2001: A Space Odyssey

Visible crew/equipment: During one of the scenes where an astronaut does an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity or "Space Walk"), you see him floating slowly from the Pod shuttle towards the Discovery. This was filmed by hanging the pod on the ceiling and lowering the actor from it with a rope towards the camera that's pointing upward. If you look carefully, you can see the shadow of the rope.

2001: A Space Odyssey mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When the astronauts are approaching the monolith on the moon, you can see the reflection of the cameraman in the visor of the first astronaut off the ramp, in the close up of him walking around the monolith. This shot was personally filmed by Stanley Kubrick and the reflection is his own. (00:48:40)

2001: A Space Odyssey mistake picture

Visible crew/equipment: When David walks with the case in the hand inside the Discovery One, you can see the dolly track below at David's feet blending in the structure. (01:12:12)

Visible crew/equipment: In both EVA scenes, first when Dave retrieves the AE-35 Unit, and when Frank goes to re-install it, there are shots of Discovery in the background, the pod in the foreground and the astronaut floating between. And in both of these shots, the pod rotates 180 degrees. In the front window of the pod, we can see reflected images of the film set and equipment as the pod rotates.

johnrosa

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 little girl on the picture phone is director Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian. (00:27:50)

Larry Koehn

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Question: What was the ultimate destination of the Jupiter mission? The giant planet is made of gas, it has no solid surface to land on. Theoretically a spacecraft could land on one of Jupiter's moons, but they lie within the lethal radiation belt.

Answer: The ultimate goal was to orbit Jupiter to study the Monolith also in orbit around it.

Grumpy Scot

Answer: The objective of the Discovery (Jupiter) mission was to locate the recipient of the powerful radio signal that was transmitted from the Moon earlier in the movie. Interestingly, the destination of the Discovery mission changed between Jupiter to Saturn and back to Jupiter during the production of the film. The Jupiter visual effects had already been shot ("in the can" as it were) when Stanley Kubrick decided to change to Saturn. It was the protest of the visual effects team, who had already spent much time and money on the Jupiter effects, that convinced Kubrick to stay with Jupiter. In the meantime, author Arthur C. Clarke went ahead and changed the destination to Saturn in his written treatment of the movie.

Charles Austin Miller

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