40th Anniversary of 2001:A Space Odyssey

Paul A. Suhler wrote:
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.


There's a drawing of one of the Discovery designs with radiators in the
Wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageiscovery_One.jpg

Pat

Dave Michelson wrote:

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

The book "2001: Filming The Future" has six alternate Discovery designs
in it. The "dragonfly" got as far as a small test model to see how it
would photograph, and there was a design that was nearly identical to
the one in the movie with big pivoting radiator panels mounted on the
sides of the rear engine module.
Speaking of the "dragonfly design", remember this thing?:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3302947.stm
......and it was even designed to go to Jupiter.

Pat

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.

The thrust needed isn't all that much; comparatively small engines would
suffice if their burn time were long enough.
as far as the engines, they were supposed to be "Cavradyne" gaseous core
U-325 reactors according to the book; from the Wikipedia article on the
Discovery One: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One

"Cavradyne Engines: Propulsion controls, designed with the assistance of
General Electric's Valley Forge Space Technology Center and the UK
Atomic Energy Authority, were located in the command module. Honeywell's
nuclear reactor control panel displayed information on such parameters
as turbine, compressor, heat exchanger, secondary circulatory, and
radiator liquid helium storage, generator and recuperator performance,
and pressures and temperatures at various stations. Precise readings
could be obtained instantaneously on the control screen, if desired, as
well as past performance and predicted future performance. The Cavradyne
engines were based on the assumption of years of research and
development, during the 1980s and '90s, of gaseous core nuclear reactors
and high-temperature ionized gases. Theory was presumed to have shown
that gaseous uranium-235 could be made critical in a cavity reactor only
several feet or meters in diameter if the uranium atomic density were
kept high, and if temperatures were maintained at a minimum of 20,000 °F
(11,400 K). At first, progress was slow because of such early unsolved
problems as how to reduce vortex turbulence in order to achieve high
Separation ratios, and how to achieve adequate wall cooling in the face
of the thermal radiation from the high-temperature ionized plasma. In
the Cavradyne system, the temperature of the reactor was not directly
limited by the capabilities of solid materials, since the central cavity
was surrounded by a thick graphite wall that moderates the neutrons,
reflecting most of them back into the cavity. Wall cooling would be
ensured by circulating the hydrogen propellant prior to its being
heated. Fissionable fuel energy was said to be transferred to the
propellant by radiation through a specially designed rigid -- and
coolable -- container."

Here's all the goodies on gaseous core reactors for space propulsion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket
This technology played a part in the non-fiction book "Thrust Into
Space" also.
Gaseous core reactors were seen as a real possibility at the time, and
work on them has proceeded at a slow rate ever since.
If you can compress hydrogen into a metallic state and keep it there,
then storage volume for the propellant needed is vastly decreased over
keeping it in a liquid or slush form.
Combining the superior isp of the gaseous core reactor (1,500 - 3,000)
with the savings in propellant volume realized by the stable metallic
hydrogen, and the Discovery design may be feasible, although the missing
radiators are still a problem.

Pat

Haven't seen this mentioned - where is Rusty ?


On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Garber, Stephen J. (HQ-TC000) wrote :
---------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 12:26:00 -0500
Subject: [history] New Sets of NASA Historical Materials

Four series from the NASA Headquarters Historical Reference Collection
have been digitized and made available in a new on-line database for use
by researchers. The database is now available at
https://mira.hq.nasa.gov/history/ or can be accessed through the History
Division web site. Included are PDFs of Press Kits, Press Releases,
Mission Transcripts, and Administrators' Speeches. Researchers may use
either the Basic Search or Advanced Search to access these. The HQ
History Division staff has digitized all press kits, press releases,
mission transcripts, and Administrators' speeches that were available to
them in the Historical Reference Collection. Links are provided to
other sources where similar and/or additional information may be found.

On Apr 10, 10:39 am, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Al wrote:
On Apr 10, 2:24 am, (Derek Lyons) wrote:
Al wrote:
Considering how even any kind of sensible scientific facts were
totally left out of most science fiction films before and after
2001 ... I consider criticisms such as this nits.

Considering the shaky scientific ground on which "2001" stood... your
point is?

What was shaky?

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 agree about the cooling fins, as for lack of room for supplies,
ect....,
you lost me!
In fact Ordway and Lange did design the Discovery with fins, and
Kubrick tried to fit it in, but the aesthetics just looked better with
out , so I am will to give him a by on that one.
Supplies?!
You check out The Spaceship Handbook for dimensions , the Discovery
was damn big enough for supplies.


Jack Hagerty and Jon C. Rogers, Spaceship Handbook: Rocket and
Spacecraft Designs of the 20th Century, ARA Press,Published 2001,
pages 322-351, ISBN 097076040X.



2001 tried to do more than most, and by-and-large accomplished it, but
Kubrick wasn't above ignoring that which was inconvenient.

The back ground technology was worked out in exacting
detail by engineers Fred Ordway, Harry Lange and Aerospace consultants
in both the USA and England.

Having consultants doesn't mean they were listened to. Even if they
were famous.

D.
--

Baloney, they were listened too, Kubrick was , with few bows to a
little dramatic licence was diligent in following Ordway and Lange's
designs, that statement is just flat wrong!

On Apr 10, 1:26 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
Derek Lyons wrote:

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

That is true and Ordway knew that at the time, but a full sized
centrifuge would not have fit in the largest film stage they had, so
got give em credit , it does no violence to the narrative and gives a
very good approximate verisimilitude.

On Apr 10, 2:36 pm, Dave Michelson 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 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


You know I am surprised no one mention the one real technical
bungle , done for dramatic reasons , after Frank Poole's Pod rams him
we see a shot of him spinning trying to reattach an 'ecs/oxygen' hose!
Lord no way one would design a spacesuit with a vital piece projected
so if could even catch on something! I think Ordway knew this
because , I am pretty sure of this, the space suits are very well
designed and look very right even somewhat advanced, and if I remember
right the guys going to inspect the Monolith on the Moon have suits
don't seem to have this internal fitting.
Don't know how this came to be, even Apollo suits had connections that
one could not disconnect so easily and designs for those were
available in 1965.
The scene would have been easy to fix, the Pod extends its 'Waldos'
which would have put a rip in Frank's suit, an insert could have shown
that.

Doing away with the Discovery's cooling fins I can live with... and
all the nits about not being 100% accurate about simulating zero g in
1 g are nits, with so much effort put into the technical accuracy of
the film, the no sound in a vacuum used as art, this is the only real
jarring technical mistake I know of in the film.

On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:19:46 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Our present spacecraft and airliners control panel concepts came as an
extrapolation of the the fighter plane control panels of the late
1970's-early 1980's with the idea that the pilot should have a interface
with the instrument panel that required him to take his hands off of his
throttle and control stick as little as possible, and be able to read
all critical aircraft operating status items while looking at the
instrument panel as little as possible, so he could keep his eyes up and
scanning the sky for threats as much time as possible.

We call this HOTAS, Hands-On Stick And Throttle, and it was designed
to use with a HUD, Head-Up Display. The problem with using panel
displays instead of a HUD is that it requires the operator to come
"inside" the airplane instead of staying "outside".

Mary "An HMD, Helmet-Mounted Display, works, too"
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
Visit my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/

Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer) wrote:
We call this HOTAS, Hands-On Stick And Throttle, and it was designed
to use with a HUD, Head-Up Display. The problem with using panel
displays instead of a HUD is that it requires the operator to come
"inside" the airplane instead of staying "outside".

Mary "An HMD, Helmet-Mounted Display, works, too"


You ever heard how the F-35 system is supposed to work?
The view from inside your helmet HUD is connected to external cameras,
so if you look straight down inside the cockpit you see what's directly
under the aircraft.
Same in all directions; the plane becomes entirely transparent to you,
and you can see in any direction around it by just turning your head in
that direction.
Wonder Woman would approve. :-)

Pat

"Al" wrote in message
...
That is the one thing that makes the most sense, the massive
interconnect of a
spinning outer hub and non rotating inner hub would be complicated and
expensive.
Rotating the space craft would be a logical and cheap way of doing the
docking.

I thought about this for Babylon 5, which has an even more complicated
docking sequence (particularly when someone is coming and going- you not
only have to roll, but also constantly thrust to the side, as if you were
orbiting the rotational axis of the station). You don't need to have the
entire hub to not rotate- you can have a ring that can derotate, with
grappling fixtures to hold the spacecraft, then gradually speed up until the
spacecraft is rotating at the same rate as the station. Then, pull it inside
and have it land. This completely eliminates compatability issues with alien
craft and makes docking far safer.


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