The Sir Arthur Clarke Day

Smithsonian Symposium: Shaping the Future:
A Celebration of Arthur C. Clarke
7 February 2001
Wednesday February 7th, 2001 was Sir Arthur C. Clarke Day in Washington, D.C.

At this event the start of an exciting new millennium truly began as we re-examined what the year 2001 might have been as seen through the visionary eyes of Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.

NASA, INTELSAT, Boeing, the AIAA, the American Astronautical Society, the National Space Society, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, the Newseum, Phillips Business Information LLC, the Space Foundation, SPACE.COM, plus the Clarke Foundation of the U.S. and the new Clarke Institute (CITI) all joined in a triumphant Sir Arthur C. Clarke Day Celebration.

The celebration included the
Smithsonian Symposium: Shaping the Future: A Celebration of Arthur C. Clarke
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) from 2 to 4 pm.
The symposium at the National Air and Space Museum included greetings from Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Walter Cronkite, and Tom Hanks (by video), presentations by Dan Goldin of NASA and Conny Kullman of Intelsat, a short film on the making of 2001 shot in 1966, a panel chaired by Fred Ordway (Technical Advisor to Stanley Kubrick in the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey) that included artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky (of MIT) who first suggested the name HAL for the computer in 2001, Keir Dullea, star of 2001 and Andy Chaikan, Space Historian. The presentations were extremely interesting and entertaining. The audience filled the theater and even got to participate in a question and answer session and the end. After the presentation, Keir Dullea, star of 2001, was kind enough to sign autographs and pose for photos.

Couldn't make it to Washington for the symposium? You can still see it. Go to http://www.spaceref.tv for the main SpaceRef.TV page (which features a very special Arthur C. Clarke intro) or go directly to the videos at http://www.spaceref.tv/features/acc2001/

Note that the quality of the Cronkite and Clarke videos is poor, as the Smithsonian videotaped the projected image of a video tape on a large screen in the darkened theater. The same holds true for the "Making of 2001" tape. The audio is fine otherwise.

Evening Reception and Screening of "2001: A Space Odessy"

The second part of the celebration was a by-invitation-only reception at the Newseum in Rosslyn, Virginia, followed by a special showing of the re-mastered version of 2001: A Space Odyssey that was completed by Stanley Kubrick before his death. This version of 2001 will be released in the U.S. later in 2001.

Although Sir Arthur C. Clarke is probably best know for writing 2001: A Space Odyssey and nearly 100 works of science fiction, he is also known as one of the foremost advocates of space exploitation. Thus, he is the father and first conceiver of the geosynchronous communications satellite, the champion of the idea of the space elevator, and the advocate of Space Guard-a program to protect Earth from asteroids and comets.

The reception both honored Sir Arthur C. Clarke and benefited the world-wide virtual research organization known as the Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information (CITI). This institute is the umbrella non-profit organization that webs together the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation of the U.S., the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation of the United Kingdom, and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies in Sri Lanka and over a dozen other research organizations, universities and foundations.

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