OK so this films synopsis had me intrigued. I am a huge fan of realistic spaceflight films and of spaceflight/astronomy/astrophysics in general. I have recently seen 'Astronaut: The Last Push' which has a similar synopsis to this, i.e a man stranded alone in a damaged spacecraft trying to stay sane. If you have not seen that film I highly recommend seeing that instead of this as the central idea is more or less the same but that film has none of the glaring poorly researched problems that plague 'Love'.
So anyway before we begin a word on gravity and the lack of it. Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is actually 90 percent the strength it is at the earths surface. The effect of weightlessness (or micro-gravity to give it its technical name) is due to objects orbiting a celestial body travelling fast enough to remain in a constant state of free-fall. I.e they are falling to earth but travelling laterally (sideways) fast enough that the earth (being near spherical) falls away at the same rate. And they remain in that free-fall due to there being near no atmospheric drag at those altitudes until they perform a retrograde (slowing down) burn to reduce their speed below orbital velocity. Why is this important? We will get to that shortly.
So what were my biggest problems with this film?
1. There would be no perceivable gravity on board the Space Station. The protagonist would float around as would any objects not secured in some way. From the moment we are introduced to this situation I was like "hmmm he's sitting down(pointless in space)therefore there is gravity... OK well I'm sure they will explain this with a simple 'oh yeah good thing we invented the 'whatever'' line of dialogue".. Nope. Never gets an explanation. And even I, who having a massive interest in the field makes me particularly picky about these details, could have accepted an artificial gravity explanation (it is the future after all) taking up all of one line of dialogue, but no.
2. OK lets let it go that they sent him up alone. I mean, its an old rickety station and you don't want to risk to many lives. Sure lets let that go.. But my problem is that he has no method of returning to earth. What? Who the hell came up with this mission plan? He was going to a station they DON'T EVEN KNOW IS IN A HABITABLE CONDITION with no way of returning but to be collected by another mission??? This is awful awful researching on the part of the filmmakers. It literally makes no sense. Again could have been explained as maybe his return capsule being damaged but no. No explanation..
3. He's finally had enough and decides he wants to cut himself loose and fall back to earth... How exactly? Cutting the cord between him and the station will just leave him orbiting with the station forever. As i said above while travelling at orbital velocity and in the absence atmospheric drag he cannot simply 'fall back to earth'. He would need some kind of propulsion to fall below orbital velocity. This is most important because A TRAINED ASTRONAUT WOULD KNOW THIS!!! Again I cannot stress enough the lack of research that went into this film.
Obviously my review is biased at least in part by my knowledge of spaceflight and orbital mechanics but these are pretty basic things to research with 5 minutes on google. I'm actually letting an awful lot go (the 'fire' that he never puts out etc).
Personally even the 'meant to be stunning' ending was just awful. An absolute rip off of 2001 leads to the kind of CGI animation ending you might expect to see in a Nikelodeon ad break link..
I know some people found something to take away from this film and good on them, taste is not objective so I won't argue against whatever they found of value here but in my honest opinion this was an awful, awful film that simple steals a bunch of stuff from better films and puts it together without even the most basic of research.. Definitely Avoid.
So anyway before we begin a word on gravity and the lack of it. Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is actually 90 percent the strength it is at the earths surface. The effect of weightlessness (or micro-gravity to give it its technical name) is due to objects orbiting a celestial body travelling fast enough to remain in a constant state of free-fall. I.e they are falling to earth but travelling laterally (sideways) fast enough that the earth (being near spherical) falls away at the same rate. And they remain in that free-fall due to there being near no atmospheric drag at those altitudes until they perform a retrograde (slowing down) burn to reduce their speed below orbital velocity. Why is this important? We will get to that shortly.
So what were my biggest problems with this film?
1. There would be no perceivable gravity on board the Space Station. The protagonist would float around as would any objects not secured in some way. From the moment we are introduced to this situation I was like "hmmm he's sitting down(pointless in space)therefore there is gravity... OK well I'm sure they will explain this with a simple 'oh yeah good thing we invented the 'whatever'' line of dialogue".. Nope. Never gets an explanation. And even I, who having a massive interest in the field makes me particularly picky about these details, could have accepted an artificial gravity explanation (it is the future after all) taking up all of one line of dialogue, but no.
2. OK lets let it go that they sent him up alone. I mean, its an old rickety station and you don't want to risk to many lives. Sure lets let that go.. But my problem is that he has no method of returning to earth. What? Who the hell came up with this mission plan? He was going to a station they DON'T EVEN KNOW IS IN A HABITABLE CONDITION with no way of returning but to be collected by another mission??? This is awful awful researching on the part of the filmmakers. It literally makes no sense. Again could have been explained as maybe his return capsule being damaged but no. No explanation..
3. He's finally had enough and decides he wants to cut himself loose and fall back to earth... How exactly? Cutting the cord between him and the station will just leave him orbiting with the station forever. As i said above while travelling at orbital velocity and in the absence atmospheric drag he cannot simply 'fall back to earth'. He would need some kind of propulsion to fall below orbital velocity. This is most important because A TRAINED ASTRONAUT WOULD KNOW THIS!!! Again I cannot stress enough the lack of research that went into this film.
Obviously my review is biased at least in part by my knowledge of spaceflight and orbital mechanics but these are pretty basic things to research with 5 minutes on google. I'm actually letting an awful lot go (the 'fire' that he never puts out etc).
Personally even the 'meant to be stunning' ending was just awful. An absolute rip off of 2001 leads to the kind of CGI animation ending you might expect to see in a Nikelodeon ad break link..
I know some people found something to take away from this film and good on them, taste is not objective so I won't argue against whatever they found of value here but in my honest opinion this was an awful, awful film that simple steals a bunch of stuff from better films and puts it together without even the most basic of research.. Definitely Avoid.