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The pods in 2001 make no sense

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DWF has gotta be kidding with us. No sci fi fan can NOT know basic Newtonian physics and how they work in space.

Well... the moviemakers don't. And some people use those as references. Look how many people think the human body would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I'll give DWF some credit if he thought the Discovery was under acceleration at the time.

I never said the ship was under accerlation.

Official Name: USSC Discovery One
USSA "Registration Number": XD-1
Overall Length: 140.1 m
Overall Beam: 16.7 m
Overall Draft: 17 m
Command Module Diameter: 16.5 m
Reactor Module Length: 32.2 m
Reactor Module Draft: 8.8 m
Mass: 5,440 tonnes

Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?
 
DWF has gotta be kidding with us. No sci fi fan can NOT know basic Newtonian physics and how they work in space.

Well... the moviemakers don't. And some people use those as references. Look how many people think the human body would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I'll give DWF some credit if he thought the Discovery was under acceleration at the time.

I never said the ship was under accerlation.

Then no credit. That's the only way your argument would make sense.

Official Name: USSC Discovery One
USSA "Registration Number": XD-1
Overall Length: 140.1 m
Overall Beam: 16.7 m
Overall Draft: 17 m
Command Module Diameter: 16.5 m
Reactor Module Length: 32.2 m
Reactor Module Draft: 8.8 m
Mass: 5,440 tonnes

Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

It never will slow down. It will just keep moving in a straight line unless something else acts on it. As stated earlier, that's Newton's First Law of Motion. "An object in motion tends to stay in motion."

It doesn't matter how much it weighs. The only time that affects anything is the amount of force required to get it moving-- or to make it stop.

As I mentioned, that's why the Pioneer and Voyager probes are still moving. Yeah, they underwent a gravitational slingshot and whatever else, back in the 1970s. But since then, they've been on the same trajectory. Moving in a straight line. Without slowing down. Forever. Unless they hit something.

Why would Discovery be any different?
 
Look I understand that at the point in the movie it's not long til Dave disconnects Hal and right after that he got the message of the true mission of the Discovery, meaning that they had reached their destination and the ship was deceleration. But as I recall in the book they still hadd a ways to go to reach Saturn.
 
Well... the moviemakers don't. And some people use those as references. Look how many people think the human body would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I'll give DWF some credit if he thought the Discovery was under acceleration at the time.

I never said the ship was under accerlation.

Then no credit. That's the only way your argument would make sense.

Official Name: USSC Discovery One
USSA "Registration Number": XD-1
Overall Length: 140.1 m
Overall Beam: 16.7 m
Overall Draft: 17 m
Command Module Diameter: 16.5 m
Reactor Module Length: 32.2 m
Reactor Module Draft: 8.8 m
Mass: 5,440 tonnes

Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

It never will slow down. It will just keep moving in a straight line unless something else acts on it. As stated earlier, that's Newton's First Law of Motion. "An object in motion tends to stay in motion."

It doesn't matter how much it weighs. The only time that affects anything is the amount of force required to get it moving-- or to make it stop.

As I mentioned, that's why the Pioneer and Voyager probes are still moving. Yeah, they underwent a gravitational slingshot and whatever else, back in the 1970s. But since then, they've been on the same trajectory. Moving in a straight line. Without slowing down. Forever. Unless they hit something.

Why would Discovery be any different?

You just proved my point, the Discovery will continue in a straight line there's no possible one of the pods could keep pace with the ship long enough to for Frank or anybody else to fix anything. To reach the AE35 unit the pod has to travel midway along the ship then come to stop while the ship continues to move foward. As I said it's like stepping off of a moving train.
 
You just proved my point, the Discovery will continue in a straight line there's no possible one of the pods could keep pace with the ship long enough to for Frank or anybody else to fix anything. To reach the AE35 unit the pod has to travel midway along the ship then come to stop while the ship continues to move foward. As I said it's like stepping off of a moving train.
No, no it's not. It's really, really not, and Silvercrest didn't prove your point. The pod doesn't slow to a stop-stop, it slows to a relative-stop, in relation to Discovery. The pod moving along the spine of Discovery is more akin to moving around inside an airplane or the back of a pick-up truck.
 
You just proved my point, the Discovery will continue in a straight line there's no possible one of the pods could keep pace with the ship long enough to for Frank or anybody else to fix anything.

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But the pods will continue in a straight line too. They're going to inherit the motion of the Discovery because they were stored inside it. If it weren't for the friction of the air and ground, a person jumping off a train would continue to fly through the air right along side it. And before you say anything, no, flying the pod back to the antenna array and stopping it there won't change anything, because all the pod's thrusters are doing is decelerating it enough that the Discovery overtakes it a bit, then speeding it back up to match the velocity of the mothership.
 
DWF, why would the pod slow down? We both agree that Discovery will keep flying in a straight line without slowing down. The pod was inside of it, so it was subject to the same forces that accelerated Discovery, and is now flying at the same speed. If it exits Discovery, that doesn't change. It can't slow down on its own-- Newton's First Law again. No force has acted on it which would cause it to slow down. So why wouldn't it keep flying right alongside Discovery? They're on the same trajectory, meaning that they're practically motionless with respect to each other.
 
DWF has gotta be kidding with us. No sci fi fan can NOT know basic Newtonian physics and how they work in space.

Well... the moviemakers don't. And some people use those as references. Look how many people think the human body would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I'll give DWF some credit if he thought the Discovery was under acceleration at the time.

I never said the ship was under accerlation.

Official Name: USSC Discovery One
USSA "Registration Number": XD-1
Overall Length: 140.1 m
Overall Beam: 16.7 m
Overall Draft: 17 m
Command Module Diameter: 16.5 m
Reactor Module Length: 32.2 m
Reactor Module Draft: 8.8 m
Mass: 5,440 tonnes

Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

In space, NEVER.
Dude, really, pick up a science book.

Wait... you don't think there's AIR in space to slow the pod down, do you?
 
Well... the moviemakers don't. And some people use those as references. Look how many people think the human body would explode when exposed to the vacuum of space.

On the other hand, I'll give DWF some credit if he thought the Discovery was under acceleration at the time.

I never said the ship was under accerlation.

Official Name: USSC Discovery One
USSA "Registration Number": XD-1
Overall Length: 140.1 m
Overall Beam: 16.7 m
Overall Draft: 17 m
Command Module Diameter: 16.5 m
Reactor Module Length: 32.2 m
Reactor Module Draft: 8.8 m
Mass: 5,440 tonnes

Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

In space, NEVER.
Dude, really, pick up a science book.

Wait... you don't think there's AIR in space to slow the pod down, do you?

DUDE read my posts stop attacking me, if the ship is accerelating it's even worse since the pod will only travel as fast as the ship was when it left the ship.:brickwall:
 
^ We have.

Like I said, the Discovery never once fires its engines in the entirety of the first film. No mention is ever made of it changing speed, and it's never *shown* to change speed.
 
I never said the ship was under accerlation.



Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

In space, NEVER.
Dude, really, pick up a science book.

Wait... you don't think there's AIR in space to slow the pod down, do you?

DUDE read my posts stop attacking me, if the ship is accerelating it's even worse since the pod will only travel as fast as the ship was when it left the ship.:brickwall:

That's right. As fast as the ship was traveling. Meaning it won't slow down. And if the ship is not accelerating, the pod will still travel as fast as the ship is. So the ship won't leave it behind.
 
Hey, if he wants to pretend he has no knowledge of physics, it's only his own foot he's shooting. He's merely inviting us to talk down to him in the future.
 
This is the line that gives the troll away:
if the ship is accerelating it's even worse since the pod will only travel as fast as the ship was when it left the ship.

The bolded part gives away that he understands conservation of momentum.
 
You guys are being trolled.
More than likely. Especially since these basic principles were thoroughly explained 60 years ago in Destination Moon.
. . . Russians had spacewalked at that point, but I don't think any NASA guys had. We've seen enough spacewalks that we just assume you could do an EVA using a jetpack to do the repair, but I don't think Clarke thought that was possible at the time the story was written.
Astronaut Ed White became the first American to perform a spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission on June 3, 1965 -- right around the time 2001 began pre-production.
Been a while since I saw 2001, is there a scene in it of the Discovery firing its engines?
No.

As for the usefulness of the Discovery's EVA pods, there's an on-again, off-again discussion of that topic on this thread, beginning with post #29.
 
I never said the ship was under accerlation.



Try this question how long does ship weighing much take to slow down to a relative stop?

In space, NEVER.
Dude, really, pick up a science book.

Wait... you don't think there's AIR in space to slow the pod down, do you?

DUDE read my posts stop attacking me, if the ship is accerelating it's even worse since the pod will only travel as fast as the ship was when it left the ship.:brickwall:

I am reading your posts, and I don't mean to attack you, but you're adamant insistence on an incorrect assertion is maddening. Discovery was NOT accelerating at any time when the pods exited. The pods MUST continue traveling at the same speed as Discovery, period. The pods had to fire a hair of braking thrust to float back to the antenna - they actually had to slow down to get there - then matched speed with Discovery to hover near the antenna (the same tiny speed change needed to get there, but in reverse), then accelerated slightly to get back to the pod bay. There are no other forces acting upon either vehicle while coasting in space, well outside any planets immediate gravity. There's no air resistance to slow the pod down once it's outside the ship. The Discovery's speed does not change during the scene. There's no reason for the pod to lose any speed, inertia, whatever, once it leave the ship, unless the pilot does it intentionally with thrusters.
 
I'm going to post one more time, on the off-chance that we aren't being trolled.

DWF, one of the easiest ways to understand what's going on here is to use a classic thought-experiment conducted by Galileo himself.

Imagine a man is riding on a horse, holding a ball in his hand. He lets go of the ball. What happens?

So long as he is holding the balll, the ball continues to move trough the air at the same speed as the horse and rider. Once the ball is released, however, it begins to decelerate and fall to the ground, until it reaches the ground, and rolls to a stop.

It does this partly because of the friction from the air, but mostly because of the Earth's gravity.

Now: imagine that this same rider is moving through outer space in a straight line (leaving aside the question of how to ride a horse through space). The rider releases the ball. What happens?

Since there is no friction from the air, and no gravity to pull the ball off course, the ball will simply continue moving through space in a straight line at the same speed as the horse and rider.

And so long as it continues to do so, it will remain motionless relative to the rider. That is to say: it will not get any closer or farther away. From the rider's perspective, it will just seem to hang there, in space.

Now: replace the horse and rider with Discovery, and the ball with the pod. The pod uses its engine to leave the pod bay--at which point, it is travelling slightly faster than Discovery. Then, it decelerates until it is travelling at the same speed as Discovery.

At that point, the two spaceships will continue travelling through space, at the same speed, in a straight line, until one or both of them accelerates or decelerates, or changes course, or until they encounter some other force, like Jupiter's gravity.

During that time, their relative position will not change, and they will remain motionless relative to each other.

I really don't know how to make it any clearer than that.
 
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