40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

Gene DiGennaro wrote:

Obviously, there was great cinematic effect in having the Pan Am
clipper rotate in sync with the center hangar, but I always thought it
would be much more practical, though less dramatic to dock with the
wheel on its outermost point. Dock on the tangent.

Docking on the tangent would be even worse - as now the docking system
has to take the weight of the Clipper, and your station is unbalanced.

The usual assumption, and (IIRC) the one used in the book, is that a
nonspinning core or end module serves as a dock.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Gene DiGennaro" wrote in message
...
Obviously, there was great cinematic effect in having the Pan Am
clipper rotate in sync with the center hangar, but I always thought it
would be much more practical, though less dramatic to dock with the
wheel on its outermost point. Dock on the tangent.

Docking at the outermost point would create a lot of force on the docking
mechanism. Ignoring that issue, you've still got the problem of the mass of
the shuttle throwing the rotating station out of balance.

The (better) sci-fi I've read that describes docking off the rotation axis
describes active movement of weights (or water in tanks) on the station to
keep it balanced. In practice, I'd imagine that this would be quite
cumbersome unless the mass of the shuttle is very small compared to the mass
of the station.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

Derek Lyons wrote:

Practically everything about the Discovery for starters. (Note the
lack of cooling fins, the lack of fuel tanks, lack of room for
supplies, etc...)

I am curious to know what you think was supposed to be stored in the
containers that lie along Discovery's 275-foot spine.

As for the radiator, Clarke has already mentioned this in his writings
about 2001. Early plans for Discovery did include a radiator but Kubrick
and others thought they looked too much like a wing and would confuse
the average filmgoer. Just as the Zero-G toilet instructions was the one
intentional joke in the film, so was the lack of a radiator the one
intentional technical omission.

--
Dave Michelson

On Apr 10, 3:31*pm, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:
"Gene DiGennaro" wrote in message

...

Obviously, there was great cinematic effect in having the Pan Am
clipper rotate in sync with the center hangar, but I always thought it
would be much more practical, though less dramatic to dock with the
wheel on its outermost point. Dock on the tangent.

Docking at the outermost point would create a lot of force on the docking
mechanism. *Ignoring that issue, you've still got the problem of the mass of
the shuttle throwing the rotating station out of balance.

The (better) sci-fi I've read that describes docking off the rotation axis
describes active movement of weights (or water in tanks) on the station to
keep it balanced. *In practice, I'd imagine that this would be quite
cumbersome unless the mass of the shuttle is very small compared to the mass
of the station.

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

I assumed the mass of the clipper was considerably less than the
station. But it would be hard to play the Blue Danube for tangental
docking,it just wouldn't be right! That having been said, whenever
the shuttle makes that cool flip maneuver on approach to the ISS, I
can't help but think of 2001.
Gene

Derek Lyons wrote:
I think all the box-like things along the length of it is where the fuel
was supposed to be...some form of solidified hydrogen isotopes IIRC,
although Wikipedia says ammonia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One Originally, the design did
have cooling fins on it in its earliest conceptions, but Kubrick wanted
it to look like a cross between a sperm cell and a spinal column to get
across the connection to the ape throwing the bone into the air and the
creation of the Starchild.


Exactly. Discovery (as shown in the film) only work if you assume
handwavium fuel, incredible thrust/ISP, and no need to cool anything
onboard.


They are looking into possible room temperature and pressure stable
forms of metallic hydrogen:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...h/4256976.html
The radiators are a lot more problematic.

Although it doesn't rotate, the design is perfect for the creation of
artificial gravity by rotating the whole works, so that the front of the
crew sphere would be "down" as it's counterbalanced by the engine
module, with the antenna array at the center of rotation.
This would have made a lot more sense than the centrifuge in the crew
sphere...it's so small in diameter that the crew will be sick in no time
as they move around in it.


Exactly. The centrifuge as shown on film is a wonderful
cinematographic tour de force - but it won't work in real life.


Even at the lunar gravity they are trying to simulate, the diameter is
way too small to be comfortable to work in.
At they very least they would get dizzy, at worst they might be falling
down and puking all over the place.
Test suggested that to be really comfortable at 1 g you were talking a
diameter of 300-400 feet (like the space station in the movie), so even
at 1/6 g the centrifuge would have to be bigger than the one on
Discovery (40 feet diameter). The small diameter would mean major weight
differences between your head and your feet, which is really going to
screw up the sense of balance in your inner ear.
If the astronauts try to jog around it like shown in the movie, then the
1/6 g is going to make them come clean off of the floor, like someone
trying to run on the Moon would experience.
A more blatant screw-up occurs in relation to the Aries spherical
moonship in the movie when the stewardess walks up the cylindrical wall
from the passenger compartment to enter the other corridor upside-down.
Although you could make some argument that this layout might make sense
on a ship that only operates in zero g as it might lead to some better
internal layout as far as using internal space more efficiently
(although that doesn't seem very likely, and if you note all the time
and trouble she has to go to to turn herself upside down by climbing up
the wall it seems like a real pain-in-the-ass as you go from one part of
the ship to the other) the real problem arrives when you land on the
Moon... because now that corridor she walked into is no longer
accessible to her unless she wants to jump up into it, and even then
it's now switched its floor and ceiling sides. What she really needs is
a elevator or simple staircase to get from deck to deck, with the bottom
of the ship being "down" in all situations
Meanwhile, the pilots are now lying flat on their backs looking out the
upper window, which really doesn't seem to be a safe way to do a
approach to a landing, with no direct view of what you are descending
towards.
The same situation will apply every time it fires its engines to move
from Earth orbit to the Moon and back, and the acceleration creates g
forces in the ship.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
Derek Lyons wrote:

Practically everything about the Discovery for starters. (Note the
lack of cooling fins, the lack of fuel tanks, lack of room for
supplies, etc...)

I think all the box-like things along the length of it is where the fuel
was supposed to be...some form of solidified hydrogen isotopes IIRC,
although Wikipedia says ammonia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One Originally, the design did
have cooling fins on it in its earliest conceptions, but Kubrick wanted
it to look like a cross between a sperm cell and a spinal column to get
across the connection to the ape throwing the bone into the air and the
creation of the Starchild.
One version of the design used a "Orion" type nuclear blast drive and
pusher plate. About the only thing that stayed intact through all of the
designs was the spherical crew module at the front.
Although it doesn't rotate, the design is perfect for the creation of
artificial gravity by rotating the whole works, so that the front of the
crew sphere would be "down" as it's counterbalanced by the engine
module, with the antenna array at the center of rotation.
This would have made a lot more sense than the centrifuge in the crew
sphere...it's so small in diameter that the crew will be sick in no time
as they move around in it.

Pat


One of the best sources for this is Clarke's "The Lost Worlds of 2001."

Pat's right about the box-like things being the fuel tanks. The original
design had cooling fins, but they were removed because they didn't want
the audience wondering why a space ship had wings.

The nuclear-blast-powered design was dropped because "Dr. Strangelove"
had ended with a series of nuclear explosions and they didn't want to
seem to be tying that in.

Paul

Pat Flannery wrote:

I think all the box-like things along the length of it is where the
fuel was supposed to be...some form of solidified hydrogen isotopes
IIRC, although Wikipedia says ammonia:

According to the book,

"Immediately behind the pressure hull was grouped a cluster of four
large liquid hydrogen tanks - and beyond them, forming a long, slender
V, were the radiating fins that dissipated the waste heat of the nuclear
reactor. Veined with a delicate tracery of pipes for the cooling fluid,
they looked like the wings of some vast dragonfly, and from certain
angles gave Discovery a fleeting resemblance to an old-time sailing ship."

See the image at

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/discovery.jpg

--
Dave Michelson

Pat Flannery wrote:

Derek Lyons wrote:

I think all the box-like things along the length of it is where the fuel
was supposed to be...some form of solidified hydrogen isotopes IIRC,
although Wikipedia says ammonia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One Originally, the design did
have cooling fins on it in its earliest conceptions, but Kubrick wanted
it to look like a cross between a sperm cell and a spinal column to get
across the connection to the ape throwing the bone into the air and the
creation of the Starchild.

Exactly. Discovery (as shown in the film) only work if you assume
handwavium fuel, incredible thrust/ISP, and no need to cool anything
onboard.


They are looking into possible room temperature and pressure stable
forms of metallic hydrogen:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...h/4256976.html

The problem isn't the fuel stored in the tanks Pat - but that no known
fuel fed into no known propulsion system can both fit into the visible
volume and provide sufficient thrust.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:

The problem isn't the fuel stored in the tanks Pat - but that no known
fuel fed into no known propulsion system can both fit into the visible
volume and provide sufficient thrust.

Do you have any back of the envelope calculations to share, by chance?

--
Dave Michelson

In message
Gene DiGennaro wrote:

Obviously, there was great cinematic effect in having the Pan Am
clipper rotate in sync with the center hangar, but I always thought it
would be much more practical, though less dramatic to dock with the
wheel on its outermost point. Dock on the tangent.

That's the method C J Cherryh uses for most of her space stations, and
it's even less workable than docking at a spinning hub when you think
about it. You've got to match relative velocities with a rim that is
moving sideways fast enough to create the illusion of a gravity field
inside, and you then need docking clamps strong enough to support your
ship in that field. Not to mention the balance problems and avoiding
collisions with anything already docked that might be coming round at
you.

Anthony