Corrected entry: A few things about splitting the asteroid always annoyed me. They couldn't possibly calculate that drilling a certain depth would "split" the asteroid rather then blowing it to smaller but still deadly bits. Even if they did calculate right they did this on stable rotation. But as they stated the asteroid started rotating unpredictably after passing the moon so it could have turned towards earth causing one piece to hit as they calculated and the other to hit just a bit later. And last even if all 2 previous scenarios go just right (as in the movie) we saw that the asteroid was covered with huge high and sharp "mountains" which would most likely break of in the explosion and rain down on earth. So either way earth would be doomed.
Corrected entry: When A.J. and Lev try to escape the fire in the Russian Space Station by climbing into a part of the station which is not heated, frozen drops can be seen. However, there was no gravitation for 18 months. The drops couldn't have formed in that kind of structure.
Corrected entry: One of the scenes showing A.J.'s Armadillo going across the asteroid shows a series of valleys lined with banded walls. These are features found in sedimentary rock formations. Sedimentary features only form with running water, which we don't exactly see a lot of on the asteroid.
Correction: An asteroid could be made from a planet breaking up or from a piece of a planet breaking off because of another asteroid colliding with it. The presence of sedimentary rock on an asteroid is completely possible.
Corrected entry: Not exactly a mistake, but... the asteroids hit the earth at the beginning, and of all the millions of square miles of the earth's surface, they just happen to hit right in the middle of downtown New York, then Paris? How convenient for the destruction-hungry audience.
Correction: All well and good, but not really trivia.
Corrected entry: The only windows in the shuttle are the windshields. How come when the bomb goes off, everyone shields their eyes from the light? I thought they were heading toward Earth, away from the explosion.
Correction: The windshields are not the only windows on the shuttle, there are more of them. Notice that Harry looks out of one of them when they dock with the Russian space station.
Corrected entry: Just after the Independence's Armadillo jumps the "Grand Canyon" on the asteroid, the camera pulls across the Armadillo. Bear is sitting alone in the front seat and we can see him grinning and waving to the camera crewmember. Zoom in and pause to gain full benefit from the "mistake."
Corrected entry: The shuttle makes a far from a smooth landing on the asteroid. It is dinged up quite a bit and even more so while they are there. Columbia burned up because a single piece of ice hit its wing causing the heat shield to malfunction. There is no way this shuttle could have re-entered the earth's atmosphere safely.
Correction: These new shuttles (X-71s) are explained as being made of titanium and of being "impenetrable". I suppose that within the absurdity of this movie, a shuttle with an impenetrable skin could perform as shown.
Corrected entry: When Harry is taking AJ down the elevator of the shuttle in the end of the movie, neither he nor AJ have their spacesuit helmets on. However, when they reach the ground, they both magically have the helmets on. Where did they come from and how did they get them on so quick?
Correction: The elevator was moving pretty slowly. They could have put them on in the time they were off camera.
Corrected entry: When the rogue asteroid chunk hits Paris and destroys it, they show it later as a huge crater. This impact alone would affect the whole world as we know it. If Mt. St. Helens could spew ash over the states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California, then an asteroid the SIZE of Mt. St. Helens slamming into France would surely put the world off-kilter. It's not something that we could go back to the next day and photograph, as was done in the film.
Correction: There is absolutely nothing in the film to suggest that the meteor that hit Paris was the size of Mt. St. Helens. (If it had been, I'm pretty certain that it would have done the work of Dottie on its own.)
Corrected entry: Even if the asteroid halves fly apart and miss Earth by 400 miles exactly as depicted in the film, it's still going to be a tragedy. The gravitational force created by the asteroid halves as they pass Earth will be about 100 times higher than the gravitational force from the Moon, which causes tidal actions on Earth. Since most of Earth's population lives in coastal areas, most of the world's population will be destroyed in the resulting tidal surge.
Correction: The asteroid was "only" the size of Texas, which has significantly less mass then the moon and proportionately less gravitational attraction.
Corrected entry: As the 2 shuttles are leaving the atmosphere, the SRB's and ET (solid rocket boosters, external tank) break away at the same time. In reality, the SRB's break away much sooner than the ET, as the SRB's are only used to get the shuttle off the ground.
Correction: On a real shuttle yes. The shuttles in the movie are not space shuttles, they are X-71s. Different design, different launch procedures.
Corrected entry: At the very end, when the camera pans across the attendees of Grace's wedding, we see the stand-ins and not the real cast. Chick's stand-in doesn't look anything like him and for awhile I thought it was the loanshark, but why would he be sitting in the front row of Grace's wedding? Apparently, those that survived the asteroid couldn't tolerate a Ben Affleck wedding and sent representatives on their behalf.
Correction: The people in the front row are the cast. The man sitting next to Chick's (ex)wife isn't Chick's stand-in. I believe this is supposed to be Harry's father, Hollis Vernon Grap Stamper, who is in a black tux. During the camcorder-like pictures during the credits we can see Chick himself in a white tux standing behind A.J.
Correction: Indeed, it is mostly the real cast, but that is Steve Buscemi's stand-in, for sure.
Corrected entry: To increase the chance of success, there's a backup for everything: we have 2 crews, with 2 shuttles, 2 armadillos etc. However, when we get the crisis where the government wants to blow up the nuke before the hole is finished, there is only one bomb. Isn't there a second nuclear bomb in the shuttle that crashed?
Correction: They lost communications with that ship and (presumably) everything on it. That's why they say nothing about detonating the second bomb.
Corrected entry: Liv Tyler and Billy Bob Thorton are in Florida to greet the heroes upon their return. Weren't they just in Houston a few minutes earlier?
Correction: Well it would take the shuttle a while (days maybe?) to get back to earth. It takes about 3 hours to fly a plane from Texas to Florida.
Corrected entry: The asteroid is said to be "as big as Texas." Presumably that means about the diameter of Texas, about 1000 miles. Drilling down 800 feet or meters barely scratches the surface of such a rock, and would merely make a nice crater, not split the rock in two. Drilling 500 *miles* down would have a better chance.
Correction: They state quite clearly that 800 feet down is a fault line, and blowing that up will split the asteroid.
Corrected entry: In the scene when the asteroids hit New York, the dog is hanging in the impact crater by his leash. When they show the overhead shot of the crater you see the body of the Godzilla street vendor halfway laying in the hole. When they show the dog inside the crater the vendor is nowhere to be found.
Correction: He is there - as the guy's pulling on the leash the camera pans up, and in the few frames before it cuts you can see the charred remnants of a body. Makes sense there wouldn't be much - presumably any bits of him in line with the meteor were mostly vaporised.
Corrected entry: In the beginning, when Bruce Willis is hitting golf balls off the oil rig, he gets ticked off and throws the golf club off the rig. When he storms into AJ's room, he's holding a golf club.
Correction: He does throw the club, but then he picks up another one before seeing AJ.
Correction: A standard set of golf equipment includes multiple types of clubs. If Harry plays regularly enough to take a set with him, it's likely he owns more than one club.
Corrected entry: The X-71's are made of "impenetrable titanium" but Ben Affleck can fire a gattling gun to open a hole in the hull. NASA must be woefully underbudgeted for that.
Correction: The gattling gun is fired from a range of about 10 feet in a frictionless atmosphere - pretty much nothing would be impenetrable to that.
Corrected entry: Truman is seen in Florida talking with the astronauts prior to lift-off. From the same command center, he controls the entire mission. But Mission Control for all missions is in Houston, Texas. Once the rocket "clears the tower," Mission Control in Houston takes over. How can Truman be in Florida, then appear in Texas a few seconds later?
Correction: Several hours pass between when the shuttle crews leave the NASA building to board the shuttles, and when they actually launch. Notice how it changes from sunlight to dusk in the shot of the two spacecraft after the astronauts board. The launch control room aka the firing room (the one with all the windows) is very different from the mission control room. There is plenty of time for Truman to fly back to Houston after watching the crews board the crew buses in Florida.
Corrected entry: Throughout the time span the crew was on the asteroid, no signs of any gravitational changes occurred. In fact, the gravity was much like Earth's, even though that's scientifically impossible.
Correction: No, they use their suits to push them down, remember? And the rhythm can get good enough to simulate a somewhat near-gravity environment. They demonstrate this a few times in the film, and only a few specific instances does it go away. You should not generalize with this post. Quote the specific times, like on the shuttle.
Correction: In regards to the moon, the asteroid started to rotate after passing the moon, not change its trajectory. Thus the two pieces (if sucessfully split) would most likely miss earth. Furthermore, in a weightless environment, the two pieces would be pushed apart by the explosion with the same amount of force. Thus the trajactory of both pieces would be the same (but in opposite directions) from the moment it exploded. In regards to the sharp mountains, they aren't big enough to "doom" the earth and would mostly burn up upon entering the earth's atmosphere.
XIII