A to B via Z

From my earliest encounter with Space Shuttle designs in space books and magazines in the sixties, I always assumed they would look super-cool and aerodynamic, with extra boosters, swept wings and piggybacked orbiters.

 Unfortunately, the reality was much more staid with something which looked more like an airliner strapped to a rocket than a spaceship.

Developmental concepts from a multitude of engineering companies show how the idea was explored, revealing some quite exotic designs being generated. A lot of the imagery may look a little too science fiction for practicality, such as Ed Valigursky's beautiful siamese twin shuttles, from 'Man in Space'

Some of the design concepts found their way into toy designs, such as the Project SWORD Dyna Soar, which was an almost direct lift from the drawing board and the Space Glider, which was influenced by the NASA Lifting Body project.

 

M1-F1 Lifting Body

HL-10 Lifting Body

Even British Aerospace were keen to get into the Shuttle business, with the odd MUSTARD design, featuring three identical craft, clustered together in various configurations at liftoff, to deliver a final stage to orbit.

British MUSTARD (Multi-Unit Space Transport and Recovery Device)

My favourite designs were the more unconventional ones, with a touch of Thunderbirds in their execution, such as these delta shaped craft and the Grumman design, below as seen in Brooke Bonds 'Race into Space' tea card set.

 Perhaps, if the current interest in redeveloping a foothold in space continues, we will see more advanced shuttle craft appear to service the space stations and planetary bases of the future.

Boeing Concept

 Or am I just dreaming ?

Dyna Soar and Lenticular Hull Designs

COME IN, JEFF TRACY

BEWARE: SPOILERS BE HERE....

Love it or hate it, the new episodes of Thunderbirds are Go have got quite a few people talking.

Most fans appear to agree that last week's episode was an emotional roller coaster. Thunderbird 4 is destroyed, Gordon Tracy is badly injured and Brains' determines that the mysterious distress call that Braman endlessly repeats appears to originate from Jeff Tracy.

According to reports, Saturday's episode , 'Signals Part One', will feature the voice of Lee Majors as Jeff. The space pirates, Reece and Dobbs, who appeared in the second season episode, 'Ghost Ship' are also hinted to return.

Retro Rockets

 To celebrate the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, i've gone a bit retro in my view through the airlock window and blog contibutors Andy B and Rob C have kindly joined in the ride and sent me some excellent images depicting the themes.

 Andy provided these excellent soviet era space imaginings, its a shame that Mir or Salyut never looked like this, or the immense launch vehicles the Soviets used to plant their Trabant-sized capsules into orbit, where as elegant.

Japanese sci fi and model enthusiast Rob gave me the heads up on a little known film 'Battle in Outer Space' which does indeed include some outstanding model work and ship designs.

 Certainly another gem to track down in the near future and a possible contender for The Green Slime's kitschy crown!

I'm especially curious about this beast of a rover, which has more than a passing resemblance to Spacex Mobile H.Q!

 

Some serious size models going on here and more than a nod to Captain Scarlets Mysteron city on Mars, too! 

REMEMBERING THE ATLAS EDITIONS THUNDERBIRD 2

This is the Thunderbird 2 model by Atlas Editions that was given free to anyone who applied for their trial offer.

Sadly, this was the only model released as the proposed set of Thunderbird models was cancelled sometime later. Those who had shown an interest received explanatory letter and a pen.

It was a shame as the model was a  pretty good addition to my Thunderbird collection. It came in a flat green colour, and was very nicely detailed.

 

It’s about the same size as the Dinky Thunderbird 2, and comes with a removable pod 4 which even has some detail inside.

There’s also a tiny detailed Thunderbird 4, which looks perfectly in scale, being much smaller than the one that came with the Dinky toy. 

The only downside is there are no legs supplied so it can’t be displayed with the pod below and the ramp open. I don't suppose it would to too difficult to make set, though.

It does come with its own ‘in flight’ display stand though.

I noted at time that couple of people complained that the shape wasn't quite right, and the nose lettering was too large. They might have a point, getting the exact lines for TB2 was, and is always notoriously difficult, even the studio models didn’t all look the same.  I reckon it’s  just  be a simple case of nit- picking, either way, considering it was free I'm not about to complain.

The model came in a classy looking collector’s box, and a certificate of authenticity collector card, which contained info about Thunderbird 2. There was also a free International Rescue metal lapel badge.

Wheels within Wheels

I was recalling the 1955 George Pal movie, 'Conquest of Space' recently and the fabulously retro spaceships it contained, especially the beautiful 'flying wing' type spaceship. But it also has a nice classic 'Von Braun' style space wheel station in the film, which is again extremely competantly visualised. While looking for suitable imagery, I came across the extremely comprehensive blog, by NZPete - which deals with the history of the matte shot, which made films like this possible, well before the advent of CGI. This is an area that our late friend Ken Holt worked in for MGM studios, on films such as Gorgo and Tom Thumb.

Space Wheel stations don't come much better than the massive model shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey, seen here in the production painting by Robert McCall. The interesting thing here is that the wheel is shown as still under construction, with the secondary wheel still in red girder framework. From the sublime to the ridiculous, but still very enjoyable, we have the station Gamma 7 from the Green Slime - a film with effects slightly below par compared to its contemporary Thunderbirds; using lots of models and pyrotechnics.

The model world is not without a fair showing of classic wheel shaped stations, such as the Strombecker model from Disney's 'Man in Space' and Lindbergs nice U.S Space Station, which was re-issued several times until fairly recently, along with the Mars Probe rocket kit.

Although Midori released the main ship (which we know as the Lunar Transporter) from Green Slime, there are a number of other notable models in the film, which have not found their way into kit form, including the main Rocket Transport.

And finally, an entirely gratuitous McCall painting of the revolving interior deck of Discovery, from Kubrick's seminal 2001.

I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S ART, BUT IT'S STINGRAY!

A trio of old photos I took of my Product Enterprise Stingray which have had a bit of an arty makeover in Photoshop.

We Shall Go To The Moon!

Its fascinating to read about the early plans for space exploration in the late fifties. Colliers magazine ran a sequence of articles detailing the United States future plans to reach the Moon and beyond.

In an effort to drum up support and public backing for the space programme, Werner Von Braun skillfully exploited the media of the time to show the wonder and excitement of space travel.

He would later collaborate with Walt Disney to produce a series of animated films showing the 'World of Tomorrow' and a manned journey to Mars. Its interesting to look at the proposals for these early craft - huge ungainly moonships with crews of 10 or 20 astronauts and beautiful aerodynamic winged rockets to transport the crews up to the waiting ships, moored alongside orbiting space stations.

The new plans for the next generation of moon ships are more substantial than the Apollo programme, but no nearly as vast as the fuel hungry giants proposed by Von Braun in 1958.

Colliers magazines spreads were all lavishly illustrated by the amazingly accurate artwork of painter Chesley Bonestell, who captured Von Brauns plans and illustrated a brave new world of wonder.