Corrected entry: When the explosive bolts blow as Dave Bowman is about to be exposed to the vacuum of space, entering the emergency airlock, wouldn't his eardrums have been blown by the explosive bolts going off in that cramped and pressurized pod? And wouldn't he be so severely eyesight impaired due to the fluid boil-off in his eyes in a vacuum, that he wouldn't be able to see, let alone operate the emergency door control lever in the airlock which he just happened to conveniently end up at? This scene looks wrong.
Zippy Zubes
17th Dec 2023
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Correction: As for eyes being useless in a vacuum, tell that to Jim Leblanc, a NASA technician who was accidentally exposed to vacuum for 27 seconds during a space suit test in 1966. He reported a slight earache, a loss of his sense of taste, but no problems with his eyesight.
27th May 2018
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Corrected entry: When Dave Bowman is attempting to enter Discovery through the emergency airlock we see the smoke from the detonation of the explosive bolts on the door of the pod but where does the door go? The force of the explosion should have fired the pod door into the airlock along with Dave Bowman! An amazing feat and pure luck that Dave Bowman once in the airlock managed to close the airlock door with his eyes closed (not that you could use your eyes in a vacuum because the water on the surface of your eyes would boil off in an airless environment!) and he bounced off the back wall of said airlock and ended up near enough to the airlock door close lever to pull it.
Correction: The door slams sideways into the cavity in the double wall designed to hold it. Hinged doors don't make much sense when you're in a cramped spacecraft. As for eyes being useless in a vacuum, tell that to Jim Leblanc, a NASA technician who was accidentally exposed to vacuum for 27 seconds during a space suit test in 1966. He reported a slight earache, a loss of his sense of taste, but no problems with his eyesight. In fact screenwriters Kubrick and Clarke based this scene on reports of a series of experiments on chimpanzees and dogs that proved that short term survival in a vacuum such as that experienced by Bowman is possible. As for him being lucky and bouncing back to a position where he could access the airlock door, yes, that was lucky. It wasn't a film mistake.
Explosive bolts are not used on sliding hatches. The force of the explosives would instantly deform the hatch, and it would no longer slide into its pocket, just block the doorway.
Correction: Since that same scenario happened in a 1960s Mercury program capsule to astronaut Gus Grissom without ear damage, we can assume that the technology of 2001 would also not damage Bowman's ears. Likewise, all astronauts on Skylab and International Space Station were trained to find and operate all hatches in the dark. Bowman should have been able to operate the airlock with his eyes closed or blinded.