SPACEX BOOSTER ROCKET ORIGIN BY PAUL VREEDE

Super Spacex collector Paul Vreede continues his journey into its origins, tonight he looks at the Booster Rocket:

Here's a picture of my Spacex Booster Rocket - missing two of
its fuel tanks unfortunately. It's another Spacex craft with a real "scientist
inspired" origin, although the SWORD Booster Rocket is its direct ancestor of
course.
The scientists in this case I believe worked for the Missile and
Space Division of General Electric. The Booster Rocket was their proposal for a
nuclear-powered spacecraft intended for a Mars mission in the early 1970s.
Nyrath, one of your Project Sword forum members, has a series of photographs
of a model demonstrating the various mission stages.
He tells me the book
those pictures are from was written by Dandridge Cole, who I found was a space
engineer at General Electric amongst other things. This tallies with another
reference I found for those pictures stemming from GE.
I have a book called
Man and Space, published 1962 by Arthur C Clarke and the editors of Life , and
in that is this fine painting by Ed Valigursky as well as a sequence of
illustrations also describing the mission.

FAB Paul!

Postscript: There's also some great concept photo's ( 1, 2)on the Space 1999 Eagle Transporter Form ( courtesy of Jim Lewis).

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO ON TV

The 1960's film starring Zero X is on the box in the UK today, Friday 13th Feb at 17.25pm or tomorrow Saturday the 14th Feb at 1pm both on FILM4.

Postscript: Despite domestic highlights like putting the shopping away and eating, I got to see most of the above film! Excellent! Like a SWORD movie! The Zero X is just great with the wings flying around as seperate lifting bodies and the MEV tearing its way round Mars! The scene where the chrome nose cone is fitted is brilliant. I even saw a Johnny Seven toy rifle being used as a grapple launcher from TB2! Hee hee. Toy Heaven. If you didn't see this movie tonight then catch ot tomorrow!

FAB!

NUCLEAR FERRY - FAB NEW PICTURES

These fabulous pictures of the Century 21 NUCLEAR FERRY have just been sent in by keen SWORD collector Ferryman, who has recently acquired this, the Holy Grail of all the SWORD fleet. Ferryman says:

I have carefully sanded and polished out the large glue stain that was on the top
of the model. I have also removed most of the damage caused by the cable melting
into the plastic of the remote control unit. I have a lot of experience in
restoring vintage toys to their former glory.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Glory Days of Space by WOTAN

The sixties were a great era to grow up in. Space travel was everywhere and on everything. I wanted to be an astronaut at age 5 (still waiting at 47) and my imagination soared. I collected space books voraciously alongside the toys, and chief among my favourites was the British Ladybird book, Exploring Space. Printed in 1964 with fabulous colour illustrations by a B. Knight, this and 'How Rockets Work' fired my enthusiasm for space with gorgeous pictures of streamlined rockets and space stations. When it was re-issued some years later in the wake of Apollo, the Mercury capsule was replaced by a LEM and all the futuristic rockets had gone in favour of Saturn Vs. Recently I spotted a nice space diorama set made by Marx on Ebay US (pictured). The set has a small copy of the larger battery Moon Grabber toys and a handful of blobby space rocks and a couple of wayward astronauts. The box states 'hand painted by artists' and looking at the sloppy way the vehicle has been decorated, I wonder if the artist was actually in zero g conditions at the time! What caught my eye though was the clearly stolen box artwork - the three main rocket and space station pictures had been lifted directly out of the Ladybird book (pictured)! Not content to subtly alter the pics and avoid any copyright issues as is the case with the Nuclear Ferry and the plagiarism of Bob McCalls art, Marx clearly decided these inexpensive items would not be around long enough to draw the lawyers attentions. Even so, its a very clear indication that toy designers and their respective companies obviously used contemporary literature as their sources of inspiration.

Nice one WOTAN.

MORE MEGA FORCE?

Cheers guys, Mega Force eh? A new one on me. I might as well show you this motley crew that I got offa t'Ebay last year. Still waiting in the twilight zone of my attic where unidentified stuff languishes for eons. The brown 'big gun' is made by SL as is the greenish digger. The little bug in the middle is made by KPT 89. The camouflaged tank carrier and jet trailer are Kenner 89. The green jets with the strange rear pins have no markings at all. No idea what the tiny brown jet at the front is nor the purple tank!

PROBE FORCE 3 ON THE BRAIN

I recently picked up these 2 cuties at the local car boot. They remind me a little of the Probe Force 3. Not sure what the top two are. I love the little brown die-cast rovers parked on the roof! The bottom jet is from the 70's Micronauts range. I'm seeing P3's everywhere now!

RUBBER PROBE FORCE 3 FROM JAPAN

Courtesy of Japanese toys detective Terry Harle and the unstoppable WOTAN, here's a great picture of small rubber jets from Japan. Now doesn't that red jet - bottom centre - look just like a Probe Force 3?

You'll remember from previous posts that Terry and WOTAN had already found a rubber P3 last year - part of a vintage packet of Takeuchi erasers (which was kindly donated to blog central - thanks boys!)

Project RUBBER! I love it.

MEV 2 ORIGIN BY PAUL VREEDE

Another brilliant instalment from Paul Vreede: Hi Paul, Here's a nice illustration by Ed Valigursky showing where the Spacex MEV-1 came from. It's from a book published in 1962 called Man and Space, by Arthur C Clarke and the editors of Life. As you see, the arm on this vehicle comes out of the side instead of the top of the body, but other than that... The wheel design looks very much like what Grumman was proposing at the time (see patent pictures - USPTO public domain) but I haven't yet been able to discover anything more official for the entire vehicle. At any rate, it's one vehicle where the claim of "authentic designs created by scientists" seems to be actually true. Best--Paul