Gravity

Question: Any idea what chemical substance is used in the fire extinguisher? I initially assumed it couldn't be straightforward liquid H2O as I couldn't see any spherical droplets floating around, but could it be an aerosol?

Louisa Radice

Answer: A quick internet search revealed that the International Space Station uses both carbon dioxide and water-based foam extinguishers. The Space Shuttle used Halon 1301 fire extinguishers, but these were fixed nozzles built into the shuttle compartments.

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: 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

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.

Friso94

Answer: Yes.

Question: How would Stone have known where she would land? Was it just pure luck that she landed in water and not on land?

Answer: She didn't. Thing is, the Tianggong station was deorbiting already, and the Shenzou was attached. She was re-entering the atmosphere whether she wanted to or not, and the fact that she landed on (or rather, near) land was just lucky.

Friso94

Question: On the Russian vessel, shortly after Ryan boards via the airlock, there's a readout in English concerning oxygen. Shouldn't the readout, and indeed virtually everything on that ship, be written in Russian?

Answer: The International Space Station is serviced and manned by representatives from several countries. It stands to reason that because of this, instructions for spacecraft and equipment would be printed in several languages. As the movie shows, in the case of an emergency it would not make sense to have spacecraft and equipment be effectively "locked out" to those who don't speak a particular language when that problem can be easily solved by printing instructions in multiple languages.

BaconIsMyBFF

This is similar to how the airline industry works internationally. All pilots, crew, air traffickers, etc, regardless of what country, speak in English. It is the international language.

raywest

Factual error: The shuttle's original mission was to service Hubble, yet when the shuttle is wrecked, Kowalsky moves with Stone to the ISS, which just happens to be "a short hike away." Hubble orbits at an altitude of 350 miles/560km, while the ISS does so at an altitude of about 250 miles/410km. Furthermore, even if they had been able to see the ISS from Hubble's orbit, they would have only seen it speed ahead, as their orbital velocities are very different: 7.66km per second for the ISS and 7.5km per second for Hubble. (00:23:20)

The Nachoman

More mistakes in Gravity

Ryan Stone: It's time to stop driving. It's time to go home.

More quotes from Gravity

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