Job Centre 2050

 A friend, Reka, is a future consultant to business. 

She published a card game of future jobs.l, Future Journey 

Here are a few.

What do you think?

LINEMAR'S FUTURISTIC VAN

 

I adore this!

I saw it online the other day.

Wholly new to me. No idea what it's called.

By Linemar.

What a tinplate future we had!

Do you like it?

SLEEK AND CURVED

 

A couple of cool toys I caught online. No idea what the top one is. The bottom one is an MPC slot car. I mean, wow!

Despite such fabulous concepts being around I can't understand why they didn't translate into real car design and I have always been disappointed with modern car designs.

You?

THE BOX BRUBAKER

 I chanced upon this online snap of an old wreck found in a barn.

I had to find out what that amazing design was.

Turns it it was called the Box Brubaker.

What a van-car!

How totally futuristically-Hot Wheels-looking is that!

Incredibly the Box Brubaker has had a comeback too. Here's the Brubaker promo pic.

What do you think? The van-car for you?

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

 I keep seeing more and more futuristic tail-lights on UK roads at night.

Here for instance is a Lexus with its snazzy and hypnotic red strip.

But the old designers had it taped.

Check out the lamps on this American icon, the Mercury Cougar.

Not bad I hear you say.

Well let's talk business and check out the awesomeness of the Lancia Stratos Zero.

Its the rear end of the century with strip lighting all the way round.

and even more candela on the modern remake's back light.

But for luminous cool we can do no better than look into the big and small screen for true illumination.

The Spinner in Blade Runner 2049.

and the non-lit magnificence of Straker's car from UFO

and the crown of all rears, UFO's Forster's car.

A curvaceous louvred marvel!

Have you any futuristic car backs or space-age tail lights readers?

The Steinwinter Truck, The Highwayman and Mehr!

Re. last month's post on the Steinwinter truck:

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-steinwinter-lorry-of-tomorrow.html

the one with the Ferrari logo on the side. A quick look turned up a few things. Hope this helps.

It seems the truck was shown at the 1983 Frankfurt Motor Show, in Germany. It actually existed, which is amazing.

I would have thought the cab would be far too small and low for anyone to actually get in and out of, with the ground clearance being measured in millimetres.

A major advantage of a normal or cab-over engine layout is that the driver sits very high up, and can therefore see over most other traffic, and know what is up ahead. This design would leave the driver with no visibility, and no idea what the road conditions and traffic were like ahead.

Apparently, it did inspire the truck in the TV series The Highwayman - this video includes the opening sequence from the show.

https://www.google.com/search?q=steinwinter+supercargo&oq=steinwinter+&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j69i57j0i512l8.7300j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:23175916,vid:h73yhEKIUVI

https://www.google.com/search?q=steinwinter+supercargo&oq=steinwinter+&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j69i57j0i512l8.7300j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:dca7633b,vid:ay-CqAmPODM

There are also some articles on the truck.

What do you think?

Paul Adams from New Zealand

THE STEINWINTER LORRY OF TOMORROW

This German road-hugging truck is simply fabulous!

Straight out of Thunderbirds, this 1983 Steinwinter looks super duper slick.

Oddly I can't find any online footage of this amazing road train actually in transit.

Is it sadly vorgessen?

Do you like it?

THE BIG BUS 1976: ALL ABOARD!

 This is crazy!

Like a Saturn V leaving the VAB! But its a gigantic bus!

What is going on?

Aha! Its a movie from 1976!

Have you seen it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rstLAwFsmk

The tyre replacement is so Thunderbirds its untrue!

Syd Mead's Project SWORD?

 I'm continually blown way by the late American futurist Syd Mead's fabulous vehicle concepts like his early '60s US Steel ads. It staggers me that he could think these up as the 1950's were just fading. Do you like them?

There's something Meadish in the vehicle illustrations of the Project SWORD Annual 1968. Maybe the Century 21 and TV21 artists were inspired by Syd? What do you think?

COTTON BALL SPACE STATION

 

I love this retro cotton wool space ball container from the Seventies. It should be on the set of Thunderbirds or UFO. It probably was!

Was there anything like this in your parental home?

SHIPS AND MORTAR

 Yesterday I watched a towering thin chimney being demolished. I'd always liked it as I went about my work and was sad to see it go. The huge white tube reminded me of the Saturn V!

I've always enjoyed seeing the space race in architecture, whether it be real or imagined like the chimney rocket.

With a childhood diet of space missions and cosmic mysteries it was inevitable I would be drawn to the New Age as a teenager. I read Daniken's Chariots of the Gods with gusto [did you?] and Hitching's World Atlas of Mysteries, which I adored and still have in the bookshelf.

Like many of you my passion for outer space and its mysteries spilled over into magazines, TV and records. One album I loved was featured in Roger Dean's Views, the amazing rocket steeple on the cover of Rameses' Space Hymns. 

I must have stared at that painting for hours and even now I can't look at a church without thinking that the steeple's a rocket! Somehow it seems fitting that they should be cosmic vessels, perhaps even space arcs heading for a new Earth!

As a kid the Corgi Rockets Skypark always gave me a thrill, one of those iconic towering toys from the dawn of the Seventies. It always reminded me of the vast buildings in Gerry Anderson's TV shows and a teetering needle space age car cark design by Mike Trim I think, the name of which I forget. Do you know it?

One modernist tower near where I grew up is still there on the M6 motorway. Its the Forton Services and is a Grade II Listed building! As a kid I was convinced it was a parked flying saucer!

[The Twentieth Century Society]

A couple more sites that I really like are the rocket testing battery on the Needles, Isle of Wight, where the old Black Arrow was fired up. We visited it a few years back.

Perhaps though, the most iconic of all space-age buildings I've ever seen were the 'golfballs' of RAF Fylingdales perched on top of the moors near Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

Here's a remarkable image of them being constructed in the Sixties as part of the Cold War [seen on Corridor 8]. Truly arresting, the futuristic spheres were removed in 2006 and replaced with a small pyramid. Did you get chance to see the balls?

Have you a favourite space age building or bit of space building art readers?

RANDY GRUBB'S CHROMIUM BIKE

I've been drooling over Randy Grubb's American workshop.

He's like the king of chromium plating!

In an Art Deco world Randy would be royalty. Just take a look at his chrome motorbike, the Decoson.

You can drool even more as he shows you how this beauty is constructed, as well as all his other terrific silver machines.

Do you like?

GERRY'S LAMENT

I've just read an interview that Gerry Anderson did with the Independent in 2003. One quote really struck me and it's Gerry's lament for how he thinks he got the future wrong in his shows. Here it is:

"I got it very, very wrong," he muses. "I thought everything would be stainless steel and sanitised and we'd all be walking around in brilliant white suits that never got dirty, and that there'd be no more disease or war."

Do you agree? Do you think Gerry got it wrong?

L O N D O N P A S T F U T U R E

Regarding OUR FUTURE BEING ROBBED, here are two 1964 views from the top of the Monument. 

The same views in 2017 from the viewing deck of the Walkie-Talkie building. 

This shot below shows look down on the Monument; follow the line of the left hand bridge to the lower right of photo. 

The Monument is the tower with gold topping. 

Looks very small in the now FUTURE LONDON. Human scale is fast receding.

Terranova47

NYC

MY BATTERY'S FLAT. WHERE: VENUS ORBIT!

There's an advert on TV where the AA repair a broken down bug from Red Dwarf on the moon.

Its comical but maybe they're predicting the future there.

Can you imagine a space-based version of the AA or the RAC that goes round fixing broken down craft in space?

Is this the future of SpaceX, NASA and Virgin Galactic?

WOULD YOU BE A MARS COLONIST?

If I was young and single again and the mission was go I probably would sign up to be a Mars colonist. A shake and baker as they were called in Alien 2!

The thought that it maybe a one way ticket would certainly play on my mind but I suppose the prospect of not successfully returning to Earth is a risk all space travellers have to face including all the pioneers who have already gone into space and landed on the moon.

I'm unsure how far off a viable Mars colony mission actually is. Thirty years? I'll be watching it on a big TV on legs in an old peoples' home by then!

For some people like my Missus Space and Man landing on other planets holds no excitement at all and seems like a complete waste of time and money, especially when the world is mired in so many pressing problems of its own.

For me the Moon Landing was Man's crowning glory, which we achieved when I was 8 way back in July 1969. Colonising Mars would be the next natural jewel in that cosmic crown no matter how many problems we have here on Earth.

What do you think readers? Would you go to Mars?

KEV'S PYE POCKET PHONE

Hi,

Here is my Pye Pocketphone. It is the same model used by CI5 operatives in The Professionals and by Steed, Purdey and Gambit in The New Avengers.

Mine seems to still work but nobody is calling from the 70's.

Take care,

Kevin D

UK

THE FUTURE WAS GREAT

I was talking to a futurologist the other day who was staying with us.

She advises large companies on how to look far far ahead into the future.

I showed her my collection of dead technologies and we discussed the futures we expected. A Sixties kid and an Eighties kid.

Being much older and a baby boomer I explained that my expected future had been of steel and glass needle-pointed cities piercing a domed sky bristling with gleaming rockets and jet cars.

Clearly this dream future never came and I realised whilst describing it that I felt a strong sense of disappointment. Maybe even betrayal.

I wonder if any of you feel like this readers, that the future we thought would emerge from Thunderbirds, Star Trek, TV21, the moonshot and a million B-movies has simply not materialised.

Smart phones just don't cut it.

What do you think? Am I misguided?

The 1956 Astra-Gnome “Time and Space Car”

Reader Mark J has sent this link to this amazingly futuristic car designed in 1956!

http://www.vintag.es/2018/01/the-1956-astra-gnome-time-and-space-car.html?m=1

What do you think?

Reaching No Absolute, In Which To Rest, One Is Always Nearer By Not Keeping Still

I saw a book online the other day called No Requiem for the Space Age. The title got me thinking: requiem, space age. Without having read the book I wonder if its about mourning the loss of the space programme; a sense of bereavement that something great and good has gone forever.

It's odd having grown up in the Sixties and Seventies: the promise of a jet-fueled future was always as close as the vapour trails in the sky; close enough to see but never quite within reach.

The Sixties and Seventies came and went: Captain Laser himself was put away and, alas, my real jet-pack never arrived. 

Man landed on the Moon when I was 10 and never really went back. That was forty five years ago. Just the jetsam of Apollo remains, a lengthening shadow across the lunar days.

I still can't decide if the sense of loss I personally feel about the demise of the space age is confused. I can't ignore the fact that my own childhood coincided with the space programme and the two ended together, like pals parting at dusk, 

The two are hard to separate. I think about one and the other is, well, just there. My childhood, like millions of others, piggybacked the space mission and we all landed on the Moon. It was a giant leap for childhood more than anything and its vision fueled mine and probably millions of other kids' dreams for the rest of our lives. 

Like the waves, the Moon has a tidal pull on us all. My teenage Sister would moon bathe. I would aim rockets at it. My parent's would hold hands and stare at it.

So maybe there is no requiem for the space age, no need for one because it's still alive. Alive in the baby boomer generation's hopes and ... well, fears too maybe. Perhaps the high tide of Man's achievements is yet to be, that searing goggled future where we should live.

The future's so bright we gotta wear shades. We want it to be true.

Although from a different and distant struggle of perhaps the greatest generation, the generation who had no choice,  the motto on my old Mum's WAF papers somehow sums it up for me: 

per ardua ad astra. Through adversity to the stars.

Like Santa landing on the roof, we all willed Apollo to land on the Moon that Christmas back in 1969. Our present on re-entry was going to be a new Tomorrow.

Although it feels like we're running on empty, we've just got to keep wanting it.

* title from On The Move by Thom Gunn