Fred Ordway sees space hotel, city as high-tech leader
Predict the future? Sure, Fred Ordway can do that. He did it for Stanley Kubrick, the director of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” considered one of the best science-fiction movies of all time.
He did it for Kubrick, the legendary filmmaker, as the movie’s scientific and technical adviser at the British studios of MGM.
That was in the mid-1960s, almost 10 years after Ordway had moved to Huntsville and the city was winding down from its sesquicentennial celebration.
Now, with Huntsville gearing up for its bicentennial, Ordway offers more possibilities for the future.
This time, he’s ready to predict what Huntsville will look like in 2055.
Sure, Ordway can do that.
He has been pondering the future most of his life (his collection of science fiction magazines, some of which were published in 1923, is at Harvard).
Get ready: Some of his predictions are as creative as HAL 9000, the computer/robot that was the brain for the spaceship Discovery in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
An example: tourists traveling in space.
“At least rise above the atmosphere, so that they’ll be able to see the curvature of the earth and the darkness of space,” he says. “That’s something we should look at in the next 20 years. It will be people with money in their pockets, not the average Joe. That will be feasible.”
He believes this will be feasible, too: a hotel in space by 2055.
“Maybe a rudimentary space hotel,” he says. “Huntsville can play a role in a private hotel in space.”
Prediction pioneer
First, an explanation about Ordway’s credentials to discuss Huntsville:
He lived here from January 1956 until 1965, when Kubrick summoned him to the British studios of MGM north of London.
He returned to Huntsville in 1966, then moved in 1975 to Arlington, Va., where he still lives.
The Ordways, though, kept their home on Lookout Drive on Monte Sano.
Ordway, 78, still travels here often. He is a member of the Museum and Saturn V Restoration committees at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.
By his estimate, he has the largest collection in the rocket center’s archives. His library – his science-fiction, technology and astronomy libraries, among other things – is here.
Ordway is also a director of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, an organization devoted to the interests of Clarke, one of the best-known science fiction writers of all time.
Clarke and Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“This is a very unique city, particularly in the Deep South,” Ordway says. “It has done an incredible job developing a high-tech base, with a great Army and NASA complex. That will continue.”
The city’s high-tech expansion will continue to this extent, in Ordway’s estimation: By 2055, Huntsville will rival some of the foremost high-tech centers in the country.
Huntsville “might get close to Silicon Valley and Route 128 around Boston,” Ordway says. “That should be the aim, to get in their league.”
His only problems with such growth are transportation and sprawl.
“When you gobble up land, you become an automobile city with no downtown,” he says. “That is crucial.”
He is aware of plans to develop downtown Huntsville.
But mass transit in Huntsville?
“I would project that Huntsville could take a leadership position on mass transit,” he says.
“It will be tougher for every individual to get into a car if the city expands outward. But Huntsville could become a model American city. There’s a lot of brainpower here.”
Source: The Huntsville Times, Guest Writer: Mike Marshall
