The computer screen fire alarm (note the clever subliminal messages here)
The ISS Fire was a massive inferno that broke out in theInternational Space Station in the movie, Gravity.
A track on the soundtrack was named after it.
Role in Gravity[]
After Dr. Ryan Stone entered the ISS airlock and navigated through the various Nodes and Modules of the station, she passed by an electrical fuse box with some exposed wiring, presumably damaged by the debris strike that are producing sparks which turned into tiny balls of fire. After Dr. Stone failed to communicate with Mission Commander Matt Kowalski, she heard the fire alarm and realized that the station was on fire. Stone left and realized that the massive fire was quickly engulfing several nodes at a time, making her sanctuary a tomb. Ryan grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to fight the inferno, but the lack of gravity caused the extinguisher's recoil to push her into a wall, bruising and cutting her face. She lost consciousness for a moment as her blood dripped into space, but luckily was able to wake up and race past the fire which caused several canisters of oxygen to explode. The fire engulfed the entire Zarya Module and chased her toward the second Soyuz Capsule. Luckily, Stone managed to make it into the second Soyuz Capsule just in time as the inferno engulfed the docking module. Stone also took the fire extinguisher with her in case a blaze should erupt inside the Soyuz. This simple action later saved her life.
Later on, while she was removing the parachute from theZvezda Module, the debris struck the station and ruptured what seemed to be the Zarya Module which exploded on impact and extinguished itself upon contact with the airless vacuum of outer space. This showed that the station was still on fire after Stone's escape and the flames possibly engulfed the entire station's pure oxygen interior.
Affected Areas of the ISS[]
- Unity Node 1
- Unity Node 2
- Zarya Module
- Japanese Lab
- Zvezda Module
- Destiny Lab
- Docking Module
- Possibly more areas after Stone's escape
Trivia[]
- In reality, flames on the ISS are blue and short, not orange and long as they are displayed in the film.
- There are many subtle in-jokes and references during the fire scene. For one, you can see a picture of Jonás Cuarón and his family on the wall of the ISS next to the computer.
- Hanging up on the wall next to the monitor is also a screen capture from the classic 1902 French space movie, A Trip to the Moon.