Shrunk Works

Spacex meets Star Wars!

My Micro Machines Landspeeder and hand painted Fireball XL5/ Spacex Salvage Craft.

[thought: If SWORD was Star Wars would the Rebellion be the Rejects?]

Miniaturisation is great but has anyone made any life-size Spacex, Star Wars or SCi-Fi craft?

Toad 1

Well, not many Swordheads can say they have their own vehicle named after 'em in the 1969 Annual but Toad can. His nifty motor is parked up in Service Bay 2 don't you know as you can see above. Looks like a cargo mover of some sort. Very handy. Nice one Toad - you going for a ride?

SWORD Summer SOLO Comic Strip Issue 30

Well Swordheads, the Summer of SWORD was nearly over back in '67 and it is in 2010. Between the last sunny days, the winds are getting up and the rain's starting to pour. Issue 30 0f SOLO on the 9th September saw the last of the comic strip format for SWORD - ending with an ad for some of the toys - a nifty bit of product placement [bit like the whole strip really!]. There was [and is] one more installment of SWORD in Solo in the form of a all-text story. Same time next week - 'the fight to the finish'!

Big Thanks to the Philosophic Toad for all his scans. Mucho Bufo.

Back in the USSR

Cool Russian space images from reader Andy B.

Gagarin pictures are from Prestel book "Soviet Posters", other two are from Russian internet sites.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

I sold a stack of Fischer Technik sets last year [took me forever to make up the boxes from a mish-mash of parts!] but I never knew they made these cool space vehicles as well!

The Real Nuclear Ferries

Looking at the Brooke Bond cards really took me back to the good old days of the space race when space ephemera was everywhere. The cover and the last few cards of the tea card set featured modular, re-usable vehicles for travelling to the Moon and beyond. Commonly based on a cylindrical frame, even the moon base design followed the trend, the system was intended to be an interchangeable series of units which could be configured for different mission requirements. The Lunar Shuttle vehicle is very reminiscent of the SWORD Moonbase itself too.

The cover image on the album shows the main ship being assembled in orbit prior to launching on a manned Mars mission. What's most notable and distinctive about these and other similar images is the inclusion of the nuclear engine. This proposal was known as the NERVA project - (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application)  an appellation which also followed the custom for using the names of roman gods and deities. NERVA was a product of the Los Alamos labs and a jointly funded product which was actually highly successful until the funding was dropped and the project cancelled in 1973 over environmental and cost issues.

The idea of the Mars mission also appeared as part of a pull out poster in Countdown comic during June 1971 - contemporary with the Brooke Bond cards - which showed a specualtive space programme up to 1988! The poster shows the Lunar Shuttle and the Nuclear Shuttle as well as the Space Tug, Skylab (remember that ?) and what would eventually become the Voyager and other deep space probes.

Even at this tender age I was a complete obsessive geek and a bit of a magpie and when I went into a hardware store with my dad, I was delighted to spot a combination padlock that looked exactly like one of the modules on the poster! In fact, I havent changed at all and am considering looking on ebay for another one now!

However, the central concept of the Nuclear Shuttle has been around for some time prior to the seventies as the NASA archives contain many images from the late fifties and early sixties of the projected use of this modular system, using a shuttle launched series of parts. The main ship would be assembled in orbit using tugs and a nuclear based cargo shuttle would move cargo back and to from a lunar base. The final push to Mars would use three NERVA engines mounted together for maximum acceleration and thrust.

$32,000 Opening Bid! It's Major!

The All-American couple, Major Matt Mason and Barbie in an eye-watering Ebay auction. Check this out!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370429211012&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

Don't Force It

Having solved my busted photo SD card problem with a small piece of paper [thanks to the net!], here's some shots of the S.T.A.R FORCE MOBILE GROUND SUPPORT from 1996 made by Lanard. Mentioned in WOTAN's bloglet on skunkworks the other day, S.T.A.R FORCE vehicles do have a SWORD-like quality to them.

Tanks a Lot

Browsing through the Vectis site's past auctions there have been various lots of Tanks and Armoured cars including our old friend the Rocket Launcher 'Cricket' lookalike. I particularly like the Linda boxed set pictured last but it's not a company I know at all.

Last Train to Geeksville

'Geek' - what a strange word. I read a history of it over the weekend in the Sunday paper. Amazingly it first appeared, in a novel, back in the 30's but it meant something different then. Why am I interested? Well, I've been been described as geeky now and then over the past couple of decades! It seems to be something to do with that peculiar [but completely normal] combination of wearing glasses, a T-shirt, jeans and an unhealthy interest in comics, sci fi, monsters and space![maybe I've missed something?]. Back in 70's UK the word for such leanings was 'wierd' or 'wierdo'  but I personally prefered 'hippy' [but not 'hip'] before it became totally extinct with the onslaught of Punkdom.

My favourite geeky 'label', an actual nickname no less, was 'Beatnik', which a free-spirited motorbike-ridin' eelcatcher, called John the Eelman, gave me whilst living on a bird reserve in the Fens [geeky?]. I can still hear him now rudely waking me up one morning shouting 'Beatnik, Beatnik, they've dropped the f******n bomb!' Late seventies cold-war humour. which just wouldn't work now!

Fortunately I avoided my daughter's 90's generation's particular moniker for such tendencies, 'Freak'. Although not unknown to me [the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers were 'freakin' around in comics back in the 70's] I always thought it more offensive than earlier efforts.

Which finally brings me to 'nerd', a person who invariably lives in 'nerdsville' here in the UK. I'm just not sure about 'nerd', although I think it may have something to do with computers? Or Chess? Is the brainy guy in Bing Bang Theory a nerd? Are his mates geeks? Can a nerd live in geeksville or vice versa? I suppose it's a bit nerdy [or geeky?] to even think about stuff like that!

Ah well, it's all geek to me!