From: lalbert1@aol.com   
      
   On Sat, 03 Jun 2023 21:12:40 +0000, msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:   
   >Les Albert:   
   >> This has turned into a funny subject; reindeer, scouring powder.  I   
   >> didn't go to any of the urls you previously posted so I don't know if   
   >> >> the movie related to the Comet was one of them.  It's a British film   
   >> that's kind of corny, but it was made in 1950...   
      
   >You must be talking about "No Highway in the Sky".   
      
   Yes, that's the movie, and you are correct that the film anticipated   
   the Comet 1 failures.  The plane in the movie that I referred to as   
   peculiar is a De Havilland FB Mk I "Venom", first flown in 1949.   
      
   >In the movie, the plane's unexpectedly short operating life is due   
   >to a fictional *nuclear reaction* in the metal, not to conventional   
   >metal fatigue as in the real-life disasters.  I don't know if this   
   >detail is the same in the novel.   
      
   I never read Shute's book but back in the 1950s "nuclear" and   
   "atomic"anything was a fascinating and mystical subject to the general   
   public, so it wouldn't have been unusual for Shute to attribute metal   
   failure to a nuclear reaction.   
      
   Les   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)