Armageddon

Corrected entry: A few things about splitting the asteroid always annoyed me. They couldn't possibly calculate that drilling a certain depth would "split" the asteroid rather then blowing it to smaller but still deadly bits. Even if they did calculate right they did this on stable rotation. But as they stated the asteroid started rotating unpredictably after passing the moon so it could have turned towards earth causing one piece to hit as they calculated and the other to hit just a bit later. And last even if all 2 previous scenarios go just right (as in the movie) we saw that the asteroid was covered with huge high and sharp "mountains" which would most likely break of in the explosion and rain down on earth. So either way earth would be doomed.

Correction: In regards to the moon, the asteroid started to rotate after passing the moon, not change its trajectory. Thus the two pieces (if sucessfully split) would most likely miss earth. Furthermore, in a weightless environment, the two pieces would be pushed apart by the explosion with the same amount of force. Thus the trajactory of both pieces would be the same (but in opposite directions) from the moment it exploded. In regards to the sharp mountains, they aren't big enough to "doom" the earth and would mostly burn up upon entering the earth's atmosphere.

XIII

Correction: With regard to the assumption that the asteroid would split in half, there are a few mentions of a fault line on the asteroid, so it seems like NASA has scanned the asteroid enough to determine that placing the nuke at a certain depth will indeed split it along that fault line. As to the rotation issue, the graphic that shows the rotation indicates it is not spinning end over end but around its central front-to-back axis, so NASA calculates that the nuke splitting the rock in half would still work.

Vader47000

Corrected entry: One of the things the creators of the movie did not think out is the issue of the asteroid's gravity. There are several problems with that. It is stated that the asteroid is the size of Texas. Even if we assumed it to have had 1000 miles of diameter (a really huge asteroid) and the same density as Earth it would have gravity of about 12% of Earth's gravity. In the movie it can be seen (even though stated otherwise) that the teams operate under earth-like gravity - tools, piping elements, debris all fall down with quite an acceleration. Also the astronauts move about very conveniently - much more easily than would for example on the Moon. On the other hand if we assumed that the asteroid had much higher density, which allowed it to had significant gravity, a near passing (a couple of hundred kilometers) of such a massive body alone would probably wipe out humanity just as efficiently as a direct hit. Even if we assumed that the asteroid's diameter was only 500 miles and its density was about the density of the Moon, the near passing of its two halves would wreak havoc on Earth as the influence of their gravity on, for example, ocean tides, would be up to 20 times bigger than Moon's.

Correction: The mathematicians at NASA would have taken the fragments into account and set up the "zero-barrier" sufficiently far away. This is why the earth sees no effects from them. And gravity is increased due to the asteroid spinning.

Phixius

Correction: Gravitational forces don't have to be equally distributed throughout an astronomical body. They have what are called mass concentrations, or mascons, which are clusters of material beneath the surface of higher density than the rest of the object, while the body as a whole has a lower average gravity (mascons in the Moon had to be accounted for in adjusting Apollo mission lunar orbits). So the Roughnecks could just be working on a higher density area.

Vader47000

Factual error: The idea of two spacecraft blasting off together so close to each other at the same time is a joke. One would put the other at great risk. Not only is there massive fire and heat, but the vibrations from the noise of the exhaust do great damage to the surroundings. And there is great inconsistency about just how close the two spacecraft really are. The first still shot taken in the dark has them at different towers about 150 yards apart. But, then all the men take an elevator up ONE tower and are split apart into the two groups at the top of the tower. Furthermore, the launch takes place at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39: the fixed and rotating service structures built for the Space Shuttle are visible. The pads at LC 39 are 8,700 feet apart (just over 1.5 miles). (01:00:00)

More mistakes in Armageddon
More quotes from Armageddon

Trivia: The character Freddy Noonan appears in, or is referenced in many scenes yet is more or less an afterthought. This is the same name as Amelia Earhart's navigator, who was involved in one of the most famous real life aerial mysteries, but is also a largely forgotten person.

af4dable

More trivia for Armageddon

Question: Would someone please explain why they need a huge Gatling gun on the asteroid? Are they scared of aliens or what?

Answer: If you look at the deleted scenes on the special edition DVD, you will see a deleted scene in which A.J. asks what they needed a gun for, and Max explains that it's for debris elimination, in order to take out small rocks in the way.

More questions & answers from Armageddon

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.