Question: Why type of propulsion system does the Endurance use? It took 2 years for them to reach Saturn from Earth. Once they're in the other galaxy, the ship appears to travel between planets in mere hours/days. Also, it appears that the smaller shuttle craft was launched from Earth on a Saturn V type rocket, but later when leaving the surface of other planets, they have no such system.
Answer: I am not exactly sure what kind of propulsion system is used, however; you must consider that although in our galaxy even the closest planets to Earth take years to travel to, in this alternate universe, the planets may be arranged in a closer formation.
Question: When Cooper is walking into Murph's hospital room (when Murph is on her deathbed), why do her family members appear to completely ignore him? Not even a "hello" or any kind of acknowledgement of his presence. You would think that because of what he accomplished in saving the planet or the fact the he is the reason all those people in the room even exist would garner some type of attention.
Answer: Cooper would have already met his other family members (grandchildren and great-grandchildren) when they first arrived at the space station and before going in to see the frail Murph, who made the trip while in-stasis. Because she is so frail, everyone would discuss beforehand how the meeting should proceed. Also, it is already a long-running movie, and adding an extended "meet and greet" scene would drag out the ending and lessen the emotional reunion between Cooper and Murph.
Question: Why is the film titled "Interstellar" when the plot revolves around intergalactic travel?
Chosen answer: Interstellar means travelling among the stars, no matter which galaxy you're in, which is what was going on. While intergalactic does mean travelling between galaxies, it's more indicative of being in the empty void of space between galaxies, not going from one galaxy to another. And since they travelled by wormhole, they were never really in the empty space.
Question: What happened to Wolf Edmund? He was one of the dozen astronaut explorers that went into the wormhole to search for suitable planets. Anne Hathaway was in love with him. Did he die before she and Cooper reached Planet Edmund or was he still alive when Brand landed there?
Chosen answer: Per the novelization of the movie he was dead when they arrived. CASE and Brand gave him a burial.
Question: When the crew gets struck by the gigantic wave on the Miller's planet, CASE is shown to be able to morph into a wheel-like form, and rescue Amelia. If CASE is actually that fast, and that "versatile" to hold things while running, why can't he actually just move around the surface, and survey the wreckage of Miller's ship. That would have saved a lot of time, wouldn't it?
Answer: The robots are very helpful in this movie, yes, but the movie also makes a point that exploration is done by humans and not by the robotic helpers. Compare this to the docking scene, where the robots initially thought that the maneuver was impossible. Relying on the robots might actually hamper the exploration.
Question: SPOILER ALERT: What exactly happens in the end, does Cooper actually die and the Tesseract and the Cooper station were just parts of his dream? Please let me know if I might have missed something because the explanation that he travels back through the wormhole to Saturn does not make sense to me. He must have been sucked inside the Gargantua and died, surely?
Answer: Check Kip Thorne's The Science of Interstellar, for the correct answer to this question. Short answer: Cooper does not actually enter the black hole.
Question: How are the waves on Miller's planet so big, and how could you get waves that big in what looked like 3 feet of water?
Question: If the wormhole was sent to help the human race, why put it out by Saturn? If it was meant to encourage humanity to redevelop spaceflight, it could have done that closer to earth.
Answer: It was never explained, so any answer is speculative. However, as a plot symbolism, Wiki Fandom suggests: Saturn is the Roman god of the harvest and visually impressive; it makes sense for the wormhole to be there thematically. As possible homage, Saturn's orbit is where the Monolith was in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well (in the book only; in the movie it was Jupiter). Saturn's rings also mimic the shape of the accretion disk around Gargantua.
Question: While en route to Miller's planet, Romilly explains that due to relativity, for each hour they spend on the surface, 23 years will have passed on earth. Romilly stays aboard the ship, orbiting the planet. The crew goes in, has a tragic accident, then goes back to the ship. Now, this is what I don't get - Romilly has aged 23 years while they explored the planet for a couple of hours. How come Romilly aged at all? He was just outside the planet. Not on earth. There should be no major time difference between the crew and Romilly.
Answer: It was stated that the time dilation on Miller's planet was a result of its close proximity to Gargantua, the black hole. Romilly kept the Endurance out of range of Gargantua, whilst Cooper, Brand and Doyle went to Miller's planet, so he was not affected by the time dilation, and aged consistently with Earth. Had Romilly gotten the Endurance any closer towards Miller's planet, he would have been affected by the time dilation in the same way Cooper and Brand were, but he did not.
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Answer: It was actually 1 hour on the planet was 7 years outside of the time slippage. They spent a little over 3 hours on the planet, these a little over 23 years passed for Romilly. As an added interest, in the scene there is a "tick" in the background soundtrack. Each tick is the passage of 1 hour of Earth time.
Question: What made Cooper think that Amelia was in love with Edmunds? Cooper asks Amelia about Edmunds, she tells him about him but she never says anything to indicate that she's in love with him.
Answer: Cooper was able to read more into Brand's comments and her emotions than she openly stated. When he questioned T.A.R.S. (the robot) about any relationship between Brand and Edmund, T.A.R.S. declined to answer, citing a discretionary protocol, leading Cooper to believe there was something. Brand also pushed for the team to land on Edmund's planet even though evidence showed that Mann's was the better prospect. Cooper strung different clues together and was guessing, but when he questioned Brand, she answered honestly.
Question: When they're discussing which planet is the best option because of low fuel I spotted what looked like snow falling out the windows. What is it?
Answer: What you are seeing outside the window are the stars in space. The stars appear to look like falling snow because the Endurance is rotating on an axis to provide gravity for the crew. It looks like falling snow because the stars appear to be the same colour as snow, and the rotation gives the impression that the stars are moving.
Question: Why did he ask Murphy through binary to ask him to stay in the past? What good would he do if he stayed on earth? Murphy wouldn't be able to crack the solution of the fifth dimension if it wasn't for future Cooper's Morse code on the watch.
Answer: Cooper does this before he talks to Trask and realises where he is and why he is there.
Answer: As an emotional being, Cooper reacts to getting away from his daughter, which at the point he believes is for the last time. In that moment, Cooper is of the view that Plan A could never have worked. That coupled with the fact that his only motive to get on the Endurance mission was to somehow bring Plan A to fruition, is the reason he is emotionally compelled to ask her daughter to ask him to stay. Rational reason works but an emotionally charged moment trumps it all the time.
Question: How exactly is the artificial gravity created on the Endurance? If it is due to the centripetal force created by the rotation, then isn't the gravitational force supposed to make them stand normal to the edge of the circle, considering the outward direction of the centripetal force?
Answer: Firstly, it's not centripetal that's pointed outwards, it's centrifugal. Secondly, what you say is precisely what happens aboard the endurance. The crew having docked ranger, moves to the ring module (the outer circle). Cooper initiates the rotation of the ring module and as such the centrifugal force pushes them outward onto the relative floor of their module. Most of the scenes that we witness are crew based in the ring module, and not aboard any of ranger or lander.
Chosen answer: They do not still have gravity. Romilly is actually floating, but nothing is ever shown from behind his back, so the floating is gone unnoticed. In fact, during some shots of Romilly, you can see his feet floating behind him.
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