Retro Thing

DIY Satellite At The Top Of My Christmas Wish List

Want.  I can't really be elegant about how cool or desirable this is.  I just took one look, and covetousness took over.  Want.  I have a feeling that this will top the Christmas lists of more than a few of you, dear readers.  I just have to ask that you follow my convoluted logic for a minute...

I threw out a pair of 17 year old sneakers today.  Leaky, cracked, worn - they were barely performing sneaker-type duties.  I wasn't hanging onto them out of sentimentality - in fact I never really liked them (they were a sort of "gift" from a demented stranger on the street), yet I kept them around way beyond their "end-of-life".  Which of course got me thinking about space suits.

Stay with me now... If I was so reluctant to throw out regular earth-bound sneakers, how could anyone ever get rid of a worn out (and very expensive) space suit?  One of those suits is like a mini spaceship, so you can't keep it in action as it approaches its end-of-life.  So where do they end up?

I learned that that they don't all simply end up in museums.  Clever people in a Russian amateur radio group thought that a retired cosmonaut suit could be a cheap and temporary transmitter satellite, offering a signal that could be picked up on inexpensive HAM radios.  Just for fun.  Brilliant fun.

A little transmitter (with a PIC controller running the show!) was fitted into the space suit that among other things played a looping "secret message" in several languages intended for school children worldwide to tune in and decode.  SUITSAT-1 (also nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich) was launched from the International Space Station in February of 2006. It was expected to transmit for about three days, though its signal could be heard for about two weeks before the suit plunged into the earths' atmosphere seven months later.

So it sounds to me like all you need to make your own satellite is an old space suit, some clever electronics, and a way to bum a ride on a space shuttle.  Can we pass the hat and start up a collection to get our own Retro Thing radio satellite?  What a terrific use for an end-of-life space suit.  That's way more useful than me trying to use my old shoes as an orbiting transmitter.

I hope that all of you pirate radio guys out there are taking notes...

Learn more from the guys who built the transmitter (with video!)

NASA press release from the event

Visions Of A Soviet Retro Future In Outer Space

The folks over at darkroastedblend.com have collected a number of Eastern Bloc paintings of life in space.   Reminiscent of outlandish American pulp covers from the 50's, these paintings are full of faith in the technological future that never really happened quite that way.  Let's not forget how close the Cold War space race could get at times - the overwhelming fear in the U.S. was that the flag that flew over the moon could be a red one.

Many of the fictitious designs feature cavernous all-glass rooms (imagine the heating costs, let alone paying the oxygen bill!), vehicles with robot pincer arms, and of course the hazards of winged space beasts - all meant to fire landlubber's imaginations.

The interesting thing to bear in mind is that all of these spaceships and living quarters would have to exist in the harsh realities of space.  You'd think that would limit some design choices when creating these fantastic vehicles and dwellings.  Even with those sorts of design parameters, you can still sense elements of the arts' iron curtain origins. 

One thing that they definitely got right in many of these paintings... cosmo-ladies.

Thank you, comrades.

Check out the collection at Dark Roasted Blend

Related:
Space race launched 50 years ago with Soviet Sputnik
Pulp cover art documentary on DVD
Soviet designed computer mice

50 Years Ago: Sputnik 1 becomes the third man-made object to reach space

Sputnik electrified the world. The 184-lb radio transmitter stunned the United States by being eight times heavier than the 21-1/2-lb device American scientists planned to launch the following spring.

"By WILLIAM J. JORDEN
Special to The New York Times

MOSCOW, Saturday, Oct. 5 -- The Soviet Union announced this morning that it successfully launched a man-made earth satellite into space yesterday.

The Russians calculated the satellite's orbit at a maximum of 560 miles above the earth and its speed at 18,000 miles an hour.

The official Soviet news agency Tass said the artificial moon, with a diameter of twenty-two inches and a weight of 184 pounds, was circling the earth once every hour and thirty-five minutes. This means more than fifteen times a day."

The first vehicles to reach space were a pair of German V2 rockets that achieved apogees of 189 km (117 miles) and 176 km (190 miles) during vertical test flights in June 1944. Sadly, the exact dates and circumstances of the launches are lost in the mists of time.

Sci-Fi Space Suits That Never Were

Lets face it, today's bulky space suits make you look like the Pilsbury Dough boy - hardly the way to get that cute diaper-wearing astronaut grrl to notice your fabulous gravity-free bod. What the world needs is space suits like they used to draw in the good old days, before boring things like real world physics and down-to-earth budget constraints ruined everything.

Atomic Rocket: Space Suits offers up pictures of dozens of imaginative designs that will ensure that you're the toast of every space station tailgate party. Just remember to follow the immortal words of Larry Niven in The Hole Man: "You don't leave your fly open in a pressure suit."

Of course, things are much harder in the real world than on the pages of a science fiction novel. Faced with the challenge of producing safe equipment, NASA has created some extremely odd designs, like the awkward armored suit on the right.

Still, there's hope: Modern technology promises to usher in an era of highly flexible and svelte space gear. All we have to do is avoid an accidental global nuclear war while the boffins do their thing.

Atomic Rocket: Space Suits [via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The Scent of Moondust

Have you ever wondered what things smell like in space? I once concluded that a spaceship would smell something like a well-sealed dorm room -- a combination of sweaty socks, warm electronics and a hint of week-old pizza. It turns out I wasn't far wrong. Space traveler Anousheh Ansari recently reported: "As they pulled the hatch [to the ISS] open on the Soyuz side, I smelled SPACE. It was strange… kind of like burned almond cookie."

Things get even weirder on the moon. Almost 34 years ago, Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan succinctly summed up the scent of moondust: "It smells like spent gunpowder." It turns out that the incredibly fine dust on the surface of the moon has a propensity to stick to everything. No matter how careful the returning astronauts were, they inevitably tracked it into their lunar module and smudged it everywhere. As soon as their helmets were off, the scent of moondust permeated the ship.

Interestingly enough, the only way to smell "the real stuff" is to take a trip to the moon. On Earth, moondust loses its distinctive fragrance:

There are hundreds of pounds of moondust at the Lunar Sample Lab in Houston. There, [NASA researcher Gary] Lofgren has held dusty moon rocks with his own hands. He's sniffed the rocks, sniffed the air, sniffed his hands. "It does not smell like gunpowder," he says.

Were the Apollo crews imagining things? No. Lofgren and others have a better explanation: Moondust on Earth has been 'pacified.' All of the samples brought back by Apollo astronauts have been in contact with moist, oxygen-rich air. Any smelly chemical reactions (or evaporations) ended long ago.

Apollo Chronicles: The Smell of Moondust [NASA]

Buran: The first Russian shuttle to reach space

Space Shuttle Buran launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on November 15, 1988. It promised a new age in Soviet space flight. Outwardly, Buran resembled the American space shuttle but there were several important differences. The most apparent was the monstrous Energia heavy-lift rocket system, capable launching the shuttle with up to 100 tonnes of cargo -- three times the capacity of the American model.

The Energia rocket was capable of full oribital insertion, allowing Russian designers to do away with the bulky engines required by the American design -- the Soviet shuttle's thrusters were required only for manuevering. In addition, the Buran-Energia system was designed to be fully reusable. The shuttle, rocket and liquid-propellant Zenit boosters could be reconditioned and reused.

The Buran flew only one automated (and unmanned) space flight - orbiting Earth twice in 206 minutes - before returning successfully to the ground. Sadly, the political and economic situation in Russia resulted in the cancellation of the project in 1993. Shuttle Buran was destroyed when Baikonur Cosmodrome Building 112 collapsed in 2002, but Buran's sister ship Ptichka ("Little Bird") was more than 95% complete when the program was canceled and currently resides in the MIK hanger at the Baikonur complex.

A comparison of two shuttles: USA vs. USSR

Souvenirs From The First Moon Landing

The American space program has been struggling lately, but that shouldn't stop us from acknowledging its stunning successes. The highlight was Apollo 11, which put bipedal primates on the moon for the first time. This cleverly designed box set includes 16 replica artifacts from the mission contributed by the crew and Smithsonian archives.

The package offers a short 64 page book that chronicles each day of the mission. The real magic is the extra stuff that's included: a copy of the front page from the July 21, 1969 Washington Post, an Apollo 11 iron-on mission badge, menu, snapshots of Buzz Aldrin's kids, a replica excerpt from Michael Collins' "Solo Book" from his time alone in orbit around the moon, and more.

There should be more clever releases like this. The gift box format adds an element of discovery often missing from traditional books and web sites. Published in August 2003, Apollo 11 Box is now discounted 70% at Chronicle Books.

Apollo 11 Box - $7.49 (Chronicle Books)