LOVELY CHRISTMAS PREZZY: WORLD PEACEKEEPERS

Hello Woodsy,

This is something I came across by chance at Amazon. I bought it in case my Grandson took a liking to my Dan Dare which I would rather not give up.

I've no idea what World Peacekeepers are or why they need an astronaut but I'll sacrifice him in the blink of an eye if need be.

Keep well,
Terranova47

USA

Sunday Driver

While I got the scenery out for the Kellogs shoot, I realised I had an old Esso Garage model in there too, from a lot of railway scenery models I bought on ebay, so I decided to use it conjunction with another gift item I received recently from Paul V.

As I expressed an interest in his recent post about the early Lego model city and the wonderful vehicles, He sent me a couple of spares to start me off down that road.

The Lego Esso Trucks would normally carry oil barrels, so I decided Esso would have to branch out into renewable fuels and made a couple of lumber loads from toffee apple sticks.

Its interesting to see the similarity between the earlier Lego cars and Minix vehicles, such as the green Simca above. Both have metal wheels and silver bases with some chassis detailing.

The Esso Service Station is possibly an old Faller product, but in a pretty rough condition. However Paul kindly provided me with a new set of Lego pumps, signage and the important rare elements to build the original Lego garage. Meanwhile, i'm happy with this quick mash up of three different model lines, just to show off the cars.

A C T I O N G I R L

Courtesy of Bernard Dunne.

It would make a great Xmas prezzy as it did back in the day!

THE COUSTEAU

 

I thought this was a neat little carded set I saw on an old auction site, the Cousteau by Real Action. Could be quite modern.

A real mash-up with frogmen and a NASA space shuttle. Looks like they're looking for pirate treasure on the artwork!

I used to watch Jaques Cousteau on the telly when I was a kid too!

Would you have liked this set as a kid?

Kelloggs Motor Cars in 1:87

Some shots of the cool Kelloggs snap together Motor Car kits from their cereal in the early 1960's as seen in 1:87 scale.

 

CAN YOU WRITE A SHORT STORY ABOUT THIS PICTURE?

 

Short story comp guys!

Can you write a short story that fits this picture I took this morning of Captain Scarlet, a letter and Batman?

Funny, yes! Serious, just as good.

Doesn't have to be long, a paragraph will suffice. Can you entertain us?

If not a paragraph then at least a caption!

And a Star To Steer Her By

 First off, this isn't a Star Trek post, although there is a tenuous connection! Rather I am refererring to John Masefields wonderfully evocative poem, 'Sea Fever'

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. 

The concept of travelling into unknown regions, without a goal, but to experience the sights and sounds of the journey, has obsessed man for centuries. With the Space Race seemingly behind us, it seems like the outward urge to explore the heavens has ended, but in fact, there are many exciting projects still ongoing. The Mars Lander Perseverance, is due to reach the red planet early next year and take up the baton from Curiosity, with an even more sophisticated rover to continue the search for life.

Just this month, the OSIRIS-Rex probe managed to obtain a substantial sample of dust from the near Earth asteroid Bennu, which will be returned to Earth for examination in around 2023. Bennu is a large diamond shaped asteroid which could potentially impact Earth at some point in the no too distant future, so besides getting an insight into what the asteroid is composed of, scientists are keen to discover ways of avoiding the potential calamity.

Nasa has Project Dragonfly in development, a mission to send a remote car sized quad-copter to study the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, by hopping across the terrain and sampling and recording data across a broad range of terrain.

Perhaps most exciting of all is the idea to send a robotic submersible probe to Europa, to penetrate the icy crust and explore the liquid oceans which are thought to exist on Jupiters moon. Given the prevalence of life in exothermic conditions deep below the waters of Earth, its postulated that life could potentially exist either on Europa, Enceladus or even beneath the surface of mysterious Pluto.

But beyond these new guys on the block is the great grandaddies of them all, the Voyager probes. Two probes launched in 1977, in two separate missions, the probes are still working today, over 40 years later.

Voyager 1 is now officially in interstellar space, having left the Heliosphere - or region of the suns remote influence. Having been shut down recently as NASA and the scientists at JPL made adjustments to the ageing controls, contact was re-established successfully with the probe, from 22.5 billion kilometers away in deep space. Voyager 2 is not far behind and still recording data faithfully.

Both probes sent back milestone data from the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus as they flew by and in 1988 Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant man made object in space. Star Trek the Motion Picture included the Voyager probe as the nexus of a huge alien spaceship travelling back from deep space to make contact with its creators, as the entity 'V'Ger'. 

Voyager famously carries the 'golden record' including Sounds of Earth and a message from humanity. Lets hope that advanced alien civilisations still have record players they can use!

The probes are now en route to their next destination, the mysterious Oort Cloud, the region of deep space, in which it is thought comets originate from and which may hold the primordial remnants of matter which helped create the planets themselves. It will be a long journey, though as Voyager 1 will not reach the inner edge of the region for at least three centuries.

You can view the current mission status on NASA/JPL's informative site here:

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_now