Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:59 pm
Re: Gravity (the movie, that is)
That's ONE of the reasons the movie sucked, anyway. If a missile hit a satellite and destroyed it then the pieces of debris would still have the satellite's orbital velocity plus or minus what was given to them by the explosion. Some fragments would be speeded up in the satellite's original orbit, some would be slowed down in that orbit, but most would be heading off in tangents to that orbit. Some would de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. All of the fragments would be potential hazards to other satellites or spacecraft but what would NOT happen is that all the fragments carried on in orbit but having all magically gained a huge amount of additional velocity in that orbit in the kind of avalanche effect dreamed of by this film's makers.