DARTH'S MOONBASE MEMORIES

A very long time ago I was doing some research for a book on the impact of space flight on pop culture (and vice versa). 

I don’t remember the exact date but in the process I stumbled across something called “Project Sword”. I remember being surprised by the fact that the range included toys of the X-20 Dynasoar, and the Saturn V on the launch pad.

Intrigued I started digging a little further and suddenly a whole world of cool space toys appeared. 

There was (apparently) a toy of the 1960s Nuclear Ferry (although I still haven’t seen one in person so I choose to pretend it doesn’t exist…); a funky looking different Saturn rocket, which I wouldn’t find out until years later was a design that came out of Hermann Koelle’s office at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency; a lifting body that was pretty much dead-on accurate, and more. 

Then I discovered that they were all made by one of my childhood heroes, Gerry Anderson. Somehow this entire product line had eluded me, presumably I had been more involved with Major Matt Mason to notice!

Then I stumbled across an apparently abandoned website by some mysterious guru who evidently knew all about this amazing toy line. Not only did this person know EVERYTHING, but they knew it so long ago that they had done the work, posted it into the ether and then vanished back into the night!

How could this be? Who was this mysterious person who knew all about Project Sword long before the rest of the world discovered it? (The rest of the world being me…I have very narrow horizons)

So I sent an email off to (I seem to think it was to a prehistoric AOL account) the mystery man in the hope that he might still be alive, perhaps living on a mountain in Tibet, waiting for an anxious student to come a-knocking. 

So I waited and waited and then one day the master quietly returned from his retreat (which turned out to be somewhere in the even more mysterious wilds of Northern England) and replied to me with the tantalizing news that he did in fact know everything, and proved it by telling me of his pilgrimages into the strange lands of the legendary Tarheel. 

He also told me he was planning on resurrecting his webpage to share his wisdom with the unclean masses like me!

What seems like much longer than ten years later the Master of the Sword is now celebrating the anniversary of his much appreciated second coming. Based on what I’ve seen Master Woods has now spread his knowledge far and wide, inspiring nerds and acolytes (like me) to contemplate a vacation in Hong Kong in the hope that I would stumble across a back street alley stocked with Moon Bases and Nuclear Ferries, all of course in immaculately manicured fifty year old boxes!

So I for one would like to thank our host and to congratulate him for his enduring patience and for sharing his passion and Swordcraft. 

Somewhat ironically one of my distant ancestors was a sword maker, of course they called them “hardware” men in those days. So congratulations to our favourite hardware man, Master Woods. May your stockings be stuffed with spaceships for another fifty years. 

Darth (aka Rob Godwin)*

*Darth was the blog's first ever commenter! Woodsy