Gravity featured a Kessler syndrome catastrophe as the event which set the plot in motion after the Russians shot a presumed defunct spy satellite down which resulted in a cloud of debris moving at 20,000 to 50,000 miles per hour.
In Gravity, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are on a routine space walk from their shuttle to service the Hubble Space Telescope when Russia blows up a defunct satellite, causing a massive cloud of debris which separates them from their craft.
During a spacewalk, Mission Control in Houston warns Explorer's crew about a rapidly expanding cloud of space debris accidentally caused by the Russians having shot down a presumed defunct spy satellite (see Kessler syndrome) and orders the crew to return to Earth immediately.
Although space exposure is largely portrayed quite accurately, the bodies of Evans and Thomas are not bloated and it would take hours for frost to develop on corpses, not moments like in the film. It would take years to amass a field of catastrophic satellite debris, not minutes as portrayed in the film.
Why did Russia shoot down its own satellite in the movie Gravity?
In the movie Gravity (one of my favorite movies, highly recommended), the Russians shoot down one of their own satellites in order to test their anti-satellite system.
Astronaut Survives Alone From The Threat Of Satellite Debris In Space | Gravity Movie Story Recap
Why was there no one on the ISS in gravity?
They experience weightlessness not because of a lack of gravity but because the ISS, and they, are orbiting Earth in constant free fall, says Valerie Neal, curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum. They're falling toward Earth and moving forward at about the same velocity.
He drifts away with hardly enough oxygen for a few more minutes. He accepts his fate and lets go, so that Sandra's character, Dr. Ryan Stone, can survive. In all likelihood, he went on to lose consciousness without oxygen, and slowly succumbed to carbon dioxide poisoning in his sleep.
Stone's leg got entangled in the Soyuz's parachute cords and she was able to grab a strap on Kowalski's suit. Despite Stone's protests, Kowalski detached himself from the tether to save her from drifting away with him and she was pulled back toward the ISS.
There was a scuba diver on set at all times to make sure the actress wouldn't drown. The light box or Soyuz capsule were where most of Gravity were shot. However, both were relatively safe.
One day when she was driving home from work and listening to the radio, she got a call that informed her that her 4-year-old daughter slipped and fell at the playground, getting a head injury which killed her. On her daughter's death, Dr. Stone said: "That was it. It was the stupidest thing".
Many of Cuarón's films deal with loss, grief, and loneliness. But “Gravity” is the most deliberate in underscoring how grief eats away at a person, pushing them to chase silence until they're forced to reckon with what they lost.
Gravity (2013): $20 million (P.S. It has been reported that George was not only paid $20 million for his acting work in this film, but he was also able to negotiate receiving a portion of the movie's profits as part of his contract.
In spite of several commentators warning that these collisions are just the start of a collision cascade that will render access to low Earth orbit all but impossible – a process commonly referred to as the 'Kessler Syndrome' after the debris scientist Donald Kessler – the reality is not likely to be on the scale of ...
The Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon in which the amount of junk in orbit around Earth reaches a point where it just creates more and more space debris, causing big problems for satellites, astronauts and mission planners.
Most of Gravity is set in space, where obviously, they did not shoot. That was all shot in a studio in England. However, there was one scene shot at Lake Powell in Arizona. It was a fitting shooting location, as it's also the setting of the astronauts' landing scene in Planet of the Apes.
Through her conversation, however, Stone has kind of a cathartic moment listening to a young child cry and howling like a dog. In the film, it appears Stone may be hallucinating a little as she is accepting her fate and letting go of fear.
Right as Stone was leaving the ISS, the debris field recircled the Earth and hit the space station causing an explosion that blasted the ISS in half while the debris tore the station to pieces. The remains of the ISS remained in orbit and presumably burned up after entering Earth's atmosphere.
One of the most notable inaccuracies is the depiction of how quickly and easily Dr. Stone is able to remove her spacesuit. Also, the Hubble Telescope, International Space Station, and China's Tiangong-1 are located in different orbits and at different heights.
In Gravity (2013) at one point of the movie, you can see, reflected in the visor of george Clooney, an additional astronaut that is not in the film. That astronaut is a "fake" cameraman. This is because the director Alfonso Cuarón wanted to simulate that the filming had really taken place in space.
I came on early in the development; Angelina wasn't even attached to it then.” The real problem, as Cuaron noted, was that Downey Jr was expected to use complicated technology to make the film, and it just wasn't something he was comfortable with.
What happens to Sandra Bullock at the end of Gravity?
Dr. Ryan Stone ends up alone in space after her companion, Lieutenant Matt Kowalski, sacrifices himself to save her. Stone manages to make it back to Earth by using the Soyuz escape vessel and landing in a body of water, grateful to be alive.
Ryan Stone's escape from space takes her through a trial of fire, then water, only to emerge on a great unknown land—she had survived but it wasn't clear she had been saved. My take, however, is maybe just a pessimistic take on the events as they are shown.
