Character mistake: During the scene when AJ is yelling out for any other survivors in his crashed shuttle, we hear Lev calling "A.J.", but with no Russian accent. Then Lev gets his accent back when he says "I'm here." (01:28:10)
Continuity mistake: When A.J.'s Armadillo needs to break out of the space shuttle, the crew shoot up the walls of the hull of the ship. But then when they drive the Armadillo through the hull, the ship breaks apart at the seams rather than at the bullet holes. (01:32:20)
Continuity mistake: After Sharpe and Stamper have the argument on the asteroid, Truman says they need the radio back up. When he says this, you see the countdown clock for the asteroid which is at five hours and 12 minutes. A bit later in the film, after the nuke was shut down by a technician at NASA, one of the Air Force Sergeants takes the terminal. In the background, you can see the clock again but the time on it is at six hours and 49 minutes. (01:37:00 - 01:42:50)
Continuity mistake: When they are in the shuttle trying to disarm the bomb, it is the pilot that is telling the munitions specialist, the guy that is supposed to know everything about the bomb, which wires to cut. (01:44:35)
Factual error: When A.J. starts up the Armadillo to jump the canyon, you can hear the sound of big, internal combustion engines. The Armadillo must have electric engines in order to function in the vacuum of space. Electric engines are virtually silent. (01:47:55)
Other mistake: In the sequence where they are disarming the bomb. When the clock gets down to 00:24, the picture is reversed (the split second shot when they pull the clock out of the bomb). (01:48:35)
Continuity mistake: When Grace throws down Thurman because of frustration, she first grabs him by the back, but in the next shot he's facing upwards. (01:55:25)
Continuity mistake: Just after Harry says "prepare the world for bad news," air raid sirens start. There's a panning down shot of some air raid speakers next to a Coca-Cola ad, with a truck parked in front of it. The angle then changes to a shot down the street (same street, same speakers, same Coca-Cola ad), except the truck isn't in front of the ad any more. (01:56:10)
Character mistake: When Sharp is teaching AJ to remote detonate the bomb, he says to "lift, press, hold" the trigger device. But the actions with the hands are actually "lift, hold, press." Even AJ repeats it wrong. (02:11:00)
Suggested correction: Lift (the cover), press (the button), hold (the button). That's the sequence.
The suggested correction sequence leaves out the trigger. The original mistake entry seems to be accurate. After watching again, Harry lifts the cover off the trigger, holds the trigger, and then presses the button. Lift, hold, press.
Continuity mistake: Near the end of the film when Sharp says "Houston, we're coming home." We see Bear looking out at the Asteroid passing the Earth yet in the next shot he is strapped to his chair saying "You Harry, you the man". (02:19:55)
Factual error: The surviving space shuttle takes off from the asteroid horizontally, like an airliner taking off from a runway. This is absurd. There is no air to provide lift for the wings, so the shuttle - with its engines providing thrust straight back - would simply trundle along the ground like a car. It doesn't use its maneuvering jets at any time, and they are far too feeble to lift the weight of the shuttle anyway. Nor do they gimbal the main engine, which would lift the shuttle vertically on an axis through the centre of the engine - they swoop gracefully into the air after a long take off. Second, they'd have to count on finding a clear length of ground on a debris strewn asteroid. Vertical takeoff, anyone?
Factual error: During the scene where it shows people all over the world, just before the shuttles take off, it is daylight everywhere. It would actually be dark or near dark in parts of the world.
Factual error: Okay, we know the astronauts can walk around on the asteroid because they have those thrusters. So how is it, then, that the pilot can walk around the shuttle without anything to keep her on the ground? She should be bouncing around like the moon walkers.
Other mistake: A.J. gets dirt on his face although he is covered by an astronaut's suit.
Factual error: En route to the asteroid, the two space shuttles head to the Russian space station to refuel. To simulate gravity, the cosmonaut aboard the space station fires a few rockets to put the space station into the spin. How fast does it need to spin to reproduce Earth gravity? Assuming the space station's spoke arms (where the shuttles dock) are about 50 feet long, the answer is 8 revolutions a minute. That makes it impossible to dock - it'd be like trying to drive a car on ice-covered roads into a spinning parking garage. There's another, more fundamental, problem: the artificial gravity points in the wrong direction. Think of spinning rides at the amusement park. The spinning motion creates an artificial gravity, an effective outward-pushing force. On the space station, the spinning would tend to throw the astronauts down the station's spoke arms and back onto the shuttle. Also, the artificial gravity would taper off to nothing at the centre. But the movie's artificial gravity somehow points down, not outward, and appears to work equally well throughout the station.
Factual error: During the movie's opening scene, you watch the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs some 65 million years hitting Earth near the Caribbean (you can see Cuba and Yucatan). 65 million years ago, Earth's continents were in different locations and most of the Caribbean looked very different.
Factual error: In the Russian space station, A.J. and Lev are running to the Independence shuttle. But as the space station is falling apart, a piece of it crashes into the other end of the hallway they are currently running through. There is no way they would make it to the shuttle even with it being a few feet away; they'd get sucked out into space almost immediately.
Factual error: It's explained in detail how the impact will cause a horrible freak tide, what it will do, and that one half of mankind will die in the nuclear winter. That's absolutely irrelevant. The asteroid is "the size of Texas," that means a quarter of a million square miles. Such an impact is called ELE (Extinction Level Event). A bigger part of the Pacific Ocean would evaporate immediately, so no matter if a wave or not. The earth would become "sterilized." So no lifeform will live long enough to die in a winter. (So it is nonsensical to compare that impact with the event 65 million years ago. It's much different).
Factual error: When drilling you have to remove the debris. This is usually done with some sort of liquid as an agent and supporting machinery. As the asteroid has some gravity the debris won't just flow into space. No machinery/liquid to be found anywhere.
Continuity mistake: When in the Russian space station, AJ is in a little pit fixing something. When we see him, he has a little snow hat. The next time he has nothing on. Then back again with the little hat.
