Factual error: When Ryan enters the space station and removes her spacesuit, she is shown wearing only a tank top and boy shorts. In reality, according to NASA's official webpage, astronauts wear a liquid cooling and ventilation garment and an absorption garment (space diapers) under their suit. (00:38:45)
Gravity (2013)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Alfonso Cuaron
Starring: George Clooney, Ed Harris, Sandra Bullock, Basher Savage, Eric Michels, Orto Ignatiussen
Kowalski detaches from Stone so that she can survive. He presumably breaks Solovyev's space walk record. Stone uses the soft landing jets on the Soyuz capsule, which has no other fuel, to get to the Chinese space station as it's reentering earth's atmosphere, gets into their functioning re-entry vehicle, and makes it back to Earth alive. She lands in a large lake, swims out, kicking off the space suit, and staggers ashore.
Count3D
More mistakes in Gravity
Ryan Stone: It's time to stop driving. It's time to go home.
Question: How was Ryan able to swim after the capsule splashed down in the water? Isn't readjusting to earth's gravity pretty difficult when you've spent a long time in space?
Answer: The movie opens with a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope on the Space Shuttle - which had already been decommissioned for two years by the time the movie came out, but we'll let that slide. Because the Shuttle was powered by fuel cells that had a limited supply of hydrogen, it meant that realistically, Space Shuttle missions rarely exceeded two weeks in space, with an absolute maximum of 17.5 days. Two weeks in microgravity is not enough to cause significant loss of muscle and bone density, so Dr. Stone would be able to swim just fine. If you look up old footage of the astronauts disembarking the Shuttle after landing, you'll see they mostly walked out and down the stairs on their own.
Answer: Yes.
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Answer: Swimming does not have the same gravity related constraints that walking on land has. It is not until she is on land where she shows signs of facing difficulties with the Earth's gravity. Also, when she swims up to the surface, she is rushing so she doesn't drown and in doing so, uses up most of her energy because she has been in space and is only now readjusting to Earth's atmosphere, so when she is above water and swimming over to land, she visibly shows signs of being exhausted and out of breath as she used up most of her limited energy attempting to swim up to the surface.
Casual Person
Swimming still has gravity related constraints, though right?
Gravity pulls water towards the earth, yes. But for a swimmer, the water provides buoyancy and supports them. The closest thing you can come to weightlessness on Earth (not including the flight training where they take you into a plane that glows up then drops) is in water, because it floats you.
She is swimming up to the surface at the fastest speed she can, so she doesn't drown. Perhaps there are some gravity related constraints to her swimming, but she is trying to fight against it so she can get to the surface. When she is above the surface and swimming/floating back to the shore, she is visibly exhausted, so it is apparent that she used up most of her energy in trying to fight against the gravity related constraints.
Casual Person