Jupiter, AC Clark, Ted Kennedy and the Moon

[pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner)]

>(Like this, for example:
>: Here's hoping the positive vibrations of the Jupiter-trumpet will beam into 
>: OUR lives and wreak a positive transformation. 
>)

Did anyone else find it really weird that we were watching a comet hit
Jupiter almost exactly 25 years after we set foot on the moon? Doesn't this
bring memories of the movie/book _2001_? I can't remember what happened
exactly 
(and I can't find my copy to refresh the cache) but didn't our moon base
discover a slab on the moon that when uncovered
triggered  cool music _and_ a signal to outer space. Then we sent HAL and some
human cargo out to Jupiter or Saturn were they encountered a weird,
exponentially replicating slab of the same dimensions as the slab on the
moon. Didn't this rendezvous happen some fixed amount of time after the
discovery on the moon? 

Or is my brain just mapping everything together everywhich way. I.e.
memories = g^{-1}(f(events)) where the kernal of f and g is their entire
respective
domains. 

What does this have to do with cyphers? Well, the slab on the moon was a
cipher. It communicated to outer space in ciphers. The SETI project that
listens to the outer space is essentially an exercise in cryptanalysis.
Kubrick's film was a big cipher that left AC Clark the job of explaining.
Okay, enough. But I couldn't find a better group to pose this question.

P.S. Or was it 25 years after Chappaquidick?