‘Gravity’ serves to remind us of one thing: Space is dangerous

TORONTO – By now you’ve likely read about the latest space movie, Gravity, starring  Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and its plethora of scientific inaccuracies.

Therefore I won’t discuss the fact that the altitude and orbits of the spacecraft and satellites are all wrong. Or that it’s ridiculous that there is some mysterious force pulling Clooney away from Bullock when all she had to do was tug his cord a little and he’d have come floating back toward her. Or the fact that Bullock is wearing boy shorts and a tank under her space suit (I mean, really?).

Despite these inaccuracies, the movie is spectacular. The visual effects and attention to detail (I’m talking about the spacecraft) are breathtaking and the scenes with exploding craft are terrifying.

Which is likely why the movie garnered $55 million on opening weekend.

So, why are fictional movies about space more thrilling than what actually happens up there?

Most people don’t know how many astronauts are aboard the ISS (six); or what unmanned missions are currently underway (LADEE to the moon; Juno to Jupiter; New Horizons to Pluto, to name a few); or what the name of the next launch vehicle is (Orion).

Why? Because there’s no death and destruction.

The fact is, nowadays, science isn’t sexy until something blows up.

It used to be that space was sexy because we were in a race with the Soviet Union to prove that the West was superior and that Communism was bad. Now, after more than 50 years of space travel, it’s become mundane to a large section of the general public.

But a meteor explodes over Russia injuring hundreds? A space shuttle explodes seconds after liftoff or burns up while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere? That suddenly gets people talking.

The popular Discovery Channel show Mythbusters figured out long ago that people like things that go “boom.” It regularly blows up objects or crashes vehicles into things. And good for them for finding a vehicle (no pun intended) with which to teach science.

But those six men and women aboard the space station are in constant danger. There are meteoroid impacts, space debris, solar storms, fires, and much more that threaten their lives every day. Each time an astronaut embarks on a spacewalk, they are just inches – or less – away from a very unfriendly and deadly environment.

While Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was aboard the ISS, he photographed a meteoroid impact in one of the station’s solar panels. You may not have heard about it because it turned out okay and nobody got hurt.

But had it hit an astronaut in during a spacewalk, the results could have been very different.

In August, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned in his spacesuit during a spacewalk after water began filling his helmet.

One may argue that there was a lot of hoopla surrounding the landing of the Mars rover Curiosity, but if you look back, it was a brilliant video by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that generated the hype, perhaps at least partly because it was called “Seven Minutes of Terror.”

It sounded scary, even for a robot. People gathered in parks and places like New York’s Times Square wondering if our not-so-little robot friend would burn up or crash into the Red Planet.

Few people seem to appreciate the seemingly mundane work that goes on aboard the ISS or with unmanned satellites. But it isn’t really mundane. There is always the possibility of danger just outside those thin walls.

Though Gravity may have gotten a lot of the science wrong, it got one thing right: space, and science, is a dangerous business.

Here is a NASA video about our need to explore – no terror included