Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

Last week on Movie Gadget Friday we kicked off our two-part series in honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This week continues our tribute as we look into some of the support systems on board Discovery 1 and the Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. While we hear Dave Bowman proclaim "My God, it's full of stars", we can't help but dig through this film full of gadgets.

HAL 9000 and SAL 9000
Designed as an artificial emotional intelligence machine, the HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 require human interaction for enhanced performance. Represented by a blue camera eye and female voice, SAL 9000 served as a guide to monitoring potential reactions by the previously disabled HAL 9000. Both machines incorporate keyboard and audio input to communicate with intelligent carbon-based lifeforms (read: us). The HAL 9000 is adept at facial, vocal, and vital sign recognition and makes decisions based on a strict understanding of logic. HAL maintains numerous responsibilities while acting as the brain and central nervous system of Discovery 1. Though HAL appears to be programmed to protect the crew, there are obvious and inherent flaws in his logic programming, resulting in -- spoiler alert -- in committing homicide to resolve conflicting commands. More after the jump.

While Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Arthur C. Clarke have popularized the idea of a space elevator, there are still a few kinks that need to be worked out before we start having folks hit the "door close" button for a 100,000 kilometer (62,000 miles) ride. The latest problem, according to a new article in Acta Astronautica (we've really been meaning to renew our subscription), is that a space elevator would be so slow-moving (200 kph, or 124 mph) that the half-week spent in the Van Allen radiation belt would kill any living thing without proper shielding. The radiation belt, which contains "two concentric rings of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic fields" doesn't affect current astronauts going to and from space because they are moving too fast to be hit by the radiation. Still, Anders Jorgensen, one of the authors of the study, doesn't think that this 62,000 mile-high problem is insurmountable: "I'm confident that we can solve it, but it's going to make things a little more complicated and a little more expensive." We appreciate your reach-for-the-skies attitude Mr. Jorgensen, but isn't protecting people from dying more than just a "little" complicated?

[Via Slashdot]