I missed the Superbowl yesterday because, well, I don’t give a damn about the Superbowl (I stopped caring about football a few years back when when I realized I was wondering which team had more felons on it).
I wish I had watched it though; evidently Fed Ex had an ad that was really, really Bad Astronomy. I searched YouTube, and bang, there it was.
Now I know this is a commercial and it’s meant to be silly, but it reinforces so many misconceptions I just have to say something.
The bad science is fast and furious here. We see a base on the Moon, and in the background a meteor flashes by. A meteor, on the airless Moon. Oops! Meteors are formed when bits of rock, ice or metal enter an atmosphere. They create a shock wave in front of them which compresses the air, and compressed air gets hot. The rock heats up, starts to glow, and voila. Meteor. So on the Moon, with no air, the rock/ice/metal slams directly into the surface, making a crater.
OK, then we see the scene inside the lunar base… and everyone is floating. Uh, there’s gravity on the Moon, folks. It’s 1/6 Earth gravity, but it’s there. It’s very common, shockingly, for people to think there is no gravity on the Moon (search Google for "heavy boots"), but to see it in an ad can only make things worse for me here at Bad Astro central.
Then it gets worse. Yes! They cut outside to astronauts walking around, and the gravity looks to be Moon normal! That only lasts until one astronaut slaps another on the back, and the slappee is launched into space. Nice trick; even on the Moon a man in a suit would weigh about 35 or more pounds. Try launching a 35 pound weight 20 yards in the air if you’d like, but have your medical insurance paid up before you do.
The final insult? The astronaut launched off the surface is struck by a meteor.
Sigh. My work is never done.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Oh yea, I seen that one! (It was aired while the canadian TV guys were still unaware they were airing the US feed by accident. Yea, they remove the US commercials during the bowl here. After the first quarter I think they finally pushed the button though.)
I very well remember babbling to my mom how much this was all bologna while it was playing… Really full of nonsense but well done graphically.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I’m a Bears fan, and an avid reader of the BA blog. I was already hoarse from the game and I started yelling about the BA in that commercial. I’m glad it was brough to your attention!
February 5th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Plus the meteor that hits him is flaming and we hear it pass:p
The real question however is why do so many adds this year involve terrible deaths
February 5th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Sigh, think of how many years you could afford to run “Bad Astronomy” for the cost of that one commercial! Fortunately the Superbowl is on a Monday here so we can go to work and avoid it. Unfortunately we have more than enough of our own versions of football competing to block up the airwaves.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Too True,
But you caught about five times more than I would have.
That means you do your work very much better than I ever could.
Therefore, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say:
Thanks, Phil, keep swinging that hammer! (Keep on that never ending work for the rest of us).
rod
February 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
On top of it, they played the worst music ever (”The Final Countdown” by Europe), and used a spaceship directly based off of the one in “Space:1999″ – A show whose premise was that the Earth’s moon was thrown out of orbit.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I had hoped I would come here post-Super-Sunday to see something about the terrible ad! I turned to my wife right after it was over and said, “oh, I can’t *count* the number of problems that commercial had.”
Heh, and of course, I hoped it would be made mention of here the next day. Lo and behold!!!
February 5th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I’m right behind you on the technical points, but.. come on, this is a commercial!
I haven’t seen you screaming about the Red Bull commercial set at the moon landing. The wings cause trouble, leading the voice over the radio to say “come back home and we’ll film it all on a sound stage”. If you didn’t take that one seriously, why the big hubbub over this one?
When push comes to shove, it was a sorta dumb commercial made instantly cool by “The Final Countdown”.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Yeah, the depicted gravity was a big “Huh??” for me. There are so many things they could have done that would have been just as humorous and much more accurate about real Lunar conditions… sigh.
An excellent job, Phil, as always.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I was just going off on that commercial myself, more exciting to me than the game I thought. Jeez you’d think at least someone on the ad campaign might have seen film of the astronauts WALKING on the moon before. Big sigh
February 5th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
There’ll be a lot more horrible deaths from radiation when the next solar flare hits and people realize their building doesn’t have a basement.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
No Gravity on the Moon huh, thats a new one. Somehow this will give our HB “friends” on YouTube more “ammo”. “There no Gravity on the Moon, so how can they walk around like that?”
I can see it now.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Don’t forget sound in space!
February 5th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Another problem. Look at how big the earth is right after they go out!
February 5th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Apollo 18 it was not. Nevertheless, some youthful viewers could ask that most important question. “Did man really walk on the moon?”
Kraft Corporation could sell green cheese through a small ad aired with the Super Bowl.
Madision Avenue gets paid to do fantasy, not science.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I know I’m a bit jaded, but that ad made me want to turn the whole thing off. Not only was it atrocious from the Science standpoint, it wasn’t even funny. Humor can excuse some things, but while the ad was laughable, it wasn’t even close to humorous.
# Pascal Leduc Says:
# The real question however is why do so many adds this year involve terrible deaths
I think the main reason would be the success of last year’s “Caveman getting squished” add. They saw that everyone thought it was funny, so they tried copying rather than coming up with a new joke.
February 5th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Darrin wrote “On top of it, they played the worst music ever (â€The Final Countdown†by Europe)”
I agree, but if you want “corny” you can’t go wrong with poodle rock hits from the 80’s.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Phil, launching a man on the moon with a slap on the back would be made even more difficult than what you say, because even though he WEIGHS only 35 pounds, his MASS is still the same, and to ‘launch’ him it’s the mass you have to accelerate. (I’m supposing here that the slap is made more or less horizontally; a vertical slap has a different effect, indeed… well, let me think now…).
February 5th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
What a minute, there’s no stars! It must be fake!
February 5th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Damn someone else pointed out the Space 1999 ship.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
I’m on a Space: 1999 model building discussion forum, and we pointed out the Eagle-like spaceship right away. It does resemble a real design I saw a few years ago, though, so I wonder how much was based on proposed reality, and how much was based on Space: 1999.
Oh, I hated that Europe song back then, I still ahte it now, and hearing it on this ad really makes me hate it more. (Is that even possible?)
By the way, if we ignore the close Earth in that one scene (REALLY close Earth, btw), and put Mars in its place, we could presume the moon shown is Phobos, which would help to correct the low-g scenes and explain the ’slappee’ escape velocity thing. A little bit. Kinda… OK, nevermind.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
… And you could hear the rocket engines as the FedEx space ship swooped in for a landing, and don’t get me started on that one! Space ships are *not* airplanes. They don’t have wings. They don’t glide. The most efficient method of landing is to come straight down. (Okay, the Apollo landers did manuever horizontally for a while just before landing, but that was because they were looking for a flat spot with no boulders or craters to land on, and they, especially Apollo 11, almost ran out of fuel doing it. It’s not something you do by choice, and the FedEx ship had a nice flat, prepared surface to land on.) But that’s the way rockets always land on TV and in movies.
What’s more, they would never land within a mile or two of an inhabited structure, don’t want a crash or explosion to take out bystanders.
And meteoroids large enough to take out a person are no more common on the Moon than they are on Earth, but we see two of them in a 1 minute commercial.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Oh big deal. Have you already forgotten last year’s FedEx ad with cavemen co-existing with dinosaurs? Did you laugh at that one, or just turn up your nose at the inaccuracies?
February 5th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I figured there was plent of BA in that commerical. The weightless astronaut was loud and clear to me.
Have you ever seen that Red Bull commerical? The one that takes place on the moon as well? Well, the two astronauts find they can’t take the first steps because they drank Red Bull, and that gives you wings! Oh yes, at then end, they say “Come back to Earth and we’ll do the whole thing in a studio.”
I have to wonder how many HBers will take this concept seriously.
February 5th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Poor ad – nice ‘Eagle Transporter’ though.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Not to mention that when the FedEx ship lands, it causes the lunar dust to billow up around it as if it were in air!
February 5th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Hey, for years I “suffered fools gladly†and simply smirked when people brought up that old pap about there being no gravity on the moon. I just wrote them off as the same people who got all tier paleontology from the Flintstones. Sad but harmless.
Then I moved here to Utah.
When I was told this same poppycock by a local teenager, I was further informed that he got it FROM HIS SCIENCE TEACHER at school. This same teacher told his students that Einstein was same kind of savant who could not tie his own shoes.
I confronted his “teacher†about where he got his information, and his answer was “Oh, everybody knows thatâ€. I later found out that he had less than two years of community college under his belt (where his “major†was “what everybody already knows.
This moron is no longer a teacher, because he got a better paying job pouring cement.
February 5th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Geesh, I didn’t even notice the billowing dust!
Do the space helmets seem reminiscent of the underwater helmets from The Abyss to anyone besides me?
February 5th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
a lot of the ads seemed to feature really painful things, not to mention the aforementioned bad science. To top it all off, there’s a big stink brewing about the “obscene” view of Prince behind the sheet during halftime.
makes me wonder why I bothered to watch the game. There’s four hours of my life I won’t get back… except that I DO like to watch well-played football…
which leads to me wonder again why I watched THIS game…
February 5th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I thought that ad was completely stupid. I mean, as everyone has already said, there are no meteors on the moon. In the lunar base, is everyone wearing magnetic shoes that keep them off the floor or something? I don’t think so. And when the guy gets punted off the moon, he actually thinks its funny. Plus, as everyone has mentioned, there is no sound in space. If the slapee had been hit with a normal moon meteorite, while in normal Moon gravity, he probably would have died as well, but in a very different way.
February 5th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Ah, come on, guys. It was a silly commercial that was meant to be silly. It’s an animation, for cryin’ out loud.
BA, I appreciate your concern, but I’d much rather you spend your considerable talents and knowledge addressing real-life issues, as you usually do. Personally, I don’t like the fact that this kind of thing distracts you from your vigilance in the fight against anti-science in the government. That’s a real concern to me; not some hare-brained commercial that I hope wasn’t taken as scientific by anyone.
Just my two cents.
February 5th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Obviously FedEx can’t afford enough heavy boots.
February 5th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
It is a silly commercial because it’s so bad, but it’s also an entertaining way to remind people of what’s not possible on the Moon. You know, just in case…
Now, the Red Bull commercial a couple people mentioned above made me groan – seriously.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Yeah, take a look at the cavemen and dinosaurs FedEx commercial. It’s like they’re on a campaign to promulgate stupid science with their service.
February 5th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Eddie, I hear you. But I think the point is that bad science is bad science, no matter how small. Yeah, it’s just a stupid commercial. When commercials come on, most of us adults go to the kitchen or tune out (if we can’t fast forward!), but the kids don’t. I learned that when my 5-year old started telling me how much I needed whatever product Billy Mays was hawking that day, often quoting most of the dialogue in the process. Are these commercials flagrant anti-science? Probably not. Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity and all that. Still, pointing out the anti- or just bad-science is worthy — in this commercial, in Star Wars, in governmental policy or wherever it may lurk.
For me, noticing the bad science doesn’t necessarily ruin a movie (TV show, book, etc.) — I mean, c’mon…Star Wars is fun! For that matter, so is the Hitchhiker’s series by Douglas Adams. Then again, if I hear one more Pacific Treefrog calling in the background of ANY movie where the location isn’t even near the Pacific Coast, I may scream.
February 5th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Oh, and PZ…yes, stupidity is self-propagating. I think that commercial was a nod to the BC comic strip lobby. Perhaps the next FedEx Super Bowl commercial should have some cephalopods instead?
February 5th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Not to mention all those old jungle movies set in Africa or South America with Kookaburras calling. I seem to recall even The Treasure of the Sierra Madre had a Kookaburra call in it.
I read the Heavy Boots item. Wow! I never realised there were people who were THAT ignorant about science.
February 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Shouldn’t earth look smaller?
February 6th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I think that 99% of prospective FedEx customers (weighted by quantity of shipments) would identify the bad science as slapstick.
I don’t think it’s harmful. It’s like an episode of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.
The caveman ad of last year was funnier. It had the killer line, “Not my problem.”.
February 6th, 2007 at 4:06 am
just a comedy add phil…… just a comedy add……
February 6th, 2007 at 5:04 am
just a comedy add phil…… just a comedy add……
If that were true, wouldn’t the commercial actually be funny?
February 6th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Good point Will. I only saw the last part with the guy flying off into space and being hit by the “meteor”. (By the way, is a rock that hits the moon still called a “meteorite” or is there another term for it?) My brother and his wife were laughing, but I didn’t find it at all funny. It was worse than the Fed Ex commercial last year with the cavemen and the dinosaurs. I guess Fed Ex thinks people dying is funny (and will sell their service) if the person dies really unconventionally and fast.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:48 am
Harmful it was not. Look: we’ve went all back to watch it again. Not bad for publicity!!
February 6th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Phil,
I had a Homer Simpson moment while I was reading your blog this morning. I was kind of half reading it and when I came to the word “Felons” my brain interpreted it as “Felines”, so I was wondering to myself, “Why would Phil wonder how many cats are on each team?” Then I re-read the sentence and realized it was “Felons” not “Felines(Doh! – Come on brain, wake up).
Thought you could use a laugh after all that bad astronomy.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:05 am
It did make me think the moment I saw it “I wonder if Phil is watching the superbowl”.
As it turns out I kind of agree with him. I shake my head when players have to go see a judge so they can leave the state to play in the superbowl. On the other hand, I live in Indiana. This was a very special Super Bowl for me.
Which brings me to the second thing I thought when I saw it. “Oh no, that Rene guy is also, ack.. hate to admit it.. a hoosier. and probably watching the Super Bowl right now and jumping up and down because it proves his little home-made book” Rene and other HB’s are already known for their “steller” performance in the research department. I can see their logic flow already.
#IF FedEx Commercial can be filmed in studio THEN the moon landings could… scratch that.. Were definitively without a doubt… filmed in a studio.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Folks, one of the aspects of this Site is to use any media misrepresentation of astronomy as a starting point to talk about good astronomy. It’s the opening line. Saying “It’s just a commercial,” misses the point. Sure, it’s just a silly commercial, and perhaps most people don’t take it seriously. But ask yourself this – why did the ad writers make so many stupid mistakes? Were they intentionally misrepresenting the moon, because they thought the audience would laugh at how wrong they were? I doubt it.
For what they spent on this ad, they sure look like they cobbled the script up in about 10 minutes. “That caveman ad worked so well last year, what can we do this year to kill someone? Can’t be another caveman.” “I know, we’ll set it on the moon, and have him hit by a meteor.” “Great, we can show all this weightlessness and floating, then have the guy accidentally knocked off the moon and hit by the meteor.” “Perfect. Now we just need some overly-dramatic music and a neato space ship.”
If they wanted weightlessness, why didn’t they set it in a space station? Oh, because of the new “Back to the Moon” thing.
Yeah, it’s just a silly commercial. And Armageddon was just a pathetic action flick. Oh wait, you didn’t see Phil’s movie review section? What were you thinking? Go there NOW!
February 6th, 2007 at 7:18 am
I didn’t mind any of the bad science, loved the 1999 ship, thought it was mildly entertaining – right up until the guy gets hit by the meteor. That was just stupid, added nothing to the commercial, was way more distracting than the “gravity free zone”… Garmin Man was definitely the best commercial of the bunch!
February 6th, 2007 at 7:49 am
In response to “it’s just a commercial.” Well, “Birdman of Alcatraz” is just a film, and yet most who have seen it think the Birdman was some sort of benign character who was maltreated by the authorities. A little research reveals that Stroud was instead as evil a child-molesting dude an any who have come along. Films, short or long, have an incredible ability to impress, educate, and edify or completely mislead a large percentage of us, so they are not “just” mere moments of entertainment. An accurate film can be just as funny and entertaining as a dumb one, so let us not let the idiots off the hook. I speak of the idiots who seem to have as a goal to make sure the world makes progress at a snail’s pace, if that.
February 6th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Skirts in zero G?
February 6th, 2007 at 8:32 am
On the stupid gravity front, I just have to share this story… My high school geography teacher once told the class that gravity was caused by air pressure. No, seriously! When I pointed out that air pressure is, in fact, caused by gravity, she went ballistic at me.
The fact that this particular woman also taught Religious Education may or may not be causally related.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I knew the moon landings were filmed in a studio. I think i saw a ‘C’ on one of those rocks. Did you notice that papers from the copy machine were fluttering? wind in the studio people.
This is proof positive.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:23 am
When it comes to space matters, my pals here in Rocket City, USA (Huntsville AL) and I have to remind ourselves: “DON’T GEEK IT TO DEATH.” Still, it seems like they could have done something at least as funny and fun while NOT playing fast and loose with the essential forces of the universe.
But then again, as Space Camp co-worker (I come by my Space Geek credentials honestly) pointed out: You know, a space ship could be out of food, water, air, fuel and electricity, but that articificial gravity system would still be working for them solid as a rock.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Since everyone else has tackled bad astronomy via the Superbowl, I’ll comment on the Superbowl itself. As a resident near the city of Indianapolis, I’ve had my fill of the Bowl since long before the game was played. Now that the Colts won, it’s just making matters worse. Yuuuck!
However, speaking of bad astronomy via ad time, how many of you recall the Nextel commercial from just not quite four years back?
It starts on the ground with a 400,000 foot-tall anchored radio tower being built, to accommodate nationwide walkie-talkie service. It cuts to a shot of the tower’s pinnacle, with an astronaut drifting nearby in zero-g.
February 6th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Maybe they were ANTI-MATTER meteoroid! That swishing sound was from the gamma rays disrupting the electronics.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:20 am
The Garmin Man ad was fun, mainly because of its deliberate cheesiness. It, and a few Behind the Scenes “interviews” can be seen on YouTube. Funny stuff when taken as a whole.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I saw an episode of Star Trek recently (I think it was Enterprise, but it might have been Voyager) and had to protest at a scene where the crew were standing in the sick bay around talking, and then they react to the sound of another spaceship “pulling up” outside! I mean, we all know spacecraft make a whooshing noise as they fly by (according to Paramount and Hollywood in general) but this was taking it too far. It couldn’t be dismissed as a mere sound effect if the sound was integral to the plot! They might as well have added the sound of a handbrake being applied.
Anyway, I’m still a Trekkie/er, but really sometimes…
February 6th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Phil, you really have a tough crowd in your comments section.
February 6th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Irishman: “If they wanted weightlessness, why didn’t they set it in a space station?”
That’s what I was thinking. In fact, I imagine some clever ad exec might’ve pitched the idea originally as being on a space station. Somebody higher up thought the Moon would make a better backdrop, but none of the jokes were changed. Oh, and they added a flaming meteor effect to make the hurtling debris more visible, to the chagrin of the guy who conceived the ad.
February 6th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Since Bad Astronomy is one in a series of Bad Science books, according to the cover — I’ll mention the last Bad Science FedEx commercial I saw with the Cavemen, and Dinosaurs. — Cavemen using some flying reptile to deliver a package, which gets eaten by a T-Rex.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Here’s one thing about space movies and this ad that drives me loony: lights set inside the helmet, behind the reflective faceplate, and directed at the face!
If that wasn’t problematic enough, the hapless astronauts featured in this commercial must have only their hands for sun shields.
On a different note:
With regards to felines, Sonny Tufts had no trouble finding them on the moon in 1953, and in a different vein, one felon was taken care of by the lunar rock men in 1958! Take me to your Lido.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Will…… not everybody will agree with Phil just because he is Phil. Whilst he is far more educated a man than me and he makes many good points I’m pretty sure he won’t mind me ocasionally thinking different to him.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Jonas: As far as I know, there was only one other Bad Science book from Wiley, “Bad Medicine”. It’s a good read even if it comes across as a bit shouty in places.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I said it earlier, and I’ll say it again: Phobos, everyone, Phobos! Would have worked perfectly for this ad. Except for the meteors. And the aerodynamic maneuvering of the Eagle–er spaceship. And the billowing dust. And the Earth. And the… oh, nevermind…
Oh, and I still think the helmets look like leftovers from The Abyss, even down to the interior lighting.
February 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Gee (or is it 1/6 Gee), when you become a scientist, are you required to give up your sense of humor? Personally, I thought it was one of the 5 funniest of the comercials (along with Bud Lite’s dirty dalmation). My kids and I did discuss the goofy science portrayed and they caught most of the “bad” science
February 7th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Eli54 said:
> Skirts in zero G?
Great catch! I saw that and forgot to comment. That could be one of the various problems they mentioned, a lack of planning that could be a winfall in some cases.
But the bad science connection – the skirts didn’t behave like they were in freefall. No billowing and floating. They must have been heavily starched.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Um…check me on this Phil, but would the astronaut’s mass and, thus, inertia be the same on the moon regardless of his apparent 35lb weight? That is, wouldn’t it take the same shove (force) to move a 200 pound person on the moon—or in space—as it takes here?
February 8th, 2007 at 6:56 am
The dust billowing up around the landing FedEx craft looks like it’s operating in atmosphere, nothing at all like the Apollo missions. I suspect this may have been faked
.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Tailspin Tommy, you are correct that mass and therefore inertia is the same. However, the effort for motion is deceptive. Have you ever dealt with boats? Because water’s resistance to motion is much less than dry friction (i.e. object on ground), a person can get a large boat moving simply by the act of stepping off. The weightless environment would be even easier. Without gravity to anchor the objects together, friction wouldn’t do much – they’d just push apart.
More appropriately, if he was able to push the other guy off into space, he should have floated in the other direction.
February 18th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Tailspin Tommy, you are correct that mass and therefore inertia is the same. However, the effort for motion is deceptive. Have you ever dealt with boats? Because water’s resistance to motion is much less than dry friction (i.e. object on ground), a person can get a large boat moving simply by the act of stepping off. The weightless environment would be even easier. Without gravity to anchor the objects together, friction wouldn’t do much – they’d just push apart.
More appropriately, if he was able to push the other guy off into space, he should have floated in the other direction
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