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allenmaher said:
SvennoJ said:

I agree with all that. However the scene with Clooney letting go is actually plausible if you see it through from the beginning. They veer of in different directions when they get separated. She gets caught in the netting and her forward momentum is transferred to a circular path on the rope, which allows her to intercept Clooney. The law of motion dictates that she should transfer some of that circular momentum after grabbing on to Clooney, who should come along with her on a circular path. So it's the centripetal force that's still at work.
But then all goes wrong. They film it in such a way that it appears they're not moving at all, her circular orbit seems to be gone right as she grabs onto Clooney's safety line. And after he let's go, she should still continue on her circular path, not bounce straight back to the ISS. Badly fudged up scene. But it becomes clear what probably happened after you watch the extras. Somebody probably calculated it all through to make it plausible and then got pushed aside in favor of the best shot. It happened with a lot of things in the movie. I guess that's what best directing is for...

Anyway for a movie trying to be realistic there's just so much wrong with it. Clooney's jetpack exhaust would have damaged the solar panels with all that messing around at the start. The fire extinguishers used in space are far smaller, not all that useful for travel. Fire doesn't spread that fast on the ISS. Why is there so much stuff floating around inside ISS, and who brings braces to space? Soyuz is a lot smaller inside, certainly no room to maneuver to put a space suit on. They have the excercise equipment tied to the wall in the ISS instead of bolted, because the vibrations from the astronauts will damage the solar panels, yet the Soyuz jerking on the station and firing rockets at it has no effect. Nevermind you can't deploy the parachute while it's docked, the 4 parachutes are inside the Soyuz.
This is what it really looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k Check out that hair in space!


The centripital force generated by that rate of rotation is very small (F=m*(v^2/r) or about *~575 kg*((~2 m/s)^2/~20 m) or ~= 115 N on a steel braided tether line rated at orders of manitude more than that force (4893 N acording to NASA).  People in space suits are heavy and I used two of them in the calculation.  Even that paper napkin calculation says centirptal is not a likely cause of imminent tether failure.

12 years a slave on the other hand tells an actual human experience that has been checked out by historians and is in large measure accurate.  The best movie won... the one that did thier homework.  And yes I agree with the space limitations, the soyuz is not a roomy vehicle. That is a really great video link to the ISS/Soyuz, a great guided tour.

The tether failed earlier on a fragile solar panel array, not believable either.
The drama was that her leg was slipping out of the parachute cords, unconvincingly. (Everything with that parachute was just plain wrong, but the cloth animation in space demo looked great, priorities...) They should have been fine on that long of a line, indeed a very small force, sustained by him drifting away very slowly. The little distance she needed to pull him in to be able to grab the line would not have made a difference. Or they could have waited until they swung around and hit the station at a different point.

They also use the cliche of how enyoyable the silence is in space. What struck me on that ISS tour is what a noisy environment that is, and in the space suit you're still surround by fans for life support and the radio. I guess compared to the ISS it is quite peaceful in a space suit.