Washington, DC - Experts are predicting that barring some incredible technological advancements in the next three months the year 2001 will not live up to the expectations raised by Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 film 2001:  A Space Odyssey.

"At the time the movie was released it seemed quite plausible that by 2001 we would have a manned colony on the moon, a large habitated space station, manned deep space vehicles, and intelligent computers.   After all, technology was advancing at an incredible rate," said NASA spokesman Shane Goguen.  "But as a society, we chose to put space exploration on the back burner and concentrate on other tasks, including cell phone development, Israel, the movie Titanic, and playing the stock market."

"The funny thing is, if we'd spent some time on artificial intelligence and created a computer like HAL, we could have left most of those things up to it and spent more of our time boldly exploring deep space and cavorting with attractive alien beings."

While NASA is not overly optimistic that they will be able to meet all the objectives set out in 2001: A Space Odyssey, they do have a last-ditch attempt planned.

"Our plan hinges on a group of rough, surly, untrained, yet oddly endearing men who spent time together in the armed forces about twenty years ago.  While we have yet to find such a group we feel it will include at least one fat man, some sort of "wacky" character, a ladies' man, and a stern leader type.  We plan on putting them through an intensive two week training program which will be set to music and be at least partially in slow motion.  This training program will teach them everything they need to know to fly to the moon, set up a base, create an intelligent computer which will try to kill them, survive some sort of calamity, and finally unearth a monolith which will speed at least one of them towards the next evolutionary step."

U.S. President Bill Clinton made a brief statement immediately following the NASA press conference.  "My fellow Americans," he began as a John Williams score swelled from an unknown source, "we embark this day on a quest that rocks us to the very depths of our souls.  While the road will not be easy or sure, I know that in the end we will prevail, because if there is one thing that cannot be crushed it is the human spirit!  And we have that spirit, my friends, and we will rise to the challenge, because today we are no longer simply Americans, we are The People Of Earth!  God bless you all, and God bless America!"
 

 
 

Copyright 2000 The Upper Canada Chronicle