Mystery in Queens

[beamjockey]

Can you help solve a puzzle?


What is this spaceship?

I'm pretty sure this is the same model, in a different museum, before it settled at AMMI.

Comments

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Its the Leonov from the film "2010"

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

You didn't read my theory.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. The Leonov had a rotating center section to provide a gravity area.
Here's the Leonov and Discovery.
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/4/4d/450px-2010_spaceships.jpg
It's clearly neither of those.

I've been looking at google image search for 30 minutes now and haven't seen it. It actually doesn't look terribly familiar to me.

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

Heck, that looks familiar!

... and my google-fu is failing me ... 8P

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

GOT IT!

It IS "DISCOVERY" from "2010" But its only PART of it.



Its two of the cargo modules from the mid section. And we know its from "2010" for two reasons. 1] the color, and 2] Kubrick had all the models from "2001" destroyed to prevent them from being used in other movies.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That has to be right.

[whl.livejournal.com]

I like your theory, although the intermodule spacing looks a bit large. But the color issue and tri-lateral symettry says you're right on.

When your original image caption said Leonov, I was a bit skeptical, as I thought the Leonov was only bilatterally symmetric.

I'll screen the movie in the next day or so, and do some checking.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

If you recall, in "2010" there is a scene in which a couple of astronauts transfer by spacewalk from the Leonov to the Discovery, which is tumbling end over end (its carousel having long since seized up), and they land on the center section of the spine, which, as mentioned above, is yellow with sulfur ejected from Io's volcanoes. I think there had to have been a close-up model of this sort made for that scene.

(Incidentally, don't you think Clarke and Hyams seriously downplayed the nastiness of Jupiter's radiation environment in the vicinity of Io? I wouldn't go spacewalking around there, that's for sure.)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

(Incidentally, don't you think Clarke and Hyams seriously downplayed the nastiness of Jupiter's radiation environment in the vicinity of Io? I wouldn't go spacewalking around there, that's for sure.)

Yeah, big time.

Clarke is too smart for this, so perhaps he did some handwave in the novel that I've forgotten. Time for another trip to the cellar!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Also, I seem to recall that the Discovery had settled down at the L1 point between Io and Jupiter, which I don't think actually makes any sense at all, since that's not stable. The L4 or L5 points would make more sense, but then Discovery would be nowhere near Io itself, depriving us of the nice Io scenery.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Isn't criticism of science in a Peter Hyams movie almost as easy as with anything that ever squirmed out of Irwin Allen's brain?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, I was more criticizing Clarke's novel, which I seem to recall was almost as cavalier--and it bothers me, because as beamjockey said, he ought to have known better. It's a pretty solid novel for the most part, one of his last really good ones and maybe the best book in the 2001 series.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Ah... My apologies for the misunderstanding.

Got me.

[gypsy1969.livejournal.com]

I don't know but it looks familiar to me too (I'd say circa 1980) and I found these neato links
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/files/images_spaceship_comparison.jpg.
http://www.hybrid-home.com/catalog/spaceship.php
http://www.smarttinc.com/advertising.html
http://www.roundacrescrafts.co.uk/index.php?cat=Men_Boys
http://www.martinbowersmodelworld.com/html/space_1999.html (what I thought?)
What fun.
So what's the answer already?

Re: Got me.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful bunch of links!

Consensus is growing around the Discovery Spine Hypothesis. We haven't yet nailed down the right scene in the movie, though. More DVD-watching is called for.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

It does look like section of the Discovery. Or could it be something from Space: 1999?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

For latecomers who might care: Puzzle solved.

An interesting sidelight from Miriam Posner.