So, someone finally decided to do a contemporary space movie. Apparently the director has held onto this idea as the special effects technology to properly portray it matured. Apollo 13 is the last time somone really tried to tackle a realistic micro G environment and the useage there was very limited in comparison to what was done here.
What is it: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in space, stuff goes wrong and they try to survive. No Aliens. No Traitor. No robots run amok. No evil coporation. No time travel... no to all the really tired cliche's that riddle almost all movies set in space. FINALLY
The Good:
This is a tour de force of current bad day scenarios facing folks that get shot into orbit. About the only thing they didn't bring into the picture was radiation exposure. For the most part they do not lay them on to thick.... for holywood that is. I think they could have done without the final Chineese station bit, or at least not the de-orbiting bit... more on that later.
The effects are stunning and represent the first worthwhile use of 3d in my opinion. The depth of field adds a lot to give a better feel of space. Perhaps the highest praise I can add is this is the first movie I have seen in 3d that I think would be less of a movie in 2d. Epic vistas of earth are nothing new but here the earth is shown to great effect and the depth of field makes it something I haven't seen before... and that is damn rare in mainstream entertainment these days. Sign me up for watching this on an Oculus Rift where there would be no annoying 3d glasses crap.
Pacing is damn good. Reading some of the early reviews I expected 2 hours of Bullock screaming and hyperventillating. While there is a good dose of that I can't say it was excessive considering the situations depicted. Many complained no Astronaut would come so unglued. I can only imagine they ignored, or simply didn't catch the whole opening dialog (easy to understand with the visuals) establishing that she wasn't just green, she was primairly there because of her expertise regarding Hubble. To put this in perspective... most astronauts spend years in training before getting a mission. Bullock's character is supposedly up there after 6 months including vacation time. Mission control defers to her on matters of the Hubble. Translation, the mission was such the expert was on location with the absolute bare minimum training required to get her there as opposed to supporting the misssion from the ground (most realisitc situation). I imagine if this were a book you would have had plenty of exposition explaining why this was the case. For a movie you get a couple of lines in the middle of insane visual candy right before a major set piece action sequence. It is a more realistic situation than say Bruce Willis and his drilling buddies going through a montage... but it is in the same vein.
The So So:
For the most part I think I will use this to cover the more egregious goofs. For Holywood, especially for space flicks, this is very minor stuff in the grand scheme of things. Don't take the harping wrong... this movie was done VERY well. I point these particular issue out because I think there were better alternatives.
First up is the 'everything is right here' conjunction of the set pieces. We start off with a Hubble repair mission by a space shuttle. Real enough. But after our bad thing happens and Bullock is tumbling around and asked to call things out she points out ISS and a Chineese station as points of reference. Now Hubble is in an orbit at the outer limits of Shuttle capacity at around 400 miles up. ISS runs at around 200 miles up... so in other words if they were as close as they could possibly be it would be difficult to see ISS. Even if they were in the same orbit they would not maintain relative positions for very long. As it so happens they are not in the same orbital inclinations and any conjunctions would be extremely breif with a closest apporach of a couple hundred miles. The Chineese station would also be in a different inclination. While I suppose it is possible some strange conflux of timing could put them all within a few hundred miles or so of each other, in reality such a conjunction would be very fleeting. I believe it was theoretically possible for a shuttle to divert to station from Hubble. In fact I believe that was a requirement of the last Hubble service mission as a reaction to Columbia... but it was a prohibitive requirement to the point that it is laughable to think an EVA jetpack could be used to match orbits between the two. Great story bit... not so good on the realism. How could it have been made to work? Really couldn't have if the idea was to bridge the orbits with the EVA pack. Even if it had the delta V to make the orbital change the precision needed is on the order of shooting a bullet with a bullet at insane range. How about a shuttle that is depressurized and damaged (ie no comms) but still has a functional OMS ? They could have used the gimped shuttle unable to survive re-entry to make it over to ISS. Once they got there they could have been unable to dock for any number of reasons... and thus would have had a reasonable situation for Clooney and Bullock to use the MMU pack to make it the 'last mile'. Of course that ruins Clooney's running gag about the EVA record but at a small cost for realism. You still get to have him sacrifice himself on the final translation etc... This also would have allowed for dealing with more realistic orbits and have them talking about catching ISS on the next orbit and burning at the right time etc... Real stuff... same story. Think Apollo 13 when they had to manually burn to make the return from the moon. I think it would have worked but I'm biased I suppose.
Second up is the super debris field. This provided the big bad 'thing' that could never really be prepared for. The catalyst is that the Russians blow up their own sattelite in orbit and that the debris of that explosion causes a chain reaction of other sattelites being hit and thus creating a bigger and bigger debris field. The threat of this is realistic enough.... even the idea of a nation shooting down their own sattelite (China and the US both did it a few years back). In fact the basic idea here is real enough... just not the timescale or manner in which it is depicted occuring in. A pretty common Holywood conciet. In reality such a debris field would not remain so concentrated. Newton's first law at work would keep the cloud expanding. Still dangerous and there is a strong theory about a critical level of space debris after which such collisions would lead to a level of debris making space flight far more dangerous. That aside, the most egregious mistake here was the idea of the comm sats being knocked out by the same event that leads to the destruction of the shuttle. Comm sats in general, and particularly those used for space communications for NASA, are in geo syncronous orbit. The escalating debris field is used as an excuse to cut communications from the ground in addition to destroying the shuttle. This is particularly absurd as geo sync orbit is some 22k miles away from earth where our story is taking place at 300 or so miles up. An event at one orbital plane would not significantly impact what is happening in the other. All in all I think they would have done better just to have severed comm with the ground based on the destruction of the shuttle's comm system. The astronaut EVA comm system is a short range UHF system that relys on the shuttle/ISS comm links for relay to the ground. In short they are walkie talkies, not sattelite cell phones. Killing the shuttle's comm system is more realistic, and creates the same effect. As for the short fuse of the escalating situation.... don't have the first call saying it isn't an issue. Have the initial event cause the emergency evac and problem. That leaves you having to think about how you then escalate the situation into an immediate issue for ISS. But the idea that the initial event could impact both ISS and shuttle in Hubble's orbit is a lot less far fectched than the idea of taking out geo sync comm sats just minutes after the initial event in a low earth orbit.
The low altitude of the Chineese station. It adds the final bit of drama on getting down from space but it is patently absurd and the flimsiest bit of the movie. I suppose they went there instead of going back to the debris field as a threat to keep Bullock moving to avoid repetition. Or perhaps it was just more dramatic. I won't even go into the fire extinguisher and silly soyuz separation sequence while in the middle of re-entry non-sense. Certainly makes for a good yarn though. Alternative? Avoid the Chinese station to begin with.
The spare Soyuz at ISS. This one is a bit of nitpick but as I know a bit about ISS ops (pays my bills actually) I have to point out there has never been or is there likely to ever be a situation where there would be a 'surplus' capacity of Soyuz seats in an ISS evacuation scenario. If the crew of ISS successfully evacuated there would not be a Soyuz left. A more realistic and really crazy Hollywood style solution to this would have been to make use of a SpaceX dragon capsule. Musk designed them with the idea of them being man rated. They are pressurized and designed to return and be re-useable. That is a possibility just begging for a Mgyver solution that gets a crewmemeber back safely in a semi realistic manner. Honestly the idea of using an EVA suit inside a dragon to return to earth is far more reaslitic than not one, but two man rated vehicles being left in orbit at two unmanned stations.
Lastly... nobody trained for space would float by a fire of any size without re-acting to it. Related... the soyuz hatch opened inwards to station and the fire depicted is massive. Look up the Apollo 1 disaster details. Air pressure would have skyrocketed and opening the hatch would likely have been impossible. The fire didn't have to be so showy to be dramatic. And it could still have provided ample reason for why ISS wasn't a suitable safe haven.
So... to re-cap. In an alternate reality where I was the technical consultant for this movie I would have the opening sequence unaltered except for having the initial event causing direct danger to the repair mission. In the initial debris incident the shuttle would have been largely incapacitated, dead crew etc... and no comm. But the core flight functions and OMS (orbital manouevering system) would have been intact. Clooney retrieves Bullock and Clooney gets shuttle from Hubbles Orbit to ISS orbit. Once there ISS has been abanndoned and struck by debris. It suffered some, but not as much damage as shuttle, Comunications with the ground are out, solar panels are not providing power, battery power is running out. Clooney is unable to dock the shuttle with station for any number of reasons forcing them to translate from shuttle to station by using the MMU (jetpack). Something goes wrong and Clooney is lost leaving Bullock to do her unassisted station EVA. There is no Soyuz left, damaged or otherwise. Once inside she fights off issues with the stations encounter with the debris field... puts out a fire etc... realizes there are no options at station for getting home. IE it isn't going to work as a life boat and she still does not have comm with the ground. So she still gives up and has her dog howling conversation via HAM radio and hallucination etc... But her revelation is not using the Soyuz soft landing jets to perform an orbital maneuver, but realizing the Dragon module still attached to station is designed to surive re-entry, it just does not have a life support system. Then she uses her supposed computer skills established in the opening to hacking the Dragon module to initiate a reuturn sequence with her inside it using a space suit for life support. No change to the ending other than substituting the dragon for the splash down in place of the Shenzou.
This is by no means making the movie hyper realistic, just gets it a fair amount closer to plausible. But as I said, in the grand scheme of movie magic nonsense this one is pretty tolerable as is.
The bad:
Nothing super awful... The Milf scene with Bullock shucking her suit in a few seconds was pretty out there but certainly made for a nice visual. Cheesecake shot vs reality... Yeah we know which way Holywood is going with that one. To be fair it was a powerful image and I did not get the sense it was there just for titillation. And if the worst I have to complain is getting to oggle Bullock in her undies I hope that helps you appreciate just how good I think this flick is.
Conclusion:
This one will be one I own when it comes out. It is worth the price of admission.
