Scale, Scale, SCALE!!

Does a low budget also mean low intelligence? Or standards? I mean the way the scale of the fissure is depicted is just an insult. You can see the fissure form Earth-its obviously hundreds of miles wide yet, when the shuttle enters it, the sides at the top are only about a hundred METRES wide! Either that or the shuttle is suddenly the size of Iceland.
If they had got just this one detail correct, it would have added points to the movie in general.
I reckon it was deliberate-an in joke.