Hmm, misremembered that part. Hopefully the point still stands.
2001: A Space Odyssey
- Thread starter Sentience
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Peter Hyams should have had Scheider, Lithgow and Balaban wearing the iconic spacesuit design that we do see Dullea wearing.
Is that actually the same suit he wore in 2001? I don't notice any obvious differences...
I don’t think so, as I believe Kubrick had almost everything from the original production destroyed, supposedly so it could not be used in other productions.
That said, I am not certain…
Well, the blue suit later turned up on Babylon 5 (the "War Without End" two-parter) so I guess it's possible the red one also survived...
I believe the costumes were spared that, but gradually recycled/disposed of following their use in 2001's publicity campaign.
The 2010 production crew had to literally recreate the Discovery (inside and out) from scratch, iirc. They used blown-up stills from 2001 as reference, only updating/cutting corners where absolutely necessary (a keyboard at HAL's 'brain,' using CRT screen displays instead of Kubrick's 16mm rear projection, etc.). At any rate, close to 20 years later (2001 filmed in 1965-1966, 2010 in 1983-1984), they would have had to make a new suit for Keir Dullea regardless of if they had the original designs or film stills to work from. For comfort's sake, if nothing else.
I'm pretty sure the blue one was from 2010. In addition to the suit Dullea wore, the blue one was still hanging up in the pod bay (it must have been assigned to one of the science team).
And they did a fine job.
IMHO, Peter Hyams doesn't get anywhere near the credit that's due him. He was the screenwriter, producer, director, AND director of photography!
And, God help me, I'd LOVE to see what 2010 could have done with the centrifuge...
Yeah, I admit I didn't even think of that. Suits like that would naturally deteriorate over the years. So that's another point in Hyams' favor - that he managed to re-create Dave's suit so exactly.
For me the most impressive scene in 2010 was seeing the Discovery tumbling end over end. In the book it was caused by the centrifuge locking up and transferring the angular momentum to the ship.
I have to admit, the drastic difference in production design between 2001 and 2010 has always kinda bugged me, it seems like awfully drastic changes for 9 years. I understand it was the difference in the real world time between them, and the differences between the teams that made them, but it still bugs when looking at them purely within the world of the movies.
In the "Science Fiction" wing of the "Museum of Pop Culture" (formerly the "Experience Music Project"), is the USS Discovery model used in the filming of "2010" hanging from the ceiling. The placard underneath it says that the model was painstakingly recreated by examining stills and behind the scenes photos taken during the filming of "2001" as Stanley Kubrick had the original Discovery model as well as the plans/sketches destroyed after filming was completed
Apparently, if one does careful measurements, it's very difficult to figure out where the rotating section is in the command sphere. The best fit seems to be axially aligned with the long axis of the Discovery, which implies the angular momentum should have been translated into rotation about that axis. However, rotation around the long axis of an object is unstable. Tidal torque due to the gravitational fields of Io and Jupiter as well as energy dissipation from flexing of the ship could well lead to the rotation about the midsection we see in the movie 2010.
2001 a space odyssey - Why is the Discovery spinning end-over-end in 2010? - Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange
There is a real world example (Explorer 1) of the evolution of a satellite's spin state from about the axis of minimum moment of inertia to the axis of maximum moment of inertia. Arthur C Clarke would likely be well aware of this, given his scientific background and interest in space science.
Explorer 1 - Wikipedia
However, I'm not sure I believe the angular velocity of the Discovery in the movie. A 5m radius centrifuge producing a centripetal acceleration of say, 1.625 m/s² (equivalent to gravity on the Moon's surface) would need to rotate once every three seconds. For 9.81 m/s² (g), the rotation rate would be 2.46 times faster or about once per second. Let's assume the former.
The moment of inertia of the habitable centrifuge section is likely to be of the order of a hundred times smaller than that of the entire spacecraft - plus I expect there would also have to be a counter-rotating mass to prevent angular momentum transfer to the whole ship and to counteract gyroscopic precession. (Tangential rockets to accelerate or decelerate the section would negate this requirement - as for tip-jet powered helicopters that don't need a tail rotor - but there is no evidence of such a mechanism.) Anyway, ignoring any counter-rotating mass and assuming only the angular momentum of the section is transferred, I think the Discovery is likely rotating way too fast - probably for dramatic effect.
The Discovery in 2010 is exhibiting a maximum rotational radius of about 60 m and an angular velocity of about 0.16 rad/s so the maximal centripetal acceleration near the crew sphere would be about 1.5 m/s² - similar to gravity on the lunar surface. Possibly, this is not as difficult to overcome as the movie might suggest and the rotation rate would likely be a lot smaller anyway due to the relative moments of inertia I mentioned.
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I always thought the reason the Discovery was spinning around in 2010 was the duelling gravitational forces generated by Jupiter and Io, pulling on each end of the ship.
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I guess it depends on the location and the tidal forces involved. In the novel, I seem to recall that the Discovery was located at an Io-Jupiter Lagrange point and the reason given for it spinning was transfer of angular momentum from the internal centrifuge. In the movie, the Discovery seems to be orbiting Io, but I don't recall if the reason for the spinning was explained. Gravitational interaction with the other Galilean moons would also have a perturbative effect. It would require some sort of resonant pushing to generate a spin. It's perhaps more likely that it would become tidally locked to the nearest body (again, Io) than made to spin as shown*. It's a many-body problem and therefore probably inherently chaotic. One could perhaps simulate it in something like Universal Sandbox and any small deviation in the initial conditions might lead to wildly different results over time.
* Not sure about this: artificial satellites of the Earth have to have a deliberately imparted spin to keep them facing the Earth. For example, the ISS has been made to pitch by about 4 degrees per minute to maintain its orientation. Tidal effects on small and relatively rigid bodies take a very long time to have much effect. The Discovery, however, is about 120 m long with largish masses (tens/hundreds/thousands of metric tons?) at each end so tidal effects might be a bigger consideration than for the ISS, where very small tidal stresses exist.
* Not sure about this: artificial satellites of the Earth have to have a deliberately imparted spin to keep them facing the Earth. For example, the ISS has been made to pitch by about 4 degrees per minute to maintain its orientation. Tidal effects on small and relatively rigid bodies take a very long time to have much effect. The Discovery, however, is about 120 m long with largish masses (tens/hundreds/thousands of metric tons?) at each end so tidal effects might be a bigger consideration than for the ISS, where very small tidal stresses exist.
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It wasn't. Also, while in the novel, the ticking clock that Discovery was going to crash into Io before Discovery II got there was explained as the the American scientists not knowing the figures to correctly factor in atmospheric drag (or maybe it was a magnetic thing between Io and Jupiter?) so their projections were off, in the movie, they didn't find an explanation and implied it was a Spooky Monolith Thing.
Yeah, there's some race against the clock element to do with a decaying orbit - I've forgotten what it was though. In the novel, the Soviets have the Sakharov drive, which can get them to Jupiter more quickly. There's also a Chinese spacecraft, which lands on Europa only to be destroyed by indigenous life forms. This plot is replaced with one of the Leonov's probes getting destroyed, which stopped the movie getting bogged down with an unnecessary side plot as well as probably being a lot cheaper to film.
I wonder why the monolith even bothered destroying the probe (and Max's pod). Why would it concern itself with things that are clearly not a threat?
Especially since Dr. Floyd had earlier said that they threw all sorts of lasers, nuclear detonations, etc. at the other monolith and it didn't react at all?
Especially since Dr. Floyd had earlier said that they threw all sorts of lasers, nuclear detonations, etc. at the other monolith and it didn't react at all?
The destruction of Max's pod was more than likely accidental, since that burst of energy from the Monolith was Dave Bowman on his way to Earth.
I don't think so. Dave is so highly evolved that he would never leave behind any visual evidence when journeying from one place to another. He'd simply..."be" there. Instantaneously.
Like in the scene in Discovery's podbay when Dave is talking to Dr. Floyd, constantly shifting forms (normal Dave, old Dave, REALLY old Dave, and Starchild) at random. There's no pyrotechnics, he just changes instantly.
Plus, you'll notice that right before Max's pod is destroyed, the streams of energy on the monolith are converging right below where the pod is. I always took that to mean the monolith was deliberately targetting the pod.
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