Retro Thing

Classic Buck Rogers Rocket Sculptures

In the early days of Retro Thing, we wrote about Cool Rockets, model maker Jeff Brewer's series of superlative rocket powered sculptures. Originally inspired by the 50s, Jeff has gone back further in the past to bring us farther into the future. His newest models are from the world of Buck Rogers, that wild 1920s comic strip that helped give birth to science fiction.

I got to see the Buck Rogers battle cruiser and the Asterite craft recently, and they continue the tradition of high quality coming from Brewer's spacedock. Hand-finished and poised for liftoff, each ship is fueled up and ready to go on those post-depression adventures of the funny pages. While his prior Cool Rockets were imbued with a spark of attitude (several of the designs looked ready to flex and spring into action), the Buck Rogers ships play it straight, serving as a tribute to those designs that launched so many imaginations so long ago.These Buck Rogers rocket sculptures are limited to a thousand pieces, so they won't be in our orbit for long. You can click below to find one on Amazon, and you'll be helping out Retro Thing along the way.

Add Buck Rogers' Battle Cruiser to your fleet

1960s Ray Gun Made Of Space-Age Cardboard

Before space patrol issues you a real ray pistol, they may have you practice your "pew pew" gun skills with this cardboard replica. It's got a deadly looking ("deadly" in that it looks like it might not be well insulated against all of that killer voltage") gun printed on both sides as well as a folded over hinge along the top.

The surprise comes if you hold the gun slightly open and bring it down quickly. A pocket of paper flaps out quickly with a loud crack. My gun is a little out of comission because it is quite old (clearly my weapon fell through some fissure in time connecting the 50th century and the 1960s), but an intact gun will issue a loud report.

While scarcely a replacement for a classic plastic or tinplate ray gun, but as a freebie with a business name printed on it... not too bad. Though labeling it "all mechanical" is a little optimistic.

Cool thing for you, dear reader, is that I found an eBay seller who has some new old stock for just a few bucks, so you can have the real thing that's intact enough to actually have fun with. You can also fold your own popper by following the link below. It won't look as cool as the paper ray gun, but it's loud enough to get you kicked out of a Junior High School lunchroom as I recall...

links:

New old stock of cardboard ray guns
Loud origami popper instructions

50 Years of Satellite TV

The Telstar 1 communication satellite was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on July 10, 1962, ushering in the modern age of intercontinental broadcasting and telecommunication. It was owned by AT&T and developed at Bell Telephone Labs as part of an international project sponsored by the USA, UK and France. Its $3 million trip atop one of NASA's Thor-Delta rockets was the first commercially sponsored launch.

Telstar was placed in a medium altitude elliptical orbit that circled the earth approximately once every 2 3/4 hours. This resulted in a short 20 minute window during which intercontinental communication could be established between Andover Earth Station in the United States and Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in Cornwall, England or Pleumeur-Bodou in France.

Goonhilly became the first ground station to receive a live intercontinental TV feed on July 23, 1962, although the French were the first to receive a patriotic American test image from Andover, Maine.

Telstar 1 was successful but short-lived. High-altitude nuclear experiments by the USA and USSR dramatically increased radiation levels in the Van Allen Belt throughout late 1962 and led to the satellite's premature failure the next February. A flurry of activity followed. The first geostationary communications satellite - Hughes Aircraft Company's Syncom 3 - was launched in August 1964, followed by Intelsat 1 - the first commercial communications satellite - in April 1965.

The Telstar name has stood the test of time, with its most recent namesake - Telstar 18 - successfully launched in June 2004.

As of it's 50th birthday, Telstar 1 remains in orbit, enjoying the view.

The Final Touchdown

This morning's landing of Atlantis, the last shuttle, caused me to get a bit misty-eyed. It also felt a bit like saying goodbye to the family's rusty old Chevrolet Impala station wagon. She served us faithfully, but it's time to move on.

The Space Transportation System was envisioned as an affordable, reusable launch vehicle for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) operation. NASA estimated that the shuttle would cost about $41 billion dollars (2011 dollars, adjusted for inflation) to design, and an additional $54 million dollars per flight. It didn't quite work out that way. By the time the exhaust plumes had settled, $196 billion had been invested in the STS program -- more than $1.45 billion per launch.

I listened to several brief news clips throughout the day as a flock of confused reporters lamented the loss of the shuttle and the end of America's manned space program. It was emotional, moving and entirely unnecessary because the American space industry is entering a new golden age. It promises to be a hell of a lot cheaper, safer and more interesting than the ghastly tedium of the shuttle's LEO resupply trips.

While it's true that NASA's expensive and risky Constellation heavy lifter program has been shelved, a squadron of eager young space technology companies are beginning to attract attention around the world. Young whippersnappers such as Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) are bringing the mindset of low-cost software startup companies to the space industry, with impressive early results.

In 2006, NASA awarded SpaceX a $278 million contract to develop the Falcon 9 rocket. Several successful years later, the relationship was extended with the announcement of a $1.6 billion agreement to provide 12 supply missions to the ISS.

If SpaceX can pull things off on budget and on schedule, it'll work out to a total cost of $1.878 billion -- about $157 million per launch. Of course, the Falcon 9 can only lift about 40% of the shuttle's payload into low earth orbit and a few years more extremely hard work will be required before SpaceX's Dragon capsule is cleared to transport a live crew. 

Even with its current limitations, the cost of resupplying the ISS using the SpaceX launch system is about 1/4 that of the shuttle. The company is already working on the Falcon Heavy launch system, which will offer over four times the Falcon 9's LEO payload capability.

Perhaps more important: The Falcon Heavy will be capable of hefting a sizeable cargo into a geostationary transfer orbit or translunar trajectory, should that be deemed politically desirable. The first launch should take place under three years from now -- a mere blink of an eye by the timelines of the commercial space industry.

SpaceX isn't the only startup eager to usher in an era of more affordable and adaptable space travel. Companies such as Orbital Sciences, Bigelow Aerospace, Blue Origin (funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) and even old-guard heavyweights such as Boeing & Lockheed Martin (United Launch Alliance) are battling for their slice of the pie.

I can hardly wait to see what lies ahead. One thing's for sure --  the American space program is only just reaching the launchpad. To infinity and beyond!

SpaceX - Space Exploration Technologies

Auction: Nintendo Game Boy Flown In Space

It should come as no surprise that my 8-year-old is an avid collector of vintage Nintendo handhelds. His latest acquisition is an original Game Boy and a handful of games from a used game store. The Kid thought it was an absolute bargain for $15, but he's always on the lookout for interesting additions to his collection.

I dare not show him this one, which is expected to fetch $1500-$2000 at auction.

Lot No. 250 in Bonhams' upcoming Space History Sale is a spacefaring Game Boy that flew on Soyuz TM-17 in 1993. It logged 196 days in space in the possession of cosmonaut Aleksandr A. Serebrov. The lot includes the Game Boy unit, (highly appropriate) Tetris game pack and the Tetris game booklet. The unit and booklet are marked with faint Mir postmarks and accompanied by a handwritten provenance note from Serebrov that reads, "Like all cosmonauts, I love sport. My particular favorites are football and swimming. During flight, in rare minutes of leisure, I enjoyed playing Game Boy."

For his sanity's sake, I hope Tetris wasn't the only game Serebrov took on the journey.

Lot No. 250: NINTENDO GAME BOY FLOWN IN SPACE [via a comment by Mikiex on this post]

First Orbit: 50 Years Of Manned Spaceflight

April 12th, 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbit of earth. He was only 27 years old, and his epic journey lasted a mere 108 minutes.

To mark the occasion, British filmmaker Chris Riley worked with Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli to shoot a film from the ISS. They determined that the ISS takes roughly the same orbit as Gagarin's flight every week or so. However, when one takes the time of day into account, it matches only once every six weeks.

The result is a 108 minute film that unfolds in real time. It traces Yuri's flight as accurately as possible, including a 40 minute stretch of near darkness over the Pacific. NASA provided some additional footage, including a moonrise -- something that Gagarin didn't have the opportunity to witness on his own journey.

As he recounted afterwards, ""I could have gone on flying through space forever." He never got the chance to experience weightlessness again, perishing in an aircraft accident at the age of 37.

The film will be available for free viewing on YouTube, starting on April 12th.

Yuri Gagarin's First Orbit - A Free Film

A Slightly Used 1961 Soviet Space Capsule, Anyone?

On March 23, 1961, twenty days before Yuri Gagarin electrified the world by orbiting the earth in his Vostok 3KA-3 capsule (later renamed Vostok-1), the Soviets queitly sent Vostok 3KA-2 into space. It contained a life-sized mannequin dubbed Ivan Ivanovich along with a dog named Zvezdochka. They returned safely after a single orbit, setting the stage for Gagarin's earthshattering ride.

It goes up for auction at Sotheby's in New York on April 12th, 2011 -- the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight -- with an estimated sale price of between $2 and $10m. That's quite an increase from a previous appearance at Sotheby's in 1996, when the guide price was between $800,000 and $1m.

As Sotheby's recounts, "The flight lasted 115 minutes. Vostok 3KA-2 completed one orbit around the Earth and returned safely to a snow-bound Russia. The landing site was near to the city of Izhevsk, but almost impossible to reach because of deep snow. Thirty paratroopers had been sent to guard the weather-bound site, where the ground lay under almost five feet of snow. The rescue party of engineers required a ski plane, and in an ultimate irony, a peasant's horse-drawn sleigh to reach the landing site. An eyewitness records finding the capsule, 'Half scorched, slightly bent over the ground, it seemed an enormous animal driven too hard, lying in a narrow snow-covered gully, the snow melting around the charred and still hot body of the unit.'

The life-like 'Ivan Ivanovich,' ejected on descent, had fallen close by. In one of the more amusing episodes of space history, the local peasants were convinced that the inflexible paratroopers who had been instructed not to touch Ivan were cruelly preventing the rescue of a downed flier. Restless and angry, the peasants relented only when one of their elders was allowed to approach and touch the waxy rubber face of the mannequin."

Sotheby's to auction 1961 Soviet space capsule [Dvice via Reuters]

Spacelog: Early NASA Mission Transcripts

Spacelog has updated NASA's transcripts of several early manned space missions to make them accessible and searchable on the web. The NASA documents have been around a while in Adobe Acrobat format, but this gives them a different feel.

Spacelog currently features the infamous Apollo 13 mission and John Glenn's historic trip into space aboard Mercury 6. NASA recently started uploading the complete mission audio recordings for all the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions to archive.org, so there's lots of source material to expand the Spacelog site.

Mercury 6 Transcript

Apollo 13 Transcript

A Pen to Fight the Moon?

If a Bic or Papermate is too low-brow for you, consider writing your angry letters to eBay monolithic corporations with a fountain pen made with alloys containing honest-to-goodness moon dust and melted-down fragments from an Apollo spacecraft.

The Romain Jerome MoonFighter comes with snazzy space fighter styling, thanks to its winged "docking station." As the somewhat stilted press release explains:

The curved, streamlined barrel of the MoonFighter is studded with 48 hand-fixed rivets and extends an irresistible invitation to savour the pleasure of writing. Conveying a blend of aesthetic perfection and historical inspiration, MoonFighter features a forward-jutting profile with toothed plates like the ventilation apertures on an aircraft fuselage. The pen is topped by a cap equipped with three small blades, engraved with the initials RJ and tipped with a titanium point endowing the MoonFighter with an airy feel and user-friendliness that make light of gravity.

It's unclear exactly how much moondust and Apollo metal is in each pen. Also, there's no price listed. I imagine it will be higher than the moon. (Rimshot!) Perhaps the fine folks at Romain Jerome can use the proceeds to hire a Photoshop expert to help them with the clipping of their product shots.

NASA Celebrates An Uncertain Birthday

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was formed on this day in 1958, tasked with managing the USA's fledgling civilian space program as well as advanced aeronautics and aerospace research. Over the course of 52 years, the agency has led the Apollo lunar missions, the development of Skylab, the Space Shuttle program and contributed a sizeable share of the International Space Station.

The cost of space exploration is astronomical -- NASA's budget was $17.6 billion in 2009. After cutbacks throughout the 1990s, the agency began to focus heavily on robotic exploration of the solar system rather than pricey and technically challenging manned missions. While some disagree with this shift, others argue that robotics have advanced to the point where semi-autonomous machines such as the Spirit and Opportunity Mars landers can perform important scientific research at a fraction of the cost of sending humans to other planets.

Nevertheless, NASA is at a crossroads. The aging Space Shuttle fleet is being withdrawn from service, with no immediate replacement following President Obama's cancellation of the Constellation program, which was to be the next generation of American manned space vehicles. For the time being, the United States is reliant on Russia to launch astronauts into low earth orbit. It's a scary point in the history of space exploration, especially with ballooning budget deficits and high unemployment back on earth.

It's an emotional time for many space enthusiasts of my generation. I perched on my mother's lap during Armstrong and Aldrin's stroll on the lunar surface and watched the maiden launch of Columbia in the school gym. I grieved through the Challenger and Columbia accidents and followed the missions and misadventures of various Mars landers with fascination. And now I sit writing these words, fearing that the best is behind us and that we might never get a chance to explore the last frontier, even though NASA and the NSF recently discovered the first potentially habitable exoplanet.

Which Sci Fi Gadget Would You Take Into Space?

Brian writes, "I recently had an opportunity to film a "tweet up" with NASA astronaut and U.S. Army Colonel Timothy "T.J." Creamer. During his talk, Colonel Creamer took a moment to answer the question, "What is the one science fictional item you wish you could really have in space with you."

In his answer, he revealed that he's a huge, old school science fiction fan, and used the opportunity to briefly discuss sf, Star Trek, and the way in which sf has influenced space exploration, science, and engineers. Oh, and he also answers the question."

Video: Astronaut Discusses Science Fiction

You Are Here

I suddenly feel very small.

NASA Unveils Free E-Book Series

NASA recently debuted the first in a planned series of free e-books. "X-15: Extending the Frontiers of Flight," by Dennis R. Jenkins is available now in a variety of e-reader formats (the Scott Crossfield Foundation offers a nicely formatted pdf version [direct link] for those wishing to read on computer).

From NASA: "The X-15 was the ultimate 'X' vehicle. Built in the 1950s, she became the fastest and highest-flying winged aircraft of its time. During 199 flights from 1959 through 1968, she collected data about hypersonic flight that was invaluable to aeronautics and to developers of the space shuttle. This book describes the genesis of the program, the design and construction of the aircraft, years of research flights and the experiments that flew aboard them."

A second title, Mark D. Bowles' Apollo of Aeronautics: NASA's Aircraft Energy Efficiency Program, 1973-1987, is slated for release soon.

NASA Aeronautics E-Books

Listening In On The Apollo 11 Astronauts... From Home

Back in July 1969, amateur radio buff Larry Baysinger managed the impossible by listening in on transmissions from the Apollo 11 astronauts during their historic lunar landing. 

The Louisville Courier-Journal reported, "Thanks to some homemade electronic equipment, including a rebuilt 20-year-old radio receiver from an Army tank and an antenna made of spare pieces of aluminum, nylon cord and chicken wire, a small band of Louisvillians was able to 'eavesdrop' Sunday night on the American astonauts' conversation directly from the moon.

The odds and ends of equipment recorded only 35 minutes of conversation between astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the lunar surface and their orbiting companion Michael Collins. But the signals were received directly from the moon, over a quarter of a million miles away, not through Houston Space Center."

Brilliant stuff. I wish we could recapture the excitement of the space race instead of squandering trillions of dollars irradiating vast swathes of desert with depleted uranium.

Read: Lunar Eavesdropping in Louisville, Kentucky [via Make]

The Loneliest Space Shuttle

I was looking through some photos of Baikonur Cosmodrome the other day when I came across this shot from 2003. A gigantic ISS-bound Soyuz TMA-3 dominates the foreground, while a forlorn Buran shuttle mock-up sits forgotten in a field, lamenting the time when it was the future of the Soviet manned space program.

Technik Museum Speyer rescued a similar shuttle in 2008 and installed it as a permanent exhibit.

Baikonur Cosmodrome [The Big Picture]