[Doctor-R]

2001: a Space Odyssey. I saw it in the theater in 70mm when it was released in 1968. It totally blew me away. A majestic vision of the future. Thirty three years from now (1968) there was going to be all this marvelous stuff: Pan Am space craft going to a huge rotating space station to a round globe ship to a moon with several lunar bases. And a talking intelligent computer! Cool space suits! Video telephones!

Remember, this was before the first moon landing in 1969. There were Apollo flights happening, like Apollo 8 that orbited the moon in December 1968. There was a strong commitment to advancing space flight.

In 1968, the movie presented things that could actually happen, by the year 2001. Much more like a bunch of product announcements rather than science fiction (long ago in a galaxy far, far away).