The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was made specifically for the purpose of developing special effects techniques in film-making that would allow NASA to fake the Apollo Project. The Apollo Mission was faked using the same front-screen technology that created so many memorable shots in 2001. Consider the fact that 2001 is wildly non-commercial yet had to have been made with a bottomless budget. Hollywood didn't throw all that money at a cryptic geek movie. The US government did.

The film's sub-plot in which a US bureaucrat takes a one-person shuttle flight from earth to the moon was put into the film to plant the idea in viewers' minds that moon travel would soon be routine and mundane. The truth is, we cannot get past the Van Allen radiation belts, Mankind is earth-bound. Our whole space program illustrates a believable progress in technology if and only if you eliminate the magical, miraculous way we could fly to the moon fifty years ago with primitive 1960s computer technology for a few missions, but never again since.