2001: A Space Odyssey

Other mistake: There is something drastically wrong with the design of the spherical 'Aries' moon shuttle. Some seats and many fixtures are 'upside down' relative to the up-down orientation of the shuttle itself, and we see loose food trays and equipment about the place as if this is routine. But - the shuttle is designed to land on the moon. What happens then? The moon has gravity, remember? There are going to be quite a few very disgruntled people dangling upside down like spiders, and there will be loose gear (and perhaps a stewardess or two) bouncing about all over the place. It is not a matter of stowing loose gear or lying flat on landing - some parts of the shuttle are upside down relative to others, which is why the stewardess has to do that famous 180 degree upside down walk. Whichever way you look at it the shuttle is going to encounter serious problems when it reaches a gravity well, which will occur whenever the engines are fired up, never mind landing on the moon.

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Suggested correction: The shuttle lands "on its back" with legs extending beyond the engines. As in most traditional sci-fi, and ALL actual, space flights to date, the launch (and landing) orientation for humans is to be on one's back. This minimizes blood being sucked down to your feet if you were sitting upright at launch - you could pass out. So we see this when the shuttle lands on the moon - the cockpit (red window) faces up (pilots on their backs, facing out the window). When we presume that the passenger cabin was 180 degrees spun around from the cockpit seating, they're still on their backs. Any loose objects would have been stowed before landing - the airlines don't lock down your bags, newspapers and coffee cups, right? They're loose in the cabin during flight, but put away on takeoff and landing.

Airliners do not fly upside down. The Orion shuttle cannot possibly operate the way it does if it lands in a gravity environment - some rooms are upside down relative to others - why else would the stewardess do the 180 degree vertical walk? It is an idiotic design flaw, and the posting is 100% correct.

The Aries passengers sit and stand with their feet down towards the moon. The pilots sit with their back down to the moon, as conventional astronauts do on Earth. But the attendant's 180-degree walk is completely wrong to the orientation of the shuttle's interior: it should have been only 90° if you look at the Aries exterior. One assumes that Kubrick preferred a longer, more cinematic shot, over a technically accurate shot. But nobody was upside-down to the moon.

Other mistake: When Dave is deactivating HAL, he unlocks memory blocks one by one by turning a key for every one of them. When he's done the first five memory blocks, from number 6 to 2, he changes the key from right to left hand, and jumps to the logic terminal blocks, unlocking number 5 of those. However, number 1 of the memory blocks slides out. (01:48:20)

Other mistake: When Frank does his first EVA he presses a button to darken his visor, but the button is marked "TEST ALARM" (visible on Blu-Ray version).

Other mistake: When Dr. Floyd's ship is descending to Clavius, the Earth is out of the window, rising. The Earth should have held position because of its distance.

Revealing mistake: When we see the space station from the cockpit of the approaching shuttle, the station does not appear to rotate because the shuttle is rotating at the same speed. OK...except that the station IS still rotating with respect to the sun, which means that the light source and shadows on the station should be moving.

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Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

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Trivia: The leopard lying on a dead zebra was actually lying on a dead horse painted to look like a zebra. The cat wasn't too happy with that scene.

Larry Koehn

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Question: If Hal is supposed to be this flawless computer that never makes a mistake or gives false information why then does it tell the astronauts Frank and Dave that a system will fail when that turns out to be wrong?

Answer: This is gleaned from the Internet: The novel explains that HAL is unable to resolve a conflict between his general mission to relay information accurately and the specific orders requiring him to withhold the mission's true purpose from Bowman and Poole. HAL reasons that if the crew is dead, he would then not need to lie to them. He fabricates the failure of the AE-35 unit so that their deaths would appear accidental. In other words, HAL is asked to lie, and he doesn't take to it very well, to say the least. The conflict between his mission objectives backs him into a corner where he has to make some pretty big (and cold) leaps in logic in order to reconcile the paradox in his programmed orders.

raywest

Answer: In the sequel, "2010" it was revealed HAL was programmed with all the information about the mission to the monolith, but Frank and Dave were not. HAL was programmed not to reveal anything until the scientists were taken out of hypersleep. When Frank and Dave tried to uncover the mystery surrounding the mission, HAL was forced to lie in the only way he knew how. He was not programmed to lie.

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