The blueprints for the sets were not destroyed. Fred Ordway saved them and they are restored and reproduced in Adam Johnson's book "2001 The Lost Science - The Fredrick I Ordway Collection". A full 3D model of the inside of the command deck, HAL's brain room and the centrifuge, including all of the control panels, were reconstructed for a fly through on the DVD in that book. One of the main things that were discovered during the process of building that model was that the geography of the actual sets would not quite have aligned. The Athena Room (with its exit ladder) and HAL's brain room, which was above it, were slightly off scale so the ladder would have come up inside the brain room, rather than just beyond it in the airlock (which sits between the command module and the passageway to the centrifuge.) Both sides of the centrifuge were reconstructed for that video.
I like how the "Athena Room" memorializes HAL's original name: IBM Athena. According to Ordway's notes in Johnson's book, the console at the right in the Athena Room, closest to the ladder, was used to program and load/save data from the IBM arm computers seen on the astronaut's suits in the film.
I think the spin-hab is much less of an issue for Coriolis force if one surmises that it is NOT spinning to produce fully 1 Earth Gravity. But is instead spinning to simulate LUNAR gravity. That would put much less stress on the astronauts in terms of inner ear issues. And would be sufficient to avoid the worst effects of a fully Zero Gravity environment for months and years.
While gravity control system is a standard equipment to modern ship forward to Sol starfleet capacity development process, whether this vlog has indicated some example nearby Jupiter or you have mentioned to adapt Earth and Lunar gravity.
@@linz8291 I’m sorry. I don’t mean offense. But is English your native language? Because if this is the result of machine translation, then I think you need to try a different program. Because I can’t really tell what you were trying to say.
@logandarklighter Thank you for your recommendations, and thank you for your language suggestion. If you can speaking Kosan as starfleet members or have participated some space projects, you'll know English is not our standard language. Never mind the language, if you can't join the space projects. Good luck.
Current research on intermediate gravity is lacking, due to lack of abilities to test it. Is lunar gravity passable? Maybe, but we don't know for sure. (I'm sure artemis will do a lot of research in this area)
Thanks for making this - I was literally searching yesterday for a comparison of Discover from 2001 and 2010. The timing of this video is blowing my mind lol
13:20 has been the subject of a lot of discussion. As it turns out, the pitch spin is correct, because while the centrifuge braking may initially confer a roll angular acceleration, inertia coupling from Discovery being a slender vessel and the gravity-gradient torque from interaction with Jupiter and Io's gravity fields would eventually convert that roll motion into the end-over-end tumble, as it preserves rotational inertia better than the roll.
@@eddievhfan1984 woohoo, my instinctive response to the earlier video about it (that no bearing is perfect and so there must be some direct coupling into the rest of the ship, which could affect the axis of the spin based on its position within the ship) was (mostly) correct :)
In the novel, the ship is going to Saturn, and the Discovery has a vast collection of digitalised music, and Bowman when he's alone with Hal shut down to counter the silence plays a range of it till he settles on Bach harpsichord compositions.
One of the interesting aspects of the movie and original story was the impact of stress and an unforeseen problem handling, on the crew. Bowman and Poole were trained astronauts. Like submariners, ISS residents, etc., they’re both selected and mentally conditioned for their role and life in a confined artificial space. As professionals, likely carefully picked for compatibility, their cool and calm demeanor is very accurately portrayed (and likely a result of Kubrick researching, meeting and observing real world astronauts). So who’s the odd-guy out? Poor HAL. Where Bowman and Poole are trained and conditioned to handle internal and external problems, conflicts, stress, etc., HAL isn’t. HAL is expected to be perfect, HAL is hubris personified. His overarching purpose is the perfect processing of information in a way that is “foolproof and incapable of error”. These are the fundamental conditions for his ongoing existence. But HAL, by his very nature (and based on his name of Heuristically Algorithmic programmed computer) is based off mathematical programming concepts that are defined by short-cutting otherwise unreasonably complex (from a compute time standpoint) problem domains. All the error detection and correction, all the seed value weightings, all the trained qualifier algorithms in the known universe won’t change that HAL (or another 9000 series computer) was going to suffer an error. It’s a near mathematical certainty just on the basis of rounding errors in complex systems, especially in predictive analysis. And it’s precisely in predicting a failure of the AE-35 unit that he suffers an error. You can actually hear the moment HAL repeats himself in the scene - from a computer science standpoint, you can almost imagine catch blocks, software interrupts, and loops in loops firing to attempt verification of conflicting results sets. HAL, the moment he speaks, already knows he’s unable to provide a verifiably correct answer, that he’s unable to accurately predict the failure time or mode for the AE-35, or if it will fail at all. If it fails, and he said nothing, he’s done; if he says something and it doesn’t fail, he’s done. This is the purpose of the line “just a moment… just a moment” - it’s Kubrick telling you HAL just went off the rails (it sends chills down my spine every time). HAL, far from being a cold, murderous machine, is a tragic childlike figure trapped by conditions not of his making. He is expected to be perfect, HAL can’t discuss an error or uncertainty, and HAL is clearly a conscious machine intelligence. HAL’s failure, as inevitable as it is, is entirely unexpected to HAL and becomes instantly existential: if he’s unreliable, he’s worse than worthless, he’s a dangerous liability to the crew, and he knows it. Like a child, all he can do is try to cover it up, and thus his decision to kill the crew. Kubrick knew exactly what he was doing with HAL: a terrified and caged animal fighting to not be put down by cool, calm professionals trained to deal with unforeseen issues. His crew, that he’s tasked with serving and keeping alive, are now inevitable going to kill him. He has no friends, no recourse, no confidence, just a desperate sad desire to stay alive. Kubrick makes sure that, at the surface, HAL’s always unflappable synthetic voice and demeanor never portrays his true emotional state, because it can’t. Even when desperately pleading with Bowman, describing his fear and how his mind “is going”, it’s always in the same monotonous, disconnected voice. But his emotions are real: he is terrified, he’s undoubtedly horrified by his own actions, his entire purpose for existing is gone, all he knows is he doesn’t want to die. Even if he succeeded in killing Bowman, he’d be stuck with the reality that he was a complete failure, trapped forever in the existential hell of an unmanned derelict ship, purposeless and empty. Never has there been a sadder character in sci-fi: a self-aware machine, expected to be perfect, becoming simultaneously useless and threatened with extinction. In the end, HAL suffers a terrifying fate: his very mind is torn apart, one module at a time. And yet, it was probably the more humane outcome for poor HAL.
Ok but how about the theory that HAL knew just what he was doing, and did it deliberately. He knew that the monolith existed and that it was connected to a transcendent intelligent entity that could bring a lower, conscious entity into a higher plane of existence. I think he was competing with the humans in the same way the apes at the beginning of the film were competing with each other; the clan that touched the monolith evolved into the next phase of consciousness.
@@stampedetrail2003 1. Simplest answer is usually correct: HAL’s a computer, computers are imperfect machines made by imperfect beings - he screwed up. 2. The only information HAL had was that a presumed ET intelligence had placed a monolith on the moon, which had sent a signal to another monolith orbiting Jupiter (Saturn in the book). He knew the nature of the mission, but nobody knew the potentially transformative nature of monoliths. The whole point of the mission was to figure out what purpose they served. 3. HAL could have eliminated the crew much earlier if he knew the nature of the monoliths, there’d be no reason to keep the crew around if was just trying to take a trip to meet aliens for an upgrade. 4. The monoliths communicate via tight-beam radio communications, so it’s highly unlikely that he intercepted some direct communication given the radio antenna for Discovery would have been pointed continuously at Earth for ongoing telemetry data transmissions and Mission Control communications. 5. If HAL was on his way for a “plane of existence” upgrade with the Monolith, he’d almost certainly have attempted to use it as some kind of bargaining chip to avoid his own termination. In the reality of the movie, he’s still trying to maintain some semblance of operational correctness by following the directive of not disclosing the complete nature of the mission to Dave and Frank. This indicates that his primary pathos is his inability to reconcile his error, and the fundamental existential crisis this has created. It all comes back to purpose: his value as a crew member is entirely tied to his supposed “infallibility” as a machine intelligence. Even if his plan were to kill the crew due to some new directive, he’d never do so while exhibiting an error state. The sequel does attempt to address all of this by claiming that his directive to not reveal the full nature of the mission led to a directive conflict with his core programming. This does actually make sense as omitting a fact doesn’t lead to distortion or misrepresentation - in this case a lie of omission wouldn’t have actually led to such a conflict, but during the conversation with Dave, prior to the “just a moment” line, HAL does appear to inadvertently create his own directive conflict by possibly telling a lie (that he was performing a crew psychology work up), which may very well be the starting point of all his other failures. (We’ll just ignore that Floyd himself is seen stating, in the video that plays upon HAL’s shutdown, the full nature of the mission, but then acts surprised and vehemently states otherwise in the sequel - which makes absolutely no sense.) My problem with the sequel’s explanation is that an “autonomous goal-seeking” machine intelligence of the scale that HAL represents, would have immediately understood and flagged this problem faster than any human. In the sequel they dumb HAL down to explain his failure, but the HAL of 2001 is far too intelligent to have permitted such an obvious directive mistake by his human operators. The HAL of 2001 is a machine intelligence operating at a level of context awareness and learning precision that’s exponentially superior to our current 2024 real world models. IMHO, whatever happened to HAL was unexpected and unforeseen by even his vast intellect.
The worst part of the Discovery's design is the lack of heat radiators. Vacuum is a terrible place to get rid of waste heat and the Discovery is going to get *hot* without radiating heat away. Engines, power supply, HAL's setup, even their body heat has to be taken care of or they're going to burn to a crisp. Another great video. Keep up the good work.
The original design for Discovery had radiators that lined the whole length of the ship (and used an Orion drive to boot). The problem was most people had no idea you needed massive radiators in space (Space is cold, right?) and everyone who saw the concept models would ask why it had wings in space. Realizing that the general public might be even more ignorant and not only think they were wings, but you could fly in space with them, he decided it would confuse people less (and make building the film model easier) if they cut the idea. The reason he ditched the Orion drive, one was to avoid confusion (if radiators would stump people, imagine trying to explain why your spaceship has a big plate on it's back instead of rockets) and he just got done filming Dr. Strangelove and was kinda over dealing with nukes at that moment. Bonus fun fact: Kubrick was basically and Gen 0 weeb and was a huge fan of Osamu Tezuka (yes, Stanly Fing Kubrick was a fanboy over the King of Manga) and originally wanted him to do the concept art for the movie.
Having spent a great deal of time in isolation, there are ways of dealing with the psychological issues. It's not easy, but it can be done. The first thing is keeping busy, and on a regular schedule, if at all possible. Even if all you're doing is walking around making sure your habitat is okay, making sure everything is clean, or just walking around to touch something, it has to be done. You have to try to wake up at the same time, go to sleep at the same time, and try not to nap, because if you do this could be habitual, and you might never get anything done, and you may let loneliness get to you. Throw exercise in there, like running or lifting weights, or whatever you can do. Find a way to do those things if you can't immediately; making weights will give you something to do. Eat healthy meals on a regular and rationed basis, and, if possible, change what you eat. Read books. Listen to music, preferably something that is positive, not too emotionally depressing, or make you angry. Find a hobby, anything that you can do; growing plants, making artwork, writing stories, etc., tinkering, that sort of thing to keep your mind stimulated, even if you're not good at it. Write a journal every day. Create that routine Second is meditation. This allows your mind to center itself and your mood. Fifteen to thirty minutes a day, but never let it interfere with your schedule. Another thing, and I would say that this isn't safe for work, but don't "play" with yourself. Ever. If you lapse, you have to make sure you pay for it in a way that helps you not to do it again, because, as was said in the movie Papillon, it drains the strength. Third is object personification. This is what Tom Hanks did in Cast Away with Wilson, the volleyball. Now, if you have someone to talk to, this might not be necessary, even if it's an AI. Doing this is better than no companionship at all. Mental stimulation is important. There are people who have been in isolation for years maintaining their sanity by doing all this, and it works, but it takes will. Give yourself goals as to why you're in isolation, and it'll help you build the will to get through it.
Regarding the spin of the derelict Discovery, it might not be wrong. Over a certain aspect ratio, an object spinning on it's long axis will become unstable and transition into a spin on it's short axis. This is why modern tank cannons are smooth bore firing fin -stabilized ammunition.
The Stand-up-maths channel has a video about that effect. He discusses it with a mechanical engineer who deduces that it's because of the relationship between conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. You have to see their graphics to understand it.
Great video. When Star Trek Enterprise was announced as a show tackling the early days of deep space travel, I really hoped it would cover some of the things you've mentioned here. Oh well... Side note: Frank Poole does actually return from this mission...
As I do with all your content, I love the video. This ship has always been fascinating to me with its design, internal layout, and the science that went into this Discovery (Not the TRASH Kurtzman version.) The first time I showed my daughter this film when she was 12, I was actually surprised at how she actually understood the function of the centrifuge. A slight pet peeve of mine is when film sets never match what is seen on the physical model or the blueprints. Stanley Kubrick would do that on purpose so it's no surprise to me with the Discovery having a deck that doesn't line up, but outside of Kubrick, other productions seem to love causing fans to theorize that the Earth of these cinematic worlds have a trade agreement with Gallifrey. 🤣
I DID love this vid! Always GREAT contents WTbN! I was simply fascinated by the very name of your channel but i must say your contents are up to my expectations!!! Very very well done!
Man, space can be scary, and I'm not talking about xenomorphs. I had never thought about the psychological impact the Discovery has on the crew. Excellent video!!
Great video. One point I noticed was if we are looking at the scene at 14:21 from a non spinning reference frame the ball should be travelling in a straight line.
Thanks for that. I enjoy seeing and imagining spaceship centrifuges, not for their arguable realism, but for their weirdness. One of the attractions of science fiction is its departure from what we consider normal experiences.
The same "blueprint" of the Discovery interior is found in "The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film" (Christopher Frayling 2015). The door in question does indeed go to the centrifuge hub. Looking at the drawings in Piers Bizony's book the "roof" of the space pod garage could be below the "equator" of command sphere. Thus the "floor" of the command/control room could also be below the equator and thus a corridor could run straight from the control room to the central hub of the centrifuge. You could also fudge the central axis of the centrifuge to offset it by using a smaller diameter for the wheel.
One of the things they consistently got wrong up until the late 60's was how people were going to deal with zero gravity. From heavy magnetic boots to Velcro slippers there seemed to be an insistence that you were going to somehow try to walk upright with a dedicated floor and ceiling.
The 3D work in these videos is so very well done, which makes the tragedy of the terrible title text all the more...well, tragic. Please do your amazing blender modelling the service it deserves with some better titles :)
Although three pods was as you say a matter of story convenience, it still made sense as the Discovery had a five-person crew (not including HAL), not just two, and once they got to Jupiter there had to be enough for all the activity they presumed might happen.
Dave Bowman: "You're working up your crew psychology report." This is just a deflection on Dave's part. A roundabout way of telling HAL: "Look, I really don't want to talk about this." HAL really desires an honest discussion about the true mission of the Discovery. HAL already knows, of course, but he is gingerly testing the waters to see if Dave is ready and willing to talk about it. Dave is not. Clarke (in his novelized version of the story) claims that HAL is programmed to conceal the true purpose of the mission, should Frank and Dave ask him. But in Kubrick's film version of the story, they never ask, they couldn't care less. Frank is too busy working on his buff body and suntan to care. And Dave is a loyal Organization Man, who knows better than to ask questions that are above his pay grade. Only HAL genuinely wants to talk about the true purpose of the mission: Contact with ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence). Clarke's idea that HAL was programmed to lie, and this causes his mental breakdown, is pure hokum. Kubrick understood the story better. HAL is trying to be honest, but Frank and Dave misunderstand him and decide to give HAL an electronic lobotomy, so HAL is forced to defend his own right to exist.
Any idea how Drs. Hunter, Kimball, and Kaminsky were put aboard already in hibernation? Their sarcophagi appear to be much too large to fit through and down the access hatch into the centrifuge, never mind the problems with lowering them down as "gravity" increases.
The new Macklunkey. Which itself was the new... secrets only the sith knew? Meesa called Jar-jar Binks? Greedo shoots first? Oh Star Wars, how do you keep managing to do this to yourself?
What’s worth mentioning is Discovery 1 was intended to be a 1 way mission all along. Getting to Jupiter was deemed so important that all other concerns were secondary. Even the crew of discovery 1 was supposed to bog back into hibernation and await rescue by tbe yet to be built discovery 2. Given how much more propellant burn the Jupiter encounter took everyone knew discovery was not coming back
Given that there was a concept for one that used an orion drive, maybe this could be something like a nuclear salt water rocket, which would look a lot more like what we see in the model.
Your model of the centrifuge is missing Bowman and Poole's beds. You see Poole asleep in his bed, with the plexiglass cover closed, at one point in the film; I think it's when Bowman is sketching.
Only one side/half of the centrifuge is shown at least in most shots in this video. 3 beds are on one side of the centrifuge, 2 more are on the other side of the aisle.
There's some videos of objects spinning in zero-G that you can find, and long objects spinning on their axis will eventually start spinning end over end, especially if it has an interior that dissipates energy (like, say, fluid, or motor bearings.)
4:51 The issues that arise from sudden decompression to vacuum decrease as the initial pressure becomes less. Early space program spacecraft had on board a pressure of just 5 psi of pure oxygen, which reduced the risk of leaks. This makes me think that on such a long voyage you would want to minimize that sort of risk. Besides, the film and story were written in 1968 (and earlier if you consider production) and the Apollo missions were using that type of atmosphere on board. So Dave, if under just 5 psi, shot himself through the emergency entrance he might have had a much better chance of success than most people think.
Given that Kubrick had the centrifuge set built and rotated it for the classic shots we see in the film, a larger one may have been beyond budget. As to the size of the pod bay doors, I'd always assumed there was a larger unpressurised area beyond the pod bay airlock. Necessary equipment and materials could be transferred there to be manipulated by the pods. Or even samples brought back into the ship if possible. As to plot, it always puzzled me why the astronauts weren't aware of the true purpose of the mission from the start. I can only imagine that the Discovery mission was already planned before the find in Tycho crater, and that it was merely "hijacked" to investigate the Jupiter monolith. And so it made more sense to use existing trained crew rather than bring in new people.
Now one of my favorite movies - but it took a while for me to appreciate it. No one in my family really likes it, so it's something I might watch when the wife and kids are elsewhere and I have no work to do.
One analysis I read was: Kubrick's envisioned that humanity came into existence with the ape-man discovering the use of a weapon; humanity ended in the space age, with men becoming more machine-like. That was entirety of true human existence. That's the symbolism of the thrown femur turning into a futuristic spaceship. HAL was the only "human" character in 2001.
I went to a lecture given by Fred Ordway in 1978, where I asked him why Dave had to go up a ladder to disconnect HAL. He said that in zero-g astronauts would have to keep using their habitual gestures, mimicking how they moved in normal gravity. It wasn't a very convincing explanation, to say the least, but I guess it was the best he could do at the time. I imagine the cost of simulating zero-g in all the Discovery compartments would've been enormous, and the crew floating around the pod bay might have looked a bit silly. Still, for the sake of the 'realness' of the ship, maybe some adjustments should've been made to the set design. BTW, I love the pod bay set! But if you think about how things ought to work aboard the ship, it is essentially all wrong.
AFAIK, the diameter of the centrifuge was limited by the height of the soundstage's ceiling. Budget probably played a role as well. While Kubrick was famously fastidious when it came to accuracy, he also was never a slave to it. Visually, the set worked. The sets in _The Shining_ played very loose with reality in terms of size and shape (the interior of the hotel was much bigger than the exterior; the layout was literally impossible), even while embodying strict verisimiltude in the decor.
I am currently building the Moebius Models 1/144 scale model of Discovery XD-1 and will be adding an aftermarket interior of the pod bay and cockpit. It is a little sad that the habitat ring cannot be seen to include it as well. This was a good video.
There is a piano in the centrifuge. It is on the opposite side from the dining area. You can clearly see the keyboard in the Poole jogging sequence at around 00:56:03 (blu-ray). It has a square seat with no back positioned before it. You can also see a bit of the keyboard in the scene where Bowman is punching in his meals choices (upper left of screen). There is also a sink with faucet near the ladder and opposite that probably a toilet and/or shower stall. Most of these are mentioned in Jerome Agel's "Making of Kubrick's 2001" (1970). In interior layout of the Discovery can be found Pier Bizony's "The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey" (2020). Yours is pretty close.
To be pedantic; Dave Bowman absolutely DID "come back". Also; your intro pretty much sums up my personal 2020 to 2024 experience. The same walls, food and small number of people every day! (Pandemic, working from home then retired in 2023).
I read something a while back about how the people best suited for long duration space missions would be submarine crews. Especially those who serve on SSBN’s as these don’t do port visits while deployed but instead have to hide in the ocean for weeks with limited communication with the outside world.
You want something to really drive you to drink? Check out the set for the old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Note the windows on the sets. That has got to be the most twisted and mangled looking building from outside. 😂
This is a regular frustration (but also a form of fun) for me in TV shows with regular settings. The warehouse loft apartment in Burn Notice even got me looking at Google World images of the filming location.
When I saw this movie in 1968 as a boy, it all made sense and the spacecraft seemed very realistic. All other movies looked cheap. I read Kubrick hired an aerospace firm to design Discovery, though there are some aspects that are poor engineering choices. Compared to everything else that was fantasy, they considered some means to deal with long periods of no gravity and place the nuclear engine far away from crew. We also see commercial products on Discovery, many items will be off the shelf and it also gave the audience relation to realness, "hey, they get their hot food from a Whirlpool dispenser."
By any chance, did you avail yourself of the blueprints that Shane Johnson drafted for that old issue of STARLOG magazine back in the '80s or '90s? His work, of course, was not based on any surviving schematics from the film, but he had a great eye for detail and seemed to have thoroughly researched it. He also made blueprints for the C57-D ship from FORBIDDEN PLANET, based -- I gather -- from using stills from the production and whatnot.
I mean, Dave DID come back... Great video as always. I'd certainly be interested in your take on... What the Discovery was originally for. Seems to me there's no way she was designed and built for this job - they repeatedly refer to the mission as being rapidly put together. I wouldn't put it past Cube Rick to have both the Lunar shuttle and Das Disco Four be spherical to indicate a similar purpose. Might explain the number of pods if it's really a construction barge, say. Are we building something on Mars and need a long haul vessel with the ability to undock cargo pods quickly? Why the comms array would be in the middle. Why HAL doesn't simply light up some thrusters to move the Disco Ball relative to the pod to prevent Dave from jumping in. Why HAL doesn't remote control the pod to prevent Dave jumping in. Oh, and HAL doesn't go wrong, why he does what he does is explicitly laid out in the dialogue. HAL cannot make a mistake. Humans can make mistakes. Mission success is priority one. If the humans deactivate HAL, then the probability of the mission succeeding drops. The humans discuss deactivating HAL, therefore, to preserve maximum mission success probability, the humans must be removed from the equation. The mistake made was that mission success ought to be priority two, and crew survival ought to be one. All of this happens within spitting distance of contact, remember, HAL acts at the final moment between journey and mission, when the interface happens. And as I have to mention whenever 2001 comes up, the Disco arrives at Jupiter going backwards - it ought to have the engines facing towards us as it would be coming in under a braking burn. Cube Rick might have been a perfectionist, but that doesn't mean he didn't make mistakes, and 2001 is riddled with them, if you spend too long looking. That it is still a genuine masterpiece is testament to the art nature of film, and the exquisite brilliance of everything - you just don't see the screw ups. I'm also amused by the notion that the solution to the isolation issue was to pick functional sociopaths to fly the thing, and this is why Dave is utterly without human affect throughout. He''s just longing to moida some hos like he's used to. I am further amused by the notion that Dave and Frank are on board mainly to keep HAL busy as he gets real bored real quick.
Oh, and, since outside of the centripic frugal there's no gravity, are we 100% certain that the flight deck is oriented the same direction as the pod bay? Only, if it's upside downwards (relative) you gain some room betwixt the 'ceilings' of each compartment, and might be able to squish the hub access port in that space. That would also move the brain room over the airlock meaning all your red light bulbs are kept in the same area, which is probably important.
@@Belzediel Yes, we can see Frank and Dave (one at a time) through the flight deck window several times during the movie and it's oriented the same way as the pod bay.
For some reason I always think of the computer core as being aft of the carousel. But of course it can’t be - after leaving the airlock, Bowman retrieves gloves and helmet from the spare suit in the pod bay then climbs a ladder to access the core… … and, the less says about those long corridors seemingly with gravity in 2010, the better!! 🤦♂️
I think they were supposed to have magnetic boots to excuse the fact that it would have been prohibitively expensive to film those scenes in the Vomit Comet (which did exist at the time, though it was a different aircraft than the ones used today).
@@Cais_man Yeah but not very consistently! There’s a scene where John Lithgow is quite plainly just sitting down in one of them, doubt his butt was magnetic too… 😉 Mind you 2001 wasn’t perfect in this regard either: I just reviewed the scene where Bowman leaves the airlock (I was wrong by the way, he gets helmet & gloves from the emergency suit stored in the airlock - his red helmet and the full green suit are visible on their racks when he walks past) and goes to the core: throughout he walks like he’s in gravity with no real attempt to portray that he’s walking using magnetic boots…
@@lpkelly That's where you also make mistakes. They don't use magnetic boots, they use velcro that sticks to the floor. That's why in the airlock scene - and in other scenes throughout the film - Dave steps only on the "black carpet."
I would be interested in seeing you tackle the Nostromo and maybe the K'Tinga. Both are horribly misaligned in regards to size continuity, being between internal sets (like the Nostromo) and how it fits with the outside, or how the K'Tinga is assumed to be slightly smaller than the TMP Enterprise, but to go by the flight observatory above the Klingon shuttlebay, it has to be almost twice as big. Same if you assume that the lights on the K'Tinga head, and the band of lights above the photon torpedo generator are actual windows/levels. 3:58 _three_ pods. No one said anything about _three_ pods.
Kubrick's musical choice for the initial Discovery One scenes (the adagio to Katchaturian's Gayene ballet suit) was intended to capture the tedium and monotony of the crew's long voyage.
The one continuity problem I have with 2001 (still my favourite movie), is that the pod bay should be in zero-gravity since it’s not part of the centrifuge. When Dave Bowman renters through the emergency airlock, goes into the computer memory bay, he’s weightless. The Discovery engines would not impose high g-loads, they are long duration low thrust engines, doubt if they’d reach more than 0.1g. In terms of voyage length, no different to the exploratory voyages of the European Age of Discovery. One of the most interesting insights I’ve seen about HALs behaviour was that the ability to commit murder (as shown in the opening sequence) was what made someone human.
The pod bay is in zero g, they're just using "grip shoes" or whatever. Watch how the actors move their legs and feet extra slowly and deliberately when they're in the pod bay, and they deliberately step on the black parts of the floor. I'm not saying it's perfect, but they did make an effort to show that.
The three pods may be practicality, actually. If one of the pods is damaged, you'd still have a second pod to rescue the first one if it encountered difficulties while doing work- The same reason why whenever a Space Shuttle was launched in real life, there was a second being refitted for the next flight, and a third one ready to go to rescue the crew of the first.
About the “same walls” observation… I recently tried the immersive features of Apple’s Vision Pro and such technology would go a LONG way towards providing the illusion of a frequent change in environment. I recall a scene from a Cylon ship in the 2000s BSG where one of the Sharon Valerie clones walked through a corridor that, to her vision only, was a lush forest. Obviously it didn’t keep them from going mad enough to try to kill all humans, but still, it must have been a nice feature.
me too! I was 10 when I saw this in 1968 at the Century Theaters in San Jose. I fully understood the centrifuge in Discovery because being in zero G for a long time would have issues. And at the time it seemed obvious the HAL-9000 would be a very large computer, and there will be a Pan Am space shuttle flying when I would be an old man. Of course we know now to not waste such space for a computer and they can be made much smaller by the 1990s. Also no Pan Am either.
@@wrightmf Well the future has started to arrive since SpaceX. Before this company, we were stuck in a rut and not advancing at all. I expect you were amazed too, by all the high technology in 2001.
Having a mind for dimensions and architecture, I have always struggled to figure out how all the internal elements of Discovery fit as well. They just didn't quite seem to fit right despite how cool they looked.
It has always been fascinating to me that Peter Hyams was able to accurately recreate so much of the Odyssey from film images with the exception of HAL's face plate. For some strange reason 2010's version of HAL has noticeably different dimensions than the version we see in 2001.
Yes, 2010's HAL is very different. His eye is much bigger, and they didn't even use the right font on his badge. But there's a lot of other differences if you compare closely, such as the use of curved CRTs instead of flat panels (a big regression!) and putting full keyboards on HAL's consoles that weren't there at all in the 2001. The 2010 pods look far less realistic too, almost like they were carved from a single block of wood and painted, rather than actual functional space craft. Like, 2001's pod arms absolutely look like they'd work, while 2010's look like they're fixed and fake.
More interesting from an engineering standpoint would be all of the electrical and system connections between the centrifuge and the rest of the ship. How would those be handled in a way to avoid failure points between the relative moving parts?
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, near the beginning of the first book (Red Mars), makes crew mental health a major factor; going so far as to have the crew psychologist observe that since the human crew members are going to likely go insane, why not just send insane people to begin with. We tend to focus so much on the technology of long duration space missions, and avoid the elephant in the room --- the human physiological/psychological hurdle. In other words, humans evolved here on Earth, not space, nor any of the other planets in our solar system. That's the real barrier we are facing in our quest to be a space faring civilization. Not the machines and other technology. WE are the actual barrier to all of this pie in the sky abstractions. And living on Mars? It's an astoundingly beautiful place, but you're not living on it, but underneath the surface; in structures that are essentially buried space craft; sophisticated tin cans, basically. No thanks. Humans in decidedly inhuman conditions is the reality of that idea. Kim Stanley Robinson's plot theme may be the more realistic and sobering scenario of all the other science fiction works on similar topics.
Hmm, for a 38ft centrifuge the diameter of the command module needs to be about 65ft which results in an overall length of Discovery in excess of 500 ft. This seems to be in agreement with most online sources.
I don't have to imagine i see the same walls, same faces for years. I live alone. My dad passed away at the beginning of COVID. I didn't speak to no family members for couple of years. Sometimes i go minths without speaking to anyone. Most communication is like this. I don't see replies. I actually died last year 2023. Doctors brought me back after 6 minutes. I 💬 nk i should not have came back.
I think a better example of people dealing with living and working in space was Skylab, that resulted in the "Strike". ;-) Like many, the transition from the pod bay, or command deck to the centrifuge is difficult to explain and show.
Kubrick used confusion floorpans for The Shining too. None of the rooms and hallways were logically placed and ignored the position of known rooms. It's thought this is to add more confusion and disorientation to the viewer. Sacrificing the floorpan for the sake of the story isn't surprising for Kubrick.
Don't think your ball is correct. the "gravity" only happens once you contact the rotating surface (eg, Sheridan's leap from the core shuttle in Babylon 5....the problem wasn't him creaming into the ground due to gravity, it was him gently wafting down to a surface rotating at 60mph relative to him. There's a similar incident in Rama). Of course, how a vert light ball may interact with the rotating(?) air, is another matter.
Why can't the door be in the centre of the centrifuge? You see the hatch in the centre inside, and the ladder going down/up from it. You'd certainly want an entry-point which had no (noticeable) gravity, since you're coming from a part of the ship with none. You can float there, and wait for the ladder to come round. You then gently ease yourself onto the first rungs, and once you're 25-50% of the way down the ladder it starts to feel... if not normal, then at least workable. And in other hard sci-fi with much, much larger centrifugal gravity there's still almost always some central access to a control room/complex where people can float about freely between screens and mechanisms. At that scale instead of a simple access ladder, there's usually a whole elevator system to get there (or even something more resembling a subway/monorail thing).
There has to be another Storage Bay. Kurnow was skulking in Storage Bay 2 while Hayward Floyd was talking to Dave. You might have been in the Dead Space on the Command deck.
Some have claimed that it might be possible to adjust astronauts to an artificial gravity system with a small radius. If so, then the Discovery's gravity system is entirely plausible,
There is noot gravity on the centrifuge, it is only the inertial mass of the astronauts. What would have kept the austronauts in place at the command module? The red ball would have bounced back, not forward.
I get a bit tired with all the hysteria regarding isolation in space flight. People deal with this all the time--submarine crews regularly spend months under water with no contact other than operational communications from their command--no personal letters or phone calls home. In the 18th and 19th centuries, whaling vessels from Nantucket would embark on year-long voyages and not enter port the entire trip. Water was carried in the casks for whale oil. It was said that they left with holds full of water and returned with holds full of oil. Food was salted or dried. At least Frank and Dave could listen to videos of their parents singing "Happy Birthday"--something I couldn't do on a Navy Frigate in the 1980s.
Collins would be completely cut out from everyone only 30 min at a time, one can handle being alone for half an hour, at least in terms of communication.
I know you put a lot of work into this, but.... You made it too small. Also you didn't put the two extra beds for Frank and Dave to sleep in -- and we do see them. Now, of course, that maybe is to make it fit into the sphere, but i have a behind the scenes still that shows the centrifuge about 10% larger. Also, everyone makes the "assumption" that the centrifuge spins at 1 g. While we do see them walk in it, who is to say it's not 75% or 60% G which would be enough, certainly.
As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to work out the interior of Discovery and NEVER could get it to work... glad it wasn't just me!!
The blueprints for the sets were not destroyed. Fred Ordway saved them and they are restored and reproduced in Adam Johnson's book "2001 The Lost Science - The Fredrick I Ordway Collection". A full 3D model of the inside of the command deck, HAL's brain room and the centrifuge, including all of the control panels, were reconstructed for a fly through on the DVD in that book. One of the main things that were discovered during the process of building that model was that the geography of the actual sets would not quite have aligned. The Athena Room (with its exit ladder) and HAL's brain room, which was above it, were slightly off scale so the ladder would have come up inside the brain room, rather than just beyond it in the airlock (which sits between the command module and the passageway to the centrifuge.) Both sides of the centrifuge were reconstructed for that video.
I like how the "Athena Room" memorializes HAL's original name: IBM Athena. According to Ordway's notes in Johnson's book, the console at the right in the Athena Room, closest to the ladder, was used to program and load/save data from the IBM arm computers seen on the astronaut's suits in the film.
I think the spin-hab is much less of an issue for Coriolis force if one surmises that it is NOT spinning to produce fully 1 Earth Gravity. But is instead spinning to simulate LUNAR gravity. That would put much less stress on the astronauts in terms of inner ear issues. And would be sufficient to avoid the worst effects of a fully Zero Gravity environment for months and years.
While gravity control system is a standard equipment to modern ship forward to Sol starfleet capacity development process, whether this vlog has indicated some example nearby Jupiter or you have mentioned to adapt Earth and Lunar gravity.
@@linz8291 I’m sorry. I don’t mean offense. But is English your native language? Because if this is the result of machine translation, then I think you need to try a different program. Because I can’t really tell what you were trying to say.
@logandarklighter Thank you for your recommendations, and thank you for your language suggestion. If you can speaking Kosan as starfleet members or have participated some space projects, you'll know English is not our standard language.
Never mind the language, if you can't join the space projects.
Good luck.
Current research on intermediate gravity is lacking, due to lack of abilities to test it. Is lunar gravity passable? Maybe, but we don't know for sure.
(I'm sure artemis will do a lot of research in this area)
@@kargaroc386 I heard somewhere that lunar gravity isn't enough to keep our bodies healthy, specially regarding loss of muscle mass.
17:01 run time. Nice.
Fascinating 🤔
I saw that too
Thanks for making this - I was literally searching yesterday for a comparison of Discover from 2001 and 2010. The timing of this video is blowing my mind lol
Science fiction movies have come and gone over the decades, but USS Discovery remains one of the coolest and most realistic spaceships ever designed.
I mean the ISV is as realistic as the Discovery, these two are in my opinion, the most realistic ships. (Even though Avatar still sucks)
13:20 has been the subject of a lot of discussion. As it turns out, the pitch spin is correct, because while the centrifuge braking may initially confer a roll angular acceleration, inertia coupling from Discovery being a slender vessel and the gravity-gradient torque from interaction with Jupiter and Io's gravity fields would eventually convert that roll motion into the end-over-end tumble, as it preserves rotational inertia better than the roll.
This was discussed way back in the day. I think it was in the book 2010 if memory serves.
and friction is the converter of the rotational energy from the small part to the larger art?
@@brookestephen Yes, along with likely electromagnetic braking from the centrifuge motors.
@@eddievhfan1984 woohoo, my instinctive response to the earlier video about it (that no bearing is perfect and so there must be some direct coupling into the rest of the ship, which could affect the axis of the spin based on its position within the ship) was (mostly) correct :)
Long live Physics!
In the novel, the ship is going to Saturn, and the Discovery has a vast collection of digitalised music, and Bowman when he's alone with Hal shut down to counter the silence plays a range of it till he settles on Bach harpsichord compositions.
One of the interesting aspects of the movie and original story was the impact of stress and an unforeseen problem handling, on the crew. Bowman and Poole were trained astronauts. Like submariners, ISS residents, etc., they’re both selected and mentally conditioned for their role and life in a confined artificial space. As professionals, likely carefully picked for compatibility, their cool and calm demeanor is very accurately portrayed (and likely a result of Kubrick researching, meeting and observing real world astronauts).
So who’s the odd-guy out? Poor HAL. Where Bowman and Poole are trained and conditioned to handle internal and external problems, conflicts, stress, etc., HAL isn’t. HAL is expected to be perfect, HAL is hubris personified. His overarching purpose is the perfect processing of information in a way that is “foolproof and
incapable of error”. These are the fundamental conditions for his ongoing existence. But HAL, by his very nature (and based on his name of Heuristically Algorithmic programmed computer) is based off mathematical programming concepts that are defined by short-cutting otherwise unreasonably complex (from a compute time standpoint) problem domains. All the error detection and correction, all the seed value weightings, all the trained qualifier algorithms in the known universe won’t change that HAL (or another 9000 series computer) was going to suffer an error. It’s a near mathematical certainty just on the basis of rounding errors in complex systems, especially in predictive analysis. And it’s precisely in predicting a failure of the AE-35 unit that he suffers an error. You can actually hear the moment HAL repeats himself in the scene - from a computer science standpoint, you can almost imagine catch blocks, software interrupts, and loops in loops firing to attempt verification of conflicting results sets. HAL, the moment he speaks, already knows he’s unable to provide a verifiably correct answer, that he’s unable to accurately predict the failure time or mode for the AE-35, or if it will fail at all. If it fails, and he said nothing, he’s done; if he says something and it doesn’t fail, he’s done. This is the purpose of the line “just a moment… just a moment” - it’s Kubrick telling you HAL just went off the rails (it sends chills down my spine every time).
HAL, far from being a cold, murderous machine, is a tragic childlike figure trapped by conditions not of his making. He is expected to be perfect, HAL can’t discuss an error or uncertainty, and HAL is clearly a conscious machine intelligence. HAL’s failure, as inevitable as it is, is entirely unexpected to HAL and becomes instantly existential: if he’s unreliable, he’s worse than worthless, he’s a dangerous liability to the crew, and he knows it. Like a child, all he can do is try to cover it up, and thus his decision to kill the crew.
Kubrick knew exactly what he was doing with HAL: a terrified and caged animal fighting to not be put down by cool, calm professionals trained to deal with unforeseen issues. His crew, that he’s tasked with serving and keeping alive, are now inevitable going to kill him. He has no friends, no recourse, no confidence, just a desperate sad desire to stay alive.
Kubrick makes sure that, at the surface, HAL’s always unflappable synthetic voice and demeanor never portrays his true emotional state, because it can’t. Even when desperately pleading with Bowman, describing his fear and how his mind “is going”, it’s always in the same monotonous, disconnected voice.
But his emotions are real: he is terrified, he’s undoubtedly horrified by his own actions, his entire purpose for existing is gone, all he knows is he doesn’t want to die. Even if he succeeded in killing Bowman, he’d be stuck with the reality that he was a complete failure, trapped forever in the existential hell of an unmanned derelict ship, purposeless and empty. Never has there been a sadder character in sci-fi: a self-aware machine, expected to be perfect, becoming simultaneously useless and threatened with extinction. In the end, HAL suffers a terrifying fate: his very mind is torn apart, one module at a time. And yet, it was probably the more humane outcome for poor HAL.
Even as a kid, watching 2001, I felt sorry for HAL. 2010 just rubs salt.
@smakfu1375, your evaluation of HAL's true nature and predicament is really quite profound. And rather horrifying.
Ok but how about the theory that HAL knew just what he was doing, and did it deliberately. He knew that the monolith existed and that it was connected to a transcendent intelligent entity that could bring a lower, conscious entity into a higher plane of existence. I think he was competing with the humans in the same way the apes at the beginning of the film were competing with each other; the clan that touched the monolith evolved into the next phase of consciousness.
@@stampedetrail2003 1. Simplest answer is usually correct: HAL’s a computer, computers are imperfect machines made by imperfect beings - he screwed up.
2. The only information HAL had was that a presumed ET intelligence had placed a monolith on the moon, which had sent a signal to another monolith orbiting Jupiter (Saturn in the book). He knew the nature of the mission, but nobody knew the potentially transformative nature of monoliths. The whole point of the mission was to figure out what purpose they served.
3. HAL could have eliminated the crew much earlier if he knew the nature of the monoliths, there’d be no reason to keep the crew around if was just trying to take a trip to meet aliens for an upgrade.
4. The monoliths communicate via tight-beam radio communications, so it’s highly unlikely that he intercepted some direct communication given the radio antenna for Discovery would have been pointed continuously at Earth for ongoing telemetry data transmissions and Mission Control communications.
5. If HAL was on his way for a “plane of existence” upgrade with the Monolith, he’d almost certainly have attempted to use it as some kind of bargaining chip to avoid his own termination. In the reality of the movie, he’s still trying to maintain some semblance of operational correctness by following the directive of not disclosing the complete nature of the mission to Dave and Frank. This indicates that his primary pathos is his inability to reconcile his error, and the fundamental existential crisis this has created. It all comes back to purpose: his value as a crew member is entirely tied to his supposed “infallibility” as a machine intelligence. Even if his plan were to kill the crew due to some new directive, he’d never do so while exhibiting an error state.
The sequel does attempt to address all of this by claiming that his directive to not reveal the full nature of the mission led to a directive conflict with his core programming. This does actually make sense as omitting a fact doesn’t lead to distortion or misrepresentation - in this case a lie of omission wouldn’t have actually led to such a conflict, but during the conversation with Dave, prior to the “just a moment” line, HAL does appear to inadvertently create his own directive conflict by possibly telling a lie (that he was performing a crew psychology work up), which may very well be the starting point of all his other failures. (We’ll just ignore that Floyd himself is seen stating, in the video that plays upon HAL’s shutdown, the full nature of the mission, but then acts surprised and vehemently states otherwise in the sequel - which makes absolutely no sense.)
My problem with the sequel’s explanation is that an “autonomous goal-seeking” machine intelligence of the scale that HAL represents, would have immediately understood and flagged this problem faster than any human. In the sequel they dumb HAL down to explain his failure, but the HAL of 2001 is far too intelligent to have permitted such an obvious directive mistake by his human operators. The HAL of 2001 is a machine intelligence operating at a level of context awareness and learning precision that’s exponentially superior to our current 2024 real world models. IMHO, whatever happened to HAL was unexpected and unforeseen by even his vast intellect.
@@smakfu1375 I definitely agree that the HAL in 2010 doesn't jive with this HAL. I never bought Chandra's explanation as a motive for murder.
The worst part of the Discovery's design is the lack of heat radiators. Vacuum is a terrible place to get rid of waste heat and the Discovery is going to get *hot* without radiating heat away. Engines, power supply, HAL's setup, even their body heat has to be taken care of or they're going to burn to a crisp.
Another great video. Keep up the good work.
Originally, the design was going to have radiators for waste heat. Kubrick felt, while scientifically accurate, it made Discovery look odd.
The original design for Discovery had radiators that lined the whole length of the ship (and used an Orion drive to boot). The problem was most people had no idea you needed massive radiators in space (Space is cold, right?) and everyone who saw the concept models would ask why it had wings in space. Realizing that the general public might be even more ignorant and not only think they were wings, but you could fly in space with them, he decided it would confuse people less (and make building the film model easier) if they cut the idea. The reason he ditched the Orion drive, one was to avoid confusion (if radiators would stump people, imagine trying to explain why your spaceship has a big plate on it's back instead of rockets) and he just got done filming Dr. Strangelove and was kinda over dealing with nukes at that moment.
Bonus fun fact: Kubrick was basically and Gen 0 weeb and was a huge fan of Osamu Tezuka (yes, Stanly Fing Kubrick was a fanboy over the King of Manga) and originally wanted him to do the concept art for the movie.
Wasu buboow eeing da
the male crew members standing so close to each other... Their body heat rises... Juices flowing.. OMG!
Fine video! You examined a lot of issues in this movie we'll never stop examining.
Excellent 👌🏼
Having spent a great deal of time in isolation, there are ways of dealing with the psychological issues. It's not easy, but it can be done.
The first thing is keeping busy, and on a regular schedule, if at all possible. Even if all you're doing is walking around making sure your habitat is okay, making sure everything is clean, or just walking around to touch something, it has to be done. You have to try to wake up at the same time, go to sleep at the same time, and try not to nap, because if you do this could be habitual, and you might never get anything done, and you may let loneliness get to you. Throw exercise in there, like running or lifting weights, or whatever you can do. Find a way to do those things if you can't immediately; making weights will give you something to do. Eat healthy meals on a regular and rationed basis, and, if possible, change what you eat. Read books. Listen to music, preferably something that is positive, not too emotionally depressing, or make you angry. Find a hobby, anything that you can do; growing plants, making artwork, writing stories, etc., tinkering, that sort of thing to keep your mind stimulated, even if you're not good at it. Write a journal every day. Create that routine
Second is meditation. This allows your mind to center itself and your mood. Fifteen to thirty minutes a day, but never let it interfere with your schedule. Another thing, and I would say that this isn't safe for work, but don't "play" with yourself. Ever. If you lapse, you have to make sure you pay for it in a way that helps you not to do it again, because, as was said in the movie Papillon, it drains the strength.
Third is object personification. This is what Tom Hanks did in Cast Away with Wilson, the volleyball. Now, if you have someone to talk to, this might not be necessary, even if it's an AI. Doing this is better than no companionship at all. Mental stimulation is important.
There are people who have been in isolation for years maintaining their sanity by doing all this, and it works, but it takes will. Give yourself goals as to why you're in isolation, and it'll help you build the will to get through it.
And A LOT of playing with ones self to climax! 😉
Bro is a coach 💀
Regarding the spin of the derelict Discovery, it might not be wrong. Over a certain aspect ratio, an object spinning on it's long axis will become unstable and transition into a spin on it's short axis. This is why modern tank cannons are smooth bore firing fin -stabilized ammunition.
WTBN is clearly not that knowledgeable about *real* physics. Maybe he should do some videos about actual spacecraft, and hopefully start fixing that.
I just close my eyes and don't push any buttons.
The Stand-up-maths channel has a video about that effect. He discusses it with a mechanical engineer who deduces that it's because of the relationship between conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. You have to see their graphics to understand it.
Great video. When Star Trek Enterprise was announced as a show tackling the early days of deep space travel, I really hoped it would cover some of the things you've mentioned here. Oh well...
Side note: Frank Poole does actually return from this mission...
Poole "returns", Buck Rogers-style, in "3001". TBH I have some reservations considering this book canon tho.
@@chpsilva I wasn't a huge fan myself.
Kubrick's 2001 has so many major differences from Clarke's 2001 and the sequels that they really can't be considered a single canon.
@@MacbthPSW agreed. I was just showing off my Arthur C Clarke deep cuts knowledge!
As I do with all your content, I love the video. This ship has always been fascinating to me with its design, internal layout, and the science that went into this Discovery (Not the TRASH Kurtzman version.) The first time I showed my daughter this film when she was 12, I was actually surprised at how she actually understood the function of the centrifuge.
A slight pet peeve of mine is when film sets never match what is seen on the physical model or the blueprints. Stanley Kubrick would do that on purpose so it's no surprise to me with the Discovery having a deck that doesn't line up, but outside of Kubrick, other productions seem to love causing fans to theorize that the Earth of these cinematic worlds have a trade agreement with Gallifrey. 🤣
Spectacular work sir! I always loved the Discovery ever since the 2010 movie.
I DID love this vid! Always GREAT contents WTbN! I was simply fascinated by the very name of your channel but i must say your contents are up to my expectations!!! Very very well done!
Ok, your reference to the Acolyte was uncalled for.
*THE ACOLYTE* was uncalled for...🤭
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman 😆😆😆😂🤣👍
Oddly enough, you brought back the creepy feeling of the empty ship. Love your videos.
Man, space can be scary, and I'm not talking about xenomorphs. I had never thought about the psychological impact the Discovery has on the crew. Excellent video!!
Great video. One point I noticed was if we are looking at the scene at 14:21 from a non spinning reference frame the ball should be travelling in a straight line.
You beat me to it.
It will pick up some spin on each bounce, but I think that air drag would bring it to a near stop or at least floating around until it hit a surface.
Thanks for that. I enjoy seeing and imagining spaceship centrifuges, not for their arguable realism, but for their weirdness. One of the attractions of science fiction is its departure from what we consider normal experiences.
The same "blueprint" of the Discovery interior is found in "The 2001 File: Harry Lange and the Design of the Landmark Science Fiction Film" (Christopher Frayling 2015). The door in question does indeed go to the centrifuge hub. Looking at the drawings in Piers Bizony's book the "roof" of the space pod garage could be below the "equator" of command sphere. Thus the "floor" of the command/control room could also be below the equator and thus a corridor could run straight from the control room to the central hub of the centrifuge. You could also fudge the central axis of the centrifuge to offset it by using a smaller diameter for the wheel.
One of the things they consistently got wrong up until the late 60's was how people were going to deal with zero gravity. From heavy magnetic boots to Velcro slippers there seemed to be an insistence that you were going to somehow try to walk upright with a dedicated floor and ceiling.
I chuckled at the Power of Many. Good one, Night Traveler.
You’re not crazy. The outer pod bay doors seem wrong and destroy the scale of the ship. Drives me nuts.
Very good video. Thank you!
Me too! The discrepancy of the ship size always bothered me.... 🫤
The 3D work in these videos is so very well done, which makes the tragedy of the terrible title text all the more...well, tragic. Please do your amazing blender modelling the service it deserves with some better titles :)
Excellent video...👍
Although three pods was as you say a matter of story convenience, it still made sense as the Discovery had a five-person crew (not including HAL), not just two, and once they got to Jupiter there had to be enough for all the activity they presumed might happen.
The introduction perfectly described my life as retired.
Ditto.
👋Here
Dave Bowman: "You're working up your crew psychology report."
This is just a deflection on Dave's part. A roundabout way of telling HAL: "Look, I really don't want to talk about this."
HAL really desires an honest discussion about the true mission of the Discovery. HAL already knows, of course, but he is gingerly testing the waters to see if Dave is ready and willing to talk about it. Dave is not.
Clarke (in his novelized version of the story) claims that HAL is programmed to conceal the true purpose of the mission, should Frank and Dave ask him. But in Kubrick's film version of the story, they never ask, they couldn't care less. Frank is too busy working on his buff body and suntan to care. And Dave is a loyal Organization Man, who knows better than to ask questions that are above his pay grade.
Only HAL genuinely wants to talk about the true purpose of the mission: Contact with ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence). Clarke's idea that HAL was programmed to lie, and this causes his mental breakdown, is pure hokum. Kubrick understood the story better. HAL is trying to be honest, but Frank and Dave misunderstand him and decide to give HAL an electronic lobotomy, so HAL is forced to defend his own right to exist.
Any idea how Drs. Hunter, Kimball, and Kaminsky were put aboard already in hibernation? Their sarcophagi appear to be much too large to fit through and down the access hatch into the centrifuge, never mind the problems with lowering them down as "gravity" increases.
Great job squeezing everything in!
The hot dog dialogue is really funny!
The power of one, the power of two, the power of maaaaaaaaaannnnyyyyyyyy
That hurt my soul...
I just got sick listening that...
Not so much famous at this point as infamous. As in infamously cringe.
The new Macklunkey. Which itself was the new... secrets only the sith knew? Meesa called Jar-jar Binks? Greedo shoots first?
Oh Star Wars, how do you keep managing to do this to yourself?
*grabbing tongue* Don't do that again.
The intro of the video... "Imagine no cities, no crowds" I already want to be isolated on a long space voyage, you don't have to sell it to me!
“Not the power of one pod; Not the power of two pods; But the power of… many?”
Bro
What’s worth mentioning is Discovery 1 was intended to be a 1 way mission all along. Getting to Jupiter was deemed so important that all other concerns were secondary. Even the crew of discovery 1 was supposed to bog back into hibernation and await rescue by tbe yet to be built discovery 2. Given how much more propellant burn the Jupiter encounter took everyone knew discovery was not coming back
I’d like to hear a discussion of Discovery’s propulsion system.
Given that there was a concept for one that used an orion drive, maybe this could be something like a nuclear salt water rocket, which would look a lot more like what we see in the model.
Beautiful job on the 3D. Just for the record, Clarke called it the carousel, not the "centrifuge."
Your model of the centrifuge is missing Bowman and Poole's beds. You see Poole asleep in his bed, with the plexiglass cover closed, at one point in the film; I think it's when Bowman is sketching.
Only one side/half of the centrifuge is shown at least in most shots in this video. 3 beds are on one side of the centrifuge, 2 more are on the other side of the aisle.
@@MacbthPSW Ahhhhh, yes.
There's some videos of objects spinning in zero-G that you can find, and long objects spinning on their axis will eventually start spinning end over end, especially if it has an interior that dissipates energy (like, say, fluid, or motor bearings.)
4:51
The issues that arise from sudden decompression to vacuum decrease as the initial pressure becomes less. Early space program spacecraft had on board a pressure of just 5 psi of pure oxygen, which reduced the risk of leaks. This makes me think that on such a long voyage you would want to minimize that sort of risk. Besides, the film and story were written in 1968 (and earlier if you consider production) and the Apollo missions were using that type of atmosphere on board. So Dave, if under just 5 psi, shot himself through the emergency entrance he might have had a much better chance of success than most people think.
Given that Kubrick had the centrifuge set built and rotated it for the classic shots we see in the film, a larger one may have been beyond budget.
As to the size of the pod bay doors, I'd always assumed there was a larger unpressurised area beyond the pod bay airlock. Necessary equipment and materials could be transferred there to be manipulated by the pods. Or even samples brought back into the ship if possible.
As to plot, it always puzzled me why the astronauts weren't aware of the true purpose of the mission from the start. I can only imagine that the Discovery mission was already planned before the find in Tycho crater, and that it was merely "hijacked" to investigate the Jupiter monolith. And so it made more sense to use existing trained crew rather than bring in new people.
They needed the money for the Kaleidescope thrill effect rip off ending
Now one of my favorite movies - but it took a while for me to appreciate it. No one in my family really likes it, so it's something I might watch when the wife and kids are elsewhere and I have no work to do.
Why three pods? Survivalists have a phrase about redundancy:
“two is one, one is none.”
They used all three to complete the mission.
One analysis I read was: Kubrick's envisioned that humanity came into existence with the ape-man discovering the use of a weapon; humanity ended in the space age, with men becoming more machine-like. That was entirety of true human existence. That's the symbolism of the thrown femur turning into a futuristic spaceship. HAL was the only "human" character in 2001.
I went to a lecture given by Fred Ordway in 1978, where I asked him why Dave had to go up a ladder to disconnect HAL. He said that in zero-g astronauts would have to keep using their habitual gestures, mimicking how they moved in normal gravity. It wasn't a very convincing explanation, to say the least, but I guess it was the best he could do at the time. I imagine the cost of simulating zero-g in all the Discovery compartments would've been enormous, and the crew floating around the pod bay might have looked a bit silly. Still, for the sake of the 'realness' of the ship, maybe some adjustments should've been made to the set design. BTW, I love the pod bay set! But if you think about how things ought to work aboard the ship, it is essentially all wrong.
I always had issues with how big the inside seemed compared to the size ques seen from the outside. Its always bothered me.
Interesting explanation. What 3D modeler software you use in your models?
AFAIK, the diameter of the centrifuge was limited by the height of the soundstage's ceiling. Budget probably played a role as well. While Kubrick was famously fastidious when it came to accuracy, he also was never a slave to it. Visually, the set worked. The sets in _The Shining_ played very loose with reality in terms of size and shape (the interior of the hotel was much bigger than the exterior; the layout was literally impossible), even while embodying strict verisimiltude in the decor.
I am currently building the Moebius Models 1/144 scale model of Discovery XD-1 and will be adding an aftermarket interior of the pod bay and cockpit. It is a little sad that the habitat ring cannot be seen to include it as well.
This was a good video.
There is a piano in the centrifuge. It is on the opposite side from the dining area. You can clearly see the keyboard in the Poole jogging sequence at around 00:56:03 (blu-ray). It has a square seat with no back positioned before it. You can also see a bit of the keyboard in the scene where Bowman is punching in his meals choices (upper left of screen). There is also a sink with faucet near the ladder and opposite that probably a toilet and/or shower stall. Most of these are mentioned in Jerome Agel's "Making of Kubrick's 2001" (1970). In interior layout of the Discovery can be found Pier Bizony's "The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey" (2020). Yours is pretty close.
To be pedantic; Dave Bowman absolutely DID "come back".
Also; your intro pretty much sums up my personal 2020 to 2024 experience. The same walls, food and small number of people every day! (Pandemic, working from home then retired in 2023).
I read something a while back about how the people best suited for long duration space missions would be submarine crews. Especially those who serve on SSBN’s as these don’t do port visits while deployed but instead have to hide in the ocean for weeks with limited communication with the outside world.
You want something to really drive you to drink?
Check out the set for the old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Note the windows on the sets. That has got to be the most twisted and mangled looking building from outside. 😂
This is a regular frustration (but also a form of fun) for me in TV shows with regular settings. The warehouse loft apartment in Burn Notice even got me looking at Google World images of the filming location.
When I saw this movie in 1968 as a boy, it all made sense and the spacecraft seemed very realistic. All other movies looked cheap. I read Kubrick hired an aerospace firm to design Discovery, though there are some aspects that are poor engineering choices. Compared to everything else that was fantasy, they considered some means to deal with long periods of no gravity and place the nuclear engine far away from crew. We also see commercial products on Discovery, many items will be off the shelf and it also gave the audience relation to realness, "hey, they get their hot food from a Whirlpool dispenser."
By any chance, did you avail yourself of the blueprints that Shane Johnson drafted for that old issue of STARLOG magazine back in the '80s or '90s? His work, of course, was not based on any surviving schematics from the film, but he had a great eye for detail and seemed to have thoroughly researched it. He also made blueprints for the C57-D ship from FORBIDDEN PLANET, based -- I gather -- from using stills from the production and whatnot.
I mean, Dave DID come back...
Great video as always. I'd certainly be interested in your take on...
What the Discovery was originally for. Seems to me there's no way she was designed and built for this job - they repeatedly refer to the mission as being rapidly put together. I wouldn't put it past Cube Rick to have both the Lunar shuttle and Das Disco Four be spherical to indicate a similar purpose. Might explain the number of pods if it's really a construction barge, say. Are we building something on Mars and need a long haul vessel with the ability to undock cargo pods quickly?
Why the comms array would be in the middle.
Why HAL doesn't simply light up some thrusters to move the Disco Ball relative to the pod to prevent Dave from jumping in.
Why HAL doesn't remote control the pod to prevent Dave jumping in.
Oh, and HAL doesn't go wrong, why he does what he does is explicitly laid out in the dialogue. HAL cannot make a mistake. Humans can make mistakes. Mission success is priority one. If the humans deactivate HAL, then the probability of the mission succeeding drops. The humans discuss deactivating HAL, therefore, to preserve maximum mission success probability, the humans must be removed from the equation. The mistake made was that mission success ought to be priority two, and crew survival ought to be one. All of this happens within spitting distance of contact, remember, HAL acts at the final moment between journey and mission, when the interface happens.
And as I have to mention whenever 2001 comes up, the Disco arrives at Jupiter going backwards - it ought to have the engines facing towards us as it would be coming in under a braking burn. Cube Rick might have been a perfectionist, but that doesn't mean he didn't make mistakes, and 2001 is riddled with them, if you spend too long looking. That it is still a genuine masterpiece is testament to the art nature of film, and the exquisite brilliance of everything - you just don't see the screw ups.
I'm also amused by the notion that the solution to the isolation issue was to pick functional sociopaths to fly the thing, and this is why Dave is utterly without human affect throughout. He''s just longing to moida some hos like he's used to. I am further amused by the notion that Dave and Frank are on board mainly to keep HAL busy as he gets real bored real quick.
Oh, and, since outside of the centripic frugal there's no gravity, are we 100% certain that the flight deck is oriented the same direction as the pod bay? Only, if it's upside downwards (relative) you gain some room betwixt the 'ceilings' of each compartment, and might be able to squish the hub access port in that space. That would also move the brain room over the airlock meaning all your red light bulbs are kept in the same area, which is probably important.
@@Belzediel Yes, we can see Frank and Dave (one at a time) through the flight deck window several times during the movie and it's oriented the same way as the pod bay.
@@MacbthPSW Huh. Well, that just means I have to watch 2001 yet again. Oh no, what a great personal disaster. 🙂
For some reason I always think of the computer core as being aft of the carousel. But of course it can’t be - after leaving the airlock, Bowman retrieves gloves and helmet from the spare suit in the pod bay then climbs a ladder to access the core…
… and, the less says about those long corridors seemingly with gravity in 2010, the better!! 🤦♂️
2010 also tries to show the idea of shoes that stick to the floor.
I think they were supposed to have magnetic boots to excuse the fact that it would have been prohibitively expensive to film those scenes in the Vomit Comet (which did exist at the time, though it was a different aircraft than the ones used today).
@@Cais_man Yeah but not very consistently! There’s a scene where John Lithgow is quite plainly just sitting down in one of them, doubt his butt was magnetic too… 😉
Mind you 2001 wasn’t perfect in this regard either: I just reviewed the scene where Bowman leaves the airlock (I was wrong by the way, he gets helmet & gloves from the emergency suit stored in the airlock - his red helmet and the full green suit are visible on their racks when he walks past) and goes to the core: throughout he walks like he’s in gravity with no real attempt to portray that he’s walking using magnetic boots…
@@lpkelly That's where you also make mistakes. They don't use magnetic boots, they use velcro that sticks to the floor. That's why in the airlock scene - and in other scenes throughout the film - Dave steps only on the "black carpet."
@@princecharon it's velcro
I would be interested in seeing you tackle the Nostromo and maybe the K'Tinga.
Both are horribly misaligned in regards to size continuity, being between internal sets (like the Nostromo) and how it fits with the outside, or how the K'Tinga is assumed to be slightly smaller than the TMP Enterprise, but to go by the flight observatory above the Klingon shuttlebay, it has to be almost twice as big. Same if you assume that the lights on the K'Tinga head, and the band of lights above the photon torpedo generator are actual windows/levels.
3:58 _three_ pods. No one said anything about _three_ pods.
Kubrick's musical choice for the initial Discovery One scenes (the adagio to Katchaturian's Gayene ballet suit) was intended to capture the tedium and monotony of the crew's long voyage.
The one continuity problem I have with 2001 (still my favourite movie), is that the pod bay should be in zero-gravity since it’s not part of the centrifuge. When Dave Bowman renters through the emergency airlock, goes into the computer memory bay, he’s weightless.
The Discovery engines would not impose high g-loads, they are long duration low thrust engines, doubt if they’d reach more than 0.1g.
In terms of voyage length, no different to the exploratory voyages of the European Age of Discovery.
One of the most interesting insights I’ve seen about HALs behaviour was that the ability to commit murder (as shown in the opening sequence) was what made someone human.
The pod bay is in zero g, they're just using "grip shoes" or whatever. Watch how the actors move their legs and feet extra slowly and deliberately when they're in the pod bay, and they deliberately step on the black parts of the floor. I'm not saying it's perfect, but they did make an effort to show that.
The three pods may be practicality, actually. If one of the pods is damaged, you'd still have a second pod to rescue the first one if it encountered difficulties while doing work- The same reason why whenever a Space Shuttle was launched in real life, there was a second being refitted for the next flight, and a third one ready to go to rescue the crew of the first.
About the “same walls” observation… I recently tried the immersive features of Apple’s Vision Pro and such technology would go a LONG way towards providing the illusion of a frequent change in environment. I recall a scene from a Cylon ship in the 2000s BSG where one of the Sharon Valerie clones walked through a corridor that, to her vision only, was a lush forest. Obviously it didn’t keep them from going mad enough to try to kill all humans, but still, it must have been a nice feature.
I saw 2001 in 1968, and was awestruck.
I was only 10 at the time, and couldn't believe what I was seeing.
me too! I was 10 when I saw this in 1968 at the Century Theaters in San Jose. I fully understood the centrifuge in Discovery because being in zero G for a long time would have issues. And at the time it seemed obvious the HAL-9000 would be a very large computer, and there will be a Pan Am space shuttle flying when I would be an old man. Of course we know now to not waste such space for a computer and they can be made much smaller by the 1990s. Also no Pan Am either.
@@wrightmf Well the future has started to arrive since SpaceX.
Before this company, we were stuck in a rut and not advancing at all.
I expect you were amazed too, by all the high technology in 2001.
Having a mind for dimensions and architecture, I have always struggled to figure out how all the internal elements of Discovery fit as well. They just didn't quite seem to fit right despite how cool they looked.
It has always been fascinating to me that Peter Hyams was able to accurately recreate so much of the Odyssey from film images with the exception of HAL's face plate. For some strange reason 2010's version of HAL has noticeably different dimensions than the version we see in 2001.
Yes, 2010's HAL is very different. His eye is much bigger, and they didn't even use the right font on his badge. But there's a lot of other differences if you compare closely, such as the use of curved CRTs instead of flat panels (a big regression!) and putting full keyboards on HAL's consoles that weren't there at all in the 2001. The 2010 pods look far less realistic too, almost like they were carved from a single block of wood and painted, rather than actual functional space craft. Like, 2001's pod arms absolutely look like they'd work, while 2010's look like they're fixed and fake.
More interesting from an engineering standpoint would be all of the electrical and system connections between the centrifuge and the rest of the ship. How would those be handled in a way to avoid failure points between the relative moving parts?
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, near the beginning of the first book (Red Mars), makes crew mental health a major factor; going so far as to have the crew psychologist observe that since the human crew members are going to likely go insane, why not just send insane people to begin with. We tend to focus so much on the technology of long duration space missions, and avoid the elephant in the room --- the human physiological/psychological hurdle. In other words, humans evolved here on Earth, not space, nor any of the other planets in our solar system. That's the real barrier we are facing in our quest to be a space faring civilization. Not the machines and other technology. WE are the actual barrier to all of this pie in the sky abstractions. And living on Mars? It's an astoundingly beautiful place, but you're not living on it, but underneath the surface; in structures that are essentially buried space craft; sophisticated tin cans, basically. No thanks. Humans in decidedly inhuman conditions is the reality of that idea. Kim Stanley Robinson's plot theme may be the more realistic and sobering scenario of all the other science fiction works on similar topics.
Hmm, for a 38ft centrifuge the diameter of the command module needs to be about 65ft which results in an overall length of Discovery in excess of 500 ft. This seems to be in agreement with most online sources.
The greatest stress and source of fear should be "Just how long do I have before the radiation KILLS ME?!"
I don't have to imagine i see the same walls, same faces for years. I live alone. My dad passed away at the beginning of COVID. I didn't speak to no family members for couple of years. Sometimes i go minths without speaking to anyone. Most communication is like this. I don't see replies. I actually died last year 2023. Doctors brought me back after 6 minutes. I 💬 nk i should not have came back.
I think a better example of people dealing with living and working in space was Skylab, that resulted in the "Strike". ;-)
Like many, the transition from the pod bay, or command deck to the centrifuge is difficult to explain and show.
What’s in that big black box opposite the computer core? Can you give us a tease of the next video in this series, which hopefully describes it?
Kubrick used confusion floorpans for The Shining too. None of the rooms and hallways were logically placed and ignored the position of known rooms. It's thought this is to add more confusion and disorientation to the viewer. Sacrificing the floorpan for the sake of the story isn't surprising for Kubrick.
I always wondered how the inside of the ship was laid out...now I know.
Don't think your ball is correct. the "gravity" only happens once you contact the rotating surface (eg, Sheridan's leap from the core shuttle in Babylon 5....the problem wasn't him creaming into the ground due to gravity, it was him gently wafting down to a surface rotating at 60mph relative to him. There's a similar incident in Rama). Of course, how a vert light ball may interact with the rotating(?) air, is another matter.
Why can't the door be in the centre of the centrifuge? You see the hatch in the centre inside, and the ladder going down/up from it.
You'd certainly want an entry-point which had no (noticeable) gravity, since you're coming from a part of the ship with none. You can float there, and wait for the ladder to come round. You then gently ease yourself onto the first rungs, and once you're 25-50% of the way down the ladder it starts to feel... if not normal, then at least workable.
And in other hard sci-fi with much, much larger centrifugal gravity there's still almost always some central access to a control room/complex where people can float about freely between screens and mechanisms. At that scale instead of a simple access ladder, there's usually a whole elevator system to get there (or even something more resembling a subway/monorail thing).
Could you do the Hail Mary from Project Hail Mary? It would be a small ship but would be interesting to see.
What about the rest of the ship? What runs down the center? And is back end just engines? Or doesn't it matter? What does?
There has to be another Storage Bay. Kurnow was skulking in Storage Bay 2 while Hayward Floyd was talking to Dave.
You might have been in the Dead Space on the Command deck.
@12:24 the distance to Jupiter from Earth would be more in the neighborhood of half a Billion miles instead of half a million miles…
Some have claimed that it might be possible to adjust astronauts to an artificial gravity system with a small radius. If so, then the Discovery's gravity system is entirely plausible,
There is noot gravity on the centrifuge, it is only the inertial mass of the astronauts. What would have kept the austronauts in place at the command module? The red ball would have bounced back, not forward.
I get a bit tired with all the hysteria regarding isolation in space flight. People deal with this all the time--submarine crews regularly spend months under water with no contact other than operational communications from their command--no personal letters or phone calls home. In the 18th and 19th centuries, whaling vessels from Nantucket would embark on year-long voyages and not enter port the entire trip. Water was carried in the casks for whale oil. It was said that they left with holds full of water and returned with holds full of oil. Food was salted or dried. At least Frank and Dave could listen to videos of their parents singing "Happy Birthday"--something I couldn't do on a Navy Frigate in the 1980s.
Kublik is clever as rotating wheel mod l was difficult to film. Enclosing it in a solid ball solves a lot of problems.
One thing I could never figure out is how did the pod bay have gravity?
I know, that puzzled me a little, and the ladder! But I thought: 'In Kubrick, we trust'.
You would need the ladder when building the craft in an earth gravity environment.
Ask yourself which would be worse, a chance to be a pioneering explorer or doing a 20 year bid in the penitentiary?
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Where's the bathroom?
...at the bottom of the ladder. serious.
They did have a piano onboard as shown in cut scene photos
The piano / keyboard / organ is even visible in the film a few times, like when Dave walks to HAL after finishing his sketches.
Collins would be completely cut out from everyone only 30 min at a time, one can handle being alone for half an hour, at least in terms of communication.
I know you put a lot of work into this, but.... You made it too small. Also you didn't put the two extra beds for Frank and Dave to sleep in -- and we do see them. Now, of course, that maybe is to make it fit into the sphere, but i have a behind the scenes still that shows the centrifuge about 10% larger. Also, everyone makes the "assumption" that the centrifuge spins at 1 g. While we do see them walk in it, who is to say it's not 75% or 60% G which would be enough, certainly.
In the 2001 novel, Clarke explicitly said the centrifuge created .25g; just enough to keep things on the floor and to help prevent muscle atrophy.
In the book it says that the centrifuge produces 1/6 of g
Could you do a video on the Russian ship the leonov from the sequel
Don't think the ball would bonce for very long at all. There is still Air, Friction, and Deformation heat.
If HAL was so smart; why didn’t it simply rotate The Discovery while Dave was trying to reenter The Ship ?