A shocking ending

September 2024

Q: You’re watching the rough cut of an action film. In the climactic scene, an air taxi has ditched into the ocean with a villain and hero aboard. Water is flooding into the vehicle, which the villain stole from the factory without its battery management system. The water has not yet reached the hero, but the villain is standing in ankle-deep water, ready to lunge. The hero sees that the water is about to reach the vehicle’s 800-volt battery pack. Based on physics and the engineering of circuitry, which is the more believable ending and why?

A) The hero winces and looks away. The screen goes black and the camera cuts to a yacht, where our hero can be heard ordering an electric lemonade and saying, “Well, that was a shocking conclusion.”

B) Our hero jumps into the ocean and starts swimming away furiously. The screen goes black and we cut to a yacht, where the hero requests a Fireball old fashioned and toasts the villain: “Better to go out with a bang.”

Send a response of up to 250 words to aeropuzzler@aerospaceamerica.org. By responding, you are committing that the thoughts and words are your own and were not created with the aid of artificial intelligence. DEADLINE: noon Eastern Sept. 16.

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FROM THE JULY/AUGUST ISSUE: We posited that you are an expert in sonic shockwaves who has been tasked with improving the plausibility of a screenplay, in which the film’s protagonist hears an audible rumble from a Falcon rocket stage that’s descending toward a droneship over the horizon from Cape Canaveral. Come back on Sept. 3 to see the winning response.