*Spoiler Alert*
Don’t look up (2021) is a movie about a comet headed on a collision course to Earth which is now dominated by people who are always distracted and have short attention spans. The movie, although consisting of popular personalities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Ariana Grande fails to impress. So here is a small list of things that the movie got wrong.
1) No one believes the 3 Astronomers.
This is simply absurd. America isn’t the centre of the world. There are scientists from all over the world who have access to state of the art telescopes to look for comets. Europe, India, Japan, Russia, China, UAE and many other countries now are space-faring countries. They all have access to good infrastructure that could have easily verified the existence of a comet headed this way and could launch a mission to deflect the trajectory of the comet. As of today, 4 countries have anti-satellite capabilities. USA, China, Russia and India. This technology with some changes could in theory be used to deflect a comet headed to Earth.
2) Only Astronomers could have known.
As much as the movie would like us to believe that Astronomers are the only ones with a telescope, the reality remains that this isn’t true. Most people who own telescopes are Amateur Astronomers. People who usually are not Astrophysicists, but do Astronomy as a hobby. They regularly take pictures of nebulae and galaxies. There are groups on social media where they share their work with the community. Of course, these people just decided to not look up.
3) 30 rockets needed to affect the comet
There is a scene where a Space force team decides to get on a few 30 or so rockets to go tackle the comet. Well. One well-programmed rocket with no one on it would have sufficed. This scene is simply wrong. What are all these people supposed to do? Push the comet? Why are there so many rockets going up? ABSURD