Gravity Movie --- Factual mistakes and goofs (SPOILERS obviously)

[Holo]

Here's a movie that would satisfy you:

1). Rocket launches.

2). Six hours of real time looking at the astronauts faces, as the spacecraft travels to dock.

3). Movie ends.

[karolus10]

The thing that bothered me the most was when they try to grab onto the Main station. Through luck the something and halt relative velocity and end up barely sticking to a thin wire.

...

Then for some reason Matt Kowalski is being sucked away from the space station by some kind of force. What is this magical force? The space station isn't thrusting and they're still very close to it, so tidal accelerations should be minimal.

Thanks to wrong physics Kowalski has detach his harness and sacrifice himself.

This is most ridiculous thing about this movie, I could forgive "everything in one orbit" thing for artistic purposes, but this cannot be explained by any way... If they manage to nearly stop their relative velocity they shouldn't be dragged by any force.

Satellite debris would pose such threat when both spacecrafts inclination differs (polar orbit) and it's close to impossible that debris cloud will collide again with other vehicle even if they are on same obit... it is possible that 2 spacecrafts on different inclinations could pass each other meters away each orbit again and again if they both on perfectly circular orbits with same orbital period, but in reality (or even in KSP) there is no such thing like perfect orbit and even smallest difference means no hit... now imagine all largest spacecrafts on orbits perfectly on path of debris cloud and simultaneously are on close enough orbits to be reached during one EVA.

From other hand this is pretty neat movie to watch as it had a lot of great eye-candies .

Edited April 9, 2014 by karolus10

[maccollo]

This is most ridiculous thing about this movie, I could forgive "everything in one orbit" thing for artistic purposes, but this cannot be explained by any way... If they manage to nearly stop their relative velocity they shouldn't be dragged by any force.

Apparently the ISS was spinning, but they never established that it was, and in the wide shots it looked static. The Stars did move in the close up shots, but it's but that could just be the camera moving slightly. To me it doesn't matter what the exact rate of rotation is. As long as it is clearly communicated I'm perfectly fine with eyeballed physics. It's a movie after all.

[KerbMav]

PS: Please don't reply with the classic "it's a movie" response.

Did you even want an answer? If everything you complained about is completely unrealistic, what answer could anyone give you if mentioning it being a movie is forbidden?

Yes, action is exciting, but creating a movie for the sake of action is very very bad story telling.

For your own sake - please never watch any movie of the Die Hard series.

Regarding the scene with George letting go of Sandra:

I think (working from memory and not 100% sure, but this is what I think is a probable answer)

- they were both still moving slightly

- the ropes were still budging, unwinding, elongating (even if not rubber) from the stress, something like that

- as soon as the ropes were unwound from the station and had reached their maximum extension they would snap/pull back

or

- they were spinning on the end of the rope slowly but with a relatively large radius while the rope was winding/unwinding around/from the station

and as Stone's foot was already slipping out of the sling, Kowalski feared the lines would not hold the mass of both of them and they would drift away from the station together, and let go to save her.

[radonek]

You are just being nitpicky. I know of only one movie in similar "real" setting – Armageddon. Whose staff evidently believed their audience is bunch of cretins who would eat **** if covered in shiny color. Yes, Gravity have some obvious fails, but you can tell its authors did lots of research, put a lot of effort to have things right and resorted to "artistic licence" when they could not move story otherwise. Actually, while looking things up I found some of percieved "fails" were in fact correct. Somebody really did his homework on this one.

[Ziff]

Yes, action is exciting, but creating a movie for the sake of action is very very bad story telling.

Apparently you've never heard of Michael Bay. The man puts action above story telling and has been quite successful with it.

[Ralathon]

Apparently you've never heard of Michael Bay. The man puts action above story telling and has been quite successful with it.

His movies are also known as brainless entertainment. Sure, they're fun to watch, but they don't leave you with anything to think about.

Action without story = dumb entertainment.

Story without action = tends to get rather boring.

You usually need a decent mix of the 2 for a good movie.

[Mazon Del]

You are all focusing on the wrong parts of the movie. All this talk about orbital mechanics, the spinning of the space station, etc. And none of you are talking about the most glaring and unacceptable error of the movie! There was a window in the soyuz! They may have done their homework well and did correct physics on those tethers in space, but that window is completely unacceptable! (Points if you get the ref.)

[Red Iron Crown]

You are all focusing on the wrong parts of the movie. All this talk about orbital mechanics, the spinning of the space station, etc. And none of you are talking about the most glaring and unacceptable error of the movie! There was a window in the soyuz! They may have done their homework well and did correct physics on those tethers in space, but that window is completely unacceptable! (Points if you get the ref.)

I don't get the reference, but modern Soyuz spacecraft have windows in both the orbital and reentry modules.

[pauldbk99]

Making the movie 100% realistic was the director's goal at first, but he had to sacrifice that to make the plot work, and believE me, the plot is very deep and thoughtful. I excuse Gravity for some errors, but I don't excuse cr*p like Armageddon. Ugh!

Or star wars

[KerbMav]

[YourEverydayWaffle]

The China Station, the shuttle, and the ISS were all moving at what looked like the same velocity and were VERY close to each other, which really bothered me.

[Dodgey]

The China Station, the shuttle, and the ISS were all moving at what looked like the same velocity and were VERY close to each other, which really bothered me.

Alternate future could explain that, which also explains why the shuttles were being used still.

[astropapi1]

Actually, Alfonso Cuarón started writing the movie when the shuttles were in service, so when they got cancelled, he had two options: To rewrite the entire movie, or make it an alternative future. He just rolled with it.

[lajoswinkler]

This is most ridiculous thing about this movie, I could forgive "everything in one orbit" thing for artistic purposes, but this cannot be explained by any way... If they manage to nearly stop their relative velocity they shouldn't be dragged by any force.

It is one of the most physically accurate scenes in the entire movie. ISS was not rotating (or it was negligible) - they were, around the station, holding on to the parachute rope. They could never cancel their momentum. They are rotating slowly (it's visible in the movie for a second or two), but their masses are large and the rope is long enough, so the force is not trivial. You can plug in the numbers, it's all there.

For the love of god, I could never understand why some people can't see this, because it's not only obvious, but intuitive to me.

[Dodgey]

It is one of the most physically accurate scenes in the entire movie. ISS was not rotating (or it was negligible) - they were, around the station, holding on to the parachute rope. They could never cancel their momentum. They are rotating slowly (it's visible in the movie for a second or two), but their masses are large and the rope is long enough, so the force is not trivial. You can plug in the numbers, it's all there.

For the love of god, I could never understand why some people can't see this, because it's not only obvious, but intuitive to me.

Thank god someone else noticed this. I think it was a stroke of genius, such a simple thing created so much tension!

[Javster]

The China Station, the shuttle, and the ISS were all moving at what looked like the same velocity and were VERY close to each other, which really bothered me.

The main issue is the Hubble: it's in a polar orbit higher than the ISS, and even the shuttle didn't have enough fuel to get to the ISS from the HST, so there was no way that a MMU could do that.

[Mazon Del]

Red Iron Crown: The reference was from an interview with the director where he had been talking about working with astronauts for the authenticity of the movie. He and his people kept asking them questions like "Look at this tether and how it moves, is that what it looks like in space? We think it is, but we'd like your input." and the responses they'd get would be along the lines of "It's good, but I have to tell you, I've been in the soyuz eight times, and that window isn't there, so you should fix that." They were just absolutely fixated on the existence of the window. It is possible the director was talking about the wrong object that contained a window, but it was pretty funny because just about every response from the astronauts would go off on a tangent about the windows.

[How2FoldSoup]

Is no one else bothered by the glaring plot hole that all communications satellites are in GEO 20,000 miles higher than the orbit everything else was magically in? To me, the fact that the debris continues to hit every 90 minutes is the biggest issue because that's the whole reason for the movie yet it's physically impossible. The debris had a much higher relative velocity at every pass and yet it was able to magically track the ISS(not to mention stay in some kind of orbit)? It doesn't make sense any way you look at it.

Not to mention getting from the ISS to the tiengong(i think I have spelling correct) 150km away in what seemed like ~30 seconds after a short burst of landing thrusters rings some alarm bells...The G-forces she would have to endure to accelerate that fast would be ridiculous...and then of course matching velocities with a damn fire extinguisher.

[Mazon Del]

How2FoldSoup: The idea behind a full blown Kessler Syndrome is that the chain reaction has occured in such a way that the collisions between objects are throwing other objects into other orbits, allowing chain reactions at higher/lower orbits spreading around.

I am not certain if they mentioned what altitude the stricken satellite was at when it was hit. Depending on how that orbital situation was set up, it is possible for the initial 'seed debris' to have an elongated orbit stretching around multiple orbital altitudes. In the cold war the Soviet Union enjoyed the idea of spy satellites that had very elongated orbits that ducked really low around the Earth and extended way up into space. This allowed them to whip around the Earth very quickly without being seen for several days/weeks so it was harder to predict when the next pass would occur. If the satellite in question was one of these, when it became a debris cloud it could easily have pass through multiple orbits causing chain reactions at each orbit.

[TeeGee]

Here's a movie that would satisfy you:

1). Rocket launches.

2). Six hours of real time looking at the astronauts faces, as the spacecraft travels to dock.

3). Movie ends.

Haha, no man, I just would like a movie to have clever enough writing to work around what's plausible and still be entertaining, especially in my space movies!

I think people nowadays are a bit more educated than to just accept what hollywood throws at us as being possible. Everybody says during a dumb action movie," that's impossible" or "that would kill him". We are not buying it anymore.

Think of how much more impressive a film would be if it were 100% accurate AND exciting, clever filmmakers can do both.

I for one liked apollo 13 and From the Earth to the moon, even though there was sound in space (I let that one slide for dramatic reasons) but the physics of the film/series and the events are pretty darn close to what really happened. They never took artistic licence on the laws of physics in a film based on real life events, and that made it a compelling movie.

Armageddon is so bad, I can't even watch it again, it just makes me angry.

Gravity was on the cusp of being exactly what I wanted, except it took the "I'm realistic" tag line in the opening crawl of "in space there is no oxygen and no sound" to prime me for a truly authentic space movie, but went ape doodoo on the physics and orbital mechanics to the point I was actively trying to explain away the discrepancies DURING my viewing time, which obviously took away from my enjoyment of the film.

Suspension of disbelief occurs when expectation is directed towards it, for example in Hobbit or LOTR, I know that was not real but it was never primed in the film that this really happened a long time ago. It didn't start off by saying, middle earth 1000 years ago in the UK....

If you're going to prime the audience with a scientific premise, people are going to watch the movie with hopes of learning something real and experiencing what being in space really is like. If I threw a random person who's seen Gravity into orbit and put them in the exact same situation, they are going to be looking for the ISS and Tiengong while station hopping in their EVA suits because that's what Gravity (the most realistic space movie ever) had happen, and that's impossible. It's called misinformation. I had to actually look up on wikipedia etc. if what happened in the movie was even possible an lo and behold, it wasn't.

That wasn't impressive, it was actually disappointing.

[Red Iron Crown]

Meh, people who know a lot about any particular subject are going to be disappointed by how movies treat that subject.

Gun enthusiasts are often disappointed by unrealistic ammo capacities/recoil effects/sound effects of weapons in movies.

People with real medical knowledge can usually point out any number of flaws in how movies treat injuries, medical procedures and hospitals.

I know a few real police officers, and they usually can't stand the incredibly unrealistic way cops and detectives are shown in movies.

Basically, movies treat everything unrealistically if it helps move the story along; there's no reason to expect physics and spaceflight to be any different.

[Seret]

Gun enthusiasts are often disappointed by unrealistic ammo capacities/recoil effects/sound effects of weapons in movies.

Absolutely. It always really bugs me is the way they cock their guns at dramatic points in the action, because it makes an intimidating noise. All that would really do in real life is eject the round in the chamber. Stupid.

Movies do things like that though, because movies are made by movie people, who get their information about things like guns and spaceflight from watching movies. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the problem there.

[Technical Ben]

Here's a movie that would satisfy you:

1). Rocket launches.

2). Six hours of real time looking at the astronauts faces, as the spacecraft travels to dock.

3). Movie ends.

Sounds great! Where do I buy tickets?

PS, if you character in a movie has "infinite ammo", then I'll skip. I prefer stories without "magic" in them. But that's the point, "Gravity" starts to become a story about magic if it starts to break reality/logic.

That's about just getting the mechanics right. We forgive a story if people drive on the wrong side of the road, it's a technicality. But if a car keeps driving after the engine explodes, it's... no longer connected to reality, so would have to be played as "a joke" etc to keep people connected to the scene.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Technical Ben

[kujuman]

Sounds great! Where do I buy tickets?

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Was it ever stated why the Chinese station was deorbiting?