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generational markers (was "Disney's Man In Space")



 
 
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  #21  
Old May 27th 04, 05:09 AM
Doug...
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In article ,
says...


Mike Flugennock wrote:


So now, I'm wondering what the generational markers are for those of us
who were school kids pre-Mercury, as opposed to post-Mercury -- between
the kids who could only look at books and imagine what rocket ships looked
like, and the kids who had TV's wheeled into the lunchroom so we could
watch the Gemini launches and who knew _exactly_ what a _real_ rocket ship
looked like.


In my case (born same year you were) the markers would be:
1.) Did you demand to your parents that the barber give you a crewcut,
because that's what the astronauts had?


Nope -- I got what was called in my neck of the woods the "West Point"
haircut, because that's the cut that Al Shepard sported. (I know, he
was a Navy man -- go fig.) It was a crew cut with the very front left a
*tiny* bit longer and shaped in to something that, if it was larger,
might have resembled the visor on a baseball cap.

2.) Did you habitually use the term "AOK" when talking?


Nope, I used "Rog" and "copy" a lot, though. And every time I saw
something that was really outstanding, I had a tendency to say "That
view is spectacular!"

3.) Was your school pencil sharpener a plastic Mercury capsule?


Yep, I had one of those.

4.) Did you develop a real fascination with tubes of toothpaste, because
there were tubes just like that that contained _food_ rather than
toothpaste?


Sort of, but I actually got more into taking Tang, some Saran Wrap, an
iron and some paper and making my own drink bags.

5.) Did you ever own a plastic Col. McCauley helmet with a "microphone"
that had a sheet of plastic in it that gave your voice a buzzing sound?


No, never got my folks to get me one of those. (Never got them to get
me a toy Supercar, either... *sigh*...) But I was so desirous of having
a helmet with visor that, in the summer of 1962 when I was six years
old, when my folks were laying linoleum tile in the basement of our new
house, I took one of the boxes the tile came in, cut out a faceplate,
and wore that. Unfortunately, I put it on the handlebars of my bike and
rode my bike off to my friend's house to show him, and decided to take
it off the handlebars and put it on while I was riding. The handlebars
went sideways, and with them the front wheel of the bike. Because my
arm was crossing over my body reaching for the helmet, my balance was
shot, and I fell over sideways, breaking both bones in my lower right
arm. Stuck out through the skin, they did.

So, I've suffered broken bomes indulging my love of space...

6.) Were rubber buckle-up snowshoes a really cool thing, because they
looked like part of a pressure suit?


Actually, gloves were the things I thought were kewl. I would strap a
book bag to my chest (my life support system chest pack), don my thick
winter gloves, and try to use standard household tools like pliers and
wrenches and such to assemble and disassemble things. All the time
wishing I could somehow manage to recreate zero-G.

7.) Did you ever think that Sister Linda, your fifth-grade
teacher....might be a lot of fun in the sack?


Naw... I went to public schools through the end of junior high and then
to the university laboratory high school for high school, so no Sisters
(in that meaning, anyway). But I had a teacher in high school that I
lusted after every moment of every day in my junior year... funny, now I
can't even remember her name.

8.) Did you ever suspect that the Mother Superior of your school might
be thinking the same thing? :-)


See above -- but I know for a fact that the (male) principal at my high
school felt the same way about the one teacher I lusted after. So did
most everyone else at the school.

I just wish she had been one of those teachers who liked the idea of
seducing her brightest students, LOL...

Doug

  #22  
Old May 27th 04, 07:53 AM
Jonathan Silverlight
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In message , Pat Flannery
writes


Mike Flugennock wrote:


So now, I'm wondering what the generational markers are for those of us
who were school kids pre-Mercury, as opposed to post-Mercury -- between
the kids who could only look at books and imagine what rocket ships looked
like, and the kids who had TV's wheeled into the lunchroom so we could
watch the Gemini launches and who knew _exactly_ what a _real_ rocket ship
looked like.


In my case (born same year you were) the markers would be:
1.) Did you demand to your parents that the barber give you a crewcut,
because that's what the astronauts had?
2.) Did you habitually use the term "AOK" when talking?


But wasn't AOK some horrible journalistic invention? I can't remember
when I learned the difference between "roger" and "wilco", though.
--
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  #23  
Old May 27th 04, 08:46 AM
OM
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On Wed, 26 May 2004 22:58:49 -0500, Doug...
wrote:

Now, of course, Dad could (and did) borrow demonstrators and bring them
home. I learned how to type on a 1967 Royal typewriter, and got really
fast at it on a 1969 Royal Electric. But the most fun thing was the
1970 HP calculator. Exactly like you described, Mike -- with the nixie-
tube display. Only did the basic functions of a calculator (I think it
was a four-function), but it was really, really kewl to use.

And yes, I really thought it looked a lot like the DSKY display, too.


....My first electronic calculator was one TI put out. About the size
of a large paperback book, did only basic functions with one memory
entry, and had a teal-blue display that a tube, but not a Nixie. Can't
remember what that was, but a lot of early hand-held video games used
it because it was visible in normal lighting, unlike an LED.

....Prior to that, it was a big honking IBM mechanical calculator, Damn
thing weighed about 100 lbs, louder than a printing press when
calculating, had scientific precision up to nine digits, depending on
where you set the decimal point by rotating these thin rods from dark
to light. You had to see this in operation to believe it could work,
and it had so many internal mechanical parts that it had to be oiled
every six months based on the instructiion manual. It ran off
ungrounded AC, and the warning lable was similar to that on a TV -
open this and you'll probably get electrocuted, natch.

Damn thing is in my parents' garage somewhere. One day I'll find that
thing and see if it still works after 40 years of storage...

OM

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"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr
  #24  
Old May 27th 04, 09:17 AM
OM
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On 26 May 2004 19:08:51 -0700, (Allen Thomson)
wrote:

Rick DeNatale wrote

Doug wrote:


Hmmmmm... I was born in October of 1955, about two years "even" before
Sputnik. I don't recall Sputnik's launch, but I was alive then.

I *do* recall Mercury.


I was born 10 years and 1 day after the Pearl Harbor attack.


OK, I'll play too.


....Yeah, why not? I was born the day after one of Glenn's launch
cancellations, and thanks to living in Houston during the early boom
years up to August 1st, 1966, I was exposed to the infomation glut
that was required to produce an Astrobuff of the First Generation. For
me, the first mission I can vividly recall was the launch of GT-4,
including the coverage of the spacewalk in audio only. I remember
pretty much every mission from that point on, as I only missed one bit
of coverage between GT-4 and STS-55(*), and that was the ALT for the
Shuttle. Pop was ****ed because I'd failed a math class, and decided
to punish me for the entire summer just to be a *******. Part of that
punishment was not being allowed to watch the ALT coverage. The
resulting arguement that ensued lasted through the day, and while I
didn't get to see the ALT coverage I still won the war, because I made
it very clear that sort of **** was never going to happen again.

Apparently the arguement given was convincing enough, because he never
tried to pull that **** again, and that's been almost 30 years since.

....But I digress. I also had quite a few space-related toys, including
that three-stage "Atlas" with all the fins and the spring-loaded
satellite launching third stage. I also had a similar cheap plastic
Saturn 5, which was wild because the entire CSM stack was still
attached to the adapter shroud, and at the base was a bas-relief
chrome representation of the back end of the LM. This was also stuck
on top of an S-II stage with a spring-loaded pop launcher that a)
popped the CSM stack off into orbit, and b) would put your eye out if
you weren't careful.

....I also built a lot of those model kits that came out back then. By
the time I got into kit building, all the Hawk and Lindbergh and Willy
Ley kits were out of production and off the shelves. I got the Space
Tug when the local five-and-dime manager bought a lot of surplus kits
from a store closing, and there was one in the pile, complete with
chrome-plated astronauts. I discovered two others in the "Space
Pursuit" kit - one being the Convair shuttle, the other being
something else I can't recall - but for the most part every other kit
was based on actual NASA designs. Which is why when the Monogram 1/24
CSM came out, I gladly set my 1/32 totally inaccurate Block "I" CSM on
fire in the back yard. I also had the LM landing kit, and at least
three of the CSM/LM minikits that Revell put out en masse. And, of
course, the Revell Saturn 5 kit that I got the Chrisnukkah it was
released. That still stands out as one of my favorite years.

....I had them all up to that one huge Shuttle kit that Monogram put
out, but never did get into the proto ISS concepts as I was moving
away from kit building at that time for other pursuits - CB Radio
being one of them, girls being the other. But every now and then I'd
stop and look over the kits and buy one. Most of them are still in-box
and unassembled due to lack of time, but one day I'll finally find the
time again. Probably when I retire :-P

(*) I had a contract gig in Dallas that required me to travel on the
day of the launch, and Southwest Airlines at the time wasn't allowing
personal radios on board due to some problem with the electronics
interefering with the navigational systems. They wound up loosening
the rules a few weeks later, but that was too late for me to try and
catch some coverage of the launch. Not that I'd probably have found
any...
OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for |
http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr
  #25  
Old May 27th 04, 11:26 AM
Pat Flannery
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John Beaderstadt wrote:




All the late 1950's-early 1960's newsgroup crew...



What about us late '40s - early '50s folk?

Friend, I suspect you are not of the Body Of Landru....



I remember the *initial* broadcasts of Disney's Man in Space. Sputnik
and Echo 1 are clear memories. I remember the Cold War, "Duck and
Cover," Jodrell Bank pirating the Soviet lunar photos, and all the
rest.


Yeah, but you're going to look pretty damn silly wearing a Col. McCauley
helmet, stomping about in rubber galoshes, and eating toothpaste in
fourth grade.
By the way, did Spielberg get the dinosaur's colors right in "Jurrasic
Park"?

Pat (running)

P.S. The helmet in question:
http://www.vttbots.com/Graphics/muse...auly_small.jpg

  #26  
Old May 27th 04, 11:29 AM
Pat Flannery
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William C. Keel wrote:

Sure was. I as pre-Sputnik by about two weeks. One early memory was
seeing an Echo (must have been 2) go overhead with some older family.


Boy, those things were bright! The S-II stage that put up Skylab was
very bright also...

Pat

  #27  
Old May 27th 04, 11:34 AM
Pat Flannery
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Sam Seiber wrote:

Pat, Somewhere in there you missed a reference to a slide rule. I
recall
using the beasties in high school.


We still have a beautifully made one sitting around down where I work,
with a sheet full of nearly microscopic print that tells you how to use
it. I still get a kick out of that crank-driven cylindrical navigational
calculator that got discussed here a while back.

  #28  
Old May 27th 04, 11:40 AM
Pat Flannery
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Mike Flugennock wrote:

I was an astronaut in the Cub Scout pageant in DC in 1965, me and six
other kids in my pack at Fort Myer. I made my helmet by coating a balloon
with papier mache and spray-painting it silver. Came out awesome.

My Cub Scout space helmet was an inverted plastic garbage can with
vertical rectangular holes cut in it, and strips of Plexiglas glued over
the holes...it looked like something out of Jules Verne.... tell me you
weren't as dumb as I was, and didn't try to build that Lunar gravity
simulator outlined in "Boy's Life".

Pat

  #29  
Old May 27th 04, 11:55 AM
William C. Keel
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Pat Flannery wrote:


William C. Keel wrote:


Sure was. I as pre-Sputnik by about two weeks. One early memory was
seeing an Echo (must have been 2) go overhead with some older family.


Boy, those things were bright! The S-II stage that put up Skylab was
very bright also...


I'm sure I saw the Skylab stage at least once. On the workshop's launch day,
I skipped high-school calculus class to try working out (graphically)
whether we'd have a sighting opportunity soon after launch. I was out watching,
and gave up to go back inside. About 5 minutes later my dad came in
calling for me, as Skylab, the only S-II ever to make orbit, and
a number of bits of debris (many of which I gather weren't supposed
to be there...) paraded by overhead. Once I figired out that data type
Issue in IDL, I'm finally better at predicting passes...


Bill Keel
  #30  
Old May 27th 04, 12:00 PM
Pat Flannery
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Doug... wrote:


And, watching Man in Space, I used to own *all* those models!



I wonder if any of the episodes of "Men Into Space" (the actual title)
survive? IIRC, they were done on film, since live video would have made
a lot of the effects more difficult.


The models were of the Disney stuff- they were made by the now extinct
model company Strombecker; AFAIK there weren't any models from the "Men
into Space TV" series...but you can still get the episodes:
http://tvoldies.net/store/index.php?...5529 94a55f78

So you'd think some of the film
would survive.

I, for one, would LOVE to see someone put them all on DVD.

Can y'all remember the book they released based on the TV show? It was
a series of short stories, which didn't really have "novelizations" of
the TV episodes, but rather had short stories exploring various episodes
in Scott MacCauley's career.


I've got a McCauley comic book; but not a true book based on the show.

Pat



 




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