Gravity (2013)
Goofs
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Character error (5) |
Continuity (3) |
Errors in geography (2) |
Factual errors (20) |
Miscellaneous (1) |
Incorrectly regarded as goofs (2) |
Plot holes (2) |
Revealing mistakes (2) |
Spoilers (4)
Character error
After the accident, when Ryan tries to communicate with Matt and then when he succeeds in making contact, she calls him "Lieutenant Kowalski". Lieutenant is the lowest grade of officer in the military. As the commander of a Space Shuttle, Kowalski would have the rank equivalent to colonel. She would call him Commander Kowalski rather than Colonel Kowalski, but she should never call him Lieutenant.
On learning many communications satellites have been destroyed, Kowalski remarks, "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." The Internet doesn't use satellites but instead high-speed landlines and microwave relay towers, so Kowalski was either misinformed or making a joke, but either way the Facebook statement is incorrect.
Stone has not yet found the ISS hatch while Kowalkski continuously talks to her. Despite knowing she is absolutely out of air, with carbon dioxide poisoning beginning, she stops trying to save herself to listen, and doesn't resume until he finally stops. While he might have been trying to keep her awake, he almost certainly would have had her describe what she was doing in an ongoing commentary, so he could tell if she started drifting off.
Early on in the movie, Clooney's character mispronounces his own name at least once. The first time he says it he pronounces it "ko-AL-skee". The next time he pronounces it "ko-AWL-skee". NASA on the ground consistently pronounces it the second way. He also mispronounces the well-known name "Soyuz" as mentioned elsewhere here. No English-speaking astronaut would ever do this.
The first time he mentions the Soyuz capsules, Kowalski pronounces "Soyuz" correctly. The next few times he says it, he pronounces it "SoyEZ."
Continuity
Explorer is in a spin due to debris impacts. When Stone travels back to Explorer, it is seen almost stable. When arriving at Explorer, it is spinning fast again.
In one scene aboard the Soyuz Space Craft Sandra Bullock mentions the distance to the Chinese Space Station as being 100 km. When George Clooney mentions the same distance a few minutes later it becomes 100 miles, which is 160 km.
Either there was a mistake in the script or George Clooney misspoke.
Either there was a mistake in the script or George Clooney misspoke.
Early in the movie, the backdrop is the Nile Valley at night. As the sun rises, the Sinai, to the east, begins to lighten. Soon after, the Sinai is dark again.
Errors in geography
The sun is shown rising to the north of the Sinai. On Earth, the sun always rises in the East.
When viewing the Earth, the clouds never move, not even the clouds in what should be a swirling hurricane, and the Aurora Borealis never fluctuates.
Factual errors
When Kowalski asks Stone to let go of him because the rope will not hold them both, that could never happen because they are both in the same orbit around the earth. A short simple tug would have brought him back to her. Additionally, once they are drifting away from the ISS, disconnecting from Kowalski would not cause her to rebound back toward the ISS unless another force pulled her back in its direction. At most she would stop when the ropes reach the end of their slack, in which case Kowalsky would also have stopped.
Stars do not twinkle when viewed from space. The twinkling seen from earth is because of the earth's atmosphere. As they were seen above the atmosphere, they should not twinkle.
It is hard for most people to understand the difficulty in being in orbit trying to reach another object in orbit. Accelerating an object in the direction of travel will actually not move you forward. Instead the energy is used up raising the object's altitude, where it will have a slower orbital speed and therefore actually move "backwards" in orbit. Accelerating "up," "down" or "backward" would have other results that most people wouldn't expect. For Stone to directly aim at the Chinese space station in its own independent orbit and accelerate in that direction would give results that are unpredictable given our lack of knowledge of both orbits, but most definitely would not result in her getting to where she wants to go.
The Space Shuttle Explorer is in the same orbit as the Hubble Space Telescope, which is being repaired. While both the International Space Station (and presumably the Chinese space station) are in orbit at the same approximate altitude (roughly 200 miles above the surface), they are most definitely not in the same orbit. At any one moment they could be over opposite parts of the Earth heading in opposite directions. Their orbits are specifically picked so as to never put them near each other, with one never directly in front of the other. Finally, since all objects in orbit circle the center of Earth's mass, they can't parallel each other, either, so the distance between them would be rapidly increasing or decreasing (given how close they were in the film the latter would have been true). In any case, the amount of energy required to travel from one object to another in independent orbits and then match velocities is probably well beyond even the Space Shuttle's ability, yet in the film it was done by one orbital pack with one astronaut pulling another.
Kowalski estimates they have 90 minutes before the debris field completes an orbit and threatens them again. That's not at all how things in orbit work. The original Russian satellite traveled in its own (presumably low-Earth-orbit). Assume it exploded with great force. The debris by definition would be sent into every direction, the density of objects attenuating by the cube of the distance the debris traveled. It would be very unlikely for any debris to reach the Shuttle, ISS or Chinese space station, or even other satellites. The film shows huge numbers of pieces hitting all at once, despite the debris being the result of multiple collisions separated by time, distance and original orbital track. No matter what, the debris would be in a completely different orbit from the ISS, and would not return.
Kowalski frantically tells Dr. Stone to detach from the broken shuttle arm because it is carrying her further away. In fact, Dr. Stone and the arm would be at the same velocity relative to Kowalski and the shuttle. In addition, Dr. Stone would have angular velocity due to the end-over-end tumble of the arm. When she detaches from the arm, that angular velocity would be translated into velocity along her path at time of release. That could increase her velocity away from Kowalski or decrease it depending on her release vector. Traveling separate from the arm would also make her harder to see. In short, frantic calls for her to release would not have been the best course.
When Ryan removes her space suit she is only wearing underwear. All astronauts wear an adult diaper during spacewalks.
At one point Dr. Ryan uses a fire extinguisher to propel herself through space. Even if all laws of orbital dynamics are ignored, using a propellant this way would not work as the character intended. Unless perfectly aligned, each blast of the extinguisher would produce a moment of inertia about her center of gravity in addition to the directional push. Within two or three bursts she would be tumbling violently.
Houston tells the astronauts that debris from a Russian missile strike on one of their satellites has caused a chain reaction, destroying other satellites, and a huge debris field is heading toward them at high speed. NASA: "Multiple satellites are down and they keep on falling." Kowalski: "Define multiple satellites." NASA: "Most of them are gone. Telecommunications systems are dead." There are a great many problems with this, made all the more important because point is so central to the plot. Communications satellites aren't in low-Earth-orbit ("LEO") like the Shuttle & Hubble Space Telescope. LEOs are at an altitude of roughly 200 miles, whereas communications satellite are in geosynchronous orbits (so-called "Clarke Orbits" in honor of SF author Arthur C. Clarke who first proposed them) about 22,240 miles above the Earth's surface. It is virtually impossible for a non-nuclear explosion to send debris 22,000 miles up even in airless space, never mind put pieces on an intersecting path with satellites that travel above the equator. Secondly, NASA didn't always use communications satellites to reach the Shuttle. If the Shuttle was above America NASA could use microwave, telephone and other methods to send voice to the appropriate ground station, which would then beam the signal directly to the Shuttle (and vice versa). Ground stations in Europe could be reached by NASA via the telephone & data trunk lines under the Atlantic Ocean. In the worst case Ham Radio could even be used to communicate between NASA and the various ground stations. Even if none of this was possible ground stations are manned by communications people during Shuttle flights, and they could have talked directly with the Shuttle even if they had trouble reaching NASA immediately.
However, the array of TRDS comsats, used to free the shuttle from constantly having to be in sight of a ground station, are in LEO to reduce the signal power needed to transmit to them. In fact, it is because they are in LEO that there have to be so many of them, instead of just three.
However, the array of TRDS comsats, used to free the shuttle from constantly having to be in sight of a ground station, are in LEO to reduce the signal power needed to transmit to them. In fact, it is because they are in LEO that there have to be so many of them, instead of just three.
In reality all the space stations are at different altitudes; but the film depicts them being at the same altitude.
After Stone emerges from the water, she looks up and sees additional debris streaking across the sky. That debris could have only been from the Chinese space station she inhabited last and it would have all already landed along with her, in fact before her since she parachuted part way down.
When Stone removes her spacesuit it is missing two parts, one of them being the Liquid Cooling & Ventilation Garment. The LCVG is what keeps astronauts from overheating and cannot be left out. It also deals with sweat. Without it Stone would risk a heat stroke. She'd also be soaking wet considering her extreme exertion earlier in the movie. None of that is shown, only black shorts and a T-shirt.
There are no side hatches with portholes that open on the descent (re-entry) module in either the Soyuz-TMA or Shenzhou spacecraft. It has three hatches: The ingress and EVA hatch, which is the only way of entering the spacecraft at launch; The internal transfer hatch through the docking port (not installed in all Soyuz crafts), and; The hatch to the descent module. Crew ingress takes place by the crew entering first the orbital module and then climb into the descent module. This is necessary as the descent module is simply too small to allow more than three hatches.
Kowalski is the mission commander, but in space shuttle missions commanders do not carry out extra-vehicular activity outside the shuttle. This is the job of Mission Specialists. Kowalski should have remained inside the shuttle, where he would of course have perished during the accident.
There are not that many astronauts. Usually they train together, or have groups that go through training. Especially for S.T.S. missions. (not like when a new crew arrives every 3 months.) It seems weird that Kowalski knows nothing about Stone. Or that Stone doesn't mind answering basic questions about herself.
Dr. Stone was out of oxygen and started breathing her own CO2. When she removed her helmet she would have had blue lips from the lack of oxygen.
The bodies of the astronauts without pressurizing suits in the space station when exposed to the vacuum quality atmosphere of space would have swollen or become bloated to a significant degree. Here they are depicted as bodies in a normopressure environment, i.e., those in an environment with gravity.
When the Clooney character is at the end of a tether/rope, he flies away in the direction the rope was pointing. However, he should have flown away at a right angle to that, since objects released from a spinning mass move away tangentially to the direction of spin; the instantaneous direction of movement at the time of release.
During the re-entry sequence, Dr. Ryan (Bullock) is oriented in the wrong screen direction (facing forward, right to left) relative to the position of the Shenzhou's heatshield (facing backward, left to right).
None of the astronauts wear the reflective shield on their helmets, which all astronauts do while in the vacuum of space. In reality, going without the shield for as long as the actors did would cause quite a bit of permanent damage. The Russian suit even clearly has the visor on the helmet. This was clearly for artistic license so viewers can see the actors' faces, however it's still puzzling why the crew decided to include the visors if they weren't planning on using them.
Miscellaneous
About halfway through the movie, when Sandra Bullock is floating around in her underwear in the Chinese space station, the bottoms of her bare feet are clearly dirty. Why would they be? She hasn't actually walked on anything in a week; she's been floating in zero gravity ever since the day they left Earth.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs
After Stone passes the panel where the fire is starting on board the ISS, her hand strikes a drinking pouch of water. The blobs of water are mistaken by some as a stream of air bubbles, as if the visual effect of weightlessness was created using a water tank. That was not the case in this movie. The water drops are computer generated.
During re-entry, debris is shown zooming past the capsule. This might be regarded as a goof because it's all part of the same Chinese space station and should be re-entering at the same speed. Whilst this might be true initially, the increasing drag from the atmosphere will slow the debris but this will differ according to the size and shape of each object. Larger, denser pieces will not be slowed as much as lighter or less aerodynamic objects.
Plot holes
The whole premise of the communication blackout is very dubious. The vast majority of communication satellites are in higher orbits than would have been affected by the debris cloud created by the Russians.
When Kowalski asks Stone to let go of him because the rope will not hold them both, that could never happen because they are both in the same orbit around the earth. A short simple tug would have brought him back to her.
Revealing mistakes
As the Shenzhou capsule re-enters the atmosphere, the resulting drag would cause not only the burning on the outside, but terrific G-forces as the capsule decelerates from orbital speeds. Yet a ballpoint pen is seen still floating weightlessly in the capsule, when it (not to mention Stone) should have been pinned to the forward bulkhead.
Doctor Stone's hair stands still in all scenes. It should be flowing because there is no gravity.
Spoilers
Continuity
At the end of the movie when Ryan blows the hatch of the Chinese capsule the hatch opening can be seen to be well above the water line. But as soon as it blows the capsule starts filling with water.
Factual errors
In the crucial scene when Kowalski chooses to drift away from Stone, there is no force pulling him. His body has no weight, no acceleration and they should have no problem returning to the ship.
At the end, when Ryan is escaping from the Chinese capsule, she spends more than 30 seconds struggling underwater; but when she finally reaches the surface, she takes only one big breath instead of panting after such a long effort.
Thirty seconds might seem long to a couch-bound movie watcher but it's nothing to a fit, trained astronaut.
Thirty seconds might seem long to a couch-bound movie watcher but it's nothing to a fit, trained astronaut.
Plot holes
When Kowalski and Stone reach the shuttle, Kowalski should assess everything being a trained astronaut. He is likely to find extra air canisters. In that case he would not have died and she would not have lost air.
