Corrected entry: When Jim is in the exhaust tunnel and Aurora is trying to 'vent' the reactor, as the 'flames' reach him, he should be incinerated within seconds. The heat output of the reactor should be over 10,000° F.
Corrected entry: The Medway has a full array of antibiotics/inoculations in an unrefrigerated drawer that is easily accessible and not protected from time. Then the Auto-doc prescribes painkillers and spits them out. Both pills and vials would deteriorate over time, to such a degree that 150 years worth of travel would make them absolutely impotent. They have no reason to be out and available to a non-existent populous for 150 years and should have been stored in cryo.
Correction: Given that the world is advanced enough for interstellar travel and suspended animation, we cannot judge their medicines or storage technology by our standards.
Corrected entry: Gus got upset when he saw that Jim had planted a tree, and there was no indication that the Avalon was designed or equipped to adequately handle live trees, flowers, vines, shrubs, and grass on board, but Jim apparently planted a large roomful of these things. When the first tree was planted, the Avalon would not reach Homestead II for about 90 years. The roving robot vacuums would have had to be removed from this area to enable grass to grow, and there's no explanation for how the plants could be watered (and without causing damage to the floor) or where all the fallen leaves went. Tree roots can push objects in their path, potentially causing structural damage to the Avalon. Avalon may have been very advanced, but failures had occurred without the added "cargo." Without being specifically designed to allow such growth on board, surely problems not anticipated would occur over the decades in space, risking all the passengers... even the ship.
Correction: This is all based on speculations. They had plenty of time to develop a good ecosystem for the plants before they died, finding a way to manipulate the ship and robots to help watering and keep the area clean. Possibly even direct and cut roots.
Corrected entry: Aurora walks into the reactor control room and burns her hand on the manual reactor vent handle. If the air temperature was hot enough to heat the handle up, she never would have been able to enter the room. (01:32:00)
Correction: We don't know if it was heated from the air. Maybe the control panel was heated from the reactor behind the glass.
Corrected entry: At the end, after Aurora decided not to go in the only sleeping-pod, we see her at the bar. The injury to her arm is gone, not even a mark on it.
Correction: It is quite possible that there is a significant time jump between the two scenes, and injury would heal in between. Besides, they have an autodoc, which should be able to fix up the scar, if there is any.
Corrected entry: Jim somehow plants a small live tree of about 15 feet in height on the ship's Grand Concourse, meaning that he must have constructed a large container of soil (with irrigation) beneath the bulkhead to accommodate the tree's rootball. This is perhaps feasible, given that Jim is a mechanical engineer, and we see his schematic of the root container drawn on the concourse deck. However, at the end of the film, some 88 years after Jim planted the small tree, the ship's actual crew emerges from hibernation to find a tree of truly gigantic proportions growing on the concourse deck. The tree has easily grown to 70 or more feet in height, which would require an approximately equal amount of space below the bulkhead to accommodate its massive root system. Even if Jim somehow continued expanding the root container to the size of a 7-story building below deck, it's unlikely that he could fill it with millions of pounds of garden soil.
Correction: The ship had farming equipment and supplies in the cargo hold for use in colonizing an alien planet, which would have given him the supplies he needed. I think it's safe to say that a technologically advanced society that can put humans into suspended animation for a hundred years and build an interstellar starship could also have the technology to sustain a tree without requiring hundreds of tons of soil from Earth - perhaps some sort of hydroponic system.
Corrected entry: It is said that the crew wake up 4 months before they arrive at Homestead 2 and the passengers 3 months, but the crew and passengers wake up at the same time at the end of the film and they are almost in orbit around Homestead 2.
Correction: The passengers had not awakened yet.The computer can be heard saying that it is initiating the crew wake-up sequence. The shot of the people on the concourse are only the crew members and it is somewhat prior to the ship's arrival at the planet. That is when they discovered what happened to Aurora and Jim. Aurora's words from her book (heard by us in a voice over) is addressed to both the crew and passengers, however. Before that scene, there is a quick filler shot of the Avalon nearing Homestead II that shows us that passengers and crew have safely reached their destination almost ninety years later. It is not meant to be a strict linear timeline.
Corrected entry: Given all the passengers are supposed to be in hibernation, and the hibernation pods are "fail safe", why would the ship's computers be programmed to announce scenic views in the middle of the voyage, such as passing the star Arcturus?
Correction: The pods were not "fail safe" as evidenced by Jim's pod being opened due to the malfunction. Once Jim is awakened and starts moving around the ship, utilizing different functions, and so on, the ship's computer would be triggered and act as if all passengers have been awakened. It starts providing its normal services, such the hologram greeting Jim and giving information, entertainment, Arthur working as the bartender, and passengers being informed when there is an interesting astronomical event to watch.
Correction: The whole premise of the movie centers around the belief the pods are fail safe. If the engineers and programmers believed the pods to be fail safe, then there is no reason to program in sight seeing subroutines for locations passed in the middle of voyage when everyone is believed to still be in hibernation.
The ship, once it happened to be activated by Jim and Aurora for passenger mode, may have sensors that then identify and announce any scenic view it encounters on its journey. The ship follows a pre-set path to and from the planet, and every astronomical object would be catalogued in its computers, regardless of whether it was intended for passengers to see it.
Corrected entry: When the ship loses gravity, only Gus' arms rise from the bed. His head, the rest of his body, the blanket, etc. should show some effects of being weightless but do not.
Correction: In that scene, the blanket doesn't appear to move at all, while (as you said) his arms float into the air, which suggests that the blanket itself is held down magnetically (or through some other mechanism). His bed may have this extra feature because he's a crew member.
Even if your explanation was accurate, for which there is no evidence, Gus' body, not just his arms, would still show effects of the lost gravity. His head would move, his body would attempt to lift up and be shown to be restrained by the "magnetic" blanket holders. Even if it was magnetic, there was enough slack in the blanket that his body would have risen an inch or two.
When gravity disappears, objects do not attempt to lift up; they stay where they are, unless there is some force applied to them.
Corrected entry: Aurora said she was on a return voyage, but we learn the ship is incapable of putting passengers into hypersleep, as this can only be done with advanced equipment on Earth. How was she supposed to get back?
Correction: Jim talks about the facility and prep they went though before going into the pod. The Homestead II could easily have the same equipment. The equipment is not on the ship since there should be no reason for anyone to be put back into hypersleep.
Correction: There would be facilities at the destination point that would perform the procedure to put people back into hyper-sleep. The ship's crew, once awakened towards the end of the journey, would then have to be put back to sleep for the return journey to Earth. Jim and Aurora could not simply hop back into the pods and be put to sleep, which is what Jim was referring to.
Correction: They could have a ship that has prepped pods to put people back into hyper sleep for the return trip. Not this ship obviously as nobody was supposed to go back straight away, but the second ship to arrive. Once a pod has been used though, it can't be used again.
Corrected entry: When Aurora is dragging Jim towards the Auto-Doc it suddenly appears close to the floor when the camera angle changes. Then back to normal when the angle changes again. For me it's obvious Aurora didn't have the strength to lift Jim that high so they had to lower the chamber.
Correction: It appears that way, but as Aurora enters the medical clinic dragging in Jim, behind them the Auto-Doc's cover can (barely) be seen sliding open just as it is starting to lower itself to floor level. Presumably advanced sensors detected an emergency situation. Once it was fully lowered, Aurora put Jim inside. The device then raises itself to normal height. Most hospital beds, gurneys, and exam tables are adjustable, so it's reasonable to assume the Auto-Doc would have that same capability. Granted, Aurora would need tremendous strength to drag a 220 lb. Man that far and then get him into the device even at its lowest level, but it's feasible.
Corrected entry: At the end, Jim tells Aurora that the medical diagnostic and treatment unit "AutoDoc" can place her back into a state of hibernation so that she can complete the journey to Homestead II. She immediately objects, saying, "But there's only one AutoDoc!" (i.e., saying she won't do it if it means leaving Jim behind). Really? Only one AutoDoc unit on a half-mile-long starship with over 5,000 passengers and crewmen? Stupidity.
Correction: The auto-doc is a tool for human doctors, it was not meant to be the primary form of medical treatment. This is evident when the auto-doc refused to reveal a prognosis because there was no doctor present, and in another case, it refused to administer treatment without medical supervision, and someone had to choose the specific treatment (s) to apply. Plus, it's likely an extremely expensive piece of equipment and the for-profit company that built the ship didn't see a need to put more than one on the ship.
While there are reasonable explanations for why there's only 1 autodoc on board, the question not addressed in the film is whether they could create another one. Jim says a few times that the ship's storage areas have replacement parts for everything on board, which would presumably include the autodoc. But maybe it's not that simple.
Corrected entry: It's established early in the film that the Starship Avalon is travelling to planet Homestead II, a one-way journey of 120 years at approximately half the speed of light. So, even if they successfully make it to Homestead II, it would take 60 years to send a message back to Earth (at light speed) to say they had completed the mission, and that's not even taking into account the effects of time dilation at half the speed of light. So, we're really talking about over 200 years, easily, to confirm a single successful interstellar mission. But, when Aurora asks the ship's computer about the failure rate of hibernation units, the computer answers that no hibernation unit has ever failed in "thousands" of interstellar missions. That means thousands of missions that were able to report their success back to Earth, which necessarily means many centuries of interstellar travel before the Avalon was ever launched. Yet their destination is only Homestead II, the second colony; the technology hasn't evolved beyond half of light speed and hibernation units for centuries; and they're still listening to old 20th Century rock and roll on the ship's sound system.
Correction: Just because this is the second planet to be named "Homestead" does not mean it is only the second planet to be colonized. We also have no idea what changes have been made in their interstellar technology, only where it is at when the film takes place. As for the music, well, we still listen to music hundreds of years old. Why can't they?
Corrected entry: When Jim first goes out of the ship and is hanging from the tether, he is emotional and begins to cry. We see his tears run down his cheek as they would if he were standing on earth. In zero g the tears would just hang at the inside corner of the eye. But since he was swinging at the end of the tether the tears should fall straight out and land on the inside of his visor.
Correction: Surface tension keeps the tears on his cheek and they travel to the "high point" on his cheek (the point furthest from where the tether is anchored). This point is directly below his eyes, meaning the tears coincidentally travel the same path they would have under normal gravity.
Corrected entry: When Aurora first talks to Jim after waking - she says to him "but somebody's got to land the ship in a few weeks" But timeline is crew wake-up with 5 months to go and passengers wake-up with four months to go. So she should have said in a few months.
Correction: She is still slightly incoherent from hibernation. In addition "few" is a non-specific, relative quantity. Given the 100+ years for the entire journey, 20 weeks could be considered a few weeks.
Correction: With flame resistant technology as we know it today, this would be a reasonable conclusion. However, this movie has made pretty clear this ship has very advanced technology beyond what we have in today's world in order to make a safe passage 150 light years away which is an impossible journey in of itself with our current technology. With the movie taking place in an unsaid time in the future where technology is far more advanced, it's not unreasonable to assume they have come up with better flame resistant technology that is currently not known in the technology we have today.
But then his little shield burned up instantly when it hit the propulsion stream. If the tech was savvy enough to withstand the venting heat, then it would have withstood the propulsion wash.
I honestly don't think it's fair to assume how things will work in a future we will never live in where they probably will have extremely fired resistant objects with the significant progress they are making. Such as the solar probe that can now touch the sun. An initial burn may be part of the way a clear shield shows its resistance in the future similar to how many fire resistant clothing will initially catch fire then the flames will suddenly go out. Especially since the shield didn't crack.