Corrected entry: When Bowman fades from the TV his wife is watching, a commercial for travel to Sri Lanka comes on. Sri Lanka was the chosen home of the film's author, Arthur C. Clarke.
Corrected entry: Near the end of the movie, Bowman instructs HAL to point his antenna towards the Earth - meaning he will not be able to relay his observations to the Leonov. The antenna moves, yet in the next shot of the Leonov crew, the Jupiter observation is still visible on the monitors.
Correction: HAL means that we will lose the ability to communicate with Leonov, but don't forget that Leonov is an exploration vessel as well. The displays are from Leonov's own telescopes and instruments, as we saw when Leonov sent the probe to Europa and when Curnow first noticed the monoliths in Jupiter's atmosphere. They wouldn't have HAL's analysis of the data, but they would still be able to perform their own measurements and imaging.
Corrected entry: When Max and Curnow enter Discovery through the emergency airlock, they emerge inside the pod bay to find the last remaining pod (even though all three pods were actually gone). It is in the spot next to the airlock door, but later when Floyd, Curnow, Chandra and the other Russian cosmonaut are talking, the pod has suddenly moved two spots over.
Correction: The pod accounting is correct, as Pod 1 was lost with Poole and Pod 2 was lost with Bowman. There is considerable time between when Max and Curnow first enter the ship and when Hal is fully reactivated (weeks in the novel), allowing for one or more EVAs to examine and restore the ship. There's no reason that the pod couldn't have been used for some purpose and then returned to a different location afterwards.
Corrected entry: In "2001", when Bowman leaves the Discovery's cockpit, he descends a ladder that leads to the pod control room (on the ship's starboard side, next to the centered pod bay). But when the ethereal Bowman leaves the cockpit with Floyd following, tho Bowman heads toward starboard, they enter the pod bay through the port-side corridor. This seems to ignore Bowman's knowledge of the Discovery's layout. With time being critical, had Bowman wanted to 'teleport' himself and Floyd to the pod bay, he'd have done so directly - no walking at all. Intentionally taking a meandering route to the pod bay seems to go against Bowman's reason for being here. (01:23:15)
Correction: This is pure speculation on your part. We have no way of knowing why Bowman is doing the things he does.
Corrected entry: Dr. Chandra informs Dr. Floyd that HAL was "given full knowledge of the mission's true objective" and "was told to lie" to Bowman and Poole. Floyd protests, stating, "I didn't instruct anyone to tell HAL about the Monolith!", and when shown that the NSC gave the order, Floyd claims "I didn't know!" repeatedly, shocked. As Dr. Chandra never challenges Floyd on his defensiveness, he must believe Floyd, yet his investigation into HAL's orders surely would have come across the video message seen by Bowman after disabling HAL in "2001" wherein Floyd himself (played by another actor) states that HAL is the only one aboard that has been told the true purpose of the mission. Floyd must be lying and Chandra must know it, and with his deep affinity for HAL and desire to prove HAL innocent, he wouldn't let this lie go unchallenged. (01:14:10)
Correction: What Chandra knew about the orders is highly debatable. As to why he would choose not to confront Floyd, that is a character choice and there are many plausible explanations.
Corrected entry: For aerobraking to work, the ship must enter the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. At no time does the ship come close enough to Jupiter to cause the friction needed to portray the flaming ball shown in the movie. (00:35:22)
Correction: This is a complete assumption, they never say specifically how close they are to Jupiter's atmosphere or how close they need to be in order for the aerobraking to work. Scientific research on Jupiter has revealed that it's atmosphere is over 1000 km thick; from what we see in the movie the ship may very well be just inside the upper atmosphere.
Corrected entry: When the astronauts reach the Discovery and enter the ship, Max actually breathes the air to determine if it's OK. Since we had Oxygen samplers in 1985, I'm positive that we'd have even better ones in 2010.
Correction: He doesn't breathe the air to see if it's ok. They've already run tests and determined it's ok. They know there is oxygen. They are simply watching him closely as a precaution.
Corrected entry: The Leonov crew launch a probe to make a close examination of the surface of Europa. As it gets close it shines a spotlight on the surface. The spot should be traveling at the same speed as the probe, meaning it ought to be traveling at several thousand miles per hour. Yet it's shown sweeping the surface so slowly that it can follow an animal swimming beneath the ice.
Correction: This means the light is being moved on a gymbal to compensate for the forward movement of the probe. Police and rescue helicopters use this technique all the time.
Corrected entry: In the prequel, 2001, there's a single room inside spaceship Discovery which holds an inventory of spare parts. In 2010, there are at least two such rooms, referred to as "Access Ways", which have huge numerals 1 & 2 painted on their walls.
Correction: First, "2001, A Space Odyssey" was not the prequel to this film. A prequel is set before, but filmed after the original. Second, both sets are identical. See both films again or see Piers Bizony's book "2001: Filming the Future", which has a number of very clear shots of the set of the Discovery which can be compared to the designs in "2010".
Corrected entry: When Dr. Floyd is briefed on the chemical analysis of Europa, he acts positively astonished at the prospect of living things on that world. But why would this be a major surprise to him? The presence of extra-terrestrial life would be interesting to him, but not surprising, since he had already known of E.T.s years earlier when the TMA-1 had been discovered.
Correction: At first they are amazed at chlorophyll being on Europa. They are amazed that such a common 'Earth' chemical can be found on other planets/moons, the implication being it could be everywhere in the galaxy.
Corrected entry: While the probe is approaching the surface of Europa, Floyd is reading off the names of the chemicals detected. He says - 'Oxygen. Carbon. Chlorophyll. Is it organic?' Well, yes, chlorophyll would be organic - it's a huge, complex molecule which gives plants their green colour - and nobody of Floyd's intelligence and education would need to ask.
Correction: He's asking a rhetorical question, sparked by his utter disbelief in what they've detected.
Corrected entry: Dr. Chandra asks the Sal 9000 computer to open up a new file. He types out the word 'Phoenix' as its name. Phoenix only has seven letters, yet nine keystrokes are heard. (00:14:50)
Correction: Easy. The seven letters of 'Phoenix', plus the 'Shift' key for the capital 'P', plus the 'Return' key.
Corrected entry: When the Leonov arrives at Jupiter's moon, Io, it's found that spaceship Discovery, which has been passively orbiting Io for nine years, is heavily caked with powdery sulfur that's been spewed into space from the moon's many active volcanoes. But if the ship were plowing through that much sulfur on a regular basis, it's orbit would've decayed literally in a matter of months at the very most, and the ship would be a shattered mass of wreckage on the moon's surface.
Correction: It is pointed out in the beginning of the film that something weird is going on with the Discovery orbit anyway, probably due to the presence of the monolith. The monolith seems to manipulate the Discovery's orbit, so we might assume it was the monolith which prevented the orbit from disintegrating all those years. Also, instead of CONSTANTLY "plowing" through volcanic sulfur, maybe the sulfur layer was caused by only one or two heavy eruptions (reaching high enough to affect the ship's orbit). In this case the Discovery would have cleaned its trajectory by picking up the dust within a few revolutions, and the orbit would have remained stable.
Corrected entry: When Curnow does his EVA to the Discovery and lands on it he proceeds to the command module at one end where he feels full gravity, yet when he reaches for the hatch there's ½" of sulfur powder laying on the hatch (which shouldn't cling to the Discovery to begin with). When he brushes it aside it settles back on the Discovery instead of floating away. (00:49:20)
Correction: If Curnow is feeling full gravity, why wouldn't the sulphur "dust" be subject to gravity as well? One would expect the dust to settle on the hull just as Curnow is resting on it. Also, the book explains that there is an electric field between Jupiter and Io, which could polarize the Discovery's hull and allow the "dust" to stick to the ship.
Corrected entry: In 2001, Poole takes a pod out to replace AE35. We see this pod spinning off into space. Bowman takes pod 2 out to retrieve Poole. He eventually blows the door to get back inside Discovery. There is no indication that he bothers retrieving this pod: He is occupied with HAL. Bowman takes pod 3 to check out Stargate. He and the pod are sucked in. So where did pod 4 come from in this film?
Correction: It doesn't mention in the film, but in the novel of 2010 they explain that the pod which Dave Bowman has to ditch when he uses the emergency airlock in 2001 does get retrieved. It explains that later on he manages to operate this pod by remote control and bring it back onto the Discovery.
Corrected entry: The alien intelligence behind the monoliths may be good at sending trite little messages of peace love and happiness, but they have just condemned the human race to extinction, along with every living thing on our planet. They change the solar system to a binary star system, which will inevitably alter the Earth's orbit. This will cause earthquakes that would make the planet uninhabitable, and the climate changes will finish off the few survivors. Turning Jupiter into a star capable of sustaining life will involve somewhow increasing its mass by approximately two hundred and fifty times. Jupiter simply isn't massive enough to become even a small, cold star (known as a brown dwarf) by itself. Using super-dense netron matter won't work: super dense matter is super heavy, that's the whole point. If you don't hugely increase Jupiter's mass it cannot become a sun.
Correction: The power source for the new star is the millions of monoliths that are multiplying within it, generating a form of alien energy that does not exist in the real universe. It apparently has abilities that we cannot comprehend but, like many things in the sci-fi universe, we will just have to accept as working the way it is shown in the movie. It is a fictional technology capable of turning Jupiter into a star without altering it's density and generating just enough heat to turn it's moons into habitable planets.
Correction: No, a commercial for Sheraton Hotels is aired, with the dialogue specifically saying "Escape. The Sheraton Hotel and Coral Bay Lounge. For those who never outgrow the wonder."
johnrosa