I was reminded by a recent XKCD strip that I hadn’t done any 2001: A Space Odyssey images, yet.¹My logic? It occurred to me that HAL 9000 doesn’t count because, technically, Jupiter was hurled into him. My first instinct was to do an image of the derelict Discovery above Io, but my old Jupiter-and-moons setup scene was giving me some peculiar rendering errors.

I regrouped, and decided to do an image of the Discovery setting off from Earth. While I was arranging the scene, I noticed the spherical command section, and our spherical planet, and the spherical moon, were all a bit similar in shape. I decided to experiment with a very formal composition. I thought about leaving a gap where Discovery’s engine was, but it looked odd, so I added in the space station from 2001. Well, not the same space station, since that one was in orbit around Earth and was a waystation between the planet and the moon, but one of a similar design being built at the Earth/Moon L5 point, perhaps as a stopover for Mars-bound traffic, or coordinating the construction and launch of Discovery One and similar ships.

Still, looking at the thumbnail, it now reminds me of nothing more than those sci-fi knock-offs of the “Coexist” bumper sticker (which is, itself, a knock-off).