Wouldn't it have been easier to...

Geek Arguments #1
I am in no small part, a bit of a geek. I've argued about Star Wars and Star Trek minutiae as though knowing how a light saber worked or untangling time paradoxes earned me money. I can argue over comics, sci-fi movies, football strategy, and even dabble a bit in video game smugness (for no reason I can think of). This time, prompted by what should be an obvious answer about a movie nobody cares about, I just have to set the record straight for nobody in particular. That and I just can't talk politics anymore for a while.    

Ben Affleck likes to relate the story that during the production of Armageddon (a terrible film that I will watch over and over) that when he asked the question "Wouldn't it have been easier to train the astronauts to drill?" that director Micheal Bay told him to "shut the f**k up." This of course was the proper answer. Because Ben's question was stupid and he should have just shut the f**k up. 

Let me state definitively that NO, it wouldn't have been easier to train astronauts to drill. Everyone would have died. Are we clear? Oh, you want an explanation?

While it is true that astronauts are smart, most holding several degrees as well as being engineers, the idea that they would be able to immediately be able to grasp all the fine points of drilling in the week or so of training they would have received is the height of elitist thinking. Proficiency or even mastery of Discipline A does not automatically translate into easy of learning semi-related Discipline B. The intellectual arrogance here is staggering, starting with the assumption that "drilling" must be easy. But rather than get into a long line of theory of the nuances of mining and instead I'm going to use the film itself show why this is terrible assumption.

Wouldn't trust them with a potato gun.

First, when the hero, Harry Stamper, arrives at NASA it's originally because government stole his drill design to use on Mars but now want to use it on the asteroid, but can't make the damned thing work. Let me say that again : a group of NASA scientists, engineers and the man the NASA director called the 'smartest man on the planet' can't figure out how to make a particular drill work after presumably weeks of going at it. Presumably one or two of the engineers present even had some mining expertise, but it still didn't help them. On the other hand, Harry the not NASA engineer arrives and after looking at the equipment for less than a minute not only tells them the issues they're probably experiencing (and he's correct) but also diagnoses the problem. But mining must be simple, right? The equipment a breeze to operate?  

Secondly, when the spaceship actually arrives on the asteroid, Harry's team faces a number of unexpected challenges. First, they overshoot the landing and instead of the intended drilling site land on an 'iron plate.' Would the less experienced trained for a week Astronaut miners have even tried to drill there? Assuming they did, the first drill bit breaks after ten feet, something Max recognizes by feel. Would a less experienced trained for a week Astronaut miner have recognized it as quickly as Max? Then, the other experienced miner Chick defers to Harry who decides they need to break out a special bit, referred to in the film as 'the judge.' Would a less experienced trained for a week Astronaut miner been able to make the determination that they weren't just unlucky? Would they have been able to handle the gas pockets, the ones the experienced miners couldn't? 

And finally, would a less experienced trained for a week Astronaut miners have taken the Time to Drill Card as gospel, dropped off the nuke and evacuated? Especially when you consider that the Astronaut who was there was prepared and willing to shoot someone did just that! The weird part is that based upon the data at hand, the Astronaut made the right call - they should have dumped the nuke because by all rights they shouldn't reached the depth needed. 

Honestly, when Chick's son called him "that salesman"...

It was only the drillers expertise that saved the entire operation. Yes, because NASA chose the drillers over the astronauts (in this movie universe) the world was saved. I'm not even going to mention the other asteroid movie of the time went exactly the other way. Okay, I'll mention it. How did that work out for them then? Right, everyone on the spaceship had to make the ultimate sacrifice so the planet only got a little blowed up. Got it? And since I've brought Deep Impact up now, anyone know why there were carrying the extra nukes? 

So, this is why to question of wouldn't sending astronauts have been simpler in Armageddon, the answer is a resounding NO. Teaching roughnecks how not to die in space clearly was. I realize that astronauts are smart. Very smart. But smart doesn't translate to a universal expertise.  

Can we let this go now? And someone tell Affleck to shut the fuck up.