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Gravity: Can Film Ever Get the Science Right?
dryriver writes in with a story lamenting the lack of accurate science in movies. "The relationship between science and science fiction has always been tempestuous. Gravity focuses on two astronauts stranded in space after the destruction of their space shuttle. Since Gravity's US release (it comes to the UK in November) many critics have praised the film for its scientific accuracy. But noted astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, had several issues with the accuracy of Gravity's portrayal of space. Through a series of posts on Twitter, Tyson — who later emphasized that he 'enjoyed the film very much' — highlighted various errors. He noted the Hubble space telescope (orbiting at 350 miles above sea level), the International Space Station (at 250 miles), and a Chinese space station could never be in line of sight of one another. On top of that, most satellites orbit west to east, yet in the film the satellite debris was seen drifting east to west. Tyson also noted how Sandra Bullock's hair did not float freely as it would in zero-gravity. This is arguably not so much an error in physics, but a reflection of the limitations of cinematic technology to accurately portray actors in zero-gravity. That is, of course, without sending them into space for the duration of the film. The Michael Bay film Armageddon is known for its woeful number of inaccuracies, from the space shuttles separating their rocket boosters and fuel tanks in close proximity to each other (risking a collision) and to objects falling on to the asteroid under a gravitational pull seemingly as strong as the Earth's. More than one interested observer tried to work out how big the bomb would have to be to blow up an asteroid in the way demanded in the movie. Answer: Very big indeed. Nasa is reported to have even used Armageddon as part of a test within their training program, asking candidates to identify all the scientific impossibilities within the film."
What makes the same people eat up LOTR or the Hobbit with total suspension of disbelief...
Not all of us do!
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Well at least the movie Apollo 13 used the vomit comet for some of their zero-g needs.
The "Bad Physics becoming a pivotal plot point" in 'Gravity' that made me nearly yell at the screen was when Bullock was hanging by her foot from the parachute lines, and had a hand on the rope attached to Clooney, and their motion is arrested by the parachute lines attached to the station (making them 3 orbital bodies with essentially no relative motion to one another) and SUDDENLY, WE ARE WATCHING "VERTICAL LIMIT: IN SPACE" and for some strange reason, Clooney is being pulled by some mysterious force, and he sacrificially unhooks his lifeline, and FALLS OFF THE MOUNTAIN^^^^SPACE STATION.
Worst part of the ENTIRE movie right there. forget line of sight between 3 orbital bodies that are no where near each other, forget this magical debris field, forget the floating hair, this was the worst physics scene in the movie.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
In the second, when the enterprise is falling to earth, all of the crew should have been weightless.
If they're not weightless in space, why would they be weightless in free-fall? I mean, the engines weren't working but that doesn't mean the artificial gravity McGuffin was offline.
There's proprtionality to consider. Deep impact was made at the same time as Armageddon, and while it didn't get all the science right, it came quite a ways closer, Armageddon get's dissed because it went so far out on some very thin limbs, and somebody else at the same time made a better movie on a lower budget.
I'm pretty OK with Gravity though. The movie came out well after the last space shuttle mission, so everyone should know that bird is not still flying. Gravity is therefore set in some alternate universe where more shuttles were built and the program is still ongoing, and also so the Hubble and ISS may have been placed in more similar orbits, the manned maneuvering packs designed differently and retained longer, the Chinese decided to locate their station close to the ISS, etc.
It's like an early Tom Clancy novel. The Japanese never really built a covert nuclear weapons program, but flying an apache 12 feet above a railroad track and having AWACs style radar think it's a bullet train until it pops straight up at them might actually work all the same. Clancy may have been utterly fictitious in attributing the sorts of motives he did to the Japanese, but he made damned sure to check the top speed and operational ceiling of his helecopters, whether they could actually be deployed by sub, and many other things about them.
In Gravity, we had:
1. the death of the mission specialist by having his head punched out, with a pretty realistic injury appearance.
2. The rest of the shuttle crew's deaths by decompression, also realisticly portrayed and with the fact that they would normally not be suited up just because the bay doors were open included. Note that in that scene, most or all of the bridge instrumentation and lighting is down - which may explain one of the supposed inaccuracies - why automatic stabilizing jets didn't fire when the shuttle was first hit, as it looks like the same impact seems to have killed both the bridge crew and the electronics.
3. The use of a fire extinguisher as an improvised propulsion unit, and our heroine's having the sense to grab one rather than push it away. If it's not technically accurate as to how much thrust it would supply, at least it had a real science feel as good as a Clarke or Heinlein story.
4. A realistic fire in space, with a lengthy smouldering period as 0-G kept the smoke from leaving the vicinity of the flame, and eventual flashover as it found sufficient oxidizables to outrace the smothering effect.
5. Realistic air pressure aboard the first Soyuz design capsule (what, you thought spacecraft are pressurized to a full 15 PSI?). Hypoxia in a young healthy adult and its different symptoms from such conditions as Emphasemic Hypoxia with accompanying Peripheral or Organismic Cyanosis treated with medical accuracy. (Periods of recovering from brief unconsiousness to full mental awareness are documented in highly athletic people suffering from suddon onset Hypoxia and not normally in cases where the cause is age or illness, but that's an unusual situation with the ambiguous "religious vision" as part of it, so whether the film got that intentionally right or just hit it by accident is up to the viewer).
6. A Soyuz style capsule stabilizing heat shield down from a tumble in the same manner as a boat tail bullet as it hits denser air, (Something the original Russian designers have long bragged about it being designed to do better than the Apollo, which was in turn supposedly better than the Gemini series).
7. Debris begins to glow with heat at altitudes where the air is still to thin to conduct much sound. Realistic hypersonic decelleration booms, increasing in volume as the air begins to bite,and unshielded debris shredding and vaporizing follow, and it all happens in very accurate realtime with the visuals confirming what the craft's altitude should be as it begins grabbing real air, begins to slow and the last bits pass it by. Time for the shot is textbook standard reentry time if the guidence systems actually get everything right.
8. Just getting the fact right that the Soyuz design is meant to land on solid ground is worth a few brownie points.
Who is John Cabal?