Could the crew member not have applied their own separate force causing it to shoot off into space? I suspect he didn't just open his hand and let it drop. More likely he was exerting pressure and it slipped.

And I agree, a fun series. I was hesitant with it being Syfy and all, but am truly enjoying the show.

@DoubleUK said:

Great series. Believable world building in this series. Sometimes a glitch. Like:

In episode 2, the crew of the marooned littles vessel tries to fix the broken antenna on the outside. When one of them lets a monkey wrench slip, it flies off into space. In space however, there is - as we all know - no air. And since everything on the vessel travels with the same speed - including the wrench - it would simply float. Because it would travel with the same speed in the same direction of the vessel.

That is only true if a vessel is not applying any force in any direction, if that vessel was accelerating or slowing down then letting go of something would immediately cause it to overtake you or fall behind since it has no propulsion of it's own to counter it's inertia.

If someone on the ISS places a spanner in space it will stay there or slowly drift off, but because the ISS is neither accelerating or slowing down the spanner will orbit with the station, but if you let go of a spanner during a burn then that spanner will be left behind. As we know ships in this show can propel themselves for a long time instead of the 45 second and 2 minute bursts that today's space craft can manage so if something falls (a misnomer) off the ship then it's history!