NASA Astronaut Talks "Gravity," Spacewalking, ISS

Nerval's Lobster writes "The upcoming movie Gravity features a pair of astronauts (George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) stranded in orbit after their space shuttle is destroyed by floating debris. Faced with dwindling oxygen levels, they struggle to reach the nearby International Space Station (ISS). It's a movie, so some deviations from reality are expected, but it also opens up an opportunity to talk with a NASA astronaut about what it's like to live in space. Catherine 'Cady' Coleman, who has spent thousands of hours aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and the International Space Station, who gave Bullock advice on the role, suggests that the real NASA has the whole orbital-debris issue well in hand, but that it takes a lot of training (and on-the-job experience) to get the hang of living in space. 'When we get up to space and the people up there run around and show us stuff — that's really, really effective and there was nothing like that compared to the classroom.' Despite the physical and mental demands, and the the time spent away from family, she sees the endeavor as supremely worth it. 'We're all very privileged to do this job,' Coleman says. 'They spend a lot of money making you ready, and you have a responsibility to do your job.'"

Nothing like real life

[TWiTfan]

In the real world, Shuttles are destroyed by funding cuts.

Re:Nothing like real life

[Russ1642]

Considering that 2 of the 5 shuttles that were in service (Enterprise was never launched) were destroyed taking everyone on board I don't think the premise of the movie is that far off.

Re:Won't come close to Apollo 13

[mcgrew]

The best thing about the movie Apollo 13 was the attention to every detail; the old cabinet TV with Walter Cronkite, the clothes, the music... As to the movie "Gravity" I submitted this, [slashdot.org] which linked Ms. Ivin's full review of the movie. [time.com] If you see it in the firehose, don't vote it up as it would be a dupe at this point.

Ivin is a self professed sci-fi fan and "one of the original Trekkies".* An engineer and a Trekkie? I'll bet she's lurking here now, probably has a 3 digit UID. A snippet of her review:

My first take was to itemize the errors. The vehicles are in impossible orbits -- wrong altitudes, wrong inclinations. The backpack maneuvering unit has a nearly infinite amount of fuel and comes superchargedâ"but only until the plot requires it suddenly to run out. Space stations seem to retain pressure in their various modules despite coming apart at the seams. You can apparently close an outward opening hatch against exiting pressure with one hand.

She did have a lot of good things to say about it.

If you have a GF this is most likely a movie you can take her to since it's Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.

* Sometimes it's great being a geezer, I got to see TOS when it was brand new and flat screen monitors, "communicators", self-opening doors, etc were just fantasies. A young friend envied me when I described hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time, as John Bonham was dead before he was born.

I live in a science fiction fantasy, except it's all real now. You guys grew up with computers, computers grew up with me. [kuro5hin.org]

You guys will see things even science fiction writers haven't thought of.