5. Its Set In The Near (But Likely An Alternate) Future
Using popular space touchstones and using what those not in the know would call accurate equipment, its likely most audiences read Gravity as being a present day set tale (once again challenging the definition of sci-fi), but a few throwaway lines tell a different story. The mission Stone and Kowalski are on before all hell flies by is designated STS-157, a mission that never has or will happen; the last ever Space Shuttle mission was STS-135 in 2011. Likely another view into how long the film has been in development (the announcement of the Space Transportation Systems discontinuation probably wasn't announced when this script element was finalised), it now places us in an alternate future. And thanks to some intricate information compiling we can figure out whenabouts it is. You see, while its a massive station to rival the ISS in the movie, the Chinese Tiangong is currently just a single module; the whole thing isn't set to be completed until at least 2020. OK, so were in the near future that for plot reasons splinters from our own. Simple. Well, not quite. That jetpack Clooney was using? It hasn't been used in missions since 1984.