Who Gives A Flying F..... Its Still A Fun Movie

Agree 100%. It's a fun light-hearted film that shouldn't be taken too seriously.

However, there are quite a few plot holes and some of the science/physics is wrong. As I was watching this with my son we thought it would be fun to spot the errors while still enjoying the film for what it was.

Some of the errors in no particular order were:

**SPOILERS**

- There is no way a mission would have been given the go ahead like that without the whole team knowing every little detail of the satellite. Even in an emergency like this one obviously was, the team (which numbers thousands of people) would have been more aware of the nature of the satellite. The USAF has used the Shuttle on many covert missions and would have been involved in something like this.

- The tiles breaking off the top of the wing as they were coming into land is not right. If they survived re-entry they would have survived final approach.

- Eastwood's character would not have jumped from the airlock to the EVA backpack like that. If he missed it would have been a long way back home. He would have been attached to the Shuttle all the time until he was secured in the pack.

- It says in the "Goofs" section that the Shuttle enters the atmosphere backwards unlike nose first as in the movie. Actually neither is correct. The Shuttle comes in the right way but points up at the angle of about 40% to present its black heat tiles to the airflow.

- Hawk would never have made it to the moon - but that's been pointed out many times on the boards already.

- The Shuttle's heat tiles are relatively fragile and suffer frequent damage when the launch stack sheds bits of foam - as we know from the Columbia disaster. The impacts from the disintegrating satellite would probably have damaged the heat shield beyond a survivable re-entry.

- One of the characters mentions how it isn't surprising the satellite's orbit is decaying because it weighs so much. Weight (or mass) doesn't have anything to do with it.

- When the satellite spins up what look like solar panel arms (bizarrely as you'd expect them to be pointing towards the sun), the rest of the satellite would have started to spin the opposite way.

- Sound in space!

- Very little effort was made to film zero gravity. But this is not a complaint. It's so hard to get it right without the resources that Apollo 13 had and most attempts just get it wrong. Much better to do what they did in Space Cowboys, i.e. not to make a big thing about it.

- The manoeuvres of the Shuttle were too fast. In reality, the Shuttle does things extremely slowly and carefully especially when manoeuvring close to another object like a satellite.

That's all I can remember for the moment. But that shouldn't detract from a great fun film.

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Right On.

Agreed 100%

Agreed, it's becoming a worrying trend where fictional movies have to be super realistic or they get trashed. I've used this quote a bunch recently but it is important to keep in mind: "The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense".

Who cares if the movie is factually inaccurate? It's a movie, it's supposed to be an escape from reality.

I agree. Interesting and original premise, great cast and performances, and just a fun movie all around.