Goofs

Explorer is in a spin due to debris impacts. When Stone travels back to Explorer, it is seen almost stable. When arriving at Explorer, it is spinning fast again.

In one scene aboard the Soyuz Space Craft Sandra Bullock mentions the distance to the Chinese Space Station as being 100 km. When George Clooney mentions the same distance a few minutes later it becomes 100 miles, which is 160 km.

Either there was a mistake in the script or George Clooney misspoke.

Early in the movie, the backdrop is the Nile Valley at night. As the sun rises, the Sinai, to the east, begins to lighten. Soon after, the Sinai is dark again.

When Kowalski asks Stone to let go of him because the rope will not hold them both, that could never happen because they are both in the same orbit around the earth. A short simple tug would have brought him back to her. Additionally, once they are drifting away from the ISS, disconnecting from Kowalski would not cause her to rebound back toward the ISS unless another force pulled her back in its direction. At most she would stop when the ropes reach the end of their slack, in which case Kowalsky would also have stopped.

Stars do not twinkle when viewed from space. The twinkling seen from earth is because of the earth's atmosphere. As they were seen above the atmosphere, they should not twinkle.

It is hard for most people to understand the difficulty in being in orbit trying to reach another object in orbit. Accelerating an object in the direction of travel will actually not move you forward. Instead the energy is used up raising the object's altitude, where it will have a slower orbital speed and therefore actually move "backwards" in orbit. Accelerating "up," "down" or "backward" would have other results that most people wouldn't expect. For Stone to directly aim at the Chinese space station in its own independent orbit and accelerate in that direction would give results that are unpredictable given our lack of knowledge of both orbits, but most definitely would not result in her getting to where she wants to go.

When Ryan removes her space suit she is only wearing underwear. All astronauts wear an adult diaper during spacewalks.

The Space Shuttle Explorer is in the same orbit as the Hubble Space Telescope, which is being repaired. While both the International Space Station (and presumably the Chinese space station) are in orbit at the same approximate altitude (roughly 200 miles above the surface), they are most definitely not in the same orbit. At any one moment they could be over opposite parts of the Earth heading in opposite directions. Their orbits are specifically picked so as to never put them near each other, with one never directly in front of the other. Finally, since all objects in orbit circle the center of Earth's mass, they can't parallel each other, either, so the distance between them would be rapidly increasing or decreasing (given how close they were in the film the latter would have been true). In any case, the amount of energy required to travel from one object to another in independent orbits and then match velocities is probably well beyond even the Space Shuttle's ability, yet in the film it was done by one orbital pack with one astronaut pulling another.

After Stone passes the panel where the fire is starting on board the ISS, her hand strikes a drinking pouch of water. The blobs of water are mistaken by some as a stream of air bubbles, as if the visual effect of weightlessness was created using a water tank. That was not the case in this movie. The water drops are computer generated.

During re-entry, debris is shown zooming past the capsule. This might be regarded as a goof because it's all part of the same Chinese space station and should be re-entering at the same speed. Whilst this might be true initially, the increasing drag from the atmosphere will slow the debris but this will differ according to the size and shape of each object. Larger, denser pieces will not be slowed as much as lighter or less aerodynamic objects.

As the Shenzhou capsule re-enters the atmosphere, the resulting drag would cause not only the burning on the outside, but terrific G-forces as the capsule decelerates from orbital speeds. Yet a ballpoint pen is seen still floating weightlessly in the capsule, when it (not to mention Stone) should have been pinned to the forward bulkhead.

Doctor Stone's hair stands still in all scenes. It should be flowing because there is no gravity.

About halfway through the movie, when Sandra Bullock is floating around in her underwear in the Chinese space station, the bottoms of her bare feet are clearly dirty. Why would they be? She hasn't actually walked on anything in a week; she's been floating in zero gravity ever since the day they left Earth.

When the space station is burning up on re-entry it would be subject to very high decelaration (hence the burning from friction with atmosphere). Any internal object would be thrown forcibly to the extremity of the internal space. However everything and the astronaut is seen floating about in weightlessness.

The sun is shown rising to the north of the Sinai. On Earth, the sun always rises in the East.

When viewing the Earth, the clouds never move, not even the clouds in what should be a swirling hurricane, and the Aurora Borealis never fluctuates.

The whole premise of the communication blackout is very dubious. The vast majority of communication satellites are in higher orbits than would have been affected by the debris cloud created by the Russians.

When Kowalski asks Stone to let go of him because the rope will not hold them both, that could never happen because they are both in the same orbit around the earth. A short simple tug would have brought him back to her.

After the accident, when Ryan tries to communicate with Matt and then when he succeeds in making contact, she calls him "Lieutenant Kowalski". Lieutenant is the lowest grade of officer in the military. As the commander of a Space Shuttle, Kowalski would have the rank equivalent to colonel. She would call him Commander Kowalski rather than Colonel Kowalski, but she should never call him Lieutenant.

Regardless of how many online sources have described this fictional character as a Lieutenant, it remains incorrect.

On learning many communications satellites have been destroyed, Kowalski remarks, "Half of North America just lost their Facebook." The Internet doesn't use satellites but instead high-speed landlines and microwave relay towers, so Kowalski was either misinformed or making a joke, but either way the Facebook statement is incorrect.

Stone has not yet found the ISS hatch while Kowalkski continuously talks to her. Despite knowing she is absolutely out of air, with carbon dioxide poisoning beginning, she stops trying to save herself to listen, and doesn't resume until he finally stops. While he might have been trying to keep her awake, he almost certainly would have had her describe what she was doing in an ongoing commentary, so he could tell if she started drifting off.

Early on in the movie, Clooney's character mispronounces his own name at least once. The first time he says it he pronounces it "ko-AL-skee". The next time he pronounces it "ko-AWL-skee". NASA on the ground consistently pronounces it the second way. He also mispronounces the well-known name "Soyuz" as mentioned elsewhere here. No English-speaking astronaut would ever do this.

The first time he mentions the Soyuz capsules, Kowalski pronounces "Soyuz" correctly. The next few times he says it, he pronounces it "SoyEZ."