Stanley Kubrick was right

[ElectricBlue]

Water has been found in the Clavius crater on the Moon. Clavius is, of course, where Kubrick put his moon base in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

They'll be finding TMA-1 over in the Tycho crater next, and then it's game on for Jupiter.

They're probably converting HAL to lithium batteries as we speak.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science...on-moon-using-nasas-flying-telescope/12806148

 

[Blind_Justice]

Sorry, EB, but I can't let you do that...

 

[Matt12191982]

Sorry, EB, but I can't let you do that...

lol

I haven't seen that movie in decades! I barely remember it~!

 

[Voboy]

Invalid thread title.

Clavius Base came not from Kubrick, but from Arthur C Clarke's source material. Not that I'm blaming you.

 

[SimonDoom]

Invalid thread title.

Clavius Base came not from Kubrick, but from Arthur C Clarke's source material. Not that I'm blaming you.

Isn't it a bit trickier than this? I'm not certain; I don't know the exact details of the development. But Clarke and Kubrick wrote the screenplay for the movie BEFORE the novel was finished. The novel came out after the movie, and Clarke was given sole credit as novelist. But are you certain that in the screenplay development Clarke was the source of the Clavius Base material?

 

[mfan2112]

Isn't it a bit trickier than this? I'm not certain; I don't know the exact details of the development. But Clarke and Kubrick wrote the screenplay for the movie BEFORE the novel was finished. The novel came out after the movie, and Clarke was given sole credit as novelist. But are you certain that in the screenplay development Clarke was the source of the Clavius Base material?

I think you are correct.

 

[Voboy]

The Clarke material (short stories, mostly) that drew Kubrick to the ideas he and Clarke developed date back as far as 1951.

You're right that the 2001 novelization paralleled the screenplay, but nearly every technical detail that Kubrick includes is mentioned in Clarke material of various vintages. So maybe you're right, but I doubt it.

Either way, like I said, I don't blame EB. Kubrick is the bigger draw, by far!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Isn't it a bit trickier than this? I'm not certain; I don't know the exact details of the development. But Clarke and Kubrick wrote the screenplay for the movie BEFORE the novel was finished. The novel came out after the movie, and Clarke was given sole credit as novelist. But are you certain that in the screenplay development Clarke was the source of the Clavius Base material?

The "water on the Moon" part definitely came from Clarke. It's mentioned in his 1951 story "The Sentinel", which was much later expanded to become 2001.

In "The Sentinel" the setting is the Mare Crisium, changed to Clavius for "2001". Clarke was the astronomer of the two, so I'd be surprised if he wasn't involved in that choice, but I haven't seen anything definite on it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The "water on the Moon" part definitely came from Clarke. It's mentioned in his 1951 story "The Sentinel", which was much later expanded to become 2001.

In "The Sentinel" the setting is the Mare Crisium, changed to Clavius for "2001". Clarke was the astronomer of the two, so I'd be surprised if he wasn't involved in that choice, but I haven't seen anything definite on it.

Given that Kubrick contracted Clarke and kept him on the hook for four or five years (he only allowed the novel to be published after the movie was released) the truth will be in a box either in the Kubrick home (with Christianne Kubrick as the keeper) or in (I think) a German film archive - she donated "the boxes" ten years or so ago. There'll be a piece of paper where Clavius is first mentioned, written by one or the other of them. Kubrick would have asked, "Where would water most likely be found? Where would you put a base?" - and the logical answer is one of the poles, because less likely for the sun to "boil" it off (whatever the term would be, in a vacuum).

I've got twelve frames from SK's own copy of 2001 - from the Stargate sequence - in a Taschen collection compiled around the same time the archive was transferred.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Given that Kubrick contracted Clarke and kept him on the hook for four or five years (he only allowed the novel to be published after the movie was released) the truth will be in a box either in the Kubrick home (with Christianne Kubrick as the keeper) or in (I think) a German film archive - she donated "the boxes" ten years or so ago. There'll be a piece of paper where Clavius is first mentioned, written by one or the other of them. Kubrick would have asked, "Where would water most likely be found? Where would you put a base?" - and the logical answer is one of the poles, because less likely for the sun to "boil" it off (whatever the term would be, in a vacuum).

Strictly speaking it's sublimation, though I doubt anybody outside a chem class is going to quibble too much with "boiling".

Water is nice to have, if it's present in worthwhile quantities, but there are other considerations. Building at the equator reduces your fuel costs by a little bit (equatorial bulge means lower escape velocity, spin means you get some of that escape velocity for free) and lava tubes (often found at the edges of mares) are good for shelter.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Strictly speaking it's sublimation, though I doubt anybody outside a chem class is going to quibble too much with "boiling".

Water is nice to have, if it's present in worthwhile quantities, but there are other considerations. Building at the equator reduces your fuel costs by a little bit (equatorial bulge means lower escape velocity, spin means you get some of that escape velocity for free) and lava tubes (often found at the edges of mares) are good for shelter.

I knew I could rely on you, Brambles - quicker than me futzing with a search engine - and I knew "boiling" wasn't right .

 

[Handley_Page]

Even today, the quality of the film image is truly remarkable. When looking at the 'exterior' shots of that space-ship, take a second to realise that each frame took about half a minute to expose; and it's 50 frames per second.
There are a few bits of dialogue from film that have passed into legend.
For example "What we have here Luke, is failure to communicate" (Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke)
And, of course, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" is one of those famous lines.(at about 1 minute).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Even today, the quality of the film image is truly remarkable. When looking at the 'exterior' shots of that space-ship, take a second to realise that each frame took about half a minute to expose; and it's 50 frames per second.
There are a few bits of dialogue from film that have passed into legend.
For example "What we have here Luke, is failure to communicate" (Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke)
And, of course, "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" is one of those famous lines.(at about 1 minute).

24 frames per second, 70mm, with all FX shots done on the camera negative.

High Res 50 fps was used with recent 3D movies such as The Hobbit, but it's a much later technology than the 70mm used in the 50s and 60s.

Christopher Nolan and one or two others use 70mm film these days, but the big curved screens have all gone - it's all flat projection now, which is nothing like the original experience.

 

[SimonDoom]

Even today, the quality of the film image is truly remarkable. When looking at the 'exterior' shots of that space-ship, take a second to realise that each frame took about half a minute to expose; and it's 50 frames per second.
.

Agree; it's pretty mind-blowing to watch it even now and to compare it with what came before. It came out nine years before Star Wars, and off the top of my head I can't think of anything in that interim that looked as good as 2001. And Star Wars, while presenting space in a more visually dynamic way, was less realistic, since you could hear sound in space. In 2001, you just heard Strauss.

 

[SimonDoom]

I knew I could rely on you, Brambles - quicker than me futzing with a search engine - and I knew "boiling" wasn't right .

Falling a bit short in the chemistry department myself, I scrambled for my own search engine to bone up on some of this and learned things I did not know before about phase diagrams and triple points in thermodynamics.

Good thread!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Agree; it's pretty mind-blowing to watch it even now and to compare it with what came before. It came out nine years before Star Wars, and off the top of my head I can't think of anything in that interim that looked as good as 2001. And Star Wars, while presenting space in a more visually dynamic way, was less realistic, since you could hear sound in space. In 2001, you just heard Strauss.

Or breathing. The soundtrack when Dave Bowman is trying to get back into the spaceship is just the sound of his breath - and the sequence in the airlock is silence, until he gets the outer door closed and air rushes in.

I saw it on a re-release in 1978 ("Before Star Wars there always was, and always will be, 2001: A Space Odyssey" was the promo line) on a huge curved screen one afternoon, with only half a dozen in the cinema. Sitting dead centre, seeing nothing else but the screen and with stereo sound, it was three dimensional, almost literally floating in space. And that first tilt into the rush of the Star Gate, whoa! Like going over a waterfall.

I've seen it on a big screen something like twenty times, and I still get a shiver up my spine every time I see the bone in the air.

As you can probably see, I'm a Kubrick nut. 2001 is far and away my favourite film, out there all by itself.

 

[SimonDoom]

Or breathing. The soundtrack when Dave Bowman is trying to get back into the spaceship is just the sound of his breath - and the sequence in the airlock is silence, until he gets the outer door closed and air rushes in.

I saw it on a re-release in 1978 ("Before Star Wars there always was, and always will be, 2001: A Space Odyssey" was the promo line) on a huge curved screen one afternoon, with only half a dozen in the cinema. Sitting dead centre, seeing nothing else but the screen and with stereo sound, it was three dimensional, almost literally floating in space. And that first tilt into the rush of the Star Gate, whoa! Like going over a waterfall.

I've seen it on a big screen something like twenty times, and I still get a shiver up my spine every time I see the bone in the air.

As you can probably see, I'm a Kubrick nut. 2001 is far and away my favourite film, out there all by itself.

2001 is a hard movie to compare with anything else. It has no story, to speak of. Minimal dialogue. There are no characters with any backstory. It's mesmerizing, but not like any other movie I've seen.

If I remember correctly I saw it for the first time in a double feature with Logan's Run in 1976. I was a bit younger than you. I remember liking it until the end, when I thought, What the hell was that?

I recognized it was a great movie, but it didn't have Jenny Agutter in (and sometimes not in) a barely-there, green minidress.

 

[Abbafan]

Isn't it a bit trickier than this? I'm not certain; I don't know the exact details of the development. But Clarke and Kubrick wrote the screenplay for the movie BEFORE the novel was finished. The novel came out after the movie, and Clarke was given sole credit as novelist. But are you certain that in the screenplay development Clarke was the source of the Clavius Base material?

I've never seen an interview or anything where either of them got into what ideas came from who. I tend to think the more scientific stuff like where moon water might be located came from Clarke, but we don't know for sure, no.

 

[Abbafan]

2001 is a hard movie to compare with anything else. It has no story, to speak of. Minimal dialogue. There are no characters with any backstory. It's mesmerizing, but not like any other movie I've seen.

If I remember correctly I saw it for the first time in a double feature with Logan's Run in 1976. I was a bit younger than you. I remember liking it until the end, when I thought, What the hell was that?

I recognized it was a great movie, but it didn't have Jenny Agutter in (and sometimes not in) a barely-there, green minidress.

LOL. With you on Agutter. Kubrick's my favorite director, but 2001 is one that I don't really go back and rewatch other than the opening scenes, for the reason you mentioned. Usually the slow pacing of his films doesn't bother me. They are beautiful to look at and there's a lot to take in and think about with his movies. 2001 is a classic movie like pretty much all of Kubrick's, but its not the most interesting one to rewatch.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I recognized it was a great movie, but it didn't have Jenny Agutter in (and sometimes not in) a barely-there, green minidress.

Now that's a weird double bill.

But Jenny Agutter... have you seen Walkabout, a Nicholas Roeg movie, made in Australia in 1971? A younger Jenny with even less on. I think that might even have been the first full nudity movie I ever saw - a very short scene of her swimming naked, which passed the censor at the time, and on re-release.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've never seen an interview or anything where either of them got into what ideas came from who. I tend to think the more scientific stuff like where moon water might be located came from Clarke, but we don't know for sure, no.

Kubrick plugged himself into NASA, so he was getting advice from everywhere. He ended up with one of three super fast NASA camera lenses which he used to film Barry Lyndon. The other two, I think, are still on the Moon.

 

[Handley_Page]

It seems to me that the media squawking about "water on the Moon" ignores a few facts.
412 parts per million is not exactly a swimming pool situation. I've not seen anything about how any usable water (as in H2O) could be extracted, for example.

 

[SimonDoom]

Now that's a weird double bill.

But Jenny Agutter... have you seen Walkabout, a Nicholas Roeg movie, made in Australia in 1971? A younger Jenny with even less on. I think that might even have been the first full nudity movie I ever saw - a very short scene of her swimming naked, which passed the censor at the time, and on re-release.

Yes, a weird double bill, and I'm sure you can imagine how it was hard it was for a barely pubescent male moviegoer to concentrate on the high-brow wonders of 2001 after 2 hours of Jessica 7 running around in and out of that "dress."

I never saw Walkabout, but I've heard about it and Jenny Agutter's scenes. There's no way it could get made today. Logan's Run was my first exposure to female nudity in a movie. So you and I have Jenny Agutter in common. You never forget your first time.

 

[TxRad]

It seems to me that the media squawking about "water on the Moon" ignores a few facts.
412 parts per million is not exactly a swimming pool situation. I've not seen anything about how any usable water (as in H2O) could be extracted, for example.

Before this, they thought all the water was in ice at the shadow line or the poles. Water in the dust means there may be water elsewhere. The bright face of the moon is cold but the poles and shadow side is even colder. In the sun or in the dark. Where would you build your base?

 

[Bramblethorn]

It seems to me that the media squawking about "water on the Moon" ignores a few facts.
412 parts per million is not exactly a swimming pool situation. I've not seen anything about how any usable water (as in H2O) could be extracted, for example.

I don't know what the state of the art is, but my first thought would be to collect water-laden soil and heat it up with solar energy to cook off the water, then condense it again, a bit like collecting dew in a desert. Hauling cargo to the Moon is expensive, but there's plenty of sunlight there, so being able to extract water even slowly probably beats carrying it.