Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” and the Inherent Drama of Man in Space

Here’s the thing about outer space: we’re not supposed to be there. Nothing about it is conducive to life as we know it. There’s no oxygen and very low air pressure. If we tried to enter outer space without the protection of pressurized suits, being in that vacuum would cause our lungs to rupture and oxygen to leave the bloodstream until we lost consciousness and died of hypoxia. Temperatures in space would either burn us up or freeze us. There is no protection from radiation. There’s also no gravity, without which we would eventually suffer from muscle atrophy and bone loss that would become apparent upon returning to any spinning chunk of rock that does have a gravitational pull. There’s also the vertigo to contend with.

Some people daydream about visiting outer space and seeing the curve of our planet from above its atmosphere, but I can’t. I’m way too…