![]() As the "Gravity" credits reveal, astronaut Andrew Thomas provided the movie's technical advice. That may have resulted in a tribute for the film's astronaut advisor.Īs earlier reported, NASA astronaut Cady Coleman spoke to Sandra Bullock from the space station, but that was done unofficially, arranged through their family members. The sign may be a hidden space history "easter egg." (Image credit: Warner Bros. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) floating by a kangaroo crossing sign. Outside the fictional world of the movies, the same could very well be said for Solovyev's achievement.Ī scene from Warner Bros Pictures' "Gravity" showing Dr. Kowalski says upon passing the record that it's not one he thinks others will be breaking any time soon. Over the course of four of his five flights into orbit, the cosmonaut logged an amazing 82 hours and 22 minutes - almost three and a half days - on spacewalks. Solovyev, who at 65 is now retired, ventured outside into the vacuum of space on the first of his 16 extravehicular activities (EVAs) in 1990. That cosmonaut, Anatoly Solovyev, does indeed hold the human spaceflight record and is the only real-life space explorer to have his name dropped in "Gravity." Several times, Matt Kowalski references the record set by a certain cosmonaut for total time spacewalking, a record the character eventually breaks, though not by the best of circumstances. Track four, which is the music that accompanies Kowalski and Stone as they return to their badly damaged shuttle is not titled "Explorer" but rather "Atlantis."Ītlantis was NASA's final space shuttle to fly in space. For example, track seven is "I.S.S." and track 13 is " Soyuz." The hint to this comes from the movie's soundtrack.Įach of the tracks from composer Steven Price's spatial score are titled to correspond with the scene in "Gravity," which in several cases translates to just the name of the spacecraft. 5).īut it may have also been that Explorer wasn't always the intended name for the film's orbiter. There is a full-scale shuttle mockup in Houston that had "Explorer" as its name, but it is being re-christened due to an unrelated series of events on Saturday (Oct. ![]() ![]() The orbiters in NASA's fleet were Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Stone encounters the satellite debris cloud, it seems she completes three trips around the planet after being separated from the shuttle.įor reasons unknown, Alfonso Cuarón decided to give his shuttle a fictional name: Explorer. Pictures' arranges to send "Gravity" to the station, it could make for a novel way to spend an orbit.)īased on the number of times Dr. (It's not uncommon for the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the orbiting outpost to watch movies on DVD if Warner Bros. Thus, in the time that audiences experience the movie, the space station flying 240 miles (390 kilometers) above has completed one trip around the Earth. ![]() "Gravity" has a running time of - you guessed it - 90 minutes. The real International Space Station takes about 90 minutes to orbit the planet, traveling at 17,500 miles per hour (not the "50,000 miles per hour" Kowalski uses to make his calculations). Stone (Sandra Bullock) set a timer for 90 minutes, having figured out how much time it will take for the satellite debris that destroyed their shuttle to round the Earth and wreck havoc again. Soon after communications are cut with Mission Control, Kowalski has Dr. Given what is about to happen in "Gravity," it could be the film's take on Tom Hanks' famous " Apollo 13" movie line, "Houston, we have a problem." (In reality, the real James Lovell radioed "Houston, we've had a problem," a nitpick, but one that space enthusiasts are quick to point out.) In "Gravity" however, the "bad feeling" is only a segue into a funny story.īut who is that answering Kowalski's call from Mission Control? Though never seen on screen, the voice belongs to none other than Ed Harris, who portrayed flight director Gene Kranz in the 1995 Ron Howard film (and while we're playing "Five Degrees of Separation," Harris also appeared in "The Right Stuff" as John Glenn). Not long into the movie, veteran space shuttle commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) calls down to Earth with the ominous warning, "Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission."
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