AE-35 Unit

In the novels of Arthur C. Clarke, a control unit component of the Spacecraft Discovery. This unit was installed in the spacecraft's main antenna complex and relayed control signals to the antenna motors to keep the main dish pointed at Earth. Due to the location of the unit, replacing it required an EVA. Discovery's spare parts store carried two backup AE-35 Units.

During the Jupiter mission in 2001, the HAL 9000 onboard computer reported an impending fault in the AE-35 Unit. Astronaut Frank Poole took a space pod out to the antenna complex to replace the unit, but, during later troubleshooting, no failure was indicated or predicted in the unit. HAL suggested that the initial unit be reinstalled and allowed to fail so the problem could be traced. Poole did so, but was killed by HAL during the EVA. (There was no fault in the AE-35 Unit; the reported failure was a manifestation of HAL's developing psychosis.)

Source: Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: a space odyssey; the film 2001: A Space Odyssey

The AE-35 Unit brought us, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the quintessential Serious Aerospace Engineer phrase, when Bowman and Poole report on their plan to bring it in for analysis. Mission Control, in the form of a crew-cut, black-spectacles type, says in a lilting monotonal, "ROger your plan to replace Alpha Echo Three-Five unit."

On another useless trivia cant, there is homage paid to this film in Star Trek: First Contact using this designation - when Picard, Worf and Lt. Hawk (thanks C-Dawg!) head outside onto the USS Enterprise-E's hull to stop the Borg from converting the main sensor dish into a giant communications device, the display screens which they are using to unlatch the dish all show the designation "AE-35" in large characters.