kevin@voder.UUCP (The Last Bugfighter) (08/15/85)
> Remember when the submarine ran into a problem and lost some air out of the > ballast tanks? The solution was to push the sub's snorkel through the wall of > an alveoli in the guy's lung and get some air when he inhaled. Well, wouldn't > there be a problem with the size of the air molecules? I mean, when the sub > was miniaturized, the air inside it was shrunken also. Now, wouldn't there be > at least a bogus air pressure reading when they fill up with normal air that > hasn't been miniaturized? For that matter, would the air molecules even be > able to fit into the sub? > > Adrian Zannin > ..{bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!ugzannin Another case of where you have to read the book to fully understand the movie. After the Proteus lost air from a storage tank pilot Owens insisted they be removed from Benes body as they couldn't continue the mission without the lost air. Grant asked why they couldn't just stick the sub's snorkle through the alveolar membrane and into the lung to suck up some air as the pressure from Bene's breathing should be enough to pressurize the tank. Owens informs Grant that it would be impossible, `We're miniaturized, with lungs the size of a bacterial fragment. The air on the other side of those membranes is unminiaturized. Each molecule in that air is almost large enough to see, damn it. Do you think we can take them into our lungs.' Grant then recalls that Owens had earlier said that the Proteus was orig- inally designed for deep sea research and had it's own miniaturizing equip- ment on-board for gathering samples. He suggests that the run the snorkelj from the compact miniaturizer and then a hose from that into the depleted air tank. Although the field of the mini-miniaturizer is small it can be extended down and out a small distance from the snorkle so as to miniaturize the air molecules before they get pushed into the snorkle, otherwise it might take more time than they had left as the air molecules were so large compared to the opening in the snorkle. It works of course, although they do have a slight problem with surface tension betweeen the blood-fluid in the aveoli and the air in the lungs, another glossed-over point in the movie. Oh, why didn't the air that escaped from the tank kill Bene's when it un- miniaturized? Well the miniaturization process neither eliminates atoms from molecules or reduces the space between atoms or an atom's components, it actually shrinks the atom and reduces it's mass at the same time. Since the miniaturized air molecules in Bene's blood were so much smaller than the rest of his body they simplly `oozed' their way out of his body. Good thing too as the volume of air lost was actually greater than the volume of Bene's body (The operation was a success but the patient exploded!). The book usually explains things in a lot more detail than the movie, Star Trek II is a case in point, you would have never known that Savik was not pure Vulcan but Romulan/Vulcan. Or that the wounded crew member Scotty carries up to the bridge is actually his nephew. But then the `Fantastic Voyage' book never had Raquel Welch either. --- Kevin Thompson {ucbvax,ihnp4!nsc}!voder!kevin "It's a sort of threat, you see. I've never been very good at them myself but I'm told they can be very effective."