Discovery (Space Odyssey spaceship)
| USSC Discovery | |
|---|---|
Discovery launching an EVA pod | |
| First appearance | 2001: A Space Odyssey |
| Last appearance | 2010: The Year We Make Contact |
| Created by | |
| Information | |
| Affiliation | United States |
| Auxiliary vehicles | EVA Pods |
| General characteristics | |
| Registry | XD-1 |
| Propulsion | Cavradyne Plasma Propulsion Engines |
| Power | Nuclear reactor |
| Mass | 6,000 short tons (5,440 t) |
| Length | 460 feet (140.1 m) |
| Width | 55 feet (16.7 m) |
| Height | 56 feet (17 m) |
The United States Spacecraft Discovery is a fictional spacecraft appearing in the Space Odyssey series by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The ship is a nuclear-powered interplanetary spaceship, crewed by two men and controlled by the on-board computer HAL 9000. The ship is destroyed in the second novel and makes no further appearances.
Kubrick and Clarke developed the original film and novel in parallel, but there were some differences to suit the different media. Kubrick dropped the cooling fins of the ship, fearing they would be interpreted as wings. The itinerary of Discovery in the book is from Earth orbit via gravitational slingshot around Jupiter to Saturn and parking orbit around the moon Iapetus. As producing an accurate depiction of Saturn proved too challenging, Kubrick changed this to the simpler route from Earth to Jupiter.
For the film, Kubrick built an exceptionally large model of the ship so that focus changes did not give away the true small size to the audience. He also built a large, expensive, rotating carousel for the artificial gravity scenes.