Missed Opportunity

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I was hoping to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the moon landing this month, but as i'm away in the Med, the date passed me by. Not a milestone as such until 2019, but worth remembering those heady days of the moon shot and the space race, when everything was geared towards astronauts and spaceflight.

These days deep space seems a little ordinary now, as we can routinely scan transmissions from the ephemera, view unprocessed images of space and receive tweets from a robotic messenger on Mars.

The wonder of the cosmos seems to have paled into insignificance and the myth about the staged lunar landing still seems to have credence, despite the fact that the descent stage of the LEM is actually visible on the moon surface!

A mission to Mars seems equally unlikely now and as the extent of the known solar system seems to have been routinely mapped, I ask "what now?". What can possibly stir the collective curiosity of tbe public in the same way that the moon shot did? An oddly shaped asteroid recently blasted through the solar system, barely raising a scientific eye brow and causing only a brief mention on the news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42053634

Cassini's vast trove of information about the Saturnian system is routinely meted out on Twitter, with utterly breathtaking images of ice fountains on Enceladus and enormous hexagonal polar vortices on the parent planet, vying for attention and losing out to piano playing cats and vitriolic rhetoric about Donalds Trump's hands.

Its a shame that the excitement and wonder of space travel has been rendered into a comic book trope and a movie meme. I was really annoyed to see the utterly ridiculous rescue scene for Princess Leia in the last Star Wars epic, which flew in the face of all natural physical laws, even in a universe which upholds the presence of a supernormal 'force'. Even more oddly, the franchise then goes on in the latest Han Solo epic to redress George Lucas' famous gaffe about 'parsecs' in a New Hope, bringing the issues of a unit of distance being used as a measure of time, firmly under control.

Perhaps the success of science fiction has satisfied the basic human desire for curiousity and shown what exists on the dark side or in the farthest corners of the universe cinematically; and replaced that need to climb atop a multi billion dollar firework and go look in person.

PRESIDENT: THE WORLD ARMY HOVER TANK

A gorgeous PRESIDENT Hover tank design from the pages of TV21, 23rd March 1968.

Is it an Eric Eden illustration readers?

SICK BAY

I'm currently slam-dunked with a stonkin' summer cold. I never knew a nose could produce so much material!

Apologies if I haven't replied to your comments and emails. As soon as humanity returns to my body I will.

I hope you are all well readers.

FLYING TV21 TANKS

I love the futuristic flying tanks in this Captain Scarlet TV21 strip from February 1968.

Not sure of the artist.

Have you seen any more tanks in TV21?

CAR BOOT BLUES

Went to the local car boot sale this morning looking for toys for Moonbase Junior. I was somewhat distracted by a nasty summer cold I've picked up so  I wasn't as keen-eyed as normal.

Moonbase Jr. did get a new bookcase and some toy cars. Beyond this there was a distinct dearth of vintage anything. The best days for finding vintage toys seem to be over at car boots. Do you agree?

One thing did catch my eye, the Rescue ship and yellow submersible from the Matchbox Mega-Rig Rescue Squad released in 1998. But at five pounds I gave it a miss. I recall Bill blogging about it ten years ago so its on Moonbase somewhere.

Here's a TV advert I found on You Tube, where you can see the ship and the sub.

ZELROBOT TOY

Saw these listed on the Bay.

Never seen them before so I kept the images.

ZELROBOT.

The description says its Japanese.

It reminds me of Micronauts toys.

I really like the rocket launcher on a pedestal. Is there any other toy like that?

What do you think of ZELROBOT?

HOLD THE BUS

Hello, 

Next weekend I'll look for some of my old toy boats if you want some extra content for a toy boat post. I would think they used to be part of British DNA being an Island Nation. 

As regards busses I'm not sure how many there are, I'll have to count them. Back in the 90's when I started working with computers for graphic design there was no longer the use of hand skills, painting, drawing, glueing etc. 

So to compensate I started building small model cars etc for a future railway layout not realising how far in the future that would be. There were a number of companies in the UK that made 1/76 scale metal kits the advantage being that they were small and could be stored in a Manhattan apartment. 

When the Internet expanded and eBay was discovered I found there were lots of old toys available that could be repainted so started buying the old Dinkey bus which happened to match a limited number of buses bought by London Transport as a wartime supplement to their war damaged fleet. These buses were still in use in the early 50's on a route near me in north London, which is where my layout is set. 

Dinky never made these buses as London ones, usually they were in Liverpool colours, Green and Cream.

A few companies in the UK made decals for 1/76 scale buses so I ended up with an authentic looking fleet. 

In the attached photo are 13 of the repainted buses. There were a number of different colour schemes over the years including Greenline and Country buses that were various greens, and until the mid fifties there was a lot of cream with the red. 

As my branch line connected to lines that went to the London Docks the 1' x 7' extension allows me to display boats I have built. 

I have a clockwork Martian Tripod to photograph on my layout, instead of a Royal Salute my artillery can have a real target! 

Regards, 

Terranova47

NYC

KEV'S MIRON SPACESHIP FROM SCRATCH

I've done another Miron spaceship scratchbiuld. The classic saucer design that features in many of the story illustrations.

Take care,

Kevin