Rocket scientists bring new Sandra Bullock film down to earth
Experts say new film takes too many liberties with its depiction of how astronauts live in space
Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron's movie starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as two astronauts having an especially bad day in space is a hit with film critics and audiences.
Reviews by actual rocket scientists, however, have been mixed.
Hayden Planetarium astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out some of the movie's scientific liberties on Twitter under the phrase "Mysteries of Gravity", while Michael Interbartolo, who flew the shuttle for Nasa, has critiqued the realism of the trailer on the science fiction website Blastr.
Second-man-on-the-moon Buzz Aldrin has praised the movie's portrayal of zero gravity, but said the shots of the earth from space looked too clear.
Audiences love to dissect science fiction movies. In 2011, Nasa released a list of what its staff considered the 10 most and least scientifically accurate films.
Gravity seems likely to fall somewhere in the middle. In the film, space debris creates a terrifying hazard for astronauts working on the Hubble Space Telescope and that's a real danger astronauts confront. The look of the Hubble and the International Space Station are faithfully drawn from Nasa documentaries, public domain photographs and US and Russian space objects that production designer Andy Nicholson bought on eBay.
For the filmmakers, that kind of realism was necessary, but not the sole consideration, Gravity producer David Heyman said.