Almost every space movie I’ve ever seen (most recently the indescribably bad {i]Mission to Mars*) shows astronauts in zero or low gravity moving like they are underwater. Kinda like slow motion.
I don’t recall this effect in any actual moon or orbital footage. Where did Hollywood get the idea that people in low gravity would have to move so slow? And why do they continue to depict them this way?
Don’t know, but the Star Trek movie “Undiscovered Country” did the same thing. Probably they’re trying to convey the idea of things being really, really different, without having to go to the trouble and expense of renting the Vomit Comet. (Like they did for “Apollo 13”.)
I also thought it was dumb, in that movie, that somehow gravity boots are contraband. Like, they NEVER have a power failure?
I thought that moviemakers were trying to show that if you make a motion in space, there’s nothing to counteract it, so you would have to be very careful of sudden movies. e.g. If you jump away from the side of a ship, there’s nothing to pull you back.
But in “Undiscovered Country” they talk and blink in slow mo; the speech pitch is dropped like it is when you slow down a tape; and even the blood globules move in slo mo. Of course, it’s purple Klingon blood, so maybe there’s another reason for that.
I suspect that the idea in ST was that the slo-mo was just another use of the Peckenpaugh Effect – the use of slow motion to depict violence.
Genuine footage of people in 0 gee usually show them moving slowly, too. It’s probably difficult to get their mass into motion, and the fact that you will continue in motion makes you move very carefully.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
If I was in a “zero-gee” (or a “free-fall”) environment, I’d be darn sure to move very slowly – for a very simple reason.
Our muscles are used to initiating actions based upon a lifetime’s experience of taking gravity into effect – and because it’s hard to overcome that habit, you have to make every movement with the utmost of caution.
Let’s say you’re in contact with the “floor” of a spacecraft. You decide you want to hop up six inches. You give what you figure is an appropriate amount of oomph to push off from the “floor” and you’re catapulted up to the ceiling, whereupon you bonk your head.
Why is that so bad? Well, because although your weight is zero, your mass is the same. So hitting the ceiling would feel exactly the same as being dropped on your head from a height of half a foot. Do you think you’d enjoy that?
So if I was in zero-gee, I’d move very slowly indeed.
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