SNHS Physics Blog 3: Science Fiction, Fiction or Reality?

Ishita Vaish

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Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey caught my attention due to its presence as a famous movie and its amazing reviews but also due to my personal interest in understanding what people imagined the 2000s be, what people imagined my life would be like. A majority of book reviews point out that this novel describes a journey deep into the solar system that went wrong, but it is also a highly recommended read because of its complexity and depth. Reviewers consistently highlight that the novel was written with care for real scientific principles and provides insight about the condition of mankind, literally and symbolically. While born from the chaos of the 1960s, this novel is truly ahead of its time.

While marked by social media posts and festive gatherings, birth is regarded as commonplace today without consideration of the marvel it truly is. This conclusion comes about from a simple observation: ask anyone to define birth and one might stumble before answering. To this extent, birth’s complexity goes ignored in the face of our emphasis on understanding death. Unlike many authors who explore the subconscious and death, breaking down what it means to exist, Arthur C. Clarke explores birth and evolution whether it be “her fourth birthday last week,” “the happiest of birthdays,” or “another birth [beyond this moment]” (Clarke). 2001: A Space Odyssey takes readers from “The Dawn of Man” to the birth of the “Star-Child” while furthering the reader’s understanding of man’s relationship with technology. The novel not only predicted technological fleets that would soon come about but also foreshadowed the potential for technology to dangerously intrude in man’s life, potentially becoming more powerful than man himself.

Clarke’s focus continuously drifts from one technological innovation to another throughout the novel. The most advanced ideas of his time consist of the technologies Clarke predicted would govern man’s journey in space. For example, Space Station One serves as a docking point for Floyd when traveling in the Orion III Spacecraft. Space Station One revolves or spins in order to provide artificial gravity. The spinning motion creates a centrifugal force, so individuals inside are pushed to the outside. In this case, that means a downward force is exerted which feels similar to gravity. Clarke predicted a Space Station would exist in 1968 and two decades later in 1998, the assembly of International Space Station began. In 2015, NASA also released a detailed plan about implementing artificial gravity using a centrifugal force to reduce health risks for astronauts.

The Space Station is just one of the many technologies Clarke predicted. In describing the journey to Saturn, the novel focuses on two critical inventions: hibernation and gravitational assist. Human hibernation has not been witnessed in space just yet but is closer than ever before to becoming a reality. Techniques like “lotska,” “therapeutic hypothermia,” and meditation may enable humans to hibernate, especially “if it means the difference between being able to go to Mars, and not” (Panko). On the other hand, gravitational assist has been widely used since the novel’s publication. Gravitational assist can be defined as “the technique of using the energy of a gravitational field and the orbital velocity of a planet to change the speed and trajectory of a spacecraft” (Dictionary). It is a technique used to help spacecrafts (manned or un-manned) travel farther into space while conserving energy and time. A satellite or spacecraft will gain speed as it approaches the planet and will lose speed as it leaves. It may seem as though the net effect is zero, but the planet is in motion while the spacecraft or satellite is approaching it. If the object is moving in the same direction as the planet, then it will acquire some of the planet’s orbital energy. In simple words, this technique allows spacecrafts or satellites to “catch up” with a planet’s motion around the sun and increase velocity. However, Newton's Law of Conservation, the first law of thermodynamics, still applies. If the object increases its velocity, then this removes energy from the planet, but this is not of significant concern to NASA because the amount of energy removed is nearly negligible compared to the planet’s size. In the novel, the scientists use the gravity of Jupiter to help the spacecraft reach Saturn, a simple example of gravitational assist. It wasn’t long before NASA began to use gravitational assists, and in 1977, the Voyager units were launched and traveled billions of miles with the help of gravitational assist.

His audience may not have understood the text when first published, but its complexity and dark message serve as a reflection of the human condition. 2001: A Space Odyssey sparked a new era of science-fiction, fueled people’s fascination with exploring space, and may have even predicted various aspects of our future. While doing so, Clarke and Kubrick sent a powerful message to all of their reader and viewers, warning them of the risks of technology and the need to step back and reevaluate the course human evolution is taking. It truly is a product of its time that foresaw what would lie ahead.