Almost every critic has given Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity a phenomenal review, citing the viewer's visceral experience as they float through space with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. But while nearly no one doubts that Gravity is a great movie, how do they feel about the science behind it?
Despite favorable reviews, some media outlets outlets shone a light on the inaccuracies in Gravity, which is about the survival of two astronauts after their space station is smashed by debris. It also, however, gets a lot right. Here are some Gravity facts that match up with the real world (warning: spoilers ahead):
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1. GPS works in space
NASA medical engineer Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) says "GPS is down" in the film's trailer, and it turns out that global positioning systems can pinpoint coordinates outside Earth; this is possible because GPS satellites orbit 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles) above ground — that's 19,650 kilometers (12,210 miles) higher than the Hubble Space Telescope, which is where the astronauts are going.
2. The space suits, shuttle and space station are on point
By all accounts, Cuarón crafted his sets to look like the real deal. Everything from the narrow corridors of the International Space Station to the design of the Chinese space vehicle Shenzhou, are all accurate, according to multiple reviews.
3. The space physics mostly check out
Many people have seen the part of Gravity's trailer in which Stone whirls hopelessly into the black abyss — well, that can happen. All it takes is an explosion to cause that motion, which can potentially go on forever. What's more, when debris rocks the space station, triggering the movie's plot line, particles hurl in all directions; this makes sense, because without gravity to alter the routes of objects flying through space, they will continue along their initial route.
Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, said that Gravity's portrayal of movement inside of space vehicles was also well done, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
"I was happy to see someone moving around the spacecraft the way George Clooney was," Aldrin wrote in his review. "It really points out the degree of confusion and bumping into people."
There were some missteps, however, perhaps the most glaring of which was pointed out by Slate's Phil Plait. At some point in the plot, Stone's leg gets caught in a parachute shroud line from the Soyuz escape capsule, while she struggles to hold onto a tether that is clipped to NASA veteran Matt Kowalski's (played by Clooney) spacesuit. If Stone lets go, the movie implies, Kowalski will disappear into the final frontier. Ultimately, he unclips himself, and does just that.
The problem, however, is that both Stone and Kowalski had stopped moving, so their "velocity relative to the space station was zero," as Plait explained it. "Gravity wasn’t pulling Clooney away from Bullock; there were essentially no forces on him at all, so he had no weight for Bullock to bear! All she had to do was give the tether a gentle tug and Clooney would’ve been safely pulled toward her."
4. The constellations match up
If you look closely, you'll see that the background of this space thriller correctly includes parts of Orion, Pleiades and Taurus.
5. Clooney's cosmonaut competitor
Kowalski eventually sets the record for most time spent spacewalking, but before doing that, he mentions the man whose record he fictionally beat: cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. The Russian spaceman ventured outside into space 16 times for a total time of just over 82 hours (or about three-and-a-half days) before he retired.
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Image: Flickr, OeWF