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As a movie, we rate "Deep Impact" to be fairly good...about 7.5 on our
scale of 0 to 10.  Scientifically, it was fairly good.  There were
essentially no "dumb" mistakes, like those that proliferated during the
"Asteroid" miniseries.  There were many things that weren't right, but can
be generously chalked up to "artistic license". Most seriously wrong were:

* violent comet activity commences within seconds of "sunrise"

* dispersal of the larger comet fragment that close to Earth is represented
as a 4th of July-type fireworks display, rather than the deadly holocaust
it would have been

* the two comet fragments are seen in broad daylight as bright objects
weeks before impact

More forgivable, taking account of the simplification necessary for a plot
in a reasonable length movie, is the sudden orbit computation by the
astronomer in the dome (rather than Brian Marsden), omission of other
effects (besides tsunami) of the impact, apparent discovery of a comet as
bright as Mizar and Alcor that is then kept secret for a year, the
extremely tangential angle (and long time to traverse the atmosphere) of
the impacting comet fragment (and its lack of brilliance), apparent
failures to predict locations of impact earlier (but after XF11, who
knows?), and the extraordinary violence of the comet (spitting boulders)
but then who knows what a comet really looks like?

Elements of the plot also strain credulity, from our informed
point-of-view.  Especially, I mean keeping secret the comet, the
construction of the space mission, and the construction of the caves in
Missouri.

But the movie was at least 100 times better than "Asteroid" and a
reasonable movie to watch by any standard.  The Indianapolis newspaper
reporter I talked with yesterday (who had seen the preview with the paper's
movie critic) said "wait for the video".  But the special effects in the
final minutes are worth seeing on the big screen.

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