Goofs

The scene where Dr. Floyd talks with Russian scientists in the space station is shot from two angles. One of the seated women has her legs crossed in all the shots from one angle and uncrossed in all the shots from the other angle.

As Dave Bowman climbs into HAL's logic center to shut him off, the seal on his suit's left hand is broken and the glove separates from the suit (due to the swing). The glove is reattached once he enters the logic center.

During Dr. Floyd's chat with the Soviet scientists aboard the space station, two of the women's coats, draped over the backs of their chairs, disappear, reappear then disappear again (in one case, the coat appears to have fallen behind the chair).

In the Pan Am lunar shuttle, we see the Clavius Moon Base approach through the viewing window of the pilot's cockpit in a view like an airplane approach. In the next shot, we see the exterior of the craft, and the cockpit is shown pointing straight up towards the black sky as it lands on the landing gear beneath the craft. It would be impossible for the pilots to view the Clavius approach from the cockpit if landing with reverse thrust engines. All they would see is the sky straight above, and it would be relatively still from their point of view.

The bone Moon-Watcher uses to beat the enemy ape is a femur (upper leg bone), as indicated by the sideways projecting "arm" with a ball at the end. However, the bone shown rotating in the air is a tibia (main bone of the lower leg), as indicated by its blunt ends.

The sun in space is pure white - not orange or yellow. It's only the atmosphere of the earth that makes it appear orange / yellow.

The dawn of man part takes place 4 million years ago and the apes don't walk upright, but fossil evidence indicates the ancestors of people were walking upright by then.

In various scenes that take place on the moon, the earth is depicted in the background. The earth is always depicted as appearing far larger than it actually appears in reality. Even before the Apollo 8 "earth rising" pictures from December 1968, it would have been possibly to determine the correct perspective, with relatively straight-forward mathematical calculations.

On each of the monolith's first two appearances, the upward camera shot shows the sun/moon or sun/earth in line, artistically above the structure. In both cases, however, it's early morning on earth or the moon, and the sun should actually be on the horizon.

The monolith is located within the Tycho crater, from which point the earth would appear to be at an elevation of about 55º. When the scientists visit the monolith, however, the earth is at an elevation of about 2º. (The "moonrise" photos and movies were taken by astronauts orbiting the moon.)

When Bowman reenters the ship, he is exposed to vacuum for no more than 10 seconds before operating the repressurization valve. Scientific evidence shows that this would indeed be survivable without grievous harm, notwithstanding the sensational depictions in other movies.

The famous centrifuge area of Discovery provides simulated gravity for the crew. However, the pod bay does not rotate, and is gravity-less. Poole and Bowman appear to walk normally there because they are wearing the same "grip shoes" as in other scenes in gravity-less parts of the ship.

When Heywood Floyd is talking to his daughter on the picture-phone, she moves slightly out of frame but remains in the shot. Modern cameras can move around to "follow" a person,Stanley KubrickandArthur C. Clarkeforesaw this.

The spinning pen on the clipper is not spinning around its center of mass: it's spinning about a point well outside its body, which (no matter the mass distribution inside the pen) is impossible. (This is because the pen is actually taped to a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera, as mentioned elsewhere in this section.)

It's not a 100% goof because the pen spinning off its center mass would actually be possible. If the Pan Am clipper was in a gentle spin itself, and the pen was a few inches away from the ship's axis of rotation, the pen's spinning would be possible as depicted. However, it's doubtful this is what was intended by the filmmaker.

Stanley Kubrickconsidered shooting the Dawn of Man sequence on location in Southern Africa but was unable to due to the expense and also the likelihood of shooting being disrupted by adverse weather. Rear projection as well as color separation overlay (blue-screen) were considered but not used because both methods would lack visual quality. Instead with assistance from MGM's special effects department the crew developed a new front projection system that used 8x10-inch slides taken on location in Africa. A high-intensity projector was aligned at a perfect angle from the camera and used to project the slide through a partially-transparent mirror that simulated placing the camera and projector in exactly the same place - thus the shadows cast by actors and set objects on the screen were invisible. However, the screen material was only available in rolls of limited width and there were variations in reflectivity between rolls. Tearing the material up into small sections and "collaging" them together provided the best uniformity but with effort some variation can be seen in places.

To come up with a convincing effect for the floating pen in the shuttle sequence, Kubrick decided to simply use a pen that was taped to a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera (in fact, the shuttle attendant can be seen to "pull" the pen off the glass when she takes hold of it). If you watch carefully around the upper left corner of the screen just before she catches the pen, you can see the glass briefly reflecting light as it rotates to give the floating effect to the pen. (On the BluRay release, the sheet is clearly visible through most of the scene. Even swirl marks and what looks like a palm-print can be seen.)

When Dave blows his way into the emergency hatch using the explosive bolts and pressure in the pod, the pod remains static, in reality, the pod would have gone tumbling into space.

As the moon shuttle lands it kicks up swirling clouds of dust. In the vacuum of space the dust would shoot out straight, as with the real-life Apollo Lunar Modules.

When the Earth Shuttle stewardess enters the passenger cabin and moves towards Heywood Floyd, she stumbles on the walkway. The nature of the misstep reveals that she is not weightless.

On the space station, right after Dr. Floyd clears security, and before he meets the Russians, he and another man are strolling along the curved floor of the station. Their bodies' orientation should be radial to the curvature of the floor, appearing to lean forward in the frame, but instead they are perpendicular to the orientation of the frame: they are walking downhill rather that walking along the bottom of the curved floor.

When Dr Floyd arrives at the Moon Base and checks into security there is a panel which can be used to select your language. It includes choices such as Dutch and Japanese. However, the buttons are all labeled in English. The buttons should have been written in their own languages instead.

When Dave (Keir Dullea) opens the access hatch to grant him access to lobotomize Hal, he is supposedly wearing an airtight space suit. As his left hand moves past, the glove separates from the sleeve, revealing his bare wrist.

In the BBC interview, Dave says that in hibernation the heart only beats once a minute. However when the life signs graphs of the astronauts in hibernation are shown, its a regular heartbeat that's occurring, not a heart beating at once a minute.

When Dave takes out the pod to replace the antenna module, the platform holding the pod extends out of the ship. Briefly, stars are visible through the platform, then disappear. A minor compositing error.

Dr. Stretyeneva's blue/gray clothing item comes and goes from the back of her chair, starting at 28m 19s.

During the intro to the BBC interview, when the announcer says "left on its half-billion mile voyage towards Jupiter", the word "Jupiter" is clearly not what he is saying. It's possible this scene was shot during part of production when the destination of the Discovery was Saturn and not Jupiter, and had to be re-dubbed later.

At the beginning of the TMA-1 sequence when Floyd and his party have descended into the excavation to examine the monolith uncovered on the moon, the face ofStanley Kubrick,present at the filming, is seen - just for a fraction of a second - reflected in the glass face plate of Floyd's helmet.

Earth should appear closer to the horizon at Clavius than at Tycho, not vice versa.

The quadrupeds shown coexisting peacefully with the apes in the early scenes are tapirs, Tapirus bairdii. They live in tropical forests in Central America and northwest South America. You'd never see them in Africa (outside of a zoo), nor in the very dry habitat shown in the film. But tapirs that are accustomed to humans can be quite docile (though obstinate), and they look exotic to most viewers, so they were a reasonable choice for the film.

The Earth hangs in the sky near the horizon at Tycho in long shots of the monolith pit, but Tycho is at 43 degrees south latitude on the Moon, so Earth would appear in the sky halfway between the horizon and zenith.

The Moon changes phase several times (backwards and forwards) in the long shots during the trip from the Space Station to Clavius Base on the Moon.

From the well lit lunar excavation site, one can clearly see earth. In return, the Russians or their cosmonauts should have easily spotted the excavation site. So, it could not remain top secret for very long.

It would be strange to keep the flight crew (Bowman and Poole) in the dark as to why they were going to Jupiter. The BBC reporter didn't ask them or HAL 9000 about the goal of the mission.

Electronics failures are inherently random and only statistically predictable. HAL could not have been reasonably expected to make a perfectly reliable prediction of the AE-35 unit failure.

If Dave had not asked HAL to rotate the pod back into position when he and Frank were discussing his disconnection, HAL would not have known about their plan. (By way of the script, the only reason this was done was so that HAL could read their lips and find out.)

When Dave is moving through the ship to disconnect HAL, he passes through doors opened by electrical means to get to the room with HALs memory modules. But HAL was aware that Dave was going to disconnect him, and would have overridden the door opening controls, denying Dave access to the memory modules.

The epidemic story can be easily dismissed by anyone with a powerful telescope, such as the Russians. They could examine the area in question and easily spot the very well lit monolith site. In reality, telescopes were available by that year that would have been able to visually detect the monolith itself.

Bowman inhales deeply before attempting to re-enter the ship from the pod.Arthur C. Clarkein an interview later noted that this is incorrect. Bowman should have exhaled, as the vacuum of space would have damaged his lungs had they been full of air.