Corrected entry: The simple fact that they overlooked the opportunity or chose not to repeat the experiment with the same or different machine to get a "second opinion" seems like a pretty big hole to the answer almost all the higher ups were asking. Easy enough to find a volunteer now that the first person to go through survived.
Corrected entry: In the part of the movie where Ellie is traveling through the worm holes, in one scene it shows the restraint seat getting crushed against the top of the pod she's traveling in. However, when the camera shows Ellie inside the pod after she lands in the water, over her shoulder you can see the restraint seat in good condition. I realize some could argue that her trip never happened, but the special finding report, discussed at the end of the movie, proves her trip did in fact happen since her camera recorded 18 hours of static. Therefore, her restraint should have been crushed when the camera was showing it at the end of her trip.
Correction: The seat is not in good condition. Ellie is lying on floor of the pod and the crushed seat is next to her, with its light flickering.
Correction: 18 hours of static is not conclusive proof the trip happened. And it's certainly not proof that the trip occured the way Ellie experienced it. Like everything else about the journey, it's an ambiguous piece of evidence open to interpretation that proves nothing. Ellie experienced the chair being crushed, that doesn't mean that it physically happened any more than her actually physically being on an alien beach that looked just like her painting of Pensacola. It's simply how the experience looked to *her*.
Factual error: When Foster is going to Japan, a Harrier jet transports her to a ship. The ship is underway, traveling at quite a clip according to the wake. The Harrier landed on its heliport platform, facing the stern. Harriers hover, but cannot fly backwards at more than a crawl. It would have crashed.
Suggested correction: It isn't technically a harrier just another futuristic version of a VTOL aircraft. We don't know the capabilities of a fictional aircraft.
The VTOL is military, but she steps off a small commercial plane.
Corrected entry: In the scene where the alien machine is activated for the 2nd time. The ships are shown to lean toward the machine (as a result of the gravity field it creates). Boats float orthogonally (horizontally) to the direction of gravity. If the machine generated a gravity field that "pulled" then the ships should be seen tilting away from the machine... in order to float orthogonal to the direction of gravity.
Correction: That would depend on the exact direction of the gravity pull. Since the centre of the machine (and hence the centre of gravity) is located several hundred metres above ground level, the force would attack at the upper structures of the ships. This would cause a tilting as it is depicted.
Correction: It could have been gravity pull or a magnetic field acting on the metal ship. Since the ship's lower part is inside water where drag is much higher, the upper part that is inside air would have tilted towards the pull.
Factual error: The last time Eleanor Arroway talks to S.R. Haddon, he's aboard the Russian space station Mir, and Haddon explains that he's up there because the "low oxygen" and zero gravity counteracts his cancer. In fact, there is no "low oxygen" environment aboard space stations or other spacecraft. Low oxygen content would, of course, kill any astronauts or cosmonauts in short order. The breathable air in spacecraft always has at least the same oxygen content as Earth atmosphere at sea-level. In fact, most Russian missions used excessive amounts of oxygen. S.R. Haddon's original dialogue was probably "high oxygen and low gravity," but the line was bungled and allowed to remain in the film.
Suggested correction: Also, being terminally ill, he is grasping at straws, and can't be expected to think solidly. After all, gravity wouldn't mean all that much to cancer cells in the human body, and special oxygen conditions of any kind can be generated on Earth (there is a weak possibility that low but sufficient for a human oxygen levels would slow cancer cells, which are often less efficient, more vulnerable in certain areas than healthy cells), so no need to go up, and finally, he may simply be Dennis Tito-ing and making an excuse to do so.
Correction: This is an opinion. The project cost a lot of money to built, a lot of people were opposed to it and then was destroyed with the costs of several lives. Only in secret did someone go through and come out alive, without anything happening, or so it appeared. They concluded it was a hoax set up by Hadden.
lionhead