Chris Prewitt
In the movie Gravity these astronauts are told that a space station has been blown up and debris is
headed towards them at insanely fast speeds. This is completely possible because there is a lot of debris
always circling earth and a serious threat to Nasa. If an object were to blow up in space it would circle
around the earth’s atmosphere because of the law of circular motion and gain speed during this time.
What the movie got wrong is that the debris wouldn’t be flying as fast as it was, but if it was it would be
flying much faster than shown in the movie. They said it was going about 50,000 mph around the earth,
so if that was true it would go by in a blink of an eye and no one would’ve seen it coming. When the
female astronaut Stone and Kowalski were hanging on to the tether and Kowalski had to let go this
wasn’t needed. Because it was almost zero gravity, all that was needed was for Stone to tug on the rope
and catch Kowalski so that they could both make it to the space station. This sacrifice was not needed.
Lastly in space it would’ve been nearly impossible for Stone to use a fire extinguisher to get on board the
station. For the fire extinguisher to work it would’ve had to be used in the center of mass which it was
clearly not. Because it was not in her center of mass when she used it she should’ve spun around out of
control which did not happen in the movie.