Funny how the pod is so durable that it can take re-entry, ricocheting off a mountainside, etc., while inside the ship it immediately explodes simply from derailing.

Starship Troopers shows us: _-How not to invade a planet._ _-How not to escape a burning ship._ I'm beginning to think this movie is a cautionary tale....

That's officially known as lithobraking. Like aerobraking uses air, this one uses rock (lithos), or a nearby mountain in this case.

They should have built the cruisers out of escape pods.

"Rocket powered, glass, go kart, two-man escape pods" Don't ever change, you magnificent bastard.

Escape Pod: Smashes through a mountain, Minimal Damage Also Escape Pod: Tips over three feet from its launch rails, Explodes. ???

It's a two person casket with a glass lidd being fired at the nearest rock like an RPG, what's your problem?.

Space Admiral: Why is our fleet bunched up together? Space Vice-Admiral: Yes.

I am fairly sure the bad design was intentional and deliberate. This is a vorhooven movie so along with outright disregarding and mocking his audience, he is a fan of parody gone so far it loops back around into full sincerity.

Escape pod after crashing into a mountain from orbit, crashing through a mountain into a cave, and hitting the end of the cave: This is fine Escape pod after going off the rails: This is unbearable

I demand a recount. there's a "stupid escape pod" leaving at the start of the shot, in addition to the three stationary ones, so there's 4.

"Its the 90's!"- Everyone in the 90's

I think an escape pod should have manuvering thrusters, even if it's just an extra tank of compressed air with a vectorable nozzle. No one wants to spend their last hour on an obvious collision course with a large fragment of their ship, and be entirely unable to even slightly adjust their trajectory.

That's an OSHA violation right there, Bob.

"Why not just have a box on a decoupler that just gets let go of?" Probably because some amount of impulse is required so that the pod doesn't sit right on the big ship that is being shot at by the enemy and/or is about to blow up dramatically when the fuel or magazines burn.

"those weird magical halo pods that hit the ground at 90 mph" he says as he cuts out the evene where the drop pod deploys a "parachute" to slow down and also fires retro rockets to reduce the speed of the pod. Still hits the ground faster than it would in reality probably but it's pretty cool so I give it a pass.

*It gets worse, you missed something…* When the escape pod rams through the outer door and exits the ship - it _creates a hole in the ship_ that leads back to the escape pod room and depressurises the ship. Imagine if a escape pod/sled was deployed when the ship wasn't damaged? Next thing the ship is venting atmosphere through the tunnel the pod flew down. And that's a pretty big room so a lot of force is going to be created by that. Anyone on the wrong side of a closing pressure door is going to be flung down that tunnel (probably severely concussed by impacts on the way) and shot out at a considerable velocity as that tunnel with the large room behind is going to be like a potato gun. Large air chamber, small diameter exit on long tube. And if during an actual emergency the pressure doors malfunction (or get overridden by officers trying to reach the pods), then the whole ship is going to vent into space. Even if it wasn't a ship destroying calamity, just a medium level emergency or _a false alarm._

3:00 That particular escape pod had at that moment been retrofitted with heavily reinforced plot armor.

It’s Starship Troopers. This was clearly intentional.

"We told it we would put it into an escape pod.... It's afraid!!"

I love how everything in Starship Troopers is designed to be as least effective as humanly possible. From the body armour that offers no protection to the infantry weapons that take 300 rounds to stop a single arachnid.

Starship Troopers Escape Pod: "But did you die though?"

"Why would this have rockets and mounted to rails?" Director: "Because if their well-designed, how can I introduce unneeded calamity in the middle of an evacuation?"

So, we can exit the ship and deorbit. Landing systems are really heavy, though. Which should we use? Retro thrust? Wings and wheels? Parachutes? Nah, just use lithobreaking, they'll be fine.

Extremely durable? How quickly we forget about pod 2 that went off the rail into a wall and exploded.

Starship Troopers: Illustrating how a movie can look great and stupid at the same time.

Given what the ship was being attacked with, I wouldn't worry too much about the realism of the escape pods.

0:57 "Down a launch tube to an exterior hatch which doesn't apparently have any explosive bolts or anything. The escape pod just rams nose first through it and pushes it off in order to escape" is said while the clip clearly shows explosive bolts opening the door and launching the debris into space just feet before the pod reaches it. Play it back frame by frame and it's obvious.

In the future, Titanic is seen as an aspirational movie about great safety because of a full ~30% survival rate.

"If you think that will stop me from mocking its escape pods, you're dead wrong." I cracked up.

They must have wanted the launch to look like the Vipers being launched in Battlestar Galactica

The Halo SOEIV's do decelerate to a degree before impact and their occupants are lightly augmented to better allow for impact survival, still a hard hit into the ground though.

Well to be fair, in the world of star ship troopers, the ones in charge consider all personnel disposable so these unsafe designs are consistent with that line of thinking.

There's room for 8 people in that huge room. Just as the scene starts, one is rocketing away. If we want to be REALLY nice, there's what looks like an already launched 5 rail so that's ten people. Also: the people were apparently kind enough to run for the one at the end of the room, and leaving the ones closest to the door for the slower people. How polite.

With the 40k drop pods they at least have the excuse that the only people who use them are super humans in power armor, or a superhuman in fluid suspension.

The whole movie is a piss-take, and so are their pods, as evidenced by the pod derailing and exploding. You can't mock anything more than it mocks itself - but good video anyway, needed a laugh :)

There may be a reason you would want your escape pods to move at least a little bit away from the possibly exploding ship they came from.

The Starship Troopers Handbook: Lesson 1: Train Recruits with live ammunition it teaches them to scream medic when one of their allies gets killed. Lesson 2: Let a rookie pilot your cruiser into a asteroid. Because we said so and if you’re 18 you can pilot our starship. Lesson 3: Mobile Infantry is a meat shield we send them into battle with only a rifle a helmet and body armor. Lesson 4: Make sure your fleet of starships that carrying thousands of lives stay tight close together. Lesson 5: Escapes pods are only two seaters so make sure you leave most of your friends behind to ensure your survival. Lesson 6: Make sure you get promoted after your commanding officer gets killed in combat. Follow these six steps and you will survive in Federation! Remember to earn Citizenship is by serving in the Federation. Would you like to know more?

“That perfect grace period where CGI was just coming in but they were just using them to edit effects not replace them entirely”

It's amazing how well the effects still hold up today.

You know if the glass can take a flight through a mountain its not really a weakness is it. Hell that canopy seems more durable than the capital ships do

“I need to get out of here”! “Are you a pilot”? Err No. well sucks to be you!

My favorite thing about this movie is all of the close up of perfect smiles and teeth. Not one cavity among the entire cast.

The piano in the background just makes this even more hilarious.

Next do a 20 minute analyzes of the practicality of the coed showers. Edit: this was a joke at the expense of Spacedock for being a nerd and over analyzing things that are just meant to be silly fun. I have never, nor will I ever be offended by anything. I think that they should make a squeal that is set entirely in the coed showers.

You also need to manually pilot them, meaning that if you're trying to escape, you better be a pilot or good friends with one! So I guess nuts to anyone working in the engine room!

Spacedock: "Might as well have not bothered, really". Jobsworth: "Well, it's 'ealth n safety regulations, init."

Well don’t forget this film is a parody, the guy who made this HATES the military

Agreed about how cool the damaged ships look. Always thought that was really done well!

Falls off its rails? *explodes* Hits a mountain? *totally fine*

Actually a boosted escape pod rather than just "let go off" makes a lot of sense. If you're in combat and your vessel are about to explode.. You'd really want to be as far away as possible. The farther away, the lower the chance that both the explosion itself and shrapnel will hit you. Naturally.. This could've been much better designed than in this movie :P

The height of expandability in any navy is how large are the escape pods, how many you have, and how durable they are. If your army is going to send wave after wave of foot infantry in without intelligence or targets then it's not surprising that the escape pods are reserved for higher ranked individuals.

@1:45 you say the room has space for 3 pods, but you can see a 4th one launching in the background & we can't see either side wall in the shot. When it goes to the exterior shot @3:45, you can see 6 pod hatches.

Real life Lifeboat have engine so I imagine escape pods would. That way you can group up with all the other escape pods.

“You think you can lick my Navs?” Zander to Carmen.

2:11 seriously vehicles that have their propulsion away from the center of mass has always bugged the hell out of me

I absolutely love the intro for this. Absolutely priceless.

In defense of the ODST drop pods, it's is in canon lore that the pods sometimes malfunction and straight up kill the occupant inside.

1:26 The pods being rocket-powered kindof makes sense if the goal was for the pods to get away from the ship as quickly as possible before it explodes and shreds nearby things with shrapnel.

The Halo escape pods you mentioned actually have a complex system for keeping the person alive when it impacts. The person needs to have enhancements done to them to allow for suspension and some other thing I forget the name of to happen in order to ensure the human body does not crush. Also, the pods do have a system for slowing their fall but it ejects the fins from it a short ways from the ground (for some reason? not sure why) so the final impact is not at terminal velocity. The system for this I believe is based on the Covenant drop pods, much like the Spartan Laser was developed as a result of studying Covenant energy weapons ans the outer shields on the Spartan Mjolnir armor is also based of studying the energy shields on covenant troops so who really knows what all is going on behind the scenes.

"That is mostly glass." Or ALON, look it up. It's an incredibly strong material.....also, the escape pod crash landing after taking all that damage contradicts the other shuttle that simply exploding by sliding off the rails.

Speaking of practical effects augmented with CGI, Mad Max: Fury Road was very good at that.

Can't forget the escape pods from Serenity that you need to jump into and slide in like a waterslide

I think there are 4 main things you must do while making a scape pod: 1 make it fast to access and launch, you don’t want to stay for too long in a spaceship that is being scrapped by guns in the middle of space. 2 make it compact, it shouldn’t occupy too much space and also you will need a lot of them, so they should be cheap to produce and small to also make sure they are hard to hit by enemy fire. 3 make sure that the pod has food, oxigen, water and anything else you need to stay alive for a while, as well as making sure it allows the person to leave the pod and enter freely in space, you don’t want to land on planets because 90% of them will kill you almost instantly. 4 make sure it has a radio or anything else that makes it easier for your people to find you, you don’t want to stay stranded in space for too long

"Not turn the people inside into Jam" a design point looked for in escape pods :)

I mean it’s Starship Troopers. Can’t have the federation be competent now can we! That might make them relatable

This is probably the sassyist 2 miniutes I have seen in like a year. I appreciate it!

This is the best thing your channel has ever done, I love it

What? One escape pod can blow the top of a mountain of and break through a cave wall, without killing its passengers or taking any significant damage. But the other one explodes after falling of rails with 0.5 km/h?

Spacedock, are you trying to tell me that Starship Troopers is a flawed film? :P Great video!

Such a good video, watched it a couple of times since it came out and it still cracks me up.

That escape room was probably a repurposed missile room. There were probably more pods stored fully fueled and ready to go along the walls or ceiling. Just imagine the fun when they start crashing onto the people bells from all the damage...

given the location these might just be the escape pods for the bridge crew, thus why there are so few of them

I think having absolutely awfully thought out designs is the signature of starship troopers

I always like it when ships have a combination of escape pods and auxiliary vessels for use as lifeboats. So in the event they have to abandon ship, everyone gets into the nearest space worthy thing, and the lifeboats can later be used to retrieve drifting pods.

They followed the Titanic model: the escape pods would never actually be needed, right?

just watched this movie today!!!! and laughed at this escape pod as well!!! LOL!!!

They are overconfident, they thought they were just fighting a bunch of stupid bugs and so they didn't need good designs for escape pods. Kinda like the Titanic being "Unsinkable"

The escape pod is mostly glass so the crew of two can see every detail of their impending doom.

Once again that was nothing more than Hollycrap destroying the story from one of the classic sci-fi books of the past, c’est la vie!

Starship Troopers the movie was pure crap, and I love it.

I always have to wonder whether it's worth having escape pods at all in certain cases. A drop ship can offer similar, if not better survivability with it's greater defensive and offensive capabilities, better movement control, and what I'd imagine as greater capacity per ship. Escape pods seem to only exist to mask the fleeing crew in the wreckage, or maybe it's just to save the crew from the travel distance between the higher decks and the shipyard. Drop pods always facinate me as well. They aren't escape pods and serve as rapid deployment of single soldiers to a planets surface. The assumption is that if a ship can shoot down a drop ship with an entire squad, maybe they will miss a small personal drop pod. The impact should, and apparently does kill many hell jumpers apparently. My best guess on how they are suppose to work is that the pod is designed to take the impact, as well as divert the force away from the occupant, while somehow stopping the occupant from dying from the sudden stop in itself. In Halo I personally think it has to do with this gell that apparently coats Spartan armor. It's the reason that Chief survives the freefall in Halo 3. In ODST I believe they use similar tech in their armor, minus the shield and much of the more risky implants the Spartans undergo. The Gel though should be easily implemented. The reason hell jumpers do die though would have to then be because they lack metal coated bones like Spartans. So if the impact surpasses a certain forced, and or the pod doesn't deploy properly, the soldier risks death no matter what. Sorry for the long post I have a tendency to write and add to the original thought while still typing. Love Sci Fi tech but I like to try and think about in story excuses for why they are made in the way they are made.

I love that the example you went to for properly designed escape pods was Spaceballs.

Plot holes you could drive an escape pod through, but I still love this movie.

Actually I'm surprise you never brought up this what happen when a plasma torpedo hits a UNSC vessel as it will spread unless you vent the air to cut it out as we see the fire spread to the forward half of the Roger Young feeding by the air but given the damage likely unable to seal off the entire ship to keep air from feeding the fire

They should have called the Rodger Young “Titanic”.

I loved the scene in ST where some ships had limped back to Ticonderoga but we're too damaged to dock for various reasons and had just come to rest on the station. Great concept and great CGI. It was all they could do to get back to the station

this is one of the most hilarious video i've ever seen. i hope there wil be more !

The Earth government can fly thousands of massive spaceships faster than light. So, why not just fly a single one at the speed of light into the bug planet. The energy released would probably create a nuclear winter and wipe out all life on the planet. Job done with a single ship. Alternatively they could rig and asteroid a few miles across to hit the planet at a few hundred thousand miles per hour, again nuclear winter, job done. Film over and done in only 5 minutes.

U can love a movie and love mocking bits of it. It's a secondary bonus feature of fun scifi

A comical Spacedock rant always brings a smile to one's face.

Your break down was informative and also made me laugh out loud!

Aw, man. You could've ended this video with: Would you like to know more? Subscribe!

The pods are definitely way too small, especially for a ship that size. One of the things I've learned playing survival mode in Space Engineers is managing ship mass (for a multitude of reasons), and having lots of 1 or 2 man escape pods makes little sense for a large crew compared to a larger escape pod that can fit say 10 to 20 people (though you never really need that many in Space Engineers), or on an even larger ship, you may want pods that can fit up to 50 people. The material needed to make a whole bunch of small containers is just gonna be more than if you make a larger container, and more material means more mass. More mass means less acceleration, less maneuverability, higher cost, and generally a larger profile presenting a larger target and requiring more added armor which in turn adds more mass. So you use more fuel, lose performance, and become an easier target when going with individual pods compared to larger pods. The only benefits of smaller pods is they are harder to hit (though not particularly if weapons are radar and computer targeted), there are more of them creating safety in numbers, and due to individually having less mass, it takes less force and distance to decelerate them. So on a small ship with only a few or a dozen crew, small escape pods make sense, but on a ship with thousands or more crew, large escape pods are far superior for evacuation. As for piloting such a craft, who's to say learning to pilot an escape pod isn't part of training? Anyone who works on an aircraft carrier, what's your input on that? Does the Navy train you to use a modern lifeboat and the deployment system, or are there people specifically trained to operate them, and you just have to hope they carry out their duties in the event of a catastrophe? Seems to me space ships would be managed very similarly to naval ships regarding training and the duties expected of you once aboard, so however lifeboats are handled today would probably be fairly similar to future space faring "navies."

Those 3 escape pods are enough to save the main cast onboard, and can be glass go-karts because plot armor. It's hard to notice how everything having boosters and exploding is silly once you've watched some Michael Bay's movies :3

Starship Troopers has some of the absolute BEST director commentary I've ever seen. Highly recommended!!

It´s starships troopers, there is just about EVERYTHING wrong with almost EVERYTHING in that movie.

Based on everything I know on this movie, that could as well be on purpose.

That thumbnail is awesome. That little guy is doing his part lol

having engines of some kind does make a bit of sense, if only to steer around chunks of debris from a ship that's falling apart, and attempting to de-orbit, but the addition of a chute and heat shield would make more sense than a glass canopy. Love that you used the Spaceball-1 escape pod as a "better example"