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October 9

A spacewalk odyssey

When Alexei Leonov couldn't get back into the airlock at the end of his space walk and had to let the air out of his space suit to get back in, for how long was he without air? Also, was this the inspiration for the decompression scene in Space Odyssey 2001? 2601:646:8082:BA0:2424:470:A683:D4AF (talk) 00:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article says, "He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off..." As to whether that influenced the 2001 scene, I couldn't say. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:10, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Voskhod 2 spacewalk was in March 1965; Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke drafted the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1964–5, finishing in December, and filming was in 1966–7, during which both screenplay and novel were further amended. (Note that the screenplay was not based on the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (novel) by Clarke and Kubrick [sic]; instead the two were written in parallel, with many variant scenes proposed and dropped, and the two works ended up with some differences.)

Leonov's difficulties and the necessity of depressurising his spacesuit were not immediately revealed by the Soviet authorities, and only emerged "later" (though I haven't discovered exactly when), so it's unlikely that Kubrick & Clarke knew about them when writing. Clarke doesn't mention the event in The Lost Worlds of 2001.

Yes, the Soviets were not terribly good at admitting their space programme cock-ups; both the 1960 Nedelin catastrophe and the 1980 Plesetsk launch pad disaster weren't publicly acknowledged until 1989. Alansplodge (talk) 11:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

An answer might be found in Michael Benson's 2018 book Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, which unfortunately I don't have. Anyone? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! So, the answer to the second question is that Clarke didn't know -- right? So that leaves the first question: for how long was Leonov without air? 2601:646:8082:BA0:98A8:D148:F8F4:4270 (talk) 02:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Leonov was never without air because the decompression was partial. And what Clarke did know or not is pure speculation because Clarke was able to look into the future. Clarke did know about satellite tv before it was invented, to use a well known example. 176.0.154.204 (talk) 04:54, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your second question was, Was Leonov's having to let some air out of his space suit the inspiration for the decompression scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey? If Clarke, who co-wrote the screenplay, didn't know of the Leonov incident, the answer can only be "no". Leonov takes about the incident in an episode of the PBS special "The Russian Right Stuff", which aired in 1991. However, even if Clarke somehow already knew all about this when the screenplay was written, I see no reason to think that it might have been a source of inspiration for which in the film is a completely different scene. --Lambiam 08:11, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clarke was a very avid scuba diver—another environment where you have no external atmosphere to rely on, only what you bring with you, and pressure and pressure gradients are a big deal you have to know about. If anything he was likely drawing on that first-hand knowledge and experience. For the vacuum of space just subtract the water and its associated pressure. Slowking Man (talk) 04:05, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]