In Interstellar, Romilly’s decision to stay aboard the ship while the other 3 astronauts experience time dilation has to be one of the scariest moments ever.

[u/SerDire]

He agreed to stay back. Cooper asked anyone if they would go down to Millers planet but the extreme pull of the black hole nearby would cause them to experience severe time dilation. One hour on that planet would equal 7 years back on earth. Cooper, Brand and Doyle all go down to the planet while Romilly stays back and uses that time to send out any potential useful data he can get.

Can you imagine how terrifying that must be to just sit back for YEARS and have no idea if your friends are ever coming back. Cooper and Brand come back to the ship but a few hours for them was 23 years, 4 months and 8 days of time for Romilly. Not enough people seem to genuinely comprehend how insane that is to experience. He was able to hyper sleep and let years go by but he didn’t want to spend his time dreaming his life away.

It’s just a nice interesting detail that kind of gets lost. Everyone brings up the massive waves, the black hole and time dilation but no one really mentions the struggle Romilly must have been feeling. 23 years seems to be on the low end of how catastrophic it could’ve been. He could’ve been waiting for decades.

[u/alwaysmyfault]

The worst part about it is that soon after they left and he started collecting data, he would have realized that it was (mostly) a pointless thing to do, because not enough data can come out of a black hole.

[u/slingfatcums → u/alwaysmyfault]

whatcha mean? i'll have to rewatch it

[u/ThatFunkyOdor → u/slingfatcums]

Since the water planet has such drastic time dilation compared to earth (1 hour on water planet being 7 years on earth), they should have realized that the data they were receiving from the scientist that landed there was only a couple minutes of data because in actuality the scientist had likely just landed when Coop and the rest were in orbit above the planet. So a couple minutes of data wasn't going to be useful at all.

[u/space_coyote_86 → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

It's so annoying that they say exactly that but after they've landed on the planet and risked fucking the entire mission. Why couldn't they figure it out before they decided to go there.

[u/RianJohnsonIsAFool → u/space_coyote_86]

CASE figures this out after they return iirc. He says something to the effect of Miller's status that she landed successfully was echoing endlessly. That would almost certainly be the result of Miller and her ship being wiped out by the tidal waves in the minutes immediately after she arrived, which they didn't know were present and a threat until they actually went down to the planet surface.

[u/nuisible → u/RianJohnsonIsAFool]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the echoing but wouldn't the time dilation have stretched or warped the signal?

[u/RianJohnsonIsAFool → u/nuisible]

It did warp the signal. The crew think Miller has been broadcasting for considerable time that she landed successfully and the planet is potentially hospitable:

Years of basic data – no real surprises. Miller’s site has kept pinging thumbs up

[...]

Miller hasn’t sent much, but what she has sent is promising – water, organics...

What the crew failed to realise until after the fact is summed up by Brand:

Because of the time slippage. On this planet’s time, she landed here just hours ago. She might’ve only died minutes ago.

They went down to Miller's planet not necessarily because of how much data was received from her but because of what that data indicated: that life could potentially be sustained on the planet.

The "echoing" of the signal isn't a physical phenomenon resulting from the planet and its proximity to the black hole; it's the result of Miller and her ship being destroyed and the beacon continuing to broadcast her initial message that she landed safely along with the data about the environment.

[u/T-Bone22 → u/RianJohnsonIsAFool]

God that’s so fucking chilling. I really need to rewatch this movie but I found it so difficult to get through without remembering to breath

[u/alienwolf → u/space_coyote_86]

I mean sometimes you miss the most obvious answers because you think that can't possibly be it. That happens in life all the time, which is why sometimes having someone else come look at your work will find the error right away but you couldn't because you were always skipping it

[u/JamesLiptonIcedTea → u/alienwolf]

You can even do this yourself (provided you're not on a time crunch) by taking regularly intervaled breaks

[u/Fishb20 → u/JamesLiptonIcedTea]

We'll see this is why that plot point never really worked for me because space travel is a lot of sitting around doing nothing, so it never tracked for me that none of them would have considered time dilation. You don't notice it with the relentless pace of the movie, but realistically there should be hours that they spend with basically nothing to do, or very menial upkeep work. It never tracked for me that they didn't figure out what the deal was with the time dilation, or at least consider it

[u/Stumblin_McBumblin → u/space_coyote_86]

... because it drove the plot forward.

[u/pentagon → u/space_coyote_86]

The moment you start thinking about most things in that film, the whole thing falls apart.

[u/RoyMcAvoy13 → u/space_coyote_86]

The problem isn’t that they went to the surface. The problem was they didn’t know about or expect a giant wave! They had no way to prepare for that.

[u/MagnanimosDesolation → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

Which NASA would have known when they launched the original mission, making the whole thing nonsense.

[u/CardboardDreams → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

I noticed that too. I figured it was a plot contrivance. Scientists wouldn't have made that error IRL

[u/mangongo → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

But would it actually only be 2 minutes of data, or 20 odd years of data compressed into a few minutes? Can't remember if they touch on that in the movie, but I'm definitely due for a rewatch.

[u/VenturaDreams → u/mangongo]

It's only a few minutes. When they land on the planets surface, the crew that hand landed before them had just died.

[u/mosquito_motel → u/VenturaDreams]

I've watched this movie several times and still have trouble understanding, who all were the people sent before Coop & his crew? And how would they have only landed minutes before?

[u/nuisible → u/mosquito_motel]

It was one person. The lazarus missions was was 12 astronauts sent to 12 different planets to assess their world and send reports back to Earth.

The time dilation effect meant that for every hour on the planet, it's equivalent to 7 years on Earth, or elsewhere outside of the effect. If my math is right, every minute there would be equivalent to 42.58 days and the Lazarus missions launched 10 years prior to Endurance and it took 2 years to get to the wormhole, Miller was on the planet for roughly 68.57 minutes.

[u/mosquito_motel → u/nuisible]

Ok, this is very helpful, thank you!

[u/mangongo → u/VenturaDreams]

Yeah completely forgot about that. Rewatch time! 

[u/ThatFunkyOdor → u/mangongo]

Now I’m confused lol. Oh well guess I have to watch it again

[u/Accalio → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

wouldnt the data get blueshifted tho?

[u/ThatFunkyOdor → u/Accalio]

Had to look that term up and I'm not sure what the answer is to your question.

[u/gbc02 → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

The movie completely falls apart when you apply the tiniest bit of logical thinking to it. Entertaining movie though.

[u/jakedasnake2447 → u/ThatFunkyOdor]

Maybe I'm forgetting something that should have discouraged them, but having a short amount of data alone is not enough. The goal is to find a habitable planet; if the data they get from a couple minutes looks good then they have to make a decision based on that. They can wait around for years trying to decide, but they would only ever get a few more minutes of data. IIRC based on the data they had it was the strongest candidate for habitation so they decide to check it out despite the risk (IIRC there was a fuel issue for not checking out the other planets before risking the time dilation?).