# Shaman vs Spacemen **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 11, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224 "2014-09-11T19:38:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/41 "2014-09-12T14:00:53Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > Either that or the world picture of the shamen isn’t complete. Well, there’s no way THAT could be true… :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/42 "2014-09-12T14:17:29Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Let’s just send this someplace it’ll fit in better. To the Saturn 3 station, via the Jupiter 2? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/43 "2014-09-12T14:36:32Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Sure-Overwrought illogical twaddle designed to pull at the heartstrings of the typical '70s movie goer. Wasn’t it made for TV? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/44 "2014-09-12T14:47:45Z")
Shaman _VS_ Spaceman? Why not be _Both_? One section of Austine Wood Comarow’s “polage” mural _Human Connections_ at the Boston Museum of Science has a panel where, through the wonder of birefringent art, an image of spacewalking Bruce McCandless\* morphs into a Kachina(?) or shaman. I can’t find a good picture of it, but here’s a video of the mural: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HOBv-4vwBD8/hqdefault.jpg "Making of the Boston Museum of Science Polage Art by Austine Wood Comarow") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOBv-4vwBD8) \*Mission STS-41B February 1984 [![](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-41-B#mediaviewer/File:Astronaut-EVA.jpg) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-41-B#mediaviewer/File:Astronaut-EVA.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/45 "2014-09-12T14:51:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Wasn’t it made for TV? Theatrical release. Interesting trivia: The soundtrack was written by Peter Schickeke(aka P.D.Q. Bach). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/46 "2014-09-12T15:49:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Wasn’t it made for TV? **Silent Running** was a major film, with big-budget (for the time) special effects. It was directed by Douglas Trumbull, well-known as the Special Effects guy for **2001** (and **The Andromeda Strain** ). But the film was shown on TV a LOT later on, and they used shots of the biodome-bearing ships in the TV series **Battlestar Galactica** in 1978 (John Dykstra did the effects. He’d starting his career working on — **Silent Running**!) Silent Running was an incredibly dumb film (Where’s the gravity coming from? How come all that heat isn’t bleeding off into space? And – most important – why did it take the environmentalist hero so damned long to figure out that his plants were dying because they weren’t getting sunlight?), but it had some good effects and the “Drones”: were cute and clever (and I suspect the name helped Lucas come up with “Droids” as the name for robots in his Star Wars films). And Peter Schikele’s music was pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/47 "2014-09-12T16:58:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Silent Running was an incredibly dumb film (Where’s the gravity coming from? How come all that heat isn’t bleeding off into space? That’s the magic of science at work. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/48 "2014-09-12T17:10:03Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > To the Saturn 3 station, via the Jupiter 2? Wait, you’re going with that? When you had a perfectly good opening for a Uranus joke? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/49 "2014-09-12T17:18:14Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Wait, you’re going with that? When you had a perfectly good opening for a Uranus joke? :smack: Believe me, _Saturn 3_ was the bigger joke, ass-wise. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/50 "2014-09-12T17:26:18Z")
Maybe we could recreate earth using organic material from the rings around Uranus ? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/51 "2014-09-12T17:37:37Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > That’s the magic of science at work. No, that’s the magic of mushrooms at work. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/52 "2014-09-12T18:00:05Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > No, that’s the magic of mushrooms at work. Did you bring enough for everyone? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/53 "2014-09-12T18:09:23Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Did you bring enough for everyone? :dubious: It does no good to ask him _after_, dude. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/54 "2014-09-12T18:44:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It does no good to ask him _after_, dude. Crap. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/55 "2014-09-12T22:10:00Z")
The real dumb part of 70s science fiction is the conceit that technological man can synthesize everything needed for human life. The problem is that his life will be soul-less and boring. It’ll be living, but not LIVING, man. But that’s crap. We’re not making synthetic food, or synthetic air, or synthetic water. We’re reliant on the Earth’s biosphere to sustain our lives, and that will be true for the foreseeable future. An Earth where they’ve paved over the forests is an Earth that’s as unlivable for human beings as the Moon. Building a sustainable closed ecosystem that can sustain human life is not a trivial undertaking, even if you’re doing it in a dome here on Earth, where if things go wrong you can just crack open the doors. It’s, like, really hard. Yeah, I know on Star Trek the air and food comes out of magic replicators no problem. Except that’s not real life. In real life we’ll need to grow our food and create our oxygen and purify our water in space, which means it’s either space jungles or nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/56 "2014-09-12T22:13:42Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Wait till you see the roaming charges. There’s a reason they call it Staroamers Fate. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2014, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/57 "2014-09-13T11:57:09Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Let’s just send this someplace it’ll fit in better. Still open . . . ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2014, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/58 "2014-09-13T12:09:49Z")
Can’t we just paint the spaceships indigo and be done with it? ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2014, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/59 "2014-09-13T12:52:32Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > If you can lift a human into space, establish an enclosed ecosystem and exploit space resources then you can drag along a few hundred acorns. Or fifty. You could tie them in a sack. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2014, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224/60 "2014-09-13T13:06:12Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > Maybe we could recreate earth using organic material from the rings around Uranus ? 2nd tier Uranus jokes just don’t cut the cheese, sorry. Back to the topic: You still haven’t explained why your particular brand of psycho soup shaman/magic should be the one picked above all the others that exist out there to be brought along on a migratory journey into deep space. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaman-vs-spacemen/698224.md?page=4)