I saw this over the weekend and just couldn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. So I thought I'd start a thread about what was wrong with the movie. I know the scenery is fantastic and they got a lot of stuff right, but the stuff they got wrong was too much for me to get past and enjoy.
Before anyone suggests that I just accept that it's a Hollywood movie and not a documentary I want to say that I understand this. But... once a movie starts breaking it's own rules it's hard to get past it. If I'm watching Superman I have no problem ignoring the physics and watching him fly around. But if a Superman movie came out where he suddenly could pick up an entire island enriched with kryptonite and fly it into space after a small sliver almost killed him, I'd also have a huge problem with that. If I watch Star Trek I have no problem with them beaming each other around, but if Kirk started flying like Superman to get out of a situation I'd have a huge problem with that too.
A space movie, like Gravity, based in our world and rules, can't ignore physics and orbital mechanics as much as this one does and still be entertaining to me. And I know I'm not alone with this. I've talked to several other people that agree.
Here's the biggest problems that I noticed and remembered, in no real order. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot already because as I was watching the movie it seemed like every 10 minutes I was thinking, "What??? It doesn't work that way", and now I can only think of a dozen.
Feel free to add any that I've missed.
1 - The Hubble Telescope orbits WAY higher than the International Space Station, and in a very different inclination. There's no way someone wearing a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) could navigate from the Hubble to the ISS.
2 - The premise of the movie is silly. Satellites could destroy each other in theory, but won't form a cloud that heads out towards anything in a different orbit. The debris would initially stay in the original orbit of the satellite and take a long time to expand far enough to endanger objects in different orbits.
3 - The debris cloud wouldn't show up every 90 minutes, that's the time it takes to orbit earth in a low earth orbit. If something were moving in your orbit and was coming around every 90 minutes, it would have to be moving much much faster than you were, and would be in a much higher orbit anyway due to the higher velocity.
4 - Rendezvous in space is harder than shooting towards something else in orbit. Several times in the movie they pointed their propulsion device (rocket, fire extinguisher, etc) in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go and fired. Then they moved towards the object and eventually hit it slow enough that it didn't kill them. Orbital mechanics are way more complicated than that!!
5 - George Clooney didn't have to cut himself loose, and if he did he wouldn't fall away. Once he and Sandra caught the lines of the parachute and drifted to the end, they stopped. All they had to do was pull themselves slightly and they'd start moving, and could climb the ropes. When Clooney did detach himself he suddenly fell away. What was pulling him?
6 - On reentry her helmet wouldn't be floating weightless. She managed to climb inside a space station that was already experiencing drag in the atmosphere, so when she removed her helmet it should have hit the wall instead of floating by weightless.
7 - Sandra Bullock gets into her space suit, by herself, in less than 7 minutes. She announces that the debris field will be there in 7 minutes but she's first got to go outside and detach the parachute lines. Suddenly she's climbing out of the hatch in her suit before the debris shows up. Not a chance.
8 - Sandra Bullock wears a tshirt and boyshorts under her space suit instead of a full body cooling suit. Maybe the second time she'd be in a hurry and wouldn't bother... but the first time she takes it off was from when she was suited up to work on the Hubble, and was wearing her underwear.
9 - A tear runs down her cheek for a short distance. But she's weightless in orbit and that would be impossible.
10 - Ignoring for a moment that they're all in different inclinations...the Hubble, the ISS, and the Chinese space station are all within sight of each other. That's as believable as a movie about a sinking cruise ship way out in the Pacific ocean, and 2 other major cruise ships just happen to be a couple of miles away.
11 - Someone not trained on the landing procedures of a spaceship can pull a How To manual off the shelf that's written in a different language and use it to initiate the landing process? Not only that, but she somehow reprogrammed the Russian lander to think that it was about to land so it would fire it's retro rockets. Why not just have her program a teleportation device instead and beam herself down. Seems about as likely.
12 - The raging fire on board the ISS didn't increase the pressure inside the station so much that it blew it open, or showed even the slightest amount of damage from the outside as it kept burning, while she slowly made her escape.
Before anyone suggests that I just accept that it's a Hollywood movie and not a documentary I want to say that I understand this. But... once a movie starts breaking it's own rules it's hard to get past it. If I'm watching Superman I have no problem ignoring the physics and watching him fly around. But if a Superman movie came out where he suddenly could pick up an entire island enriched with kryptonite and fly it into space after a small sliver almost killed him, I'd also have a huge problem with that. If I watch Star Trek I have no problem with them beaming each other around, but if Kirk started flying like Superman to get out of a situation I'd have a huge problem with that too.
A space movie, like Gravity, based in our world and rules, can't ignore physics and orbital mechanics as much as this one does and still be entertaining to me. And I know I'm not alone with this. I've talked to several other people that agree.
Here's the biggest problems that I noticed and remembered, in no real order. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot already because as I was watching the movie it seemed like every 10 minutes I was thinking, "What??? It doesn't work that way", and now I can only think of a dozen.
Feel free to add any that I've missed.
1 - The Hubble Telescope orbits WAY higher than the International Space Station, and in a very different inclination. There's no way someone wearing a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) could navigate from the Hubble to the ISS.
2 - The premise of the movie is silly. Satellites could destroy each other in theory, but won't form a cloud that heads out towards anything in a different orbit. The debris would initially stay in the original orbit of the satellite and take a long time to expand far enough to endanger objects in different orbits.
3 - The debris cloud wouldn't show up every 90 minutes, that's the time it takes to orbit earth in a low earth orbit. If something were moving in your orbit and was coming around every 90 minutes, it would have to be moving much much faster than you were, and would be in a much higher orbit anyway due to the higher velocity.
4 - Rendezvous in space is harder than shooting towards something else in orbit. Several times in the movie they pointed their propulsion device (rocket, fire extinguisher, etc) in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go and fired. Then they moved towards the object and eventually hit it slow enough that it didn't kill them. Orbital mechanics are way more complicated than that!!
5 - George Clooney didn't have to cut himself loose, and if he did he wouldn't fall away. Once he and Sandra caught the lines of the parachute and drifted to the end, they stopped. All they had to do was pull themselves slightly and they'd start moving, and could climb the ropes. When Clooney did detach himself he suddenly fell away. What was pulling him?
6 - On reentry her helmet wouldn't be floating weightless. She managed to climb inside a space station that was already experiencing drag in the atmosphere, so when she removed her helmet it should have hit the wall instead of floating by weightless.
7 - Sandra Bullock gets into her space suit, by herself, in less than 7 minutes. She announces that the debris field will be there in 7 minutes but she's first got to go outside and detach the parachute lines. Suddenly she's climbing out of the hatch in her suit before the debris shows up. Not a chance.
8 - Sandra Bullock wears a tshirt and boyshorts under her space suit instead of a full body cooling suit. Maybe the second time she'd be in a hurry and wouldn't bother... but the first time she takes it off was from when she was suited up to work on the Hubble, and was wearing her underwear.
9 - A tear runs down her cheek for a short distance. But she's weightless in orbit and that would be impossible.
10 - Ignoring for a moment that they're all in different inclinations...the Hubble, the ISS, and the Chinese space station are all within sight of each other. That's as believable as a movie about a sinking cruise ship way out in the Pacific ocean, and 2 other major cruise ships just happen to be a couple of miles away.
11 - Someone not trained on the landing procedures of a spaceship can pull a How To manual off the shelf that's written in a different language and use it to initiate the landing process? Not only that, but she somehow reprogrammed the Russian lander to think that it was about to land so it would fire it's retro rockets. Why not just have her program a teleportation device instead and beam herself down. Seems about as likely.
12 - The raging fire on board the ISS didn't increase the pressure inside the station so much that it blew it open, or showed even the slightest amount of damage from the outside as it kept burning, while she slowly made her escape.