Astronauts At The Controls: 2010 Vs "2001" (in 1968)

Thats Inspiring! Reality is actually more impressive then fiction. Now we need to turn this 2001 image into reality, hopefully before 2101 or 2201.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/G/posters/dfmp_0054_2001_a_space_odyssey_1968.jpg

Visibility is much better from the ISS Cupola Flight Deck than it is from the 2001 Pod. I'd like to see some good VR imagery taken looking up into the cupola and out in all directions.

That ISS Cupola is impressive, do they allow Soyuz tourists to visit this part of the station?

Regards to the film, 2001, hope one of the crew never gets into a situation of having to re-enter through the emergency airlock without a helmet!
http://mfwright.com/2001exp.html

(I can't believe that movie is more than 40 years old of story that takes place nine years ago!)

Mike

Too bad we're not at Jupiter yet but very cool! :)

alternate link

http://www.sm-sef.org/images/ScienceHistoryPics/1968-Movie2001Poster.jpg

This is not the promised future. I don't think reality is more impressive than fiction, because despite the laptops and Cupola it's all about boring LEO activities.

Where's my lunar base? Where are the trips to Mars and Jupiter? Where's Tzien to Europa? Where's HAL? Where are the hibernation pods? Where are the big rotating stations (The ISS it actually three times smaller than Alpha 1)?

It is an odd thing that the ISS is in LEO, while the film had regular commercial access to a very large space station, regular flights to a huge Lunar base and nuclear powered spacecraft on it's way to Jupiter.
2001, the film, passed into a parallel universe 10 years ago.

The present situation is not a failure of prophecy for MSF .... it was is a failure of nerve!... as A.C. Clarke would put it.

(Kudos Kubrick, Clarke, Fred Ordway and Harry Lange 40 + years ago!)

"I don't think reality is more impressive than fiction,"
"2001, the film, passed into a parallel universe 10 years ago."

I agree, it would be great if the 2001 vision was the reality of today in 2010, oddly enough the title of the sequel to 2001. 40 years ago I really thought it would be and I lament that progress has stalled for so many decades as most of us do.

At any rate, when fiction or idea becomes reality it is typically more impressive then the original concept. Once we actually have large rotating stations, Lunar bases, nuclear powered spacecraft etc. the resulting technology and capability will be profound and surpass expectations. Even though there is all this controversy over the space program, the ISS and the Shuttle, I recommend forgetting all that for a moment and see what an extraordinary accomplishment these things really are. The technology we have now is the end result of centuries of effort and represents the foundation our species needs in order to move out into space and the universe. The 2001 and other SF visions of the future are still valid and, although a tad behind schedule, can still help form the visions and goals needed in order to move humanity and technology forward into space. Even though things are behind schedule, and we have overshoot the anticipated dates things would happen by, lets not loss sight of these ideas and goals as future potentials and take pride in what we have accomplished. Perhaps renaming the movie 2101 might be a good thing although its not as catchy as 2001.

http://www.sm-sef.org/images/ScienceHistoryPics/1968-Movie2001Poster.jpg

Oh, it's still pretty cool.

But on big stations, etc; I think this is something Clarke himself would admit, going by Preludes and his other books - Computing and Communication happened! The amount of human presence in space required for many operations is greatly smaller than was imagined when 2001 was written, and continues to decrease. It was imagined that humans would be required for observation, communication, etc, work in space on a daily basis, and that would drive infrastructure. Comms, and modern computing, lets us remote and automate most of those systems. Indeed, I'm reading Heinlein's Rolling Stones right now, and, back then, they were imagining three communication satellites. That's it! Now, the commercial spaceflight industry launches a new bird every three days or so. Eventually, we'll need those Bases, but it's hard to work out a major profit or benefit for them for things we need right now.

However, as a human exploration missions researcher, I'm certainly not going to deny that we won't need humans in a wide range of exploration scenarios. In addition, one day, our infrastructure can be expected to grow at a rate where having humans available to tend it will be important - once we move beyond reasonable RTT range from Earth, out of the cislunar region, and hence can't teleoperate easily from home.