Gravity- Rides Everything

Whoa! That was intense. I have never found a movie so engrossing and suspenseful. At one point, I tried to dodge something on the screen at a 2D showing. (Remember the rules of 3D. Don't support 3D conversions.) A big shout-out to the star of the film: (Sandra Bullock's ass?*) Sir Issac Newton. The inertia in this film gave a great performance. It really deserved top billing over Gravity. This may have also been the most scientifically accurate movie about space ever made and it was the scientific accuracy that made the action as great as it was. Note to Hollywood: Science=Good.

*When did Sandra Bullock get hot? Sandra is currently 49 years old. She has been a famous actress since the late 80s. And while I acknowledge she has always been attractive, I have never had a lewd thought about her until today. I guess zero-G does wonders.

NASA training must be intense. (Too bad NASA no longer exists either in the short-term with 97% of NASA employees furloughed or the long-term with no manned space vehicle.) In six months of training, Dr. Stone, a medical engineer with no aeronautics background learned all the complexities of living and working in space, how to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, how to fly a Soyuz unassisted, reading Russian and Chinese, the layout of two space stations and Advanced Fire-extinguisher Aeronautics. (NASA does not use compressed gas fire-extinguishers for reason seen in the film.) Even though the mission only called for her knowing two of those skills. She also presumably learned something about the Space Shuttle she was supposed to be flying in and could land it blindfolded using only her feet. By the time Dr. Stone returns to Earth, she has used six different spacecrafts.

The odds of Dr. Stone making it to the Chinese craft and surviving re-entry were astronomical, but assuming she survived to the surface her odds of living to tell the tale were still really slim. The place where she landed was essentially random and because Dr. Stone was having "one of those days" the floats on her landing pod did not deploy forcing her to swim to land. A significant minority of the Earth's surface is land which would not provide Dr. Stone with a comfortable landing, but the majority of the planet is too far from shore. The world has 356,000 kilometers of coastline and surface area of 510,072,000 square kilometers. I have personally completed a one mile (1.6km) swim and I believe most reasonably fit people with no special training could do the same, but not much more than that. If I was in that landing pod, I would have a safe landing area of 569,600 square kilometers, a target I would have a 0.1% chance of hitting at random. If Dr. Stone's NASA training increased her swimming ability to 10km, more than six times my best distance, her odds of survival increase dramatically to 0.7%. The current world record for unassisted swimming is 112 kilometers held by Penny Palfrey. If Penny could match her 41 hour effort, she would have a safe landing area of 39,872,000 square kilometers, good for a 7.8% chance of survival. (Assuming she knew which way to swim.)

The beach where Dr. Stone landed appeared to be in North Korea. Some days you just can't win.