'ODYSSEY'S' ARRIVAL? REALITY STILL CATCHING UP TO '2001'.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

We may have reached 2001, but we're still light years from ``2001: A Space Odyssey.''

Director Stanley Kubrick and scientist-author Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 cinematic vision of the future was probably the most realistic depiction ever, or since, of modern space travel, according to most aerospace experts.

But much of the technology predicted 33 years ago has yet to be truly realized by the real 2001. There are no sentient robots or artificial gravity environments. No suspended animation. No Hiltons in space or manned flights to Jupiter.

Paul Ronney, a microgravity researcher and professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California, believes humans could have made much greater progress in space exploration, but for the end of the Cold War.

``A lot of what we're lacking is not so much technology, but motivation,'' said Ronney, who is now designing an experiment for the International Space Station on how fire acts in zero gravity. ``It's not a race against some other country now. There's less impetus to do these grand things when there isn't some immediate challenge of some other country doing it first.''

In the public's eye, he added, putting a man on the moon in 1969 was the unifying, grand goal, the symbol of humanity's conquest of space. After that, everything else - the space shuttle, Mars exploration - seemed anticlimactic.

Great strides

But at the same time, humans have made great strides in space exploration and achieved some of the film's vision.

We have the International Space Station now under construction, a product of Americans and Russians working together - something Kubrick imagined during the height of the Cold War.

We also have a reusable space shuttle, two-way communication through videophones and computers that can beat humans at chess, all of which were predicted in the film.

With its almost painfully long, silent scenes of extravehicular activity and life in zero gravity, the movie at times seemed to favor the minutiae of aerospace over plot and acting.

For science junkies, though, that's what made it so fascinating.

``It made such a big impression on me,'' said Randii Wessen, who works in the Mars program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. ``To us it's the Gospel. One of the things that's so phenomenal about the film is when you watch today, it's still technically correct. If we could do it, that's how we would do it.''

In a nod to the film's influence, the next Mars mission, to be launched in April, is titled 2001 Mars Odyssey.

A major theme in the movie - and one that has pervaded film and literature at least since Mary Shelley's ``Frankenstein'' - is the fear of betrayal by man's technology.

HAL's betrayal

The HAL 9000, portrayed with an eerily calm voice and a motionless red eye, is billed as an intelligent, flawless machine that runs every system on the ship. That image is shattered, however, when HAL apparently misdiagnoses an equipment flaw, and then decides that eliminating the human crew is necessary for the success of the mission.

But we remain far from the point where our computers and robots seem to have consciousness and personality, said Michael Arbib, a USC professor who has written 20 books on the field of artificial intelligence and brain research.

Instead, he said, research focuses less on personality and more on how to make robots smarter so they can perform their tasks more efficiently and with less direction.

``The thing that's most memorable about HAL is the lack of emotion, and the ability to see the humans as obstacles to the mission,'' Arbib said.

Artificial intelligence researchers want to create machines that see the big picture, so an actual HAL would not see the humans as obstacles, but would try to figure out how to work with them properly to ensure the mission is achieved.

``If HAL had that, not simply saying: Here is the mission, the people are just consuming oxygen and making the mission less likely to succeed, but if he were approaching those people in terms of: I know what they want and I want them to like me, and this is what we have to do to make them happy,''Arbib said, ``we would have had a much more successful mission.''

Strangely enough, he added, it is the toy industry - with its robot puppies and virtual reality video games - that is making some of the bigger advances in intelligent robotics. One of his former students, he said, had to conduct advanced studies on animal behavior to help develop the robot dog, a big seller this Christmas.

``It may be some of the very exciting developments in artificial intelligence are going to come out of the toy industry,'' Arbib said.

From a cinematic perspective, the film received mixed reviews upon its first release, when it was 160 minutes long. Some found it dull and confusing, but it caught on in the counterculture as a wild (sometimes drug- enhanced) ``trip.'' It later gained in popularity when Kubrick trimmed it down to 139 minutes and rereleased it in 1972.

Wessen recalls seeing the film in theaters at age 10, and enjoying it, but being perplexed by the plot and Kubrick's multilayered symbolism.

``I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on,'' Wessen said. ``There were monkeys, then the bone turns into a spaceship. And there were colored lights.''

But he remains confident that much of the technology is possible within a generation or so. He envisions a day not too far in the future when mankind has established vast colonies on the moon the size of Earth's modern metropolises. ``My kids will tell their kids they remember looking up at the half moon and remembering when the dark side had no lights.''

'2001: A Space Odyssey'

On TV: Turner Classic Movies will feature back-to-back airings of the classic sci-fi adventure film at 9 p.m. and midnight on New Year's Eve. The cable network will also air the film at 10 p.m. on Jan 25.

In the theaters: A new print with digitally remastered sound had been scheduled to open at the Nuart Theatre on Dec. 29, but was postponed until later next year due to delays in Warner Bros.' restoration effort.

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Photo:

(color) Keir Dullea plays astronaut David Bowman in the 1968 film ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' which to this day continues to impress scientists with its accurate portrayal of advanced technology, some since realized and some still on the drawing board.

Box: `2001: A Space Odyssey' (See text)