Talk:Cultural Influences on X-COM

UFO

Holy crud!
I used to watch that as a kid, and got into trouble with my mom when I stole all her tin foil to make a cool uniform, then tried to dye my hair purple like the radar operator/receptionist girl.
She didn't mind the foil so much, but the beetroot in my hair didn't go down too well =P
Tifi 15:01, 2 February 2009 (CST)

Supralight (SOL) speed detection and intercept.

In the first episode of UFO it's stated that very special equipment, "Utronic" detection systems, have been developed to track UFOs. So there is a case for why UFOs can be tracked even at superlight speeds.

Interception at high sublight speeds is more difficult but the UFOs are almost always on an approaching course, so it's feasible that the Interceptor rockets are more or less just dropped in the path of the UFOs. Tenuous, but possible. Like a lot of TV shows of this period (and even now), the grasp of physics is pretty weak. Spike 17:28, 15 February 2009 (CST)

Hmm, thinking about this a bit more... the "Utronic" detectors would need to be detecting something that propagated faster than light, and in fact faster than the supralight UFOs, otherwise they would only detect UFOs after they had already attacked - or after they had dropped below light speed, at least. If Utronics detected any emanation that travelled <= 1.0 SOL, emanating from a UFO travelling at 8.0x SOL, then the emanations later in (absolute) time from the attack point where the UFO decelerated below 1.0 SOL, would be detected before the emanations earlier in (absolute) time when the UFO was far away. A decelerating UFO would appear to be traveling away (or, alternatively, backward in time). Oh, don't get me started on relativity...

Therefore Utronic detectors must be some form of tachyon detector, and UFOs must emit (or reflect) some form of tachyons.

Either that or it's all nonsense. ;) Spike 15:53, 16 February 2009 (CST)

For that matter, what effect would nuclear explosions have in the vaccuum of space? The propogation of energy from the explosion would likely be too slow to damage the target?