Discovery One
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The United States Spacecraft ''Discovery One'' is a fictional spaceship featured in the first two novels of the '' Space Odyssey'' series by
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...
and in the films '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) directed by
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
and '' 2010: The Year We Make Contact'' (1984) directed by Peter Hyams. The ship is a nuclear-powered interplanetary spaceship, crewed by two men and controlled by the AI on-board computer
HAL 9000 HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's ''Space Odyssey'' series. First appearing in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', HAL ( Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer ...
. The ship is destroyed in the second novel and makes no further appearances. Clarke and Kubrick developed the first novel and film in parallel, but there were some differences to suit the different media. Kubrick dropped the cooling fins of the ship, fearing they would be interpreted as wings. The itinerary of ''Discovery One'' in the book is from Earth orbit via gravitational slingshot around
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
to
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
and parking orbit around the moon
Iapetus In Greek mythology, Iapetus (; ; grc, Ἰαπετός, Iapetós), also Japetus, is a Titan, the son of Uranus and Gaia and father of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius. He was also called the father of Buphagus and Anchiale in other ...
. Kubrick changed this to the simpler route from Earth to Jupiter's moon
Europa Europa may refer to: Places * Europe * Europa (Roman province), a province within the Diocese of Thrace * Europa (Seville Metro), Seville, Spain; a station on the Seville Metro * Europa City, Paris, France; a planned development * Europa Cliff ...
. For the film, Kubrick built an exceptionally large model of the ship so that focus changes did not give away the true small size to the audience. He also built a large, expensive, rotating carousel for the artificial gravity scenes.


Development

The spaceship first appears in the novel ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' by science fiction author
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...
and the film of the same name produced and directed by
Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
. The book and the film were developed in parallel in a collaboration between Clarke and Kubrick. Despite this, the novelized and filmed appearances of the craft differ. Clarke based the design on ideas that were, or he believed were, scientifically feasible. He gave the ship a hypothetical thermonuclear propulsion system and added huge cooling fins to radiate away the excess heat produced. In the book, Clarke says the fins "looked like the wings of some vast dragonfly" and that they gave the ship a "fleeting resemblance to an old-time sailing-ship". In the film, Kubrick removed the fins because he thought that the audience might interpret them as wings giving the spacecraft the ability to fly through an
atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
. Early in the development of the movie, Clarke and Kubrick considered having ''Discovery'' powered by an Orion type nuclear pulse propulsion system. Kubrick quickly decided against it, both because showing the ship accelerate by a 'putt-putt' method might be "too comic" for film, and because it might be seen as him having embraced nuclear weapons after his previous film, ''
Dr. Strangelove ''Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'', known simply and more commonly as ''Dr. Strangelove'', is a 1964 black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and t ...
''.


Carousel

Kubrick spent $750,000, a large portion of his $6 million budget, on the set for the artificial gravity scenes in the carousel. The set was a vertically-mounted circular set in diameter and wide. The entire set could rotate around its axis at up to . The rim of the carousel would move slowly enough to allow the actors to walk around with it as if they were in a
hamster wheel A hamster wheel or running wheel is an exercise device used primarily by hamsters and other rodents, but also by other cursorial animals when given the opportunity. Most of these devices consist of a runged or ridged wheel held on a stand by a ...
. This created the impression that the actors were walking up the walls of the set, while in fact, the actors remained at the bottom. The same technique was used for the ''Aries'' Moon shuttle scenes. This was not an entirely new idea; in the 1951 ''
Royal Wedding ''Royal Wedding'' is a 1951 American musical comedy film directed by Stanley Donen, and starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Set in 1947 London at the time of the wedding of Princess Eli ...
'' a similar arrangement allowed Fred Astaire to apparently dance up the walls and along the ceiling of his hotel room. Clarke believed that the ability to transfer between zero-g and artificial gravity areas of a spaceship would be easily learnt by astronauts, and this is how Kubrick portrayed it in the film. However, expert opinion is that this would be somewhat more difficult to achieve, particularly due to the
Coriolis force In physics, the Coriolis force is an inertial or fictitious force that acts on objects in motion within a frame of reference that rotates with respect to an inertial frame. In a reference frame with clockwise rotation, the force acts to the ...
. Long-radius centrifuge experiments by the
Naval Medical Research Laboratory The Naval Medical Research Command (NMRC) is an agency that performs basic and applied biomedical research to meet the needs of the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps. Its areas of focus include study of infectious diseases, biode ...
starting in 1958 kept subjects in a diameter centrifuge complete with living quarters for up to three weeks. The experiments found that the subjects took three to four days to overcome motion sickness and balance issues.


Studio model

Two models for filming were made, one long and one long. The scale of the models, compared to many other productions, was unusually large. This was due to the need to keep the whole ship in focus for the shots, something which could not be done on smaller or tabletop models. With a smaller model, the camera needs to be brought in closer, and the change in focus across the model would betray the true size of the object. Following the completion of the film, Kubrick ordered both the models and the plans for constructing them destroyed, so that they could not be used on future productions. This presented a problem during preproduction for its 1984 sequel, '' 2010: The Year We Make Contact.'' The filmmakers were forced to refer to frame blowups of the ''Discovery'' from different angles taken from a 70mm print of ''2001'' in order to construct a new model. In addition, a model of the ship's head and a few body segments were used for close-up shots of ''Discovery'' docked with the ''Leonov.'' A 12-foot model was used for the primary motion control shots, while a smaller one was used to depict the ''Discovery'' tumbling end over end over Io.


Fictional history

Because of the lack of aerodynamic design and its immense size, ''Discovery One'' was assembled in and launched from
orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...
. As described in the novel, it was originally intended to survey the Jovian system, but its mission was changed to go to Saturn and investigate the destination of the signal from the black monolith found at the crater Tycho. As a result, the mission became a one-way trip to
Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
and its moon Japetus. (In the filmed telling, the destination remains Jupiter.) After investigating alien artifacts at Saturn and Iapetus, the preliminary plan is for all five members of the crew to enter suspended animation for an indefinite period of time. Eventually, it was intended that the much larger and more powerful ''Discovery Two'' (not yet completed) would travel to Japetus and return with everyone in hibernation.


Ship features

In the novel ''2001: A Space Odyssey'', ''Discovery One'' is described as being "almost 400feet long with a sphere 40feet dia." (122meters and 12.2meters respectively; the ''2010'' film mentions ) and powered by a nuclear plasma drive, separated by of tankage and structure, from the spherical part of the spaceship where the crew quarters, the computer, flight controls, small auxiliary craft, and instrumentation are located. The ship's carousel is a spinning band of deck, mounted inside the crew compartment, using
centrifugal force In Newtonian mechanics, the centrifugal force is an inertial force (also called a "fictitious" or "pseudo" force) that appears to act on all objects when viewed in a rotating frame of reference. It is directed away from an axis which is paralle ...
to simulate the effects of gravity and is the primary living and work area. The three
hibernating Hibernation is a state of minimal activity and metabolic depression undergone by some animal species. Hibernation is a seasonal heterothermy characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and heart-rate, and low metabolic rate. It most ...
astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
s are also located here. The carousel provides Moon-level gravity rotating at just over 5rpm. The carousel can be stopped and the rotation stored in a
flywheel A flywheel is a mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In particular, ass ...
. There is an automated kitchen (developed with the assistance of
General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
); a ship-to-Earth communications center; and a complete medical section where the astronauts undergo regular automated checkups. Areas outside the carousel, are
micro-g environment The term micro-g environment (also μg, often referred to by the term microgravity) is more or less synonymous with the terms ''weightlessness'' and ''zero-g'', but emphasising that g-forces are never exactly zero—just very small (on the I ...
s where the crew members use Velcro shoes to attach themselves to the floor. Piloting,
navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...
, and other tasks take place in these areas. There is also a pod bay, where three one-man repair and inspection craft are kept, and the spaceship's primary HAL 9000
mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
.


Communications

''Discovery'' is described as a very large ship that could be handled by only two astronauts ( David Bowman and
Frank Poole The ''Space Odyssey'' series is a series of science fiction novels by the writer Arthur C. Clarke. Two of the novels have been made into feature films, released in 1968 and 1984 respectively. Two of Clarke's early short stories may also be c ...
), working 12 hour alternating shifts, along with the HAL 9000. In the book, IBM predicted that computer development would be advanced to such an extent that the mission could be undertaken with all the astronauts placed in
hibernation Hibernation is a state of minimal activity and metabolic depression undergone by some animal species. Hibernation is a seasonal heterothermy characterized by low body-temperature, slow breathing and heart-rate, and low metabolic rate. It most ...
. It was said to be desired, however, that regular communications be maintained throughout the voyage between the
pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...
and copilot and mission control back on Earth. During communication, an account is taken of the elapsed time for electromagnetic waves crossing space between the spaceship and the
Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
. For example, Poole is depicted watching a pre-recorded birthday message from his family, rather than interacting with them in
real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...
. Such a conversation is not possible because messages take anywhere from 30 to 52 minutes to transmit between
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
and Earth. Naturally, this time would depend on the relative positions of the bodies in the
Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...
at any given moment.


The fate of ''Discovery''

After the malfunction of HAL, Bowman deactivated the computer, thus effectively isolating himself on ''Discovery''. In the movie, when the spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, it encounters TMA-1's considerably larger 'Big Brother', 'TMA-2', at the Jupiter/ Io L1 point. The novel is basically the same with ''Discovery'' in orbit around Saturn's moon Iapetus instead. In both versions, Bowman leaves ''Discovery'' to examine the monolith and is taken inside it. The novel and movie ''2010: Odyssey Two'' follows the ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' movie ending rather than the novel. After finding out that ''Discovery''s orbit is failing, a joint Soviet-US mission (including
Heywood Floyd The ''Space Odyssey'' series is a series of science fiction novels by the writer Arthur C. Clarke. Two of the novels have been made into feature films, released in 1968 and 1984 respectively. Two of Clarke's early short stories may also be c ...
) travels to Jupiter aboard the spacecraft ''
Alexei Leonov Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov. (30 May 1934 – 11 October 2019) was a Soviet and Russian cosmonaut, Air Force major general, writer, and artist. On 18 March 1965, he became the first person to conduct a spacewalk, exiting the capsule during th ...
'' to intercept and board ''Discovery'' believing that it harbours many of the answers to the mysteries surrounding the 2001 mission. ''Leonov'' docks with ''Discovery'', reactivates the on-board systems, and stabilizes its orbit. Hal's creator, Dr. Chandra, is sent to reactivate the HAL 9000 computer and gather any data he can regarding the previous mission. Later on, an apparition of Dave Bowman appears, warning Floyd that ''Leonov'' must leave Jupiter within two days. Floyd asks what will happen at that time, and Bowman replies, 'Something wonderful'. Floyd has difficulty convincing the rest of the crew, at first, but a dark spot on Jupiter begins to form and starts growing. HAL's telescope reveals that the "Great Black Spot" is, in fact, a vast population of monoliths increasing at a geometric rate. (The film accelerates the pace from the novel, both shortening Bowman's deadline from fifteen days, and making the spot grow faster.) Initially, it was planned to inject ''Discovery'' on an Earth-bound trajectory (though it would not arrive for some years); however, when faced with Bowman's warning, the ''Leonov'' crew devises a plan to use ''Discovery'' as a ' booster rocket', enabling them to return to Earth ahead of schedule, but leaving ''Discovery'' in an elliptical orbit of Jupiter. The crew worries that Hal will have the same
neuroses Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...
on discovering that he will be abandoned, and Chandra convinces HAL that the human crew is in danger and must leave. After detaching itself from ''Discovery'', ''Leonov'' makes a hasty exit from the Jupiter system, just in time to witness the Monoliths engulf Jupiter. Through a mechanism that the novel only partially explains, these monoliths increase Jupiter's density until the planet achieves nuclear fusion, becoming a small star. As ''Leonov'' leaves Jupiter, Bowman instructs HAL to repeatedly broadcast a message warning travellers not to land on Europa. The new star, which Earth eventually dubs " Lucifer", destroys ''Discovery''. HAL is transformed into the same kind of entity as David Bowman and becomes Bowman's companion.


Notes


References

*
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Spac ...
''The Lost Worlds of 2001'', Signet, 1972 * Clément, Gilles; Bukley, Angie; Paloski, William, "History of artificial gravity", ch. 3 in, Clément, Gilles; Bukley, Angie (eds), ''Artificial Gravity'', Springer Science & Business Media, 2007 . * Schwarm, Stephanie, ''The Making of 2001: a Space Odyssey'', Modern Library, 2000 . {{Spaceodyssey Space Odyssey Fictional spacecraft