminal charges and are likely to remain in detention until a new trial in the deaths by security forces of more than 800 protesters.
“The previous ruling was unfair and illegal,” said Yousry Abdelrazeg, one of Mubarak’s lawyers, who accused the judge in the first trial of political bias. “The case was just a mess and there was no evidence against Mubarak.”
No date has been set for the new trial.
The court’s decision comes amid turmoil over an Islamist-backed constitution and outrage over the expanded powers of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. It means a bloody chapter in Egypt’s 2011 revolt will be revisited with the prospect that Mubarak, whose police state ruled for 30 years, may be absolved in a case that deepened the nation’s political differences and impassioned the Arab world.
Mubarak was convicted in June of not preventing the deaths of hundreds of protesters attacked by police and snipers during the uprising, which began on Jan. 25, 2011, and ended 18 days later when he stepped aside and the military seized power.
Mubarak argued that he had not ordered the crackdown and was unaware of the extent of the violence. A recently completed government-ordered investigation into the killings, however, reportedly found that Mubarak had monitored the deadly response by security forces in Tahrir Square via a live television feed.
The appeals court ruling came a day after prosecutors announced an investigation into allegations that Mubarak, 84, received about $1 million in illicit gifts from Al Ahram, the country’s leading state-owned newspaper. The former president has reportedly been in a military hospital since December after he fell in a prison bathroom and injured himself.
Last year’s trial riveted the nation with images of the aging Mubarak wheeled into the defendant’s cage on a stretcher, his arms crossed and his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
(Special correspondent Reem Abdellatif contributed to this report)
Spoiler warning: Firefly ended over 10 years ago and it’s been 7 years since its subsequent film, Serenity, came out, so the spoiler statute of limitations is officially up. Proceed at your own risk.
Like many fans of the Joss Whedon space western Firefly, Kyle Hill was shocked by the end of the Serenity movie, when fan-favorite character Wash (Alan Tudyk) was unceremoniously impaled by a Reaver harpoon. Unlike most fans, Hill — a research assistant with a degree in Environmental Engineering and a contributor at Scientific American — decided to try and rewrite (fictional) history by proving that Wash’s death was scientifically impossible, using the power of math, physics and fandom. His article originally appeared online at Scientific American, and Wired publishes this updated version with permission.
I was late to Firefly. Nearly 10 years after the show first aired and then was subsequently cancelled, I holed up in my room, coffee and external hard drive in hand, aiming to blaze through one of the most beloved sci-fi series.
A mix of science fiction and “spaghetti-western” genres, Firefly was wonderful. It certainly awakened the fanboy in me, and I quickly understood why my girlfriend envied me for being able to watch the series for the first time.
It all ended abruptly, due to early cancellation, with the last episodes of Firefly barely answering any central questions or exploring the rich universe that had been so lovingly crafted by creator Joss Whedon. It was to my delight to learn that in 2005 there was a full-length movie in response to public (and private) outcries for more of Serenity and her crew.
Watching Serenity let me spend a bit more time in the ‘verse, and the film thankfully resolved a number of outstanding loops justwaiting to be closed. But the forced end of Firefly also forced Joss Whedon’s hand. He put in scenes that would only have appeared in a last hurrah like Serenity. One scene in particular shook me, like the unexpected sight of a Reaver ship. It’s a scene that drove me to NASA forums and technical reports, glass manufacturers, my calculator, and eventually to this post.
Late in Serenity, after crash-landing at the mysterious base of “Mr. Universe,” pilot Hoban “Wash” Washburne meets his end at the tip of a Reaver spear. The immediacy of the violence, and his wife Zoe’s touching reaction, kept my mouth agape well into the next few minutes of the film. One of my favorite characters just died, as Firefly died. I couldn’t stand it. I had to be sure.
What if the Reaver spear couldn’t plausibly make it through the forward windows of Serenity? The movie may have been set in the future, but we too have built spacecraft with windows, and they are made to withstand impacts. If I could prove that a modern shuttle window (assuming that a future window would be even better) could withstand the impact that killed Wash, I could have the ultimate in fanboy closure: the movie is “wrong,” and my version of the story lives on.
Objects in Space
In terrestrial situations, a speck of paint is less than harmless. In space, it’s deadly. Travelling at a blistering 10,000 meters per second in orbit, the equations deem it lethal. It becomes a “hypervelocity” bullet.
Our spacecraft obviously must account for this deadly debris. Tens of thousands of pieces of extraterrestrial trash litter the orbit of Earth [PDF], meaning that a shuttle’s final impact could come from an errant hex nut. Shuttles today are outfitted with shielding to prevent such disasters, and feature two-and-a-half inch thick windows—the thickest pieces of glass ever produced in the optical quality for see-through viewing.
The largest impact to a shuttle window occurred when a fleck of paint struck STS-92—a flight to the International Space Station. A shuttle window has never been penetrated by a hypervelocity impact, but it doesn’t have to be. A deformation large enough could eventually cause window failure upon repeated take-offs and re-entries.
After engineers examined the crater in the window of STS-92, the shape that best explained the damage was a sort of miniaturized plate. But to begin making comparisons, I’ll consider the fleck of paint to be a similarly sized metal sphere. This will bring the numbers in line with the hypervelocity testing that NASA has already conductBased on the size and the speed of the fleck that hit STS-92, I calculated that the window weathered an impact with around 20 Joules of kinetic energy—equivalent to four milligrams of TNT or a decently thrown baseball. It created more than enough damage to warrant a window replacement. And such replacements from serious impacts are commonplace. Robert Lee Hotz notes in the Wall Street Journalthat “NASA shuttle engineers have replaced the spacecraft’s debris-pitted windows after almost every flight since since 1981, at a cost of about $40,000 per window.”
Such little flecks can be catastrophes. An orbiter unlucky enough to be hit by anything much larger than the paint chip that hit STS-92 is in for some trouble. Debris measuring five centimeters in diameter packs the punch of a bus collision. Any larger than that and we begin making comparisons to sticks of dynamite.
The shuttle windows are tough, to be sure, surviving nearly 1,400 impacts intact over 43 sampled missions, but are they strong enough to save Wash? Tiny particles are elevated to terrifying status because of their ridiculous speeds, not their mass. Conversely, the Reaver spear that killed Wash was larger, but moving much more slowly. A few assumptions and some physics equations would determine if I could save him.
I Am A Leaf on the Wind…
To get the general dimensions of the spear that killed Wash, I had to (unfortunately) go back to the scene in question, excruciatingly slowing down an emotional moment to be replayed over and over.
Diving back into Serenity, I used an earlier Reaver chase scene to guesstimate the spear size and speed. If Reavers shoot spears slow enough to be dodged (which they do), the spear that kills Wash can’t be moving much faster than a Major League fast-ball, putting the upper limit on speed around 100 miles per hour (45 m/s). This is orders of magnitude slower than the hypervelocity impacts that a shuttle deals with, but the spear is thousands of times more massive than a fleck of paint. Assuming it’s fashioned out of an “average” metal, and given its size, I’d guess it’s around 100-200 pounds (45-90 kg).
Kinetic energy is easy enough to calculate. The kinetic energy of a moving object is one-half of its mass multiplied by the square of its velocity.
This equation gives the Reaver spear a frightening 45,500 Joules at the low end. This is over 3,700 times the energy of the largest recorded impact to a space shuttle window — equivalent to a detonation of a pencil made of TNT or a medium sized anvil dropped on it.
What are the risks? via Aerospace.org
Based on hypervelocity testing undertaken by NASA, the Reaver spear would be like an aluminum sphere with a one-centimeter diameter hitting the window at 10 kilometers per second (assuming that the tip of the spear is comparable to a 1cm diameter point). Seeing that the damage threshold for a shuttle window based on this testing is 0.004 centimeters, my hopes quickly vanished. With this kind of energy, the Reaver spear could pierce a shuttle’s wing, its thermal protection tiles, or even its crew cabin.
The math doesn’t lie—Wash didn’t stand a chance.
Watch How I Soar…
I thought I had found the perfect fanboy out. The windows in Serenity looked flimsy and thin, surely not something a space-faring craft would be outfitted with. If the windows were anything like what we use to traverse the ‘verse today, perhaps all that would have happened is a jolt of fright from a deflected Reaver spear, or so I hoped.
But even delving through a hundred page NASA technical report [PDF] on impact shielding couldn’t ease my psyche.
Now, this is at its core a fanboy rant. No matter what I found, Wash dies in the movie. It’s part of the larger story and serves as a plot point, not a meaningless killing-off. But I selfishly wanted closure; I needed to resolve the dissonance between a character’s death and the fact that we know he wouldn’t have died if the networks saw better numbers from Firefly.
Maybe this is a testament to the enduring qualities of the show. To create characters important enough, and in only fifteen short stories, to warrant hours of research and calculation that ultimately proves useless in the larger story is an outcome of a great narrative. It’s typical of a fan base that will still pack a Comic-Con panel ten years after the airing of the show.
In the end, I like the story better this way. It takes a great narrative to make someone care so much about a character that he takes real world steps to resolve his own dissonance. If I could have ‘proved’ that Wash wouldn’t have been killed, a whole can of worms would open. What about the fact that Serenity was an old ship with sub-optimal gear? What about space-age technologies like super-strong window polymers? The scene obviously resonated with people (especially me), and the fact that I failed is a better story than a discussion of faulty film physics.
