Gravity Proves Why Movie Critics Are Trash.

[JoeTheBro]

bugrimmar said:

JoeTheBro said:
I disagree.

Movie completely ignored physics, I'm a rocket scientist, yet I loved almost every minute of it. Definitely the best movie of the year so far.

I'm curious. Would satellite debris really travel at that insane speed and cause that much damage in that scenario?

Well if the movie was 100% like real life, then the chances of the satellite debris being in the same orbit are astronomically thin. Space is fricken huge.

If in the one in a million chance the debris and the shuttle do cross paths, then it would either be a lot lot lot worse or a lot nicer. If the destroyed satellite was orbiting at the same altitude as the shuttle, then it would have the same relative speed as the shuttle. Each one is going 17,000 mph, but to each other they are static. The explosion from what ever destroyed it would be the only thing making the debri fly. That means it would hit the shuttle going more like 50 mph, depending on the explosion. Or if for some reason the satellite was orbiting in the opposite direction(which would make like zero sense), the debri would be going 34,000 mph relatively and even the smallest dust particle would do serious damage. Wouldn't be able to see it either since that's almost 10 miles a second.

My biggest problem with the movie though was that the debri came around every 90 minutes. It would either be 45 minutes if the debri was going 34,000 and everyone would be dead the first time anyway, or it would take days to come back around.

Also I'm only a kerbal rocket scientist.