fireproof78 wrote:

Tangent: A story about space? I'm curious now

It's a screenplay I was writing (on and off for about 2-3 years) about an astronaut who gets knocked out during an accident during an EVA and how the rest of the crew have to send out another to rescue him, except the rescuer is an astronaut who's been 'grounded' due to sickness. The story is essentially about mistakes and the various ways different people deal with them. It's what my avatar is all about (though it's just from a random piece of artwork).

I spent a lot of time researching (which is probably half the fun of doing these sorts of projects) and watching actual EVA footage as well as thinking about how the bad stuff could happen, specifically what could cause the accident without meteor shower/aliens/random debris. In the end, I made it the SAFER itself.

A small part of me is annoyed I was beaten to the punch. But I did smile during my viewing as the first few minutes of Gravity were similar to what I had written - a female astronaut feeling under the weather as she works hard on an EVA gets mission control piping in with observations from medical, which she attempts to brush aside.

Trey wrote:

there has to be enough demand to make doing it worthwhile

Well, that's the real trick, isn't it? And it's probably going to cost us something extra...

IIRC, the petition at http://originaltrilogy.com had "only" about 70,000 signatures. And as far as I know, most casual Star Wars viewers simply don't care which version they're watching. The distributors seem to think there's still a market for old Star Wars films, 'cause last month they re-released the 2011 versions in DVD + Blu-Ray combo packs. Convincing them to pay for a full restoration of the original versions (if good sources still exist) is the hard part.

avatar wrote:

Apart from the stunning VFX (those render times must have been horrendous), I enjoyed the fact that the movie was NOT about saving humanity. There was no portal to close that was about to let an alien invasion take place. There was no evil super villain.

Yes, that did make it refreshing. Just plain old real adversity.

The one major inaccuracy that I've not seen anyone talk about? All EMUs have SAFERs attached to them, even when attached to the arm. These Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue packs are a little propulsive unit that fits onto the main backpack and are designed specifically to allow astronauts to move around and return in case of trouble. So Stone should have been able to stabilise and return to the shuttle on her own. I looked, she's not wearing one.

Now one could have made the argument that this was before these were introduced, back when the bigger MMU was being tested - that famous picture of Bruce McCandless doing the first untethered EVA looks remarkably like what Clooney is doing (and he says he is testing it) - in the 80s I think it was and following a typical old Hubble repair mission profile, except the film is much more likely to be set in the future with the Tiangong station completed, the ISS completed, and shuttle missions at STS-157 (we ended at 135).

Also, the station tends to have railings and handles all over it, ideally an astronaut can move across most of its surface without ever untethering (in actual fact, astronauts always remain tethered), so I was quite surprised to see Stone take numerous risks leaping from one rail to the next. Considering that she was always missing things, I would have thought that she'd be clinging on for dear life. Granted she was in a bit of a hurry.

And airlock doors wouldn't fly open like that, that would have smashed an astronaut's helmet or sent him/her flying away.

Finally, I'm pretty sure the Soyuz flight suit has to have an external power source etc. and whilst when she's detaching the parachute she has the umbilical, she doesn't later have it when she's transfering to the Tiangong. In fact, technically, she'd be wearing the Sokol suit, which isn't designed for EVA at all. However, maybe in this near future they are?

Yep, I wish I hadn't spend the last 2-3 years or so researching about this stuff for my own story, I wouldn't have noticed stuff like this.

Edit - conversely, I buy that Kowalski decides to detach himself, since Stone doesn't have an adequate anchor to pull him in. The act of pulling on the tether would have exerted force on the ropes around her leg and at the other end, which would likely have come loose as a result. You know, for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction?

Aural Stimulation wrote:

I'm looking forward to Christmas for the EE. C'mon Santa, don't let me down!

How are the extra scenes?

The dozen or so minutes of extra scenes are not really worthwhile. There's more fart jokes with the dwarves carrying on like football hooligans at Rivendell. The humour just falls flat for me. It wasn't always successful in LOTR (drinking game, dwarf tossing, burping, etc) but here it's even worse.

So forget the few minutes of longer scenes, and look forward to the commentary and hours of superbly produced extras.

BDA: It's a classic era fan service. If all you've seen is NuWho, then you probably won't get why this is a big deal. Karn, and its sisterhood is also featured in "The Brain of Morbius" from Tom Baker's era.

Aural: It makes sense to name him the War Doctor. He's still himself, but more of a warrior. Plus, if all Time Lords had a single worded name, you'd start to run out after a while. The Stairmaster. The Ladle. The Edge. The Rock. And so forth.

Depending on the time, I'd love to join this one. From X-Wing to Force Unleashed