![]() When she finished, we discussed which of 2001’s technologies had arrived and which still lay outside our grasp. She could be found deep in her reading, her stockinged feet tucked into our galley’s convection oven for warmth. ![]() I was surprised to learn that Marsha Ivins, our flight engineer, had never read the 2001 novel, and she was soon spending her spare minutes afloat in Atlantis’ middeck, devouring Arthur C. Until then, we had been too busy to break out my 2001 items in Atlantis’ cabin, but now we had a bit of free time. Rain and clouds at Kennedy Space Center delayed our return to Earth by two days. Just to be safe, though, we always left the airlock door open. Fortunately, I escaped any worries of a rogue HAL 9000 plotting my extravehicular demise. Just as in Kubrick’s film, I hovered alongside a massive spacecraft as it cruised silently through the cosmos. Installing the lab, my partner Bob Curbeam and I executed three spacewalks. Its 13-day mission: deliver the US laboratory module Destiny to the ISS. STS-98 Atlantis and its five astronauts headed for the International Space Station (ISS) on February 7, 2001. Cleared by NASA, I now had the props for a possible educational talk from space about 2001 as we pursued the trail blazed by the prophetic film. To accompany it, I searched the aisles of a local hardware store in Houston and found a dull black sharpening stone, a miniature version of the monolith which in the film repeatedly altered the fortunes of humanity. I pulled my hardcover copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey from the shelf. The 'monolith' is a sharpening stone that Jones purchased to represent the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey. The book is signed by Jones and Arthur C. ![]() Jones on Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-98) in February, 2001. This book and 'monolith' were flown by astronaut Thomas D. I wanted to mark our upcoming shuttle mission, the first of a new millennium, by bringing along something to commemorate Clarke’s story and the Kubrick film. I was fixed on a career in aerospace-whatever future America had in space, I had to be a part of it.įast forward to February 2001 and my fourth shuttle mission. Through high school and college, I watched 2001 at least 20 times, examining the cosmic scenery, the spacecraft, and the cool decisiveness of the astronauts. Later I bought the soundtrack album eyes closed, I was soon soaring toward a space station to the strains of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube. Clarke’s novel of the same name, devouring it for clues. Unable to interpret the film’s enigmatic ending, I immediately bought a paperback copy of Arthur C. Awed by the sleek monolith, the taciturn astronauts, and Kubrick’s dazzling mind-trip across the universe, I knew I had to become a space explorer myself. Hoping to capture some record of the movie’s special effects, I shot an entire roll of film during the screening with my Brownie box camera-of course, none of the shots turned out. ![]() I was stunned by the movie’s sweeping timeline, leaping from the origins of humanity to a 21 st-century expedition to the remotest reaches of space. A Life magazine story had prepared me for some of the amazing visuals in the film, but seeing it on an 8 th grade field trip to Baltimore’s Charles Theater left me breathless. ![]() While most of our space technology has not advanced at the pace portrayed in 2001, it nevertheless had an outsized impact on my interest in a space career. Clarke’s prescription: ‘See the movie, read the book…repeat as often as necessary.’ About the only edge Atlantis held over 2001’s spacecraft was that our space toilet was much simpler to operate than the version portrayed in the movie. Although we were headed for a space station that day in 2001, it hardly approached the sophistication of the giant, rotating station seen in the film. Our shuttle was a fragile, if versatile, experimental space plane the Pan Am shuttle of the film was a passenger-carrying stiletto crewed by impeccably uniformed flight attendants. To be sure, our space shuttle Atlantis did not have the capabilities the 1968 film predicted for spaceships of the “future.” Atlantis could not leave Earth orbit the film’s Discovery could voyage to Jupiter. When my STS-98 crew launched into orbit on February 7, 2001-the first human space launch of the millennium-I marked the milestone by carrying with me two personal mementos of the landmark Stanly Kubrick science fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. ![]()
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