• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

DISCOVERY - Ship Of The Week #25 6/13/2015

Discovery

  • Awesome!

    Votes: 23 85.2%
  • Rubbish!

    Votes: 2 7.4%
  • Meh...

    Votes: 2 7.4%

  • Total voters
    27

Admiral2

Admiral
Admiral
DISCOVERY XD-1



Excerpt from the final mission report to the NCA by Dr. Heywood Floyd:


“Of course it’s hard to accept that the apparent failure of the Discovery Jupiter mission can be blamed on the space craft. Discovery XD-1 was state of the art in terms of technology. Equipped with three one-person EVA pods, cyro-stasis chambers, centripedal effect-based artificial gravity and a Series 9000 Heuristic Algorithmic central computer system, Discovery was fully outfitted for any contingency that the command crew might have faced. Reports concerning the HAL 9000 computer’s apparent malfunction are currently under investigation, but even if the concerns are warranted, they do not explain what happened to the mission after Dr. Bowman disabled the system and proceeded to TMA-2 on his own.


“All telemetry up to the last departure of the EVA pod is under strict review, but it is my personal belief that the answer lies with what are Dave Bowman’s last transmitted words:


“‘My God...It’s full of stars!’”




THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA





2001: A Space Odyssey is the seminal science fiction movie directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. An allegorical mix of Nietzche and Homer’s Odyssey, 2001 is the story of Mankind from its earliest beginnings to the later Space Age as the Human Race interacts with constructs left by an alien race. The movie stars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, but the Discovery herself stars in the person of the HAL 9000 computer.



“Well, Hal, I’m damned if I can find anything wrong with it.”​
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyUMmNl4hk[/yt]​

 
Awesome. Definitely.

Especially since the centrifuge set was actually built, full-scale, all the way around. Pity they didn't get the chance to use it in 2010!
 
Awesome. Definitely.

Especially since the centrifuge set was actually built, full-scale, all the way around. Pity they didn't get the chance to use it in 2010!

I heard that all the blue prints for the model and sets had been destroyed so everything recreated for 2010 had to be done off measurements from footage off 2001.
 
Its over a decade and a half late in being built for one thing. I would rather us having spaceships rather than little craft that can only make orbit or the moon if pushed.
 
Double Awesome!! It's one of the most visually striking and aesthetically intriguing sci-fi ships there is.

(No Double Awesome!! so I had to go with just Awesome!)
 
Awesome. Definitely.

Especially since the centrifuge set was actually built, full-scale, all the way around. Pity they didn't get the chance to use it in 2010!


Agree, awesome!:techman:




As the NASA SSO[atmosphere test only] Enterprise was named after the 1701, does anyone know if the NASA SSO Discovery was named after the 2001 Discovery ?
 
Awesome. The long fly-by is the granddaddy of all movie spaceship beauty shots. I love the interiors, too. A classic.
 
Simple and elegant as all designs should be.

I could actually see this as a real world viable spacecraft.
 
Awesome. Definitely.

Especially since the centrifuge set was actually built, full-scale, all the way around. Pity they didn't get the chance to use it in 2010!

I heard that all the blue prints for the model and sets had been destroyed so everything recreated for 2010 had to be done off measurements from footage off 2001.

Sadly, true. :(

2010 gets a lot of shit from fans - most of it, IMHO, undeserved - but Peter Hyams definitely did his homework getting the Discovery re-created. True, the rear-projection-film readout screens were replaced by CRTs (and somehow the blue spacesuit lost its helmet*), but otherwise it's solid.

* No, Dave did NOT use the blue helmet in the original film when he broke into the ship. He used the GREEN helmet, part of the green suit which was stowed inside the emergency airlock.

More fun facts: The blue spacesuit AND the design of the Leonov were both used in Babylon 5. (The suit was worn by "The One" during B4/War Without End, and the Omega-class destroyers were obviously based on the Leonov)
 
Love the Discovery, but doesn't it also suffer from the "bigger on the inside" problem like the J2?


I mean, how do you squeeze the access way, HAL's brain center and the centrifugal control section between the pod bay (which seemingly takes up nearly half the sphere) and the observation/window section?
 
Last edited:
The pod bay and its doors are flush with the outside of the front spherical section, but there's still room for the centrifuge 'behind' the bay (stern-ward).

And the centrifuge itself isn't as big as it looks. I've seen pictures of the outside of the set, and it's smaller than what the movie makes it look like. (When a person is standing on the inner surface, the 'middle' is pretty close to the top of their head.) IMHO, there's plenty of room for the 'real' centrifuge inside the sphere.
 
Love the Discovery, but doesn't it also suffer from the "bigger on the inside" problem like the J2?


I mean, how do you squeeze the access way, HAL's brain center and the centrifugal control section between the pod bay (which seemingly takes up nearly half the sphere) and the observation/window section?

Artist Oliver Rennert has made a brilliant attempt, but he even admits he had to cheat a little. Still, when the artwork looks that good, I say "close enough for me!"
 
Here's a blueprint:

2001_centrifuge.gif


Bottom line, Green Shirt, is that Jupiter II was created by TV producers and Discovery XD-1 was created by a scientist who also happened to write science fiction. Nothing was an afterthought, and nothing went into it that was thought wouldn't fit.
 
Also, the onscreen Discovery was supposed to have those huge wings (that the book version has) which radiated heat away into space. But they had to drop those from the film, because viewers would have thought that the wings were for atmospheric flight.
 
Here's a blueprint:

2001_centrifuge.gif


Bottom line, Green Shirt, is that Jupiter II was created by TV producers and Discovery XD-1 was created by a scientist who also happened to write science fiction. Nothing was an afterthought, and nothing went into it that was thought wouldn't fit.

I wasn't trying to insult the designer of Discovery by comparing it to the lowly J2 - I'm sure it was the intention to make things fit. But I can't get past the fact that the pod bay set is more than somewhat larger than shows on the blueprint. That goes for the other areas as well, but to a lesser degree. Perhaps the problem (if any) lies with the builders of the miniature and set designers. But that's just my humble opinion.
 
Here's a blueprint:

2001_centrifuge.gif


Bottom line, Green Shirt, is that Jupiter II was created by TV producers and Discovery XD-1 was created by a scientist who also happened to write science fiction. Nothing was an afterthought, and nothing went into it that was thought wouldn't fit.

I wasn't trying to insult the designer of Discovery by comparing it to the lowly J2 - I'm sure it was the intention to make things fit. But I can't get past the fact that the pod bay set is more than somewhat larger than shows on the blueprint. That goes for the other areas as well, but to a lesser degree. Perhaps the problem (if any) lies with the builders of the miniature and set designers. But that's just my humble opinion.

No, the problem stems from optical illusion and perspective.

The illusion comes from the fact that scenes have to be filmed in the pod bay, so there's no way for the audience to see a fully enclosed space the way a character in the actual space would, one wall or the other always needing to be moved out of the camera's way. That means it's not possible for you to judge its actual size watching it on the screen, because in reality it's always part of a larger whole, namely a soundstage. (Ever hear someone who's been to the real Oval Office say it's smaller than it looks in movies or on TV? This is one big reason why.)

As for perspective: Okay, so the pod bay looks bigger than it does in the blueprint, but it's possible that's because the entire sphere is bigger than it looks in the blueprint, and everything still fits properly.

As Hal might say: "Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry much about it."
 
TRS had a roleplaying game based on the Star Frontiers rules for 2010 that came with deckplans and a cutaway maps of Discovery to show how things fit.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top