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Geophysicist Dr. David Stephenson in the Canadian TV documentary 2001 and Beyond notes that "Every engineer that saw it [the space station] had a fit. You do not spin on a wheel that is not fully built. You have to finish it before you spin it or else you have real problems".
Even if it is a circular rotating object, an orbital space station is not a wheel: it has no axle. So it is probably not a big issue to make it spin even though it is not fully built yet (no gravity, no frictions, no wheel balance needed). Actually, it is even possible to say that it is not spinning at all.
So it could even be seen as an accuracy: they purposedly made it uncomplete to show that it is possible to make it spin even if it is not finished. And it is very likely that Athur C. Clarke was aware of this.
88.179.202.15 ( talk) 09:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
Harry Lange should be listed as a technical adviser because he was at Marshall Space Flight center with Fred Ordway. And hired by Kubrick ... Ordway and Lange as a pair. Yes he did production design but , even if Ordway was the lead, Lange was also an engineer as well as a crack technical illustrator, and did some technical advising too. aajacksoniv ( talk) 15:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
"The sequence in which Bowman re-enters Discovery shows him holding his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the emergency airlock. Doing this before exposure to a vacuum—instead of exhaling—would, in reality, rupture the lungs. In an interview on the 2007 DVD release of the film, Clarke states that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error.[16][17] In the same scene, the blown pod hatch simply and inexplicably vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke.[18]" First that is not a 'puff of smoke" that is saturated cabin air in the POD that condenses as it meets the cold vacuum in the emergency air lock. Many discussions of where the air lock went center on the possibility that it rotated into a slot on the side of the POD for that purpose. This is very a reasonable engineering solution. Alas we don't have a reference for it. aajacksoniv ( talk) 22:49, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Currently, the article claims in-flight movies didn't come about until the early to mid-90s, which is not the same as what the source used says. The source mentions in-flight movies in use since the 60s (also check out this 2006 issue of Smallformat which has a 70s photo of a Super8 projector installed in a plane on the cover: [1]). What the 90s date is referring to are other technologies, such as live television and videogames on commercials flights. In any case, it should be made clear that in-flight movies were rather common at the time of the film's release. -- 2003:71:4E6A:C947:4D33:62C1:D5F9:7BD2 ( talk) 16:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Flatscreens were around long before 1972. The first effective flatscreen TV was the Aiken tube, in development since the early 1950s and built in 1958. Due to a UK lawsuit by Dennis Gabor, it never saw any use outside the military. The next step in IRL flatscreen design were TV plasma displays, which were invented as early as 1964. So flatscreen TV technology was definitely around by the film's release. Nor was 2001 the first sci-fi film in which flatscreen TV monitors were seen, as at least an earlier occurance is seen in the Polish-East German film First Spaceship on Venus (1960). -- 79.242.222.168 ( talk) 00:56, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
"Many reviewers thought the Russian scientists met by Dr. Floyd in the space station were affiliated with the then-extant Soviet Union.[49][50][51] Nonetheless, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. (Aeroflot, then the Soviet state airline, is now a privately owned carrier, but still considered the de facto national airline of the Russian Federation, much as Air Canada is considered the de facto national airline of Canada, even though it has been privately owned since 1988)."
"extant" should IMHO read "existant". Aeroflot IS still a state carrier, as the Russian Federation own the majority of Aeroflot stock. cf Wikipedia... And btw, they still have hammer and sickle in the company's logo :-) 134.247.251.245 ( talk) 11:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Under "science," "inaccuracies," the following passage is confusing, and probably a bit overly critical: "Also implausible is the Sun reaching its zenith so soon after a lunar sunrise, and the appearance of a crescent Earth near the Sun is in complete discontinuity with all previous appearances of Earth, whose position from any spot on the Moon varies only slightly due to libration." First, that sentence has too many complicated ideas crammed into a tight space. Second, I think the part about the sun is nitpicky, I would drop it entirely. We don't know how much time passed between the shot of the astronauts taking pictures with the monolith and the shot with the monolith, Sun, and Earth. It could've been a week, so the sun could've reached its zenith in that undetermined amount of time. We also don't know the exact angle between the camera, top of the monolith, and the sun, so the accuracy of the position of the Sun in that shot is debatable. Third, the part about the Earth needs some work. I think a clearer way to say what was intended is the following: The shot of the astronauts on the Moon going into the pit with the monolith in it shows the Earth near the horizon. The subsequent shot of the monolith, Sun, and Earth shows the Earth overhead. This is impossible, unless the monolith had moved a long way, and there's no indication of that. For any fixed location on the surface of the Moon, the position of the Earth doesn't change in the lunar sky, except for the nearly imperceptible movements caused by libration, because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Citizen127 ( talk) 00:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
The crescents in the opening scene are too thick. Just look at the Moon when it's actually some "distance" from the Sun. It's razor-thin.
The Sun would be absolutely blinding. You wouldn't see any stars. Even with just the Earth in view, you probably couldn't see many stars, if any.
The pen is not spinning about its center of mass.
The alignment and the relative sizes and distances of the moons of Jupiter at the very end of the Jupiter scene are completely off -- ridiculous, even.
When Moonwatcher looks up at the monolith and sees the Sun directly above, we see what looks like a sunset sky. The sky would be mostly the white glare from the blinding sun. The moon wouldn't be visible at all, and if it were, its crescent would be thinner. Yes, it looks like a sunrise or sunset directly above, with the Moon with too thick a crescent.
When Poole is drifting away, the stars keep moving down (or up?). The only way this would happen would be if the camera were "orbiting" him.
Each of Hal's eyes has a little yellow light at the center. Shouldn't there be a lens there? If there were a little yellow light at the center of your own eye, you wouldn't be able to see too well, would you, now? Betaneptune ( talk) 08:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
What about other content?, not really a good reason to add more. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 20:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
![]() | A fact from Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 5 November 2012 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
| ![]() |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Geophysicist Dr. David Stephenson in the Canadian TV documentary 2001 and Beyond notes that "Every engineer that saw it [the space station] had a fit. You do not spin on a wheel that is not fully built. You have to finish it before you spin it or else you have real problems".
Even if it is a circular rotating object, an orbital space station is not a wheel: it has no axle. So it is probably not a big issue to make it spin even though it is not fully built yet (no gravity, no frictions, no wheel balance needed). Actually, it is even possible to say that it is not spinning at all.
So it could even be seen as an accuracy: they purposedly made it uncomplete to show that it is possible to make it spin even if it is not finished. And it is very likely that Athur C. Clarke was aware of this.
88.179.202.15 ( talk) 09:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)
Harry Lange should be listed as a technical adviser because he was at Marshall Space Flight center with Fred Ordway. And hired by Kubrick ... Ordway and Lange as a pair. Yes he did production design but , even if Ordway was the lead, Lange was also an engineer as well as a crack technical illustrator, and did some technical advising too. aajacksoniv ( talk) 15:10, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
"The sequence in which Bowman re-enters Discovery shows him holding his breath just before ejecting from the pod into the emergency airlock. Doing this before exposure to a vacuum—instead of exhaling—would, in reality, rupture the lungs. In an interview on the 2007 DVD release of the film, Clarke states that had he been on the set the day they filmed this, he would have caught this error.[16][17] In the same scene, the blown pod hatch simply and inexplicably vanishes while concealed behind a puff of smoke.[18]" First that is not a 'puff of smoke" that is saturated cabin air in the POD that condenses as it meets the cold vacuum in the emergency air lock. Many discussions of where the air lock went center on the possibility that it rotated into a slot on the side of the POD for that purpose. This is very a reasonable engineering solution. Alas we don't have a reference for it. aajacksoniv ( talk) 22:49, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
Currently, the article claims in-flight movies didn't come about until the early to mid-90s, which is not the same as what the source used says. The source mentions in-flight movies in use since the 60s (also check out this 2006 issue of Smallformat which has a 70s photo of a Super8 projector installed in a plane on the cover: [1]). What the 90s date is referring to are other technologies, such as live television and videogames on commercials flights. In any case, it should be made clear that in-flight movies were rather common at the time of the film's release. -- 2003:71:4E6A:C947:4D33:62C1:D5F9:7BD2 ( talk) 16:14, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
Flatscreens were around long before 1972. The first effective flatscreen TV was the Aiken tube, in development since the early 1950s and built in 1958. Due to a UK lawsuit by Dennis Gabor, it never saw any use outside the military. The next step in IRL flatscreen design were TV plasma displays, which were invented as early as 1964. So flatscreen TV technology was definitely around by the film's release. Nor was 2001 the first sci-fi film in which flatscreen TV monitors were seen, as at least an earlier occurance is seen in the Polish-East German film First Spaceship on Venus (1960). -- 79.242.222.168 ( talk) 00:56, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
"Many reviewers thought the Russian scientists met by Dr. Floyd in the space station were affiliated with the then-extant Soviet Union.[49][50][51] Nonetheless, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. (Aeroflot, then the Soviet state airline, is now a privately owned carrier, but still considered the de facto national airline of the Russian Federation, much as Air Canada is considered the de facto national airline of Canada, even though it has been privately owned since 1988)."
"extant" should IMHO read "existant". Aeroflot IS still a state carrier, as the Russian Federation own the majority of Aeroflot stock. cf Wikipedia... And btw, they still have hammer and sickle in the company's logo :-) 134.247.251.245 ( talk) 11:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Under "science," "inaccuracies," the following passage is confusing, and probably a bit overly critical: "Also implausible is the Sun reaching its zenith so soon after a lunar sunrise, and the appearance of a crescent Earth near the Sun is in complete discontinuity with all previous appearances of Earth, whose position from any spot on the Moon varies only slightly due to libration." First, that sentence has too many complicated ideas crammed into a tight space. Second, I think the part about the sun is nitpicky, I would drop it entirely. We don't know how much time passed between the shot of the astronauts taking pictures with the monolith and the shot with the monolith, Sun, and Earth. It could've been a week, so the sun could've reached its zenith in that undetermined amount of time. We also don't know the exact angle between the camera, top of the monolith, and the sun, so the accuracy of the position of the Sun in that shot is debatable. Third, the part about the Earth needs some work. I think a clearer way to say what was intended is the following: The shot of the astronauts on the Moon going into the pit with the monolith in it shows the Earth near the horizon. The subsequent shot of the monolith, Sun, and Earth shows the Earth overhead. This is impossible, unless the monolith had moved a long way, and there's no indication of that. For any fixed location on the surface of the Moon, the position of the Earth doesn't change in the lunar sky, except for the nearly imperceptible movements caused by libration, because the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Citizen127 ( talk) 00:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
The crescents in the opening scene are too thick. Just look at the Moon when it's actually some "distance" from the Sun. It's razor-thin.
The Sun would be absolutely blinding. You wouldn't see any stars. Even with just the Earth in view, you probably couldn't see many stars, if any.
The pen is not spinning about its center of mass.
The alignment and the relative sizes and distances of the moons of Jupiter at the very end of the Jupiter scene are completely off -- ridiculous, even.
When Moonwatcher looks up at the monolith and sees the Sun directly above, we see what looks like a sunset sky. The sky would be mostly the white glare from the blinding sun. The moon wouldn't be visible at all, and if it were, its crescent would be thinner. Yes, it looks like a sunrise or sunset directly above, with the Moon with too thick a crescent.
When Poole is drifting away, the stars keep moving down (or up?). The only way this would happen would be if the camera were "orbiting" him.
Each of Hal's eyes has a little yellow light at the center. Shouldn't there be a lens there? If there were a little yellow light at the center of your own eye, you wouldn't be able to see too well, would you, now? Betaneptune ( talk) 08:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
What about other content?, not really a good reason to add more. Fountains of Bryn Mawr ( talk) 20:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)