Too much stupidity (spoilers)
I just saw this movie on AMC and although I had heard the physics was a "little soft" I had no idea it was this bad.
- satellites in geosynchronous orbit do not decay, ever, period. They stay there for thousands of years. Satellites in low-earth orbit do decay.
- the space shuttle is not capable of reaching geosynchronous altitude, ever, period. It's just as dumb as saying you can fly a 747 to the moon. The shuttle can only reach low-earth orbit.
- in order to fly to the moon from low earth orbit (which is as high as the shuttle can go) you need enough fuel to increase your speed by 3200 meters per second. A PAM doesn't have that. The Soviet missiles might, though, but they were only designed to deorbit and attack ground targets.
- How much O2 did Hawk have exactly? A trip to the moon takes about 3 days, unless you have a LOT more delta-V than 3200 m/s.
- Hawk clearly landed on the lunar surface before walking or crawling to his final resting place. Where did he get the fuel for this landing? Since when do the engines on a Soviet nuclear missile have restart capability? He would have crashed into the lunar surface at thousands of miles per hour.
- The shuttle's thermal tiles were clearly damaged by the debris strikes from Ikon. I realize this movie was made before the Columbia accident, so maybe we could let them slide.
- It was stated that the orbiter had only one remaining OMS engine working, and that fuel was leaking, so they might not be able to de-orbit. But NASA thought about that back in the 70s: the shuttle orbiter can de-orbit itself using RCS thrusters alone if it has to.
So now comes all the "it's only as movie" posts, and the "it's science fiction, so nothing has to make sense" posts. If you can really turn your brain off long enough to watch such nonsense, well, good for you. But keep in mind that when things are this wrong, it's like watching a movie about World War 2 and seeing soldiers using laser guns. If this was a distant future movie like Star Trek, then it gets more leeway. But this is a "today tech" movie.
I like my space movies the way I like my war movies and my history movies and my drama movies: at least halfway believable. It's obvious the makers didn't bother doing any research. [/rant]