2001: A Mars Odyssey? index
back to mainpage		 deutscher Text
Music: Also sprach Zarathustra

Map of Tycho-Crater in Kubrick's and Clarke's 2001, at 0:48
  big screen
The Moon Shuttle Aries-1B
with 4 Cydonia-like faces
big screen
The Cydonia Face
from Viking images
70A13 and 35A72
more about this
Do you remember the scene during the flight over the moon, where Dr. Floyd is shown the moon-map of Tycho-Crater? On this map 45° S and 10° W is marked and 3 points around the crater are named. One of them is the excavation site around the monolith, the other are not mentioned in the movie.

The moon-map is rotated by 180°, so that N is down and not up as usual. The reason for this is, that in 1968 there weren't any geological maps available of the moon. And astronomical maps are south up oriented.

When I found this map in the movie, I did not think of astronomical maps and rotated it by 180°. Furthermore, I replaced 45° S with 45° N. Why this replacement? At the time I found this map, I did not even have any reason for doing this, but afterwards, I saw, that on a larger map of the same area, which was shown seconds before this one, there was the latitude 34° N marked. This incription is simply wrong, as this is a map of the southern hemisphere, where you can clearly see the large bright Tycho crater.

So, this is a hint, Kubrick & Clarke are giving us, to project the map on the northern hemisphere of some other planet. The planet is given with the red tinted lander image: Mars!

The reason why I reviewed this scene of the movie was this Usenet-article from Bill Thagard., who saw the Cydonia-Face in the mars-red tinted image of the Lunar lander. (see picture on top of this page)

I chose to project the map on a mars-map and I could not believe what appeared!

One of the three markers on the map is named 21 F and this point on Mars is only 0.5° east of the Cydonia-Face and on the exact latitude 41° N!

How could Kubrick & Clarke knew this coordinates in 1968?

Another curious thing is, that Eric W. Crew, a British engineer and Author of some articles in Nature, found back in July 1998, independent from this discovery, a connection between the Solar System and objects in Cydonia. There are objects representing the inner planets and Jupiter and the object for Earth is exact at the location of point 21F!
It is important to know, that he made this discovery without any knowledge of a connection to 2001 and long before my report about this. I myself already knew his article, but hadn't it in mind when founding the 2001-connection. Two month later, I reread his article by random and found it!
Read his article here.

In addition to this, they gave us a small bonus hint with this dialog later in the movie:

Hal: Of course I am. Sorry about this, I know it's a bit silly. Just a moment...just a moment...I've just picked up a fault in the AE-351 unit. It's going to go a hundred percent failure within 721 hours.
Dave: Is it still within operational limits right now?
Hal: Yes, and it will stay that way until it fails.
Dave: Would you say we have a reliable 72 hours to failure?
Hal: Yes, that's a completely reliable figure2.
Dave: Well, then I suppose we'll have to bring it in3, but first I'd like to go over this with Frank and get on to Mission Control. Let me have the hard copy on it4, please.
What a coincidence! 35A721 is the Viking Image-ID of the Cydonia-Face. And this image is a completely reliable figure2 which is the hard copy4 we have to bring in3 the discussion about extra-terrestrial life.

I sent a hardcopy and some thoughts about this page to Sir Arthur C. Clarke and received after only a few days this form letter with his handwritten comments!

Many thanks to Sir Clarke for this fast answer from Sri Lanka!

(handwritten parts in italic bold text)
(deutscher Text: hier)

Sir Arthur Clarke CBE
[...], Colombo, Sri Lanka

Dear Correspondent,
Thank you for your letter; I am sorry that, for the reasons given below, I cannot answer you personally. - don't see any reasonable coincidence! -

Having been affected by Post-Polio Syndrome since 1984, I now require daily physiotherapy, which puts major demands on my time and energy. I can no longer walk unaided, and a wheel-chair to move any distance.

As I have to sleep every afternoon, I can only manage a 10 hour working day: even with nine secretaries in three continents, dealing with mail and faxes absorbs so much time that there is very little left for writing...

Nevertheless, if I can conserve my energies I look forward to greeting 2001 - which I can't believe is only two years away... So I hope you will understand the need for this form letter.

Sincerely,

ACC Clarke, 5.Jan 2000

Anyway, the 'Mars Face' has been demolished by better observations!

The riddle about the two other points is now solved!

A map of the Giza-Plateau layed over the Moon-map and the positions of the three Orion belt-stars shows something very interesting.
The three points match the positions of the stars and the Giza-Pyramids!

More about the Orion-Mars connection on this page.

Confirmation of the "21F"-Position by the movie Mission to Mars!

About 1947 seconds from beginning of the movie, the words "Go 41 by 9!" are spoken to the mapping-computer to show Cydonia. These are the exact coordinates of the 21F-marker!

Other trivia in the movie:

If you do not understand these hints to the number 19.47, read more at www.enterprisemission.com or http://www.chez.com/frenzy/Econnexion.htm

More background info about Mission To Mars:

The mass-ratio of the 3 Giza-Pyramids is equal to the mass-ratio of Earth, Venus and Mars!

This is another reason to search on Mars for position 21F and not on the Moon, as 21F is the position of the Menkaure-Pyramid which symbolizes Mars with its mass-ratio.

Pyramid Pyramid-Volume (cubic-feet)relative pyramid-mass Planet relative planet-massplanet-mass
Khufu481*757.752/3=92061005 f3100% Earth100%5.9736*1024 kg
Khafra471*707.752/3=78642880 f385% Venus82%4.869*1024 kg
Menkaure218*356.52/3=9235370 f310% Mars11%6.4219*1023 kg
The volume-ratio is equal to the mass-ratio as the 3 Giza-Pyramids are built from the same material.
Sources of measurements: Giza, Planets
In the source above is an error: 775 feet side-length should be 757!

This idea for comparison of the masses, I got from the book Return To Mars by Anthony Pollock and Brian Crowley, 1989, p.28.
There they point to the analysis by Willy Kross, who published this mass-relation for the first time in his pamphlet Seeking a new interpretation of the mathematical-astronomical mystery of the Pyramid of Cheops in Giza.
Return To Mars will be published again in about one year as an updated edition.
In the book Wir, vom Mars, K�ln 1979, by Walter Hain, on pp.89-91 there is also a reference to Kross' article.

Moon and Mars maps taken from
PDS Planetary Image Atlas

Informations about 2001: A Space Odyssey:

Arthur C. Clarke: Stanley Kubrick:
Holger Isenberg
[email protected]

PGP-Key 		27. November 1999