I just watched George Clooney’s “Midnight Sky” on netflix.
The movie is visually striking, set on a space ship and on an apocalyptic Earth in +30 years. Some sort of unspecified radioactive disaster has pretty much wiped out all livable space on Earth. The movie focuses on the attempt of a sick astronomer to communicate with a space ship that has been off exploring a newly found habitable moon of Jupiter. They have been out of communication with Earth for a couple years.
I really didn’t understand the foundational premise of the movie. We have been able to receive communications from satellites that we’ve sent to Jupiter, and a quick google says it’s only ~22 light minutes between Jupiter and Earth. If that distance is the closest, let’s suppose that it’s a few times that at maximum separation — that’s still only a couple hours separation (guestimating). Why would the ship have gone completely out of communication with Earth for years while they were on their mission?
There were lots of other holes in the movie, and I wonder if some of those missing pieces were detailed in the book?
Incidentally, the astronomy facility looked really cosy and comfortable for a something located in Antarctica! There was mention of the poles late in the movie, but early on there was the famous picture of the explorer Scott with his four companions on the wall, which I assumed was meant to give away the location (I recognized that picture from Brian Keating’s book, “Loosing the Nobel Prize”.)
Its set in the Artic, Greenland to be precise.
Regarding being out of communication, I’m with you, though even the dark side of the moon is out of communication with Earth. So its conceivable that K-23 was always behind Jupiter or facing away from Earth.
It’s inconceivable that it was facing away from earth for a few years. The moon is tidal locked to the earth so it’s rotational speed is equal to its orbital speed, roughly one month. It has one side fixed facing the earth.
Jupiter is not locked to the earth, so nothing in orbit around anything in that system would stay hidden from the earth for a couple of years.
Maybe their radio batteries went out (unlikely given that they could just rewire)…or they fried a critical semiconductor component…or cosmic rays degraded their comma circuitry, or an emu overload their electronics…or even the antenna was busted.
Greenland explains the wolves, which didn’t make sense for the South Pole. However, I’m pretty sure this was the picture on the wall the compound:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition#/media/File:Scottgroup.jpg
(which I interpreted as trying to indicate that the setting was the South Pole, seemingly confirmed later in the movie by a statement by one of the astronauts to the effect of “it will take longer for the radiation to overwhelm the poles”.)
I thought of tidal locking too, but agree that that doesn’t make any sense. Wondering about the comms issue, ignores the other flagrant plot hole. How would Jupiter have such a large moon (which incidentally appeared to have a large grass like plant growing on it, and a breathable atmosphere), and that this moon somehow evaded all telescopes and satellites ever sent that way? (eight flybys and orbiters so far: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Jupiter )
They did have comm failures later in the movie and had to rebuild an antenna unit. Presumably that means their comms were working before that point. They seemed to imply that they were out of communication distance for a while — which made me wonder initially if the idea was that they were actually off exploring some other star system.