Factual error: From the continuity of the movie it appears that the response from LIMA came within a few minutes of the transmission from Mars. This would be impossible. Even if Mars and Neptune were on the same side of the Solar System, in a straight line, they would be 4 light-hours apart, meaning the replay could not be received less than 8 hours after transmission. There's no implication that they kept Brad Pitt sitting in a room for 8 hours waiting for a reply.
Ad Astra (2019)
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Directed by: James Gray
Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Liv Tyler, Ruth Negga
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Suggested correction: IIRC, there was a communication sent from earlier. It's very possible they resumed 8 hours later, even if it was the next day. And, judging by the auditors sentiment to LIMAs response (discretion), there is a chance that LIMA did not respond favorably, nor ever would have a chance hear the "emotional" version of the communication sent that day.
Suggested correction: The objective of sending McBride to Mars was for him to transmit a number of appeals to his father on a familial level. Although McBride didn't know it, his messages were intended to catch his father off-guard, making him believe his son was en route to Neptune, but actually clearing the way for a nuclear strike against the LIMA. Unfortunately, the movie fails to make it clear that the younger McBride is transmitting several sequential messages over an extended period of time before his father finally responds. This is more a matter of bad pacing and editing than it is a factual error.
It was shown that the message the father answered was exactly the one in which the son rejected the script and began to speak from the heart. And this was the same message after which the father immediately answered, while the son was still in the room.
No, Roy McBride sent more than one message, and it even shows time pass between messages. His father's reply to an earlier message only arrived coincidentally as Roy went off-script on a subsequent message.
Roy McBride: Can I have a blanket and pillow?
Flight Attendant: Certainly, that will be $125.
Trivia: When Roy McBride is reviewing a top-secret message regarding his father and the LIMA mission, the message filename is "6EQUJ5," which is a very obscure easter egg in the movie. The filename 6EQUJ5 refers to the real-life "WOW Signal," a deep space radio signal received by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University in 1977. The alpha-numeric designation "6EQUJ5" was a printed readout of the signal's duration and intensity. This signal lasted 72 seconds and was 20 times stronger than background radio noise, causing a surprised astronomer to circle the printed 6EQUJ5 readout in red ink and make the handwritten notation "WOW!" in the margin. While the signal was an anomalous one-time event that was never repeated, and there is still no proof that 6EQUJ5 was alien in origin, it has stimulated debate about extraterrestrial radio signals for decades. Ironically, the movie "Ad Astra" concludes that there are no alien radio signals and that we really are alone in the universe.
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