Space Cowboys (2000) - 27 mistakes

Revealing: While the guys are going for their physicals, there's a scene in which blood is drawn and you can clearly see the tube connected to the end of the syringe pumping fake blood into the container.

Continuity: This line of thinking is repeated twice, once by the NASA scientist and once by the Tommy Lee Jones character: "To get to the moon, you only have to go halfway - gravity will take you the rest of the way". Actually, since Earth's gravity is 6 times greater than the moon's, you would have to go 6/7ths of the way, otherwise you return to Earth.

Factual error: A couple of times during the film, someone exclaims in horror that if this-or-that system fails, they will have to land the shuttle dead-stick (unpowered; no chance to veer off and try again). Actually, all shuttle landings are dead-stick; they are computer guided but nevertheless are unpowered, one-shot deals.

Continuity: During the climactic landing sequence at the end, the point of view shifts rapidly from head-on to alongside and back. Watch carefully at the first side-on view just as they're touching down; the nose of the shuttle says "Columbia". When it switches to the next head-on view, the wings say "Daedalus".

Visible crew/equipment: You can see reflections of film crew and lighting boards in Clint Eastwood's sunglasses several times during the scenes where he is gathering the old members of team Daedalus.

Continuity: When the rockets blasted on the Russian satellite, it should have cleared all the debris surrounding it.

Factual error: The flight director talks directly to the crew several times. In order to avoid a lot of confusing chatter, only CapCom can talk to the crew.

Continuity: When Frank is stopped in the lobby after leaving Gerson's office if you look out the window behind Frank you see a couple walk by, a woman in a light suit and a man next to her. The shot than shifts to Gerson and back to Frank, you again see the couple walking by, within 30 seconds.

Factual error: In the shuttle landing sims, the pilot is flying, not the commander.

Factual error: At the end, the russian satelite is aimed straight at the moon. It couldn't have been done that way, and if they did aim at the moon, they would have had to aim to where it would be in 3 days.

Factual error: In many scenes in space, the stars are shown twinkling or flickering. This occurs only when seen through an atmosphere.

Plot hole: When the astronauts finally get to IKON, everyone is amazed at how big it is. Now come on! Russia begs the U.S. to fix their satellite, NASA spends about a billion dollars getting a mission up there, man-years are spent training astronauts, and they don't even know what the satellite looks like?

Factual error: The X-2 only had one seat. In fact, I don't believe there were any two-seater "x-planes".

Continuity: In the first fifteen minuets of the film, Marcia Gay Harding's ear rings keep vanishing and reappearing.

Factual error: At one point, the rotating solar power panels on IKON slam into the Shuttle, wrapping around the nose. That's bad for the astronauts! The tiles all over the Shuttle are used to absorb the tremendous heat of reentry. They are also very brittle. An impact like that would have torn them off by the hundreds, making reentry impossible.

Continuity: The US flag that was in the back-left corner of Gerson's office (between the map and the window) when Colonel Corvin first visits to offer Team Daedelus' service is gone later on, when General Vostov is in Gerson's office.

Factual error: Before launch, Flight reads off the names of positions and then "go". During a shuttle launch, Flight reads off the names and the controller checks in with a go/no go.

Deliberate "mistake": When the space shuttle is in outer space several explosions and scrapings occur. The audience hears each of these. These sounds would never be created in the first place because space is a soundless vaccum.

Continuity: The character Jerry, played by Donald Sutherland, snaps off one arm of his sunglasses that the doctor gave him. He uses it to assist him in fixing the door that was jammed shut. When they are suited up and coming back to Earth it shows him with the sunglasses back on from both sides of his head and the arm is on the glasses, not broken off anymore.

Continuity: In the opening shot of the NASA people, they are wearing I.D. tags that have the date of 11-99.  But just days later Clint Eastwood's tag is a year higher, showing 11-00.

Continuity: When Donald Sutherland is getting off the roller coaster to talk to Clint Eastwood. He kisses the woman and then removes his glasses. You then see a shot of the back of his head and his glasses are still on. They then show a shot of his face and they're off.

Continuity: When the Shuttle is landing at the end of the movie, the wing says Discovery. Earlier they specified that the shuttle they took up was a new shuttle and that it was named Deadalus.

Other: Each STS, or Shuttle Transport System, mission is given a sequential number. STS-1, STS-2, and so on. As of November 2001, NASA was only on its 108th STS mission, yet this movie, which takes place in 2000, refers to a mission as STS-200.

Other: During the landing, when Jerry is getting Ethan and Roger out of the shuttle using the escape pole, the two people going out (presumably the stuntmen) look to in fact be jumping out the hatch, instead of just being pushed/thrown by Jerry.

Factual error: Several times in the film you see astronauts "suit-up" and head straight out the airlock into space. In reality they would have to pre-breathe pure oxygen for forty minutes to purge the nitrogen from their bloodstreams. If they just went straight out they would suffer from "the bends", as divers do.

Factual error: The Russian says that the missiles in IKON are locked onto American cities. The implication is that those cities will be destroyed if Eastwood screws up. Actually, since the orbit has decayed from geosynchronous (an altitude of roughly 22,000 miles) to low Earth orbit at 1000 miles, I don't think the missile guidance systems would get a chance to work. If the missiles were launched, they would simply shoot down toward the Earth and blow up wherever they happened to be. So, prayers to anyone unlucky enough to be directly below those missles.

Factual error: They only have a month to train. In that time they would train for the mission and just let a trained pilot/commander fly. Also, they wouldn't take time out from training to go to CA to be on Leno.