). During the "Dawn of Man" sequence, one of the proto-humans is shown holding a chimpanzee. Is this supposed to be its child, or a pet? If it's a child, it's a completely different species from its parent.
Dr. Floyd flies PanAm from Earth to the space station. Unfortunately, PanAm went out of business in the 1980s.
During his flight to the Moon, Floyd sucks his meal through a straw. When he finishes, the food drips back down into its container. However, Floyd is supposed to be in zero-g, so the food should remain in the straw.
During the flight from Clavius to the TMA-1 site, a scientist shows Floyd a diagram of the excavation, which shows it to be large and circular. However, when they arrive, the actual excavation is small and rectangular.
Flyod and the scientists approach the obelisk with some trepidation, like it's an unexploded bomb. However, the excavation has been going on for weeks, and the site is surrounded by lights and cameras. Obviously, there's been lots of people around this thing for a while. Why are they still so timid?
How does Bowman survive the vacuum when going from the pod to the airlock?
During his flight to the Moon, Floyd sucks his meal through a straw. When he finishes, the food drips back down into its container. However, Floyd is supposed to be in zero-g, so the food should remain in the straw.
Potential anti-nit. Could the air pressure push it back down?
How does Bowman survive the vacuum when going from the pod to the airlock?
Actually, that's quite realistic. It is possible to survive vacuum. You don't explode instantly. He got in, and into an emergency airlock, IIRC, and then flooded it with O2.
If the Space Odyssey takes place in 2001, and that's a year and a half after Floyd's visit to the monolith ("Jupiter Mission: 18 months later"), we have passed the last day when Floyd's trip could've occurred (June of 2000), making it a nit.
Anti-nit: of course, the trip was top secret so we never heard about it.
Anti-nit-nit: They mentioned a colony on the moon, and the cover story of a virus. Since we haven't heard about that, it's now a nit!
I seem to recall that Floyd's trip occurred in 1999. That may have been from the novel (which is canon, since Clarke wrote the script and novel simultaneously).
Clarke says he kepts the dates deliberately vague, as to what, if anything, happens in 2001.
Hmmm -- was there any reference to specific earlier dates in the 2010 novel or movie? I know H.A.L. gave the exact date he was brought online....
Are the BBC going to have 12 channels by next year? They are planning to launch BBC 3 & 4 soon.
According to the movie, HAL was made before the year 2001...so...where is he? Huh?
Actually, John, UIUC (Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign) did have a "birthday party" for HAL in March of 1999.
I thought HAL's birthday was supposed to be in 1997 or something like that.
I thought HAL's birthday was supposed to be in 1997 or something like that.
Sorry about the double post, computer error no doubt. Anyway from the IMDB:
"The subsequent novel and the screenplay both give HAL's birthday as January 12, 1997, but the date given on screen is January 12, 1992."
You're right. The UIUC parties were in 1997. My mistake.
DUH.....DUH.......DUH......................................DUNUH!!!!!
BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM
DUH.....DUH......DUH.....................................DUNAH!!!!!!!
DO DO DO!!!!!!!!
DEE DEE DEE DEE!!!!!!!!!
DUH DUH DUNUH!!!!!!!!!!!
--
Happy 2001, everybody!
Who'd have thought that the sitting president of the USA during 2001 A Space Odyssey would be...*shudder* George W. Bush.
Ugh.
Think of how he would gut the space program to pay for his tax cuts for the rich.
One thing makes sense. Remember in 2010 they find out that the reason that HAL killed everyone is because of some info that he was given and should not have had. That info was given to him from him from "The G** D*** White House". Now everything makes sense.
I think that i have figured out this whloe movie. The only part that i don't understand is when Dave ends up in a bedroom. What's up with that? I lose track of the whole movie after that.
The novel makes it a bit more clear. But essentially, they put him in the hotel room to make him a bit more comfortable and get him out of the pod. The point was that they wanted to turn him into a Star-Child.
the aliens put him in a hotel room. Oooooookaaaay?
I guess that's a little more cleared up. At least now I know were the bedroom came from
Meg, according to the book, TMA-1 had been monitoring broadcasts (which makes sense). The alien used the hotel room from a movie (maybe it was 2001: A Space Odyssey? ).
Okay that clears thing up. Thank you
Sorry, I know it didn't really clear it up. The movie is pretty obtuse, the novel helps.
How fast is the Discovery traveling? I just rewatched 2001 yesterday and wondered this. The reason I was wondering it is because of the pod. Bowman goes after Frank Poole in a pod. Presumably, Discovery is still on its way to Jupiter. This means the pod has to have enough power to get Poole and not only carry him back to the ship, but catch up with Discovery as well. Not to mention have enough power to keep the pod equidistant from the front of Discovery while David Bowman argues with HAL about opening the pod door. Would that little pod have the fuel to do all that?
Also, it seems that a couple of scenes the stars are twinkling in outer space. I thought the twinklings were a result of our atmosphere, and thus wouldn't be visible in space. Am I wrong on this?
Discovery travels at approximately 100,000 mph... relative to the Sun.
The pod is also travelling at 100,000 mph relative to the Sun. It shares Discovery's basic velocity. Basic physics.
Your question is like asking, why don't you get slammed against the back of the airliner, since it's travelling at 600 mph. Same thing, you share the airplane's velocity.
Yeah, but what I'm thinking about Scott, is the fact that the pod flies away from from the Discovery. Meanwhile, the Discovery is contnuing on its way to Jupiter. Wouldn't Discovery have left the pod behind? Wouldn't the pod have to generate quite a bit of speed to go get Frank Poole and expend a great deal of energy to slow down (to keep from slamming into Poole) and then turn around and build up up enough speed to catch up to Discovery?
"Your question is like asking, why don't you get slammed against the back of the airliner, since it's travelling at 600 mph." - ScottN
I'm talking about when the pod is outside of Discovery. Does the same principle apply when the pod has flown away from Discovery, turned around and gone back to the mothership, got in front of the ship and remains the same distance from it? I realize this may be yet another example of my stupidity, but I can't for the life see how it can do that.
From what I can figure it goes something like this. Discovery and the Pod are both travelling at 100,000mph relative. When Bowman takes the pod after Poole he is travelling at 100,000mph rel + the pod's Delta V. After he catch's Poole (who couldn't have been given that much Delta V) He returns to the Discovery and Slows back down to the Discovery's 100,000mph relative speed in a slightly different position than it was when he left. That is how he could hover just outside the front of Discovery. A thought exercise: Imagine an aircraft carrier able to go as fast as an F-14. You launch an F-14 and it i going as fast as the carrier + its own speed. The F-14 comes back and applies its airbrakes until it matches speed with the carrier only it is just off to the side of the deck. Since in space there is only minimal drag from intersteller dust which insn't dense enough in the solar system to cause a problem it would work. This was a rather simplified thought exercise but I hope this helps some. Remember in space its all relative and there are no straight lines in sublight travel.
But what I'm really wondering would the pod have that much fuel to do all of that? Or would such maneuverings require less energy than I think it would?
By the way, another thing that bothered me: After HAL uses Frank's pod to hurl Dr. Poole into space, we see a shot of the pod tumbling away from Discovery. (It crosses Frank Poole's path.) Why would the pod fly away like that? If HAL did it, why would he want it to? Why would it tumble?
The amount of Delta V imparted may not require that much fuel. Assuming standard rockets a low thrust over a long time will give about the same delta V as a large thrust over a short time. It is more of a how quickly do you want to get there vs. how much fuel do you want to have. I'm not sure Bowman was really concerned about fuel so he may have burned the tanks almost dry. from the way Poole was using the thrusters when he went out they seem pretty decent so the pod could probably make a few short high thrust burns that don't use that much fuel to impart a high delta V. As for why the pod went tumbling off I would guess that HAL didn't need it anymore so why bother controlling it after impacting with Poole. Sine Every action has a reaction Poole and the pod will go off on their own orbits and a good navcomp/navigator can figure out an intercept course that would be fast while fuel conservative.As for tumbling since Poole and the pod both are not perfect circles their centers of mass at impact would cause them to have a tumble when they parted.
To give a definate answer as far as I can figure the pod should have sufficient fuel to do the manuevers assuming Bowman uses a high energy/low fuel usage curve or burns the tanks about dry.
Another thing I loved this book and the movie both so forgive me for going on for a bit.
The point is that the pod's velocity RELATIVE TO DISCOVERY is only a few hundred mph (whatever the pod's engines can do}. For all intents and purposes, to the pod, Discovery is standing still.
That's one of the basic tenets of Relativity, actually... as long as one is not accelerating, he can consider himself to be motionless and the rest of the universe to be moving around him.
The pod wouldn't need to expend much energy at all. If you are on an aircraft going 700mph and step out the wind resistance will quickly slow you down. If you were in the vacume of space and stepped out of the same craft you would still be going at the same speed as the craft (the discovery is not burning it's engines, it did that back near Earth. Ever since it got up to speed it has just been coasting at 100,000 mph or whatever speed without expending any more fuel) When the pod leaves discovery it is still coasting at 100,000 mph. When it fires it's engines to go in the opposite direction it is now going at perhaps only 999,900 mph if it is drifting at 100 mph less than discovery it will slowly (by cosmic standards) drift away from discovery. When it has Frank to catch discovery it must only generate perhaps 200 mph of power to catch discovery (it's already drifting at 999,900 mph + 200 mph = 110,000 mph) and can catch discovery again.
If you've ever seen those animations of probes like Voyager I or II notice they do not have engines. They were launched by rockets. When they got up to speed they detached the rockets and drift for years on end to where ever they were aimed.
Brian, just a nit... you added one too many 9s... that should be 99,900, and then 99,900 +200 = 100,100.
Okay, so I'm an idiot.
No when I first started reading about this stuff my brain hurt but then I got a handle on it, sorta. I just have trouble explaining it. I guess I didn't make it clear enough about the relative speeds, sorry.
Brian, just a nit... you added one too many 9s... that should be 99,900, and then 99,900 +200 = 100,100.
What kind of a place is this where everything you do gets nitpicked appart? LOL
A great coincidence -- I just got my Limited Edition DVD today (what? you didn't know there was one? Neither did I until I happened to browse it on Amazon. It's been out since June! NO hype, no special store display, never heard of it! A lot like ST:TMP's promotion campaign -- sure, they have 800 copies of The Waterboy.........) end rant
I have a special occasion coming up on Dec 8 so I'm not even going to open it until then. But tonight on public television they had two specials, one about the making of 2001, the other about the possibility of a real HAL 9000 computer. Only watched the first one, taping the second.
Good show, but one thing always induces a cringe in me -- that's hearing the narrator say repeatedly "two-thousand-and-one". It rankles me the same way when I hear someone say nook-yoo-ler for "nuclear". We're stating a year here, not counting. We didn't say "nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-nine", but we would say there were nineteen hundred and ninety-nine years that passed. Yes, nitpicky, but that's what we do. At least Arthur C. Clarke made it sound correct, "two-thousand-one".
Just why did HAL make an error with his warning about the faulty antenna and then try to kill all of the astronauts after he did his lip reading? Was HAL indeed defective and could not handle that knowledge, sending him over the edge? (A Kubrick favorite - Full Metal Jacket, The Shining) Did he deduce the true purpose of the voyage and panic? Was he under the influence of the intelligence that built the monolith (maybe they only wanted one astronaut by design - but then again if HAL had his way he would have killed them all) This is what makes the movie have such intrigue and also makes it my favorite sci-fi movie!
Also, after HAL is shut off by Dave Bowman, a monitor comes on with a broadcast from Earth revealing the true essence of the mission. Is this a coincidence that it comes on at this point or had the message been somehow suppressed by HAL (explaining his behavior?)
Finally, if you change each letter in the name HAL to the next one in the alphabet, you get IBM.
According to to the book and 2010 (book and movie) the fact that hal knew the truth and they did not (he had been told to lie.) He did not know how to lie or keep a secret and became paranoid about what would happen if they shut him off, presumably he was malfunctioning when he read an error in the AE 45 unit but thought that he was more important to the mission than they were, hence he couldn't get shut off.
Arther C. Clark says that they HAL/IBM think was coincidental and unintentional.
anyone noticed the 4s in this movie (beter than startrek and the 47s) let me count the 4s (ways)
pooles missed line: ive fallen and cant get up
Brian, it's AE-35, not AE-45.
Yes, the HAL/IBM thing is coincidence. Clarke has stated this on many occasions, and even went to the trouble of having the character of Chandra debunk it in 2010.
how about the ae 47 unit then
No, it's the AE-35. Watch the frickin' movie.
I am detecting trouble with the Alpha Echo three five unit dave. I predict that it will go 100% failure mode within twelve hours.
scottttttttttttttnnnnnnn hellow scott, do u read me scot, its a bloody joke ...( thx hal9000) open the doors, scottn,
ps lighten up scott
An epsode of Recess had quite a good send up of this film.
One nit i have is that the folks on the moonbase move as if they are on Earth, not the reduced gravity of the Moon.
When Bowman flies the pod out to check on the AE-35, the pod goes directly over the top of the Discovery. Then we switch to the view from inside the pod, and suddenly the Discovery is out the right side of the pod's window.
Bowman parks the pod, then he has to leap a good 50 feet (by my estimate) to reach the AE-35. First of all, why couldn't he park any closer? And second, he must be very confident about his accuracy, because he doesn't appear to have any type of MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit) to help him steer. If he misses, he's screwed.
The AE-35 is their communications array. Why, then, is it constantly rotating? Shouldn't it be in a fixed position pointing back at Earth?
The astronaut's suits have a very obvious design flaw, which directly contributes to Poole's death. The air supply is connected to the helmet by a flexible metal tube. Even disregarding the fact that HAL used the pod to yank the thing out, it looks like it could easily get snagged on something just in the normal course of duty.
Poole and Bowman hide out in a pod to talk about HAL. As they talk, their heads move back and forth from facing each other to looking at HAL. But from HAL's point of view, we see them only in profile.
Bowman and Poole could have avoided lots of problems if they hadn't asked HAL to rotate the pod after they got in. (But then HAL wouldn't be able to read their lips through the window, find out that they're plotting to shut him down, kill Poole, etc., etc...)
So Bowman was in such a rush he coudn't take an extra couple of seconds to grab a helmet and gloves? He could even have put them on once he was in the pod.
Some nits on 2001:
• The stars are twinkling in the DVD I watched... this makes no sense
• In exterior shots of the Discovery, when the spaceship is still relative to the camera (and there are many of these scenes), the star fields are moving slightly. This makes no sense because at the distance we are to the stars, (and the relative slow speed of the planetary ship) they would never appear to be moving at all. The only exception would be if the spaceship is turning. Any challenges to this?
• When Dave makes his re-entry into the airlock, you can see the now empty pod still outside just where it was before. You would think the explosive bolts and the following decompression would have sent that pod flying... (every action has a opposite and equal reaction), but it is still there. Maybe he left the parking brakes on before he left... ideas?
• As Dave goes to HAL logic portal/entrance, he is walking in the corridor under gravity conditions. When he is floating around in the brain giving him a lobotomy, he is floating in non-gravity. What gives?
You're right that the stars shouldn't move, Arnold.
I seem to remember the pod using it's claws to grip and turn the airlock door release. Could the claws still be holding on when the hatch blows?
Arnold,
• As Dave goes to HAL logic portal/entrance, he is walking in the corridor under gravity conditions. When he is floating around in the brain giving him a lobotomy, he is floating in non-gravity. What gives?
I believe that his suit has magnetic boots... Of course, I could be wrong. Also, I think the memory core is dead center in the centrifuge, so it's gravity-free.
Or Pan-Am Grip Shoes®, perhaps?
Star Trek-First Contact has a tip of the hat to 2001 and the AE-35. Look for it in the scene where Picard and Worf battle the Borg on the hull of the Enterprise-E.
Re:pods. There is a nit I posted on the 2010 board regarding them. In that film, when Curnow (John Lithgow) and the Russian guy (Elya Baskin) enter the Discovery, there is one pod left. How come? Poole was killed when Hal commandeered one (which blew out into space, along with Poole's corpse), Bowman blew the hatch off the second pod to get back inside the Discovery, and Bowman used the third (and last) to get down to Jupiter. Maybe Bowman could have retrieved and repaired the second pod. The force of the blast should have sent it flying; even if the claw was still attached to the hatch; the blast should have separated the pod from the claw.
I agree that the air hose was a serious design flaw. But-didn't the suits the real astronauts and cosmonauts in the sixties wear similar suits?
In the book 2010 they mention that the last pod on the discovery was the one with the missing hatch and that Bowman remote piloted it back to the Discovery. I don't have time to find my video tape and see if the one in 2010 is missing a hatch but when I get the time I will let you all know.
Regarding astronaut leaps to repair the AE-35: Look closer at their backpacks... unlike the ones the moon astronauts wear, which are just life support packs, the Discovery astronaut packs have built in attitude nozzles near the bottom.
So, what exactly is all the "stuff" Dave sees after flying at the Monolith? The book describes a lot of alien technology, but I don't recall any of it being described as looking like a Pink Floyd concert. Seeing how well they portrayed spaceships and the like up until that point, it seems pretty weird that suddenly the only way to create these sceens was via the Joshua Light Show. Was the content of this part reworked for the movie, or am I just being obtuse (or both)?
Was the content of this part reworked for the movie,
I'll have to re-read "Lost Worlds", but I belive it was reworked. I suspect that Kubrick was trying to "show the unshowable", as it were... to give us the sense that it was incomprehensible.
It was kind of hard to figure out just when he exited the Star Gate at the other end.
I figured that some of what we saw was the red giant... I think that stuff went on way too long, too...
The flickering image of Floyd explaining the purpose of the mission really dates this film. I know that rear projection was the only way this could be done at the time 2001 was shot. Still, with the video technology available today, this looks kind of poor now.
Lots of the control panels in the movie had rear projection screens in them, several of the panels in the pod have clear film scratches on them.
The bridge displays in Star Trek - The Motion Picture were also rear projections. One problem with this was that if a scene required a re-take, or even for different camera angles, the whole display would have to play out again, so the shots would match. The projection screens were replaced with video displays for Star Trek II. The displays on the "Discovery" in 2010 were also video displays.
By the way, when was the last time you saw film scratches on a movie, either watching it on DVD or on a cable movie channel?
The computer graphics weren't really computer graphics either. They were hand drawn animation, as were the mattes in the film. Those hand animated graphics did seem to influence the look of real computer animation (of the wire-frame variety) used in later seventies film such as ST:TMP.
All of the tiny details would be all the more noticeable on a big movie screen. I would have liked to see this on the big screen when it was rereleased on the big screen in 2001. Alas, it was a rather too limited rerelease (it didn't play in my area).
Though, it is now set in a 'past' of 2001, the film really did predict how the future of 2001 should have been. Who could have foresaw such a downsizing of the Space Program after Apollo.
I think Arthur C Clarke & Stanley Kubrick consulted NASA on a number of details to get things as correct as possible.
...when it was rereleased on the big screen in 2001...
I don't remember 2001 being re-released at all in 2001. And, I live in New York, where almost every movie plays at some point. It was planned, but I don't remember it being done. I do remember Turner Classic Movies running 2001 at midnight on 1/1/01. Twice.
Some theaters will show older films on the big screen ocassionally. I saw Forbidden Planet and The Ten Commandments at an independent theater. I was hoping that same theater might show 2001, but 2001(the year) came and went by without it being shown. Seeing a film on television just can't compete with seeing it on the big screen.
My last time I ever saw 2001 was in San Francisco, in 83, in a theatre, at least. Some nice lady thought it was a soup line so she gave me two sawbucks.I guess I was the poorest -looking.
lol.Sice then I had the Beta, the Vhs, the dvd cut up version ,the commentaries by Gary lockwood and Keir Duella. I missed the 2001 director's cut though.
I tried to make new friends in jr. high and suggested this movie. They didn't like it and left me in the theatre.I paid them their lunch and mine,( they left me when the Jupiter scenes showed up)
and the least they could do was take me home!
I had to walk home 5 miles-as the powers that ran the town
cancelled Sunday bus service! It ran with Silent Running.
I guess 2010 won't be seen in 2010.
The pre-Humans aren't realistic looking; you can tell there are actors in the costumes. And the scene where there is streaming of multi-lights, that goes on for TOO long. There are other draggy parts of the movie. I fell asleep during the movie once. Otherwise, it is a fascinating
visual AND Classical music movie experience.
you can tell there are actors in the costumes.
That's what tipped you off, eh?
Sophie "I seem to remember the pod using it's claws to grip and turn the airlock door release. Could the claws still be holding on when the hatch blows?"
That would have prevented the blooper of how the pod could stay beside the Discovery, but after watching it, no, Bowman retracted the arms, even though he could have kept at least one linked to the emergency lock mechanism.
Poole is dead, the other three crewmembers killed by HAL, and still Bowman arrives at Jupiter? I suppose he was too close to bother turning around, but wouldn't it make sense to abort the mission and return home? He's only one guy, and the emotional reaction would be to go back home.
I taped this movie off TCM a few years ago, and did a bit of 'editing'-- cutting down substantially the amount of time with the apes and the psychodelic warp effects, which makes the movie run a little faster.
The movie is almost three movies in one-- the apes, the Moon, and the Discovery voyage. Each segment stands virtually on its own, with no return to previous characters in the next segment, with the exception of the pre-recorded Floyd scene.
The moon shuttle cockpit scene has a blooper. The cockpit is at the front of the ship, which rotates to land, so that now the cockpit is the 'top' of the ship. The only problem is that as it descends, the view out of the viewports should be space, but we see the lunar surface out of the windows.
How does the MoonBus fly? I ask this because I've just bought a model of it, and from visual evidence in the movie as well, you'll note she only had engine ports on her 'belly'. How does she fly in a straight line forward if the engines are pointing straight down and not behind her? The only thing in the aft bulkhead is the exit door.
One of the few humorous scenes in the movie-- Floyd reading instructions on the operation of a zero-g bathroom...still topical today!
If the Moonbus is stocked with pre-wrapped ham and chicken sandwiches made of bread, why does the moon shuttle have boxes with liquid food consumed by straws?
One guy offers coffee to Floyd and another passenger aboard the Moonbus from a coffee pot. It should be zero-g inside the little ship, so how does the coffee flow?
Much has been written and noted about the use of classical music in this movie, but strangely it's abandoned during the Discovery scenes, where eerie movie-type music is played instead.
Clearly Gerry Anderson was inspired by this movie for the first season of Space:1999, from the bumpy-hull spaceships, to the moon city (which looks as big as Moonbase Alpha), and the weird alien environments (and inexplicable scanarios).
Even the Moonbus has black panels below the forward viewports and a blocky central body, which would be re-worked into the Eagles.
Poole is dead, the other three crewmembers killed by HAL, and still Bowman arrives at Jupiter? I suppose he was too close to bother turning around, but wouldn't it make sense to abort the mission and return home? He's only one guy, and the emotional reaction would be to go back home.
Orbital mechanics. Discovery was designed to go into orbit at Jupiter, and upon completion of the mission the crew would go into hibernation and await rescue by Discovery II. He doesn't have the delta-V to "turn around".
Sort of Scott. In the book, 2001 it was that they burned up all of their fuel to get there & would have to enter hibernation and await a rescue from the uncompleted Discovery II. The movie implied that they had the fuel for a return trip. Of course the book also staged the final scene orbiting Saturn, which was the plot reason. At the last minute the mission had been changed from Jupiter to Saturn (after the discovery of the monolith).
The movie 2001 implies that they have enough fuel for a return trip & the sequel 2010, both movie & book (which mostly follows the movie's continuity) it's a major plot point that The Discovery has enough fuel for a return trip.
But your point about orbital mechanics still holds up. Discovery was launched with 2 big detachable fuel tanks attached to it, that were jettisoned after they had been emptied and the ship was on a course to intercept & orbit Jupiter. The ship is just hurling through space towards Jupiter & hasn't fired it's engines since it first left Earth. Without Jupiter's gravity it would take almost all of their fuel to stop, much less set a course back to Earth.
For similar reasons they chose to not try a direct abort with the Apollo 13 capsule after the accident. They let it continue to the moon and return to Earth more or less as planned.
Yes. Apollo 13 was on a "free-return" trajectory. I believe that 14 also had such a trajectory, since it was going to the same site that 13 had to abandon; but they didn't use free-returns for 15 through 17.
No, Discovery doesn't have enough fuel for the return trip, she has enough fuel to let them leave early -- Leonov had enough fuel for the return trip, but only for a pre-planned launch window. Discovery's fuel let them move the launch window up to before Bowman's deadline.
Even very early drafts of the story had the crew going into hibernation at Jupiter (see "The Lost Worlds of 2001").
No, Discovery doesn't have enough fuel for the return trip, she has enough fuel to let them leave early.
I'm pretty sure that Discovery had enough fuel to make her own return trip at such a launch window too. Neither ship had enough fuel to leave early, but either could have made it back to Earth alone during the launch window. That's why HAL wanted to know why they were leaving early. Discovery didn't have enough fuel to leave early, but she could have made it back home alone. She also couldn't have all of The Leonov's weight attached to her when the engines were fired & make it home; which is why they used her as a booster rocket.
Even very early drafts of the story had the crew going into hibernation at Jupiter (see "The Lost Worlds of 2001").
That's my point. The origional version of the story had that plot point; the book & movie were developed concurrently. The first plan for the movie also had the plot point that they were going to Saturn, rather than Jupiter, because that's where the monolith was & that's why they had to use all of their fuel to get there. The final version of the film does not have it, nor do the sequels (books or movie) which mostly followed the continuity of the film.
Oops. You're right.
Those are the tools of a misspent youth; where I didn't have much else going on but reading those books & thinking about them.
You guys are right about it not being easy for Bowman to turn around and go back home. With 2001 technology so similar to our real-life tech, it's extermely complicated to zero in on Earth, have the proper fuel consumption, etc-- chalk it up to the Star Trek Syndrome, where I forgot that not everyone has near-limitless power and sophisticated sensor systems that make a return trip as easy as walking home!
I'm little uneducated about something else I think you guys could tell me; which came first, the book or the movie? Did Arthur C. Clarke write the book, and the movie was based on it, or did he simply write the novelization of it?
Thanks.
Clarke wrote both in parallel. "The Lost Worlds of 2001" is his story of how he wrote it/them.
I'm little uneducated about something else I think you guys could tell me; which came first, the book or the movie? - Steve McKinnon
Clarke's short story, "The Sentinel". It was the basis for both book and film.
Both Scott & Benn are correct. Clarke & Kubrick developed the story for 2001, based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" (which was really only based on the idea of an ancient artifact on the moon sending a signal somewhere), at the same time. They basically started together and basically played 'change, comeback, change" as they developed the book and movie.
The origional plan was that the movie would credit "written by Stanly Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke" while the book would credit "written by Arthur C. Clarke & Stanly Kubrick." Some sort of legal/contract issue prevented that and the book is credited solely to Clarke while they share screenwriters credit on the movie.
Thanks, guys! So we can blame both of them for the confusing final 10 minutes?
This film is being run on TCM as I write this. With the intermission intact. (I've seen it theatrically both and without the intermission.) I can't name any film these days, even with a longer running time, that has an intermission. (FYI, I saw The Godfather Part II the same year [1974] I saw 2001. Even though Godfather II was an hour longer, it had no intermission.)
The pads that Bowman and Poole watch their interviews on look quite a bit like current i-pads.
Dr. Floyd was the only passenger on the flight to the space station. Even though the film was made in the mid-1960's, an age of more "conspicuous consumption," a sole passenger on a long flight sure seems quite wasteful today.
{a sole passenger on a long flight sure seems quite wasteful today.}
In the book, it was explained as a special flight, urgently organized just for him to get him on the moon as fast as possible and with as little contact with the general public as possible.
When Dave goes out to change the AE-35 module, he asks HAL to prepare B pod for EVA. HAL turns on and rotates the central pod. Later, when Frank and Dave prepare to get into a pod so they can speak without HAL hearing them, they ask HAL to rotate C pod. Again, HAL rotates the central pod. So which pod is the central pod, B or C?
When HAL refused to let Dave back into the Discovery and terminated communications, Dave could have threatened to damage the ship and render it unable to complete the mission, unless HAL let him back in. I bet that would have gotten HAL's attention.
I'm attending a screening of this on Saturday with special guests Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood in attendance. Very excited. Have always wanted to see this on the big screen.
"Dave and Frank" will be there with you lot. Cool.
The pads that Bowman and Poole watch their interviews on look quite a bit like current i-pads.
Samsung's defense in a lawsuit brought by Apple was that Samsung based its tablet design on the pads from 2001, and not Apple's i-pad. That was also a recent "Final Jeopardy" clue. That I didn't get. 
I got it. I guessed at it, trying to come up with a science fiction film from the late 1960s that might've had such technology, as per the clue (even though it had been a while since I'd seen the film, and didn't remember the pads), and luckily got it right.
It's airing this coming Tuesday, June 3rd, at 8:00 PM, on Turner Classic Movies.
I had a little fun with the movie, specifically the space station. Its stated specs are that it is about 300 meters in diameter and rotates once per minute, which gives it a simulated gravity of just about that of the Moon. Measuring and timing things directly from the movie, I get an outside diameter of about 350 meters and a rotation period of 1 minute, close enough considering the uncertainties inherent to such measurements. The station and the people in it are also shown with their correct relative sizes. Kudos to the special effect people who went to the trouble of getting all of that right.
This, however, introduces a nit. The people walking on the station do not have the proper gait. Walking in such low gravity does not look at all like walking in Earth's normal gravity. Back in 2002, Tim Gueguen pointed out the same thing about the people walking on the moonbase.
When Floyd goes through the security gate, the attendant tells him to use number 17 of a total of 18 stations. Why? I suppose there are that many stations to allow arriving passengers to be processed quickly, however Floyd is the only one arriving at this time, so why not use the logical station 1 instead?
Petty nitpicking. It is obvious when watching Floyd and Miller walking in the curved interior of the space station that they are walking downslope on a movie set instead of in the artificial gravity of a rotating space station.
The explosive bolts on the pod are triggered in a very weird way. Remove a cover and press three buttons on a panel to the right of the pilot, then turn three knobs on another panel behind him and wait almost 10 seconds for the door to blow. Explosive bolts are used for emergencies, when fractions of a second are important. Blowing that hatch open should require a single simple action, one lever pull or one pressed button, and be instantaneous, like an ejection seat on a fighter jet.
When the pod's door finally explodes it sends no debris at all inside the airlock, just a quickly dissipated cloud of vapor.
It has already been pointed out that the spacesuits shown in the movie have a bad design flaw. Oxygen is fed to them through a flimsy and easily detached tube. Like the old diving suits used before the invention of scuba gear, they should at least have valves that prevent catastrophic decompression in case of such an accident. It would have given Frank plenty of time to reconnect the tube.
I guess the NASA consultants Stanley Kubrick suppoesdly hired missed those details, or were too classified to do correctly.
Kubrick was nearly in trouble for showing a "best guess" of a classified control panel in the cockpit of a B-52 in Dr Strangelove.
Another nitpick.
When the lunar shuttle is on final approach, you can see that the cockpit window is facing upwards. Yet, the crew can look out horizontally at the lunar surface below them.
When Dave is sketching the hibernating crew, you can see Frank asleep in his pod, with the cover closed. I'm not sure how safe/comfortable that would be. I can see it closing when it becomes the hibernaculum, but sleeping with it closed?
During Dave's EVA to replace the AE-35 unit, he's very VERY quiet in the pod. During "real-world" EVAs, the astronauts/cosmonauts are in constant contact with either ground control or the ISS.
Dave should have been continually updating Frank with status reports.
Not sure if this is a nit on 2001 or 2010. 2010 (at least the book, don't remember about the film), establishes the monolith as being in the Jupiter/Io "flux tube". That indicates that it's closer to Jupiter than Io. Io is the innermost of the four major moons (I believe only Jupiter V is closer). Yet in 2001, the monolith is clearly outside of the orbit of several moons.
In the 2010 movie, the Discovery mission status at the beginning of the movie states that the monolith is orbiting between Jupiter and Io.
When the small monolith sends its signal to its big brother orbiting Jupiter, the people around it react to the deafening screech it causes in their radios. It is quite a coincidence that the monolith just happened to transmit on the exact frequency those radios were set to.
In the book, it was essentially on all frequencies.
Well, that's wasteful. The efficient way to send a signal over those long distances is to use as narrow a frequency band as practical. The aliens would have known that and, more to the point, Arthur C. Clark would have known that.
It's been a while, but I think the EM disturbance was a side effect of the "real" signal.
In order to remain in contact with Earth, Discovery's antenna must always be pointed in its direction, which means the general direction of the Sun when orbiting Jupiter. But during the scenes when we see Discovery navigating through the Jupiterian system, you can clearly see that the antenna is pointed nowhere near the Sun's direction.
NANJAO The colorful scene of the "wormhole" Dave flies through would today be made with CGI. But that option did not exist when the movie was made, so I wonder what technique was used to create them.
In the scene of the ape men huddling under a rock ledge at night, they nervously listen to growls of prowling predators all around them. Then one of them has the brilliant idea of growling back. Wouldn't that alert those predators of the location of easy prey ripe for the picking?
The scene of Frank jogging around Discovery's carousel is done very well for the most part. The last two shots however could have used some more work. One is a close up from the front where Frank is clearly running downhill, and the other a close up from the back where he is clearly running uphill.
Speaking of Frank's jog, with the depicted size and rotation rate of Discovery's main habitat, the generated gravity at floor level would barely reach 0.1 g, and even less at head level. A running gait in such a gravity would not look at all as depicted.
Radio signals do take the stated 7 minutes to travel 80,000,000 miles. This means that the time delay between question and answer in the BBC interview was 14 minutes. Frank and Dave don't appear to have moved at all during those long intervals. They probably sat in front of the camera to hear a question and give their answers, then went to do something else for 14 minutes and returned to the camera for the next question and answer. Doing that would inevitably have resulted in shifts in their positions and stances which should have been obvious after the delays had been edited out of the interview's final cut.
NANJAO During the BBC interview, as they discuss the hibernating members of the crew, we are shown a close up of one of the hibernating pods control panels. One of the displays on that panel is labeled "vibrator" =8)
Frank and Dave watch the interview while eating a meal. The food in their trays varies in placement and quantity in inconsistent ways as they switch between the different takes.
This one is a little subtle. At one point, we see Dave moving in the carousel's central hub from HAL's point of view. Judging from this scene, HAL's lens is clearly placed exactly on the carousel's axis of rotation. However, in another scene we see Frank and Dave moving through that same hub from another point of view that show's precisely where HAL's lens is place, and it is very much off center.
This one is hard to judge, so it may not be a nit. When Dave takes his pod out on his first EVA, he turns it around after exiting the ship, shining the pod's bright headlights on the hull. We see Frank through Discovery's front porthole as he sits on the bridge, monitoring the EVA. As the pod ends its turn, its headlights are shining directly on Frank, but it doesn't appear like any light is actually reaching him.
quote:The scene of Frank jogging around Discovery's carousel is done very well for the most part. The last two shots however could have used some more work. One is a close up from the front where Frank is clearly running downhill, and the other a close up from the back where he is clearly running uphill.
What I'm talking about is his gait. During most of the scene, his running gait is normal, like it would be if he was running on a flat surface. Obviously, the rotating set was always carefully positionned so the actor would be at the very bottom. But in the last two takes it was as if the dolly carrying the camera filming him was crowding him out of that spot. In the close up take from the front, he looked like he was being pushed back up the slope and thus forced into a "running downhill" gait, and in the close up take from the back, he looked like he was pushed forward up the slope and forced int a "running uphill" gait. It's hard to picture from a mere description, but it's immediately apparent when watching the movie.
The Time Tunnel effect was created using a technique called slit scan, using a motorised camera on a rostrum & a static background obscured by a matte with a slit in it.
It was also used to make the Doctor Who title sequence used from 1973 to 1980.
In the opening sequence with the Earth and Sun rising beyond the Moon, we see the Moon's night side faintly illuminated. There are however no light sources in space that could have provided that illumination, the Moon should be completely dark.
Also, as the Sun rises we should see a thin sliver of the Moon's lighted side slowly creep into view on top of its darkened disk, but we don't.
Speaking of thin slivers, Earth's visible crescent is too thick, and it doesn't change during the whole sequence. It should start very thin and thicken as the Sun moves up, but it would not end up as thick as depicted.
Because of Earth's atmosphere refracting the Sun's light, the cusps of its crescent would extend almost all the way around the planet. There should also be a definite red tinge to that crescent, the color getting deeper farther from the Sun.
Finally, the side of the Moon we would see in such a shot would be the far side, the part we never see from Earth, but they clearly used a picture of the near side to shoot that scene.
According to this movie, by the year 2001, we would have massive orbiting space stations and functioning bases on the Moon.
2001 is now twenty years in the past, and we have none of those (unless you want to count the ISS).
You can chalk that up to the shuttle program, which was a massive waste of time and resources. If NASA had carried on with proven Apollo program technologies we would have likely made a crewed Mars landing by 1992.
Except the Nixon Administration slashed NASA's budget because they felt that Vietnam would be a better investment. And they still got their butts kicked.
Whatever happened to Frank Poole's body after Bowman released it back into space? This video offers one very well done possible answer.
Or course, the canonical answer is that his body was found near Neptune in 3001, brought home and revived.
Which kicks off the plot of that novel.
To be fair, though, I liked the YouTube's idea better.
Wow. Was expecting some kind of punchline at the end but instead found a really well done piece that is very true to the movie.
2001 is one of my favourites but I absolutely know that it can be a real slog for many people.
I guess Dave played a role in reviving his old shipmate.
2001: A Space Odyssey as directed by George Lucas.
Excellent video.