Even though there is no gravity on the asteriod, when all the steel beams fall off the vehicle, they fall to the ground just like on earth, not in space!
During their training, the instructors tell them that there will be gravity on the asteroid. All objects have a gravitational pull even you and I. Gravity is the force of attraction between two bodies. It doesn't matter if it is an orange and an apple or your body and the Earth. If the apple and the orange were in space, they would eventually move towards each other...the only reason you don't see this happen here on Earth is because the Earth's gravity overcomes the gravity of the two pieces of fruit because of it's much greater mass. Hence, the asteroid does have a gravitational field, just not as strong as on Earth.
First, I'm gonna reply to the machine gun comment mentioned above. If you watch the director's commentary on the criterion collection version of the dvd, Jerry Bruckheimer tells you that there was a scene cut out of the final cut that explained why there were machine guns on the armadillo. I believe it was in case rocks or debris came flying at them, but I can't remember. And second, I thought the movie had a wonderful back story and one more thing. IT'S JUST A MOVIE! Sometimes you have to bend things around a bit so that the story goes the direction it needs to in order to interest the audience. I mean c'mon, what kind of movie would it have been if Ben Affleck (A.J.) would have been killed when Bruce Willis shot at him....or even when "MIR" exploded? Give me a break and try to recognize a good film when you see it.
Everyone is way off track here. Let's go back to memorylapses' first comment. Every object has a gravitational pull. Even a pencil has a gravitational pull. Surely a comet several miles in diameter would have a gravitational force to pull objects back to it even several meters off its surface.
And second of all people, It's a Movie!!! If you want technical realism in what you watch, maybe you should be watching re-runs of lost in space. LOL.
the gravitational pull of an object like an asteroid or comet is EXTREMELY small.
For instance, Ceres, the largest asteroid, has a diameter of over 500 miles and a gravitational pull of 0.03 of earth. Compared to Earth's Diameter of nearly 8,000 miles.
On earth, an object dropped from a height of 10 feet takes 0.3 seconds to fall to earth. on Ceres, it would take over 10 seconds for it to hit the ground. and thats the LARGEST Asteroid, all the others take considerably longer.
Likewise for a comet. The Gravity would be small that if you decided to do a high jump.. you could literally go into orbit, or leave the comet altogether.
Of course I bet the explanation in the movie is that its supposed to be a special comet that defies gravitational law and the properties of solar system objects, which gives them a nice cheap way to continue making the movie here on good ol' terra firma where there's a bunch of gravity. Besides, if they did all that other stuff, the producers might have to learn something.
Actually the size of the asteroid has nothing to do with gravity...It's the density. The greater the density the greater the gravitational pull. So if the asteroid was very dense, then it could have enough gravity to make things fall.
Actually, a masses gravitational force does have to do with size, but, yes, it also has to do with density. Every atom has a certain attractive force. The computer that I'm sitting at right now is attracting me, also the keyboard, mouse, etc. The men's spacesuits make them more attracted to the meteor. Then again, there were also huge mountains of razor-sharp rock all around them, so they would cancel out a lot of the suits' attractions to the meteor. Oh well, movie-makers slip up once in a while. What does it matter?
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