Moonfall

My descending soul prays to push past Saturn's rings

strung like Rosaries round a giant hand.

My unfuelled heart yearns to be the Huygens probe

landing in a lake of Titan's blood.

dedicated to Yuri Gagarin, First Astronaut and also the Cassini-Huygens Team, who landed the most distant man-made object in our System.

Fifty Years in Space

It seems like humanities involvement in space has been ongoing forever. If you look at the amount of stories and books, tv programmes and films that have covered the space race, its not hard to think that we had explored every inch of the cosmos. Its difficult to comprehend for me that basically the first steps began within my lifetime - the year before I was born, Gagarin took his life in his hands and lifted off on Vostok into a totally alien and unexplored territory. Now, fifty years on, space appears commonplace and routine,as Gagarin is feted as the national hero, the US Space Shuttle programme is retired. What does this mean for space travel in the future ? The proposed US mission to return to the moon fizzled out and Russias space program is small in comparison to the glory days. Maybe in the next fifty years, we will find renewed enthusiasm and resources and reach out towards Mars and beyond.

Meanwhile, I noticed that Airfix have seen fit to re-release the excellent Vostok kit - probably for the third time, but with a very tame box art this time. I recall my excitement as I watched my dad building me the original kit, complete with Sputnik and Soyuz variants and a tiny, bubblegum sized Vostok capsule...

Interestingly though, besides the old Saturn rocket kits, they have also made the Skylab launch vehicle too and re-released the Angel Interceptor too - Starcruiser and the Cosmic Clipper next maybe...?

http://www.airfix.com/airfix-products/new-models-for-2011/space/a05172-vostok-1-a05172/gallery/

Simple Pleasures

'To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'
 

Sat in the garden today I remembered the times when as a boy, each corner of the garden became an alien landscape to be explored and overrun by imagination. In Summer, i'd spend hours playing with my space toys in the flower beds or on the hard stone floor, sending men down on cotton strands into holes or into the sky on home made parachutes. In the schoolyard, a defect in the tarmac had fallen in leaving an artificial crater and I used to imagine sending the Prospector down to inspect it. 

These days its much harder to let the imagination roam and indulge myself with some simple fun, but for a quiet half hour today, I got out a few small items and the camera and indulged myself in taking a few snaps and enjoying that far off day when the lawn was an exotic green forest and the patio became a sun baked steppe and the birdbath was transformed into a bottomless mere...

A sinking feeling

Stretching his legs

Prepare for takeoff

Barren Landscape

Proceed with Caution

Overflight

TAXI!

Collecting Samples

"where the hell are we ?"

Pursuit

and capture...

Audience Participation

Over the years there have been loads of instances of fabulous craft appearing in TV21, Countdown, annuals and in the plethora of Anderson shows. Ive got my personal wish list, but im curious as to what you guys think as to what would have made a good toy. I'd have loved to have seen the WOMBAT from Thunderbirds, the Howertank from the SWORD annual and the MEV from Terrahawks. But whats been a missed opportunity for you ? Send me your thoughts, along with a scan or a photo or screen grab of the ones that got away for you, and ill blog them!

WOMBAT courtesy of Keith Mcneill

http://www.keithmcneill.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/3c.html

Come Fly With Me

Well its summer and the devil will make work for idle hands! As a kid i'd spend hours fiddling about with paper airplanes and balsa wood gliders and sitting at my desk yesterday lunchtime I was working up the Task Force entry for the Top Trumps game. The T1 struck me as being very aerodynamic and dartlike and I had a mad idea that it would make a neat paper glider!

So without further ado heres a mad idea realised. The concept is simple, print the graphic out on thin card, cut out around the ships outlines. Running from the nose of the body part to just behind the cockpit is a thin slot - adjust to suit the weigth of card and cut out. On the wing section, theres a similar slot running from the engines part way up the dorsal fin area. Take the body section and fold along the leading edge of the main wing, so you have a double sided body. Glue together with stick glue such as Pritt. Slide the wing section into the slot so that the two pieces form a cross shape. To add a little extra weight to the nose, tape a small nail or pin under the leading edge of the nose where its unseen. When your happy with your creation, stand well back and launch! wheeeeeeee...... seven years old again !

If anyone goes to the trouble of making one, send me a photo for blogging! If you need a higher res version of the artwork mail me for a pdf .

Moonship Returns Home

Century 99: C21 Mister Softee Ice Cream Van

Here we have the plastic Mister Softee Van by Century 21 for your personal tasting. Yummmmmmm! Fresh from the Ferryman collection. I love the little portrait of Mr. Softee on the van with his curlytop hair - reminds me of Max Headroom or those crazy guys in DEVO! But was Mister Softee the same as Mister Whippee? And was Tracy Island on it's rounds or did Brains rustle up their sundaes? My own fave ice cream when I was a nipper was a raz ripple screwball with a bubbley in the bottom and running a close second was a delicious jammy ice cream wafer sandwich! Deelicious.

There is mention of a Century 21 Topo Gigio Ice Cream Van in Dennis Nicholson's 'Guide' book but I've certainly never seen one. If it's like the other two Topo vehicles by C21 then it may be in a red and yellow SWORDesque box. Anyone ever seen one?

Seeing the Attraction

I was cruising through a few old copies of Countdown comic the other day and amidst the TV21 reprint material and other stuff, there are one or two original stories and one offs by various jobbing artists, including one of my personal favourites, Brian Lewis. His style is quite technical and detailed, whilst at the same time individual and stylish.

A particularly good story I fondly remembered from back in 1971 is the stand alone 'Space Tug' strip. This featured a small group of spacefarers who ran a salvage ship for hire, called unsurprisingly the Space Tug. Lewis took his inspiration clearly from the craft and styling of 2001 a Space Odyssey, especially the Lunar Shuttle Aries and the distinctive space suits. Countdown had blatantly lifted the Discovery for its flagship strip and used it extensively with only a name change, but Lewis created ships and environments which could have easily been 'off camera' in Kubricks opus.

ARIES LUNAR SHUTTLE

Heres a pastiche of the ships and craft from the strip. The other big attraction for me was they all had a nice Spacex feel to them with strange, globular engines and unusual shapes.