Talk:Discovery One

There is a huge amount of baloney in this article
Why and where from? Much of it seems to have simply been pulled out of thin air from someone who didn't pay any attention to what Sir Arthur C. Clarke or Stanley Kubrick wrote or said in any interviews, or what is in the film 2001 either.

For example, none of the genuine sources (e.g. Clarke) ever said anything about using nuclear fission power in the Discovery One. Clarke was noncommittal on the details, but what was far more likely was thermonuclear fusion power for the Discovery One. Thermonuclear fusion is at least ten times as efficient as fission is, and furthermore, fusion produces inert helium that makes nice, clean rocket exhaust -- along with whatever other water, ammonia, or methane that you put into the engines.

Referring to a "sister ship" going to Saturn to rescue the crew? ABSURD!! As explained in Clarke's novel, the Discovery Two would have been a much larger and more powerful spaceship than the Discovery One (hence taking much longer to build). She would be built with the capability of making the trip all the way to Saturn, picking up the five-man crew of the Discovery One there if they survived, putting everyone back into suspended animation again, and then flying all the way back to low earth orbit again. "Sister ship", my a$$. If the Discovery One were comparable with the USS Consitution of 1812, then the Discovery Two would have been comparable with the British ocean liner Queen Mary of the 1930s. (The one that is kept at Long Beach, California, now, all tied up and anchored down.)

In the novel 2001, Clarke described fully how the Discovery One would fly close by Jupiter to get a gravitational assist to help her get to Saturn, and then once whe was close to Saturn, her goal was to explore the mysterions saturnian moon Iapetus, which was on the line-of-sight of the radio transmission from the TMA-1. Then while the Discovery One was on her way between Jupiter and Saturn was when all of the trouble with the HAL-9000 cropped up. However, Dave Bowman made it to Iapetus anyway, and when he got there, Iapetus had a gigantic Black Monolith on it. That monolith opened up, revealing a stargate, and then Bowman in his EVA pod got sucked into the stargate and onto an incredible voyage across the Universe.

As for those who argue here on this page about the name Discovery One, both the Discovery One and the Discovery Two are mentioned in Clarke's novel 2001, and furthermore, a ground communicator from NASA, addressing the two astronauts, refers to their spaceship as "X-Ray Delta One". For those of you who know nothing of the lingo of NASA and the military, "X-Ray Delta One" refers to the Discovery One. Get it? "Delta" in the phonetic alphabet means "D", and hence "Delta One" is phonetic lingo for Discovery One. Furthermore, an X-ray is a way of probing and discovering things. Hence, "X-Ray Delta One" is a redundant way of saying Discovery One in the standard phonetic alphabet. 98.67.163.16 (talk) 03:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I totally agree. What is here is apparently a hodgepodge from the film and the book and interviews and etc. with little to no references. It is almost too confusing to bother editing for grammar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HullIntegrity (talk • contribs) 13:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Fusion is only more efficient than fission if fusion power has been developed past the break-even point. To-date fusion bombs are the only such technology. On the other hand, fission power was proven technology back in the '60s and fission rockets were in the works. Fission rockets have since been tested and are known to work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 04:55, 25 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Considering the date of the original story and developments at that time, it entirely reasonable and likely that Clarke had the NERVA (see Wikipedia article on same) fission propulsion system in mind for Discovery 1. The description in the novel is a good fit.  In the mid-60s, NERVA was well on track to being a spaceworthy Mars propulsion system and could have been utilized for Jupiter or Saturn.  NERVA had a specific impulse in the mid-800 second range, over twice as efficient as any chemical propulsion system at that time.  Fusion far more desirable, but at that period would have taken bombs.  However, in later years, R. W. Bussard, who proposed the Rover project that led to NERVA, did design a fusion reactor, the Polywell, which would make a good space propulsion power source.  Bussard felt that the fusion reactor, if "all regeneratively cooled" by the propellant, would not need radiators, but most of his long range designs did have radiators. This article should remove the conflicting mentions of fusion versus fission propulsion.  Unless it can be conclusively cited that Clarke meant one or the other, it should correctly reflect that the power source was ambiguous. Tomligon (talk) 21:20, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Heading Needed
HAL malfunctioned due to a programming conflict between keeping the real purpose of the mission secret from Bowman and Poole, and his basic programming for delivering accurate data. Not a fear of abandonment.

This use to be a full article about the ship from the movie 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. What happened? --Jason Palpatine (talk) 07:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * --- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 16:02, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Dumb -- Jason Palpatine (talk) 11:03, 13 January 2008 (UTC)   This User fails to understand Wikipedia's Systematized Logistical Projection of its Balanced Policy Contingency. (speak your mind | contributions)

I've seen this spaceship
I've seen this spaceship, or, better saying, the model that was used for filming, near a parking lot of Fiumicino Airport, Rome, Italy. You should see it with Google maps cliclking here http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?ie=UTF8&hl=it&ll=41.776137,12.248645&spn=0.00276,0.004989&t=h&z=18&om=0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.48.244.2 (talk) 13:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Holy cow, you're right. There's a Google Street View shot here. The ship is definitely the Discovery, although it's not the original filming model. The original was smaller and less droopy. Must have been a labour of love to make, though. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 17:14, 24 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It appears to be part of either a display or a theme park, with several other sci-fi and technology themed exhibits just nearby. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 17:17, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Hal brain room605.JPG
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 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --10:02, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Draft
The statistics section uses the term "draft" where I think it should use "height."

"Draft" is the distance between the most submerged point (usually the keel) on a ship and the surface of the water. Wjl2 (talk) 20:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

"U.S.S. versus USSC"
Hello! I'd all ready sent a link to this article to a friend in England, before I was bothered by the way the name of the ship is stated in it.

"U.S.S." = "United States Ship". Ergo, "United States Spacecraft" will not do here, for that would be another "U.S.S."!

But then I saw below, the "USSC". That's a big clue right there that it is, "United States Space Craft". So, "Space Craft" not "Spacecraft".

(Hmmh. It just occurred to me that "spacecraft" might mean a new crafting hobby, like knitting.)

Is this sort of confusion a hold over about the meaning of the "U.S.S." for the "Starship Enterprise"? Like, is it "United States Ship", "United Space Ship", or "United Star Ship"?

But anyway, if "Discovery One" is indeed meant to be depicted as property of the United States Government, but not the "United States Navy" per se, some might argue that "Spacecraft" could be used as one word rather than two. But that doesn't make sense!

Argh! I feel like I'm trying to explain the difference between "boat" and "ship" here! LeoStarDragon1 (talk) 14:35, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * It's just Discovery. Neither the book nor the films makes any reference to 'USS', or Discovery One. Halmyre (talk) 16:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It is Discovery “X-Ray Delta One.” This is said by the mission controller in the 2OO1 film when discussing the AE-35 unit. There is a short YouTube clip if you don’t want to look through the film. Hyde35 (talk) 19:39, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I see that this comment is redundant, as it is answered above. Sorry. Hyde35 (talk) 19:55, 26 September 2023 (UTC)


 * You're nuts: Of course both Discovery One and Discovery Two are mentioned in the novel 2001.

Centrifuge location and orientation
I wonder how where and how the centrifuge is located and oriented. One can imagine that it is a disk located at midheight of the sphere that makes the command module (mid-height as we can imagine that the "floor" is defined by the pod bay plane, and up is towards the "windows" and down toward the floor.) However, in 2010, you can see the Discovery rotating (after the lose of energy the rotation was transferred to the whole ship) around and axis paralell to the floor and perpendicular to the main ship axis. This means that the centrifuge was a rotating "vertical" disk which rotation axis was perpendicular to the main ship axis, a sort of saw blade as in a saw mill. This means that it was "invading" the pod bay. Am I right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.229.135.66 (talk) 18:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The centrifuge is located towards the rear of the habitat sphere. Page 66 of 2OO1: The Lost Science shows it. Hyde35 (talk) 19:59, 26 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't worry too much about it. The Ship still had liquid propellant stored in its tanks when it was parked, which means it's not a strictly rigid body. If its initial rotation is about the long axis, it will gradually precess to the more stable end-over-end tumble mode it displays when the Leonov arrives.

Ongoing problems with notability
While Articles for deletion/Discovery One was closed as keep, and some sources were discussed, they were not added to this article, which still fails to tell the readers why this topic is notable (important, significant, etc.). All we say is that it was in the famous movie, how it was designed for the movie/book, and then have a fictional history of what it did in the movie/book. What we need to tell the readers (in order for notability to be removed) is WHY this ship is considered significant (maybe it inspired things, maybe it became a pop culture icon, etc.). Also ping User:Spinningspark who removed the notability template I've added and which I now restored (I wanted to elaborate on my edit summary more, per WP:BRD). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:34, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Piotrus, the purpose of AFD is to test notability. The participants agreed that it was notable.  Templates aren't meant to be a permanent badge of shame.  You can't put it back just because you personally think the AFD was wrong or you don't like the article.  If you think a mistake has been made you have the option to open a new AFD.
 * WP:N does not require us to explain in the article why something is notable. It is notable because reliable sources find it notable and cover it.  Nor does WP:N require sources establishing notability to actually be in the article.  It is enough that they exist.  But in point of fact you are wrong that the sources from the AFD were not added to the article.  Some of them were as part of the article improvement. SpinningSpark 06:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand the purpose of the maintenance and cleanup templates, please see Template index/Cleanup. I explained above what this article needs for this template to be removed. Nobody is saying it needs to go to AfD again, but until the problem is resolved, the template should stay to encourage editors to fix this. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 11:23, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * The article may have issues, but it doesn't have notability issues. That's been established.  And a template index is part of neither policy or guidelines.  It's just an index. SpinningSpark 15:30, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

RfC on notability tag
Should the article Discovery One continue to carry a notability tag despite its AfD being closed as keep? 15:58, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

The tag was removed following the AfD two years ago but a user has recently insisted on restoring it. Multiple reliable sources were presented at AfD to establish notability. pinging original discussion participants. SpinningSpark 16:01, 11 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Remove tag per the AfD decision and reliable sources in article. Spinning<b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 16:02, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Remove tag. I'm the person who took this to AfD in the first place, and I don't understand the justification for tagging it for notability. It was a unanimous "keep", and relevant sources were added from those brought forward in the AfD discussion. I could see a tag (or new AfD) being appropriate if the notability criteria for this subject had changed or the original close was questionable, but I don't see that in this case. Our guidelines do not require that the article text explain why a subject is "important" or "significant" – only that there are sources to satisfy our notability criteria. --RL0919 (talk) 16:31, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Remove tag per the guidance at Template:Notability/doc: "Do not use this tag merely because the page requires significant work. Notability requires only that appropriate sources have been published about the subject.  It does not require that any editor has already named these sources, followed the neutral, encyclopedic style, or otherwise written a good article." It seems the question of notability was settled at AfD, so the tag is no longer helpful. If some editors believe the AfD discussion came to the wrong conclusion, start a new one. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 16:56, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Discovery model(s) used for Kubrick’s Film
I wonder if this adds some useful information: https://www.michellaudio.com/about 46.6.253.28 (talk) 06:03, 30 July 2023 (UTC)