The Sourest Cargo

 I've often wondered what a nuclear freighter might carry?

Probably drums of Kids' toxic waste.

But then again, more likely crates of this new kids stuff, Mouth Glower Sour Spray!  

Is there anything sourer in your sweets aisle readers?

Kevin's Nuclear Freighter Traffic Light

Hi,

When going through my box of scrap Spacex toys all very battered, I found enough bits to put together a couple of Nuclear Freighters.

 I decided to swap parts over to create a complete yellow one and a green one. 

To complete the traffic lights, I included my red one from the 2005 and Beyond toys.

Cheers,

Kevin

UK

AN ATOMIC PRIESTHOOD!

 I heard something interesting on the radio the other day. Well, at least I thought so.

Being a fan of eco-dramas like Edge of Darkness and Chimera I was intrigued by Half Lives, an upcoming radio play about nuclear waste. At its heart is the tension between a scientist and a linguist struggling with the challenge of keeping future generations away from the buried peril.

Even more fascinating is the real challenge this September play emulates, how can nuclear waste and spent fuel sites remain prohibitive to human intervention for thousands and thousands of years as the deadly waste slowly decays. Put simply, don't mine here!

It turns out that teams across the world; scientists, artists, linguists, have come together to wrestle with this very conundrum, perhaps the longest-lasting of anything humans are doing.

As a simple sign worked work - future humanity may not be able to read - far more abstract things are being looked at; the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the symbology of different coloured cats and the hand paintings of the Aboriginal world and more critically, their eon-spanning oral tradition.

For me the most intriguing of the ideas is a religion, an Atomic Priesthood, because religion has proven itself to carry a message successfully over vast periods of time.

Sounds like the Jedi! 

or just give the whole job to Project SWORD!

How would you warn future humanity against drilling into our nuclear dumps?

DAN DARE'S FAB SALVAGE CRAFT

 This 2000 AD Annual 1980 was part of a large lot of books that came my way last month.

I was never a 2000 AD reader but I now appreciate the effort and following of the comic that emerged in the decaying end of the Seventies.

Browsing through I was attracted to the reds of Dan Dare.

When Bam! What is that ship!*?

There was more at the end too!

I don't know about you but I think the artist has possibly taken inspiration from two sources we know well.

FAB1

and the Triang SpaceX Salvage Craft

Merging them together you get something like this.

What do you think readers? 

THE FAIRCHILD REPUBLIC AFTI: 1970's AIRPLANE OF THE FUTURE

Here's the AFTI gracing the cover of the German flight magazine Luftfahrt International in 1978.

This Seventies plane stripped-down concept had so many Anderson chops its untrue. There's some Thunderbirds Wombat in there 

and especially a bit of Triang SpaceX's fabled Salvage Craft too!

You can even get a model AFTI on Shapeways!

and maybe even still this miniature Salvage Craft from the old Ravenstar Studios, although I'm unsure of they're still around

Have you got any of these models?

SALVAGING WOMBATS

 

I saw this plastic key fob on auction and instantly thought of our friend the Wombat.

There's also a look of the legendary SpaceX Salvage Craft

Do you like these designs readers?

LUNAR TOW

 A styrene ball, my salvage craft and the shower curtain.

MY LATEST SCRATCH SPACEX TOY: THE SALVAGE CRAFT

Its been a strange week since coming home.

I've badly burned my thigh with red hot tomato soup and finished my latest plastic model SpaceX toy.

The Salvage Craft.

Here's the original Tri-ang card illustration.

Here's my scratch toy.

This was a relatively quick scratch job compared to some of the others I've done this summer.

It's illustrated on the Triang SpaceX backing card towing the Nuclear Freighter. I haven't made one of those this time but I did knock up a tow bar. You can see it here 'towing' a real Nova Rocket to the Moonbase Scrappers.

Here's the Salvage Craft with its scratch pal the LAMA and a real NOVA 1 toy.

Fortunately I bought a bag of half plastic beads years ago for a never-produced Task Force blog exclusive but one of them made a great little cockpit blister on the Salvage Craft.

The hardest bit was shaping the yellow plastic body, which I messed up on the two back curves. They're not equal!

I raided our lego box for the blue side struts, which light up nicely when illuminated.

These final shots are overlit but I left them in.

Hope you like my kitchen Salvage Craft!

It's my second go as well. I made a clay model 10 years ago as blogged at the time, along with a painted 'Matchbox' Nuclear Freighter

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2009/04/sword-dream-factory-salvage-craft-and.html

BY THE SHORES OF EUROPA

The World Council received word from NASA that traces of marine life had been detected by Apollo 111 on the Jovian moon, Europa.

Tri-SpaceX was alerted and sent a Salvage Craft to investigate. Capable of pelagic landing, sub-aquatic video and animal salvage, the craft touched down on the ice blue waters of the moon. 

Incredibly, the crew managed to photograph what appeared to be immense ocean-going Plesiosaurs, the first life-forms discovered since disturbing the dust bats in the caves of our own moon by Apollo 11, a fact not reported at the time.

The Tri-SPACEX crew were also able to briefly film one, which they nicknamed the 'Predator X', directly below their floating craft. It was far far more hostile than first reported by NASA.

This was the last communication received from the crew. The craft was not heard from again. A rescue mission is underway.

It is called Project SWORD sent in to rescue SpaceX. Godspeed.

SPACEX SALVAGE CRAFT ORIGIN STORY ON VIEWCOMICS

Check out this amazing resource for viewing comics online. Its called ViewComics. https://www.viewcomics.net/

There's so much in there - entire comics to view at your leisure. There's my beloved early issues of Warren's Creepy and Eerie which I plan to enjoy this summer without having to get my whole collection out of the loft.

There's also tons of TV21 comics and by way of introduction to this site I thought I'd revisit issue 87, which not only features the origin of the Spacex Salvage Craft [above] - the GK-10 below] and Nuclear freighter ...

.... but also the Spacex Tractor T-5 [both discovered by Wotan and Scoop respectively about 10 years ago here on Moonbase].

So without further ado here's the link to page 15 of TV21 #87, the first sighting of the GK-10 in Fireball XL5.

https://www.viewcomics.net/tv-century-21-tv-21/issue-87/15

The story continues up to issue 89 and the GK-10 appears again there.

There's a neat A-Z on the site. Enjoy searching for your fave comics! 

What do you think?

underwater sf sub film

And possibly my favourite of tonight's rattle bag of You Tuber clips by NKGT5656 of Japan, this scintillating footage of an amazing model sailing underwater.

I don't know what the model yellow sub actually is [anyone?] but it reminds me completely of the WOMBAT seen in Stingray [I think?]

and also the as yet unseen Salvage Craft from the Tri-ang Space range of toys

salvaging crafts IV

Above is a custom idea for the front for a Nuclear Freighter's own backing card courtesy of Bill B's SpaceX II project in 2009.

Below is my crude Matchbox blimp Nuke Freighter modelling Bill's backing card.

salvaging crafts III

More custom SpaceX backing card ideas from 2009 from the colourful mind of Bill B. This time it was the rear for a Nuclear Freighter.