Daytime in New York, daytime in China

The film: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, starring Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman. It's another one of those lousy Golan-Globus productions, so I almost feel like a bully for nitpicking it. We must let go any nit that arises solely from lack of a budget for special effects, it's not worth it. The film's message of peace activism is a good one, but with the production being so flawed, not many people will hear the message, much less take it to heart.
What happened: Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) steals a strand of Superman's hair from a museum and uses it to create a powerful adversary for Superman, Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow). Nuclear Man's Achilles' heel is that he needs sunlight to feed his powers. Luthor summons Superman (Christopher Reeve) to his lair to meet Nuclear Man, and soon the two start fighting. It's daytime in Metropolis (New York) when Superman and Nuclear Man go way above the Earth's atmosphere and fight in outer space. Then they drop back down to Earth, where Nuclear Man endangers tourists by smashing a section of the Great Wall.
Why it makes no sense whatsoever: You don't need a big special effects budget to know certain basic science facts. For one, that the Earth is round and that New York and China are almost on opposite sides: New York is in time zone UTC -5 (give or take one for daylight savings time, I forget which) and China is UTC +8. Superman and Nuclear Man can get to China in a matter of minutes, but it still takes the Earth about twelve hours to bring into sunlight what is now in darkness. Or do you mean to tell me that Superman and Nuclear Man fought in outer space for about twelve hours? Well, maybe I can believe that.
But later in the film, Nuclear Man kidnaps Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway) and takes her into outer space. Superman moves the Moon to block the sunlight empowering Nuclear Man (we can only hope he puts the Moon back in its right place afterwards, and that the change in tides that must've resulted from that move had no major negative consequences). Nuclear Man lets go of Lacy. Lacy then FALLS DOWNWARD IN OUTER SPACE!!! Superman rescues her, and she's apparently OK from the lack of oxygen. Was Nuclear Man somehow generating an atmosphere for her to breathe, and did Superman take over that duty once he picker her up?
Look, if you can't afford to hire a science consultant, at least go to the used book store and pick up any high school science textbook written within the last hundred years.