The most fun part of scifi is separating the sci from the fi. So, naturally, after watching Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, featuring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, I feel the need to tear apart the plausible from the improbable, just as the shards of space debris tear apart the Hubble telescope in the opening scene…
Spoiler alert? Perhaps… Though it honestly doesn’t matter. The events of the film are almost non-importnat compared to how it makes you feel just sitting there, watching it.

The opening scene shows Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) fixing a piece of the Hubble Telescope and Clooney (does it really matter what his character’s name is?) plays the technician assisting her. The crew then receives a message that the Russians blew up their own satellite with a missile (the judgement of the Russians is an insulting inaccuracy in its own right). The debris then proceeded to gain on Hubble and obliterate the telescope, spaceship and (most of) the crew.

Impending Obliteration 1 of the Hubble Crew

Obliteration 2 of the International Space Station

There are a few things wrong with this scenario. First, The debris would most likely orbit closer to Earth than the other satellites because of its acceleration.  As the Russian satellite was impacted by the missile, its acceleration would have increased (f=ma), bringing it closer to Earth, where orbiting objects have a higher acceleration. We can see how this works in the following equation:

We can see that acceleration (a) and distance from earth (R) are inversely proportional, meaning that as acceleration increases, the radius decreases.

Basically, if the Hubble, International Space Station, and Chinese Space Station, as well as the debris were orbiting at the same altitude, they would be orbiting at the same speed, and would never meet each other.

Though to add insult to injury, satellites do not orbit Earth at the same speed, anyway. Therefore, even if the space debris was able to accelerate at the same altitude, it would not of hit Hubble and ISS and the Chinese Space Station.

While on the topic of orbitals, and how each satellite has its own, I would like to point out the scene where Clooney and Bullock fly from Hubble to ISS using a jet pack.:

The astronauts make their way from Hubble to ISS via jetpack.

This is one of the biggest inaccuracies. Sometimes spaceships do not even have enough fuel to escape Hubble’s orbit.  A mere jet pack would not get the job done.

Despite its loopholes, the movie wasn’t half bad. It was hard to see Clooney and Bullock as their characters, rather than simply Clooney and Bullock. Though their stardom outshines their characters, they did an excellent job conveying the emotions that made the movie so successful. The whole time, the audience is at the edge of their seats, from a nice mix of plot and character reaction.

The scientific inaccuracies can be overlooked when we realize the real story being conveyed: It is of a melancholy woman who, when put in the biggest survival situation of her life, learns to appreciate life and find the will to live, once again. We couldn’t get such a dramatic coming of age with real science, now could we?