Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey Technologies in 2001: A Space Odyssey The 1968 science fiction film "" featured numerous fictional future technologies, which have proven prescient in light of subsequent developments around the world. Before the film's production began, director Stanley Kubrick sought technical advice from over fifty organizations, and a number of them submitted their ideas to Kubrick of what kind of products might be seen in a movie set in the year 2001. The film is also praised for its accurate portrayal of spaceflight and vacuum. "2001" is, according to four NASA engineers who based their nuclear-propulsion spacecraft design in part on the
2001 Mars Odyssey 2001 Mars Odyssey 2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and a thermal imager to detect evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. It is hoped that the data "Odyssey" obtains will help answer the question of whether life existed on Mars and create a risk-assessment of the radiation that future astronauts on Mars might experience.