20 Things You Somehow Missed In Gravity
1. One Of Its Main Plot Beats Goes Against A Rather Bleak NASA-Centric Rumour
Before reading this, please be warned that this particular entry discusses death by suicide.
As mentioned before, after feeling that all hopes for returning home safely were lost, Ryan Stone reduced the Soyuz station's cabin's oxygen and awaited her fate. This sequence goes against the long-held rumour that NASA gives its astronauts suicide pills for use in fatal situations.
It turns out that this rumour was started by none other than Carl Sagan, who insisted that the space agency gave its astronauts cyanide pills for use in worst case scenarios. He even featured this in his 1985 novel Contact (and the 1997 movie that it inspired) and never changed his stance on the matter.
However, his belief was challenged by notable figures in NASA, such as former astronaut Jim Lovell and Johnson Space Center director Gerry Griffin. They denied the use of the pills and the latter even said that it would be easier to open the hatch than use a pill.