“2001: The Lost Science”

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Jun 272012

If you’re anything like me (and who wouldn’t want to be?), you have been frustrated by the dearth of hard info about the spacecraft and technologies shown in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” With a few exceptions, most of the stuff that has been published over the years has been either rehashed PR images, screenshots or outright guesswork. Piers Bizony’s “2001 Filming the Future,” published in 1994, has been just about the only good source for concept art, diagrams and other such imagery, but it remained pretty lean.

Since I started work on the Space Station V diagrams (described HERE), I’ve been interested in finding anything new on the subject. Of course after more than four decades, it’s hardly to be expected that much is left to find. One potential source is the recently published “2001: The Lost Science” by Adam Johnson, published by Apogee Prime. I bought it a few weeks back in the *hope* that there might be some good and/or useful stuff in it; hope was pretty much all I had as there were few reviews or descriptions out there. It showed up in the mail a few days ago… thanks, mailperson, for leaving it in the dirt at the side of the road. Feh.

Anyway: I’ve purchased a number of Apogee space books in the past, and they’ve all been fairly small-format paperbacks. Imagine my surprise to find that “2001: TLS” is the size of an old issue of Life magazine; finding a place for it on the bookshelves might be a bit of an issue. And it’s just as well that it is this large… it is loaded to the gills with high-quality imagery, including a lot of cleaned-up blueprints. Some of the “holy grail” blueprints remain lost… no overall views of the Discovery, none of the Space Station V. But there are essentially complete “deck plans” of the Discovery, including pod bay and centrifuge; cockpits of the Orion/Aries; Aries passenger deck plan and elevation; control panels; space pod, and others.

For me, the best/most annoying inclusion was, at long last, good diagrams of the Orion III spaceplane. This is not quite the Orion as it appeared in the movie… a few details are off, including antennae and a slightly different cockpit canopy configuration, but on the whole it lays the vehicle out nicely. Where it becomes annoying: Oh, Now You Tell Me. It gives full scale dimensions: 175 feet long (not counting the “spines”), and 85 feet span. This is notably smaller than the dimensions I’ve been using.

A decade ago, when I first started hacking away at the idea of a “2001 Tech Manual,” I tried to determine the sizes of the vehicles. For the Orion III, I started off assuming that the reported scale of 1/144 for the old Aurora plastic model kit of the Orion III was accurate. This produced a length of 165 feet, a span of 85. Not too far off, especially given how little interest model kit companies have often shown in sci-fi kit accuracy. After that, I read through Ian Walsh’s study of the Orion III, and how he came up with dimensions, and found his reasoning convincing. His dimensions are 213 feet length, 109 feet span. Much larger than what is apparently the “official” size of the craft. This would have implications for those who have the Fantastic Plastic model of the Space Station V; but at this point I’m just going to stick my fingers in my ears and hum real loud when anyone asks about that.

“2001: The Lost Science” is a bit pricey, at about $50. But I believe it is worth it. You can buy it from Apogee’s online bookstore (but not, sadly, from Amazon.com).

It is packed with illustrations. I am currently busy scanning a number of them, in particular diagrams, to help out with a few projects. But I won’t post them… here’s a case where if you want ’em, you should really go through the proper channels for ’em.

Recommended.