Talk:Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey

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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: Did you know... that over fifty organizations helped director Stanley Kubrick to imagine the technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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)[reply]

The problem here isn't the basic physics. Of course the Station can be spun before it's finished. The problem is logistical. It's very much more problematic to build while spinning than while idle. Many thousands of tonnes of building materials must be distributed to their respective construction sites. If the Station is idle, the materials can be easily trucked to their sites without even docking in the hub. They can even be stored by just lashing them to the existing superstructure. With the existing structure under rotation, the materials must be docked and stored in the hub, then carried by conveyor from the hub to the perimeter. If construction is being handled by human laborers, then there's a significant safety issue to be dealt with. Anyone who slips off the rotating structure will be flung away tangentially. So, each worker must have firm surfaces to stand upon, safety rails, and so on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 21:58, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"The appearance of outer space is problematic, both in terms of lighting and the alignment of astronomical bodies. In the vacuum of outer space, stars do not twinkle." Just where do twinkling stars appear in the film? Reference? aajacksoniv (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

"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)[reply]

That's all very reasonable. The problem people have is in the fact that the door's explosive bolts are very plainly shown to the audience multiple times. If the door just slides away in an emergency, then why the bolts? Explosive bolts are to summarily break a hatch completely off. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 22:03, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

"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)[reply]