Interstellar - Difficult Choices in Space Exploration
Cooper:
We no longer have the fuel to visit both prospects, so, we have to choose.
Romilly:
But how? They’re both promising. Edmunds’ data is better, but Dr. Mann is the one still transmitting, so…
Brand:
We’ve no reason to suspect Endmunds’s data would have soured. His world has key elements to sustain human life.
Cooper:
As does Dr. Mann’s.
Brand:
Cooper, this is my field. And I really believe Edmunds’ is the better prospect.
Cooper:
Why?
Brand:
Gargantua, that’s why. Look at Miller’s planet. Hydrocarbons, organics, yes, but no life. Sterile. We’ll find the same thing on Mann’s.
Romilly:
Because of the black hole?
Brand:
Murphy’s Law. Whatever can happen will happen. Accident is the first building block of evolution. But when you’re orbiting a black hole not enough can happen. It sucks in asteroids and comets, other events which would otherwise reach you. We need to go further afield.
Cooper:
You once said that Dr. Mann was the best of us.
Brand:
He’s remarkable, we’re only here because of him.
Cooper:
And yet here he is. He’s on the ground, and he’s sending a very unambiguous message, telling us to come to his planet.
Brand:
Granted, but Edmunds’ data is more promising.
Romilly:
We should vote.
Cooper:
Well, if we vote, there’s something you should know. Brand? He has a right to know.
Brand:
That has nothing to do with it.
Romilly:
What does?
Cooper:
She’s in love with Wolf Edmunds.
Romilly:
Is that true?
Brand:
Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.
Cooper:
You’re a scientist, Brand.
Brand:
So listen to me when I say that love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful. It has to mean something.
Cooper:
Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing…
Brand:
We love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that?
Cooper:
None
Brand: [Stays quiet.]
Maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand. May it’s some evidence, something artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it yet. All right, Cooper, yes, the tiniest possibility of seeing Woolf again excites me. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Cooper: [Brand leaves]
Honestly, Amelia, it might. TARS, chart a course for Dr. Mann’s.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.
Interstellar - Communication Updates from Various Space Missions
Doyle:
The lost communications came through.
Brand:
How?
Doyle:
The relay on this side cached them. Years of basic data, no real surprises. Miller's site has kept pinging thumbs up, as has Mann... but Edmunds went down three years ago.
Brand:
Transmitter failure?
Doyle:
Maybe. He was sending thumbs up right till it went dark.
Romilly: [Doyle nods, and Romilly begins drawing on a whiteboard]
Miller still looks good? She's coming up fast ... with one complication: the planet is much closer to Gargantua than we thought.
Cooper:
Gargantua?
Doyle:
A very large black hole. Miller's and Dr. Mann's planets orbit it.
Brand:
And Miller's is right on the horizon?
Romilly:
A basketball on the hoop. Landing there takes us dangerously close. A black hole that big has a huge gravitational pull.
Cooper:
Look, I can swing around that neutron star and decelerate—
Brand:
It's not that, it's time. That gravity will slow our clock compared to Earth. Drastically.
Cooper:
How bad?
Romilly:
Every hour we spend down there will be maybe... seven years back on Earth.
Cooper:
Jesus...
Romilly:
That's relativity, folks.
Quotes sourced from Wikiquote (© Wikiquote contributors), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Modified for formatting/length.