When GRAVITY of Movies Becomes Reality, From Crystal Palace to SKYFALL! – IMRAN®

“A Collision With Space Debris Leaves 3 Chinese Astronauts Stranded in Orbit,” reports WIRED (link in comment).

This incident was not quite as catastrophic as the global disaster so brilliantly and realistically depicted in the great movie GRAVITY, but—like all cases of life imitating art—collisions between spacecraft and the tons of debris floating in the (literally) “high” seas of space were bound to happen.

Fortunately, this is a (somewhat) minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of superpower space programs, though certainly a serious challenge for the crew. Still, it highlights the importance of tracking and attempting to eradicate space debris—something I was privileged to discuss nearly 25 years ago with the top brass of the United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

Flying from Long Island, NY for my first visit to Huntsville, AL, my excitement was already high at the literally incredible doors that were opening for me. I vividly recall being escorted into a super-secure facility—one so restricted that even U.S. Senators could not enter without prior vetting and authorization.

Having seen the great movie WarGames as a young electrical engineering student at UET in Lahore, Pakistan, you can imagine the goosebumps I still get thinking about visiting the real-life equivalent of NORAD and “Crystal Palace” from that film.

There, I met with Lieutenant General John Costello, the Commanding General at the time, to talk about EverTrac™’s solutions for “tracking people & assets indoors & outdoors”—including the greatest of all outdoors: the increasing number of satellites, rockets, tests of potential missiles for a future battle, and the resulting orbital debris in space.

That was a quarter century before today’s United States Space Force came into existence, complete with its logo that critics noted looked suspiciously like Star Trek’s Starfleet emblem.

Time flies, as do more rocket ships hurtling into orbit. With each deployment of an explosive bolt here, a breakaway fragment there, the exponential increase in risk becomes clear. The likelihood of a real-life drama—like the one Sandra Bullock and George Clooney endured on screen—rises dramatically.

I need to rewatch the 3D Blu-ray I bought a few years ago. What do you think are the chances of a true catastrophe, and in what time frame? What solutions do you imagine?

At EverTrac™, we have (bad pun alert!) plenty of space to track your ideas and present them to the right people.

© 2025 IMRAN® 

EverTrac™

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