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Entertainment

"Gravity" Review: By Someone Who Has Been There

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 10, 2013
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An Astronaut Fact-checks Gravity, Vulture
“Former U.S. astronaut Scott Parazynski has done seven space walks, including the time he spent seven hours dangling from a robotic arm at the International Space Station, repairing a solar panel array that could have electrocuted him at any time. He had to watch that very solar panel get slashed to bits during Gravity, but aside from that moment, Parazynski loved the film. Vulture had a long, spoiler-filled conversation with the astronaut about space debris, jet packs, tears in space, and Sandra Bullock’s underwear.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

2 responses to “"Gravity" Review: By Someone Who Has Been There”

  1. Homer Hickam says:
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    Loved Scott’s review of Gravity which I saw last night with an NBS colleague. “Just like in the tank!” was our response. Scott was right on about the graceful movements needed to translate around structures on space. This was true even in the NBS although water density muted and softened some movements which wasn’t there for actual EVA’ers. My only quibble of his excellent commentary was his comment on tears. The first tears in weightless conditions I saw was on a Japanese aircraft simulating zero-g. A woman reporter burst into tears and they were like wet bullets! There must be a little muscle surrounding the tear ducts to force tears out. Anousheh Ansari reported the same thing to me – floating tears – when I was writing her memoir My Dream of Stars. I suspect the movie-makers might have consulted “My Dream” for the screenplay since Anousheh was much like Dr. Stone in that she was a newbie, was quite sick in the first few days of her flight, then had a heroic finish (although not so amazing as Dr. Stone, of course).

  2. Skinny_Lu says:
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    Watched the movie and liked it. It had very realistic looking hardware and Earth views. The story is made for public consumption. Most people on the street do not understand orbit planes and altitudes, so they would not find anything wrong with Hubble, ISS and the Chinese station being in close proximity to each other. Sandra Bullock is spectacular in her underwear. George Clooney is himself in the movie. Yes there is a lot of mayhem and destruction in the movie but that is what sells tickets. The debris field that causes their problems is well made and it is quite amazing when all hell breaks loose. Leave your engineer’s hat at home when you go see it. I won’t reveal any spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, but I’d recommend it.