Karl,
Who flipped the gravity switch on in the moonbus prior to coffee?
While the film does have its flaws in its depiction of gravity (more on that in a minute), I am not bothered by the gravity they obviously have on the Moonbus.
The Moonbus is not in orbit, therefore it should not be in freefall (aka "zero gravity"). The bus flies straight at what appears to be a constant altitude above the Moon's surface, so presumably it is propelled by those large downward-firing rocket bells. I therefore would imagine that they enjoy normal Lunar gravity (1/6 G) on the Moonbus.
Now granted, logically the easiest way for the Moonbus to get around, would be to launch itself on a ballistic trajectory from Clavius to Tycho (in otherwords, a sub-orbital trajectory), cut off the rockets, and coast all the way. I'm not entirely certain that this is
not what is being depicted in the film, but if that's the case the Moonbus seems to be traveling kind of low to the ground.
Anyway... sure, gravity on the Moonbus, why not.
What bugs me though, is the one gee gravity field they seem to always have everywhere in the film. For example, look at how the men move around in the Clavius meeting-room scene where Floyd addresses the Moonbase personnel. Everyone walks normally as if they were on Earth. In reality, they'd only have a sixth-gee of gravity, so people would tend to "float" and "bounce" as they moved. Look at the videos of the astronauts on the moon, and how they hop and lope as they move (and those guys are wearing hundreds of pounds of equipment!).
There's lots of gravity-that-shouldn't-be in other locations as well. On
Discovery, the astronauts
climb up and down ladders between levels (the Bridge, HAL room and Pod bay for example). This is unnecessary since all compartments on the ship except for the Centrifuge, are supposedly in zero gravity!
Another infamous example is on the Aries 1-B Shuttle from Space Station 5 to the Moon. That entire ship is in zero gravity, but when Floyd slurps his dinner through a straw, the food slides
back down the straw! :lol
Obviously this is all due to the fact that it's only a movie, and it was filmed in the one-gee gravity environment of Earth. Kubrick gives it a heroic try though, and does a lot with actors on wires, for instance in the EVA scenes or when Bowman is in the HAL brain room, to give the impression of free fall.
Gravity in space movies is usually a "taken for granted" thing. In Star Trek there's some sort of artificially generated gravity field. This seems to have been the case in "Space 1999" as well, where they have one gee on the Moonbase but once somebody steps outside onto the lunar surface, suddenly it's floaty sixth-gee time. :lol
In "2001 a space odyssey" though, Kubrick knows enough to not be depicting "artificial gravity fields". He shows fake gravity being generated by rotating drums (as in Space Station 5 or the
Discovery's centrifuge).
The Peter Hyams sequel "2010 the year we make contact" throws the gravity situation out the window though, since even though the
Leonov is shown to have a rotating section to provide gravity, Hyams also has normal gravity on
Discovery, which is a no-no. Cut to John Lithgow leaning jauntily against the wall in the pod bay. :lol
k
