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Rainflower> You JUUUSSSSTT snuck that post in before mine. Thanks for the info. I will now look into ejection seat research, as well.

...and why do they decrease in size from the largest at the top, to smallest at the bottom? And I just realized, those three ball valves are acting like check valves, they would remain closed if O2 were coming from behind. THAT assumes that the part that we see get removed is indeed the pilot's side. If the check valves idea is correct, then the part attached to the pod wall would actually be the pilot's side. and the part with the three cylinders would be the aircraft side.

Rainflower> You are a "Stealy-Eyed Missile Man"! Your'e post saved the day.
The connector is indeed what is known as a "Personal Equipment Connector (PEC)", and a variant can be found on the Martin-Baker Mk12H Harrier ejection seat. Since the Harrier is WAY post 2001:ASO, you will note only minor variations in the release tab (Please see attached images). I always thought the whole thing rested on the surface of the panel, but (unless they cut it down), the majority of the PEC is behind the panel. I just found this info after doing some more research. The application now makes sense, and indeed, the ball valves are on the aircraft side. Apparantly, sensors detect the altitude at which the aircraft is flying, and adjusts the ball valve positions accordingly. So it makes sense that the balls should remain closed to prevent dust from getting inside the ports. So everybody...hold off on getting your own copy...I want mine first and I imagine everyone will be scrambling to get one while the supplies last!

Images:
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=995d5c2
http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=f8475a9

Well, your memory didn't fail you today! Thanks again. Now I suppose Martin-Baker is going to get a ton of calls requesting PEC's.

After more research, it appears that this style of PEC goes back to the 1950's era Mk. 3. It has been referred to as "European style". It is present on Mk. 6 and Mk. 7 series as well, and I wish that I had dates when these seats were introduced, but all I can find is that they were present in the 1960's. Considering that 2001:ASO was made in the mid 60's, if the studio had access to a boneyard, no doubt they would find much 50's era artifacts.

There are other variants of this PEC. The Mk. 3-6 PEC images I have found seem to fit the bill, whereas what little I have found in general on the Mk. 7, has either the same unit, or another type that has the same basic interface, but the seat half of the unit has a much longer body.

So this unit survives even up to at least the Mk. 12 series of later years. One point of note; all of these seats were produced for many aircraft of various countries, and each aircraft had its own particular requirements. It would be foolish for me to suggest that the info I have just given is anywhere near complete. Very possibly, the amount of variations of each seat model may be extensive. But also, no doubt these units exist in many boneyards today due to their ubiquitous nature. So for those looking for these units, they certainly apply to potentially any aircraft that carried the Martin-Baker seats. Also I do not know whether the PEC was actually designed and built by Martin-Baker, or supplied by a subcontractor who may have supplied the same unit to other seat manufacterers. In addition, I can not say whether the interface itself was designed around a general military specification. If that be the case, the unit may be more prevalent than previously thought.

In looking at the closeup jpg, this unit has a Martin-Baker spec plate, so that means this unit was definitely built by MB and not a subcontractor.

The arm manipulators or the attitude/translation controllers? The manipulators look really difficult since so little can be gleaned from available images. I have little doubt, the Kubrick archives (now in a university collection) would shed more light on this.

This next part is long-winded.

As for the attitude/translation controllers these bring up a curious issue. Any spacecraft needs both types of control. In Gemini/Apollo/Shuttle, the xlation cntlr is on the left, the att cntlr on the right (with an extra right, att cntlr for the center crew member in Apollo CM). Each is distinctive in appearance; a standard pistol grip lends itself well to commanding rotations, whereas a xlation controller has a distinctive shape due to its special needs. Reversing the functions for the two grip types is counter-intuitive. Theoretically, you could combine all of this into a single, integrated controller but I experimented with this idea in the early '80s and what you get is a controller that does both , but neither very well due to the limits of the pilot isolating the 6 degrees of freedom with his hand and wrist. I suspect NASA has reached this same conclusion, because weight is always an issue in spacecraft design, and doing away with half of your controllers makes a lot of sense if you can get away with it. Obviously, after almost 50 years, they haven't been able to.

In all of the 2001 spacecraft, the pod type of controller is present, with or without the pistol grip type.
In the Aries and Moon Bus you see both types present (The pistol grip gives away the rotation controller due to its pistol grip style, and Kubrick seems to have had proper consultation regarding the two types of required controllers (att/xlation)). It looks like 2001 uses the reverse convention of right-att, left-xlation. Attributing the pistol grip to xlation work (though not impossible) is again, counter-intuitive. But whether the movie pays attention to which should do what is impossible to say. Orion brain farts, in that IF the other controllers (which are concealed) are pistol grips,this means that the seats controller positions are mirror images of each other relative to the seat (that's a big training non-no). But if the hidden controllers are the "xlation" type, then you have an awkward ergonomic issue. Using identical controller shapes for both operations is difficult, but also confusing; when the grips FEEL different in your hand, you easily equate what its function is. If they are the same, especially when a pilot is fatigued, it is much easier to confuse the two. It is just as confusing if you mirror image the two controller types and placements in the pilot's and copilot's seats; a nightmare since crewmembers often trade seats depending on the flight they are assigned to. Left-seater this week...right-seater next week. This brings us to the pod. Here, we clearly have the "translation" type of controller in both positions. So I have a problem with the designers' rationale. Especially since all of the other vehicles (except possibly brain-fart Orion) use this controller in conjunction with the pistol grip type.

That having been said, and since we are stuck with two identical controllers, that still raises the question...what the hell ARE those things, anyway?! It has got to be the weirdest hand controller I have ever seen. And did they modify it for the film? I think it was Dennis Gilliam who pointed out the British style texture on it. But what are its origins? I have a link below to some sketches I made of the thing. These are "thought" sketches, are not accurate, but are just an attempt to get my mind around it and I exagerrated the sinusoidal bumps on purpose to make them stand out.

Why did they have the "C" shape to its profile in the front area? Why the strange, awkward restricted range of motion...you can't push it forward very far due to the vertical post being mounted far forward on the ball base. If you want to rotate it backwards, two possibilities result. 1.), you have to rotate your wrist back which is a tad unnatural, or 2.), the post has a band inside it that forces the pivot at the back of the hand controller to counter-rotate, which would keep the controller horizontal as it is pulled back, much like a drafting arm would do. When you watch Bowman in the shot just after he leaves the pod bay on his first EVA, he clearly pushes forward and with an increasing forward rotation of his wrist, so version (1), seems to be the correct answer. So he's not using the grip's pivot while doing so, but clearly the pivot is there. It also would have very awkward translation control...You could equate fwd/bkwd hand motion to xlate-forward/xlate-backward, side-to-side rocking hand motion for side-to-side xlation, but hard to control up/dwn xlation by using the grip's pivot (not the ball pivot at the bottom of the post). Increased grip pressure only makes sense for throttle.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! For instance, those strange sinusoidal bumps all over it. That's hardly ergonomic and probably feels awful after awhile unless you reason that those things have some practical purpose worth the discomfort. At first I thought they sorta looked ergonomic in that they looked like finger depressions. But the ones in the front don't line up with the ones in the back...Clearly you can place your finger's outer most digits in the available slots up front, but in the back your two middle fingers have to fit within the wide trough in the middle which means pressure points at the sides and base of the two fingers. And the forefinger looks like it has a handy depression to fit into as well, if it weren't for the fact that it is bounded by a bump that curves around to that thumbwheel-looking thing, and rests uncomfortably under what looks like would be the third bone back in the finger. Could these bumps be transducer switches that are activated according to how hard you grip the controller? And what about the big switch-like thing under the palm? Transducer, too? Who the heck knows, cause I haven't a clue where this thing comes from. One thing is clear to me...sort of. The designers went through the trouble to put all of these bumps in areas where you would definitely FEEL them. Perhaps that is a clue. One crazy idea I had was that maybe this thing came from some medical hardware where hand controlling was required. But that is a desperate idea. It's probably aerospace related, if it is a genuine article to begin with.

http://d01.megashares.com/?d01=e36193f

Perhaps the thumbwheel (if it's not just a tall ridge) handles up/dwn translation. Again, I may just be pissin in the wind.