2010 has always been one of my favorite movies. I didn't like the sterile 2001, but this movie had realistic (for the time) special effect, a good story and acting, and crackled along pretty well. I even drew up plans for and halfway built a small model of the Discovery. I picked this up last night at Walmart and watched it while the boys were watching TV downstairs, and really enjoyed it. One of the guilty pleasures was watching what 1984 thought 2010 would look like from the perspective of 25 years ahead. I actually thought they didn't miss it too bad. They grossly overestimated our spaceflight progress, but grossly underestimated our progress with computer monitors - apparently no one saw flat screens coming. The assumption that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would still be intense rivals in space 25 years later was also not quite accurate. The Soveit Union no longer exists and U.S. astronauts now routinely hitch rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets - actually aboard the same Soyuz spacecraft that were over a decade old when this movie was made.
Anyway, I really enjoyed spending some time with this old friend.
