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

On Thu, 27 May 2004 06:00:29 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote:

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

I only know Strombecker from their paper locomotive models. Not very
convincing, but you see so many of them in antique malls and flea markets
that they must have been pretty popular (plus they were dirt cheap).

Did Strombecker make injection molded plastic models as well, or could the
ones in the series have actually been as cheesy as their paper model railroad
models?

Dale

"OM" om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote
in message ...
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 have the Monogram CSM on my desk in front of me. I haven't fully completed
it yet . I'm still looking for the Gemini model; I had that back in '69 or
so and would like to build it again (and perhaps not eventually destroy it
by launching it out of a 3rd floor window on a homemade parachute...).

Xmas '69 (or maybe '68) was terrific for me, model-wise. The Saturn V stack;
another set of all of the manned rockets; and (OT) a 1/24 (IIRC) Mirage III
which was a beaut... (I found the same model online a few years ago [1], had
been sitting in a storeroom for 30+ years... not yet built, as some of the
parts have warped and am unsure how to straighten them... ah well.) Ah
yes... and the Philips EE1050 electronics set, which started me on my
career...

[1] I got very sick and mortal a few years back, and had a bit of yearning
for my youth while recuperating - so got back into model-building, including
balsa/tissue airplanes... but, as is the way of such things, didn't enjoy it
as much... nowadays I "build" things for a living, and laboriously painting
tiny pieces of plastic has lost its charm... but I did finally get into
radio-controlled flying, and am now surrounded by half-finished airframes,
servos and NiCads .

Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...

But wasn't AOK some horrible journalistic invention?

Yeah... Shorty Powers, IIRC, embellishing things a little for the press...

Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com

Doug... wrote:

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.


My radical bicycle plan involved the use of stretched bicycle tire
innertubes to catapult the bike straight out of the garage and onto the
street then an assistant released the rope that tied them in a "V"
arrangement to the back wall of the garage while they were resting
against the saddle support bar- rather like a giant slingshot with me
and my bike replacing the rock...this might of actually worked if the
bike had been centered in the garage, and both innertubes had been
stretched to the same degree; what actually happened under test was that
the bike was immediately turned sideways by one of the sides of the
"slingshot" retracting faster and further than the other, and then
hurled violently from the garage at ninety degrees to its intended
trajectory, leaving me flying off the bike and sliding on my side down
the concrete driveway.
Never leaving good enough alone, I then decided that I could drive at
high speed from the street across the alley and onto the boulevard, and
catch the innertube catapult (now running between a concrete wall and a
tree) on the front of the front fork pivot, stopping the bicycle almost
instantly...the result of this test was a direct hit on the center of
the catapult, the bicycle slowing rapidly, the catapult line sliding
over the top of the handlebars, then tearing the skin off of the tops my
hands and forearms before snapping violently onto my chest, followed by
me being pulled backwards off the bike and hurled down the boulevard
ass-end first as the innertubes retracted.

Pat

"Allen Thomson" wrote in message
om...

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

I was born nine months and one week after the JFK assassination...

--
Terrell Miller


"At one point we were this Progressive edgy group and we can't really equate
that with Brother Bear so I don't know really."
-Tony Banks

In article ,
wrote:

On 2004-05-26, Mike Flugennock wrote:
In article , Rick DeNatale
wrote:

On Wed, 26 May 2004 14:34:11 +0000, 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 just barely remember Shepard, Grissom, and Glenn; I really started
paying much closer attention to the first Gemini shot, in about the third
grade, at an age where it was a little easier to get my head around what
was happening.

I remember, hrm, Helen Sharman. Don't remember Challenger. Was born
about twenty-four hours after STS-5 landed.

(Does that mean that between the time I was born and the time I was old
enough to vote, drink (even in tinpot little foreign places), &c &c,
there were officially no 'experimental' manned spacecraft? Worrying...)

Gee, you is all old... ;-)

(That said, I do remember a friend having a big poster of... oh, you
know, That Picture of the chap in the MMU. Always was jealous.)

Wow, yeah. I always thought that was one of the all-time coolest fotos
from the entire Shuttle program, an EVA image that ranks right up there
with the foto of Ed White, backdropped by cloud cover below, arms and legs
spread out, kicking back and enjoying the "walk"...then, of course, NASA
went and cancelled further use of the MMU maybe a year or two(?) later; I
forget exactly why.

Still, it was cool, at long last, to see an astronaut actually, for real,
flying in space with a "jet pack".

--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

In article , "William C. Keel"
wrote:

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...

So, you skipped a calculus class to do orbital mechanics calculations?

...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.

--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

"Doug..." wrote in message
...

My Dad sold office equipment. You know, typewriters, mimeographic
machines, spirit duplicators (remember those purple spirit machine
copies?), that kind of thing.

Of course. That smell is marked in my brain.


And calculators.

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.

Well, the closest I can come to this is my dad's IBM Selectric typewriter.
Beautiful piece of machinery. Wrote a 19page term paper on it in 7th
grade... the subject... the up and coming Space Shuttle. Boy, you know
getting the spelling of some of the fuels right was quite an exercise. :-)



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

Doug

On Thu, 27 May 2004 07:57:22 -0400, "Terrell Miller"
wrote:

"Allen Thomson" wrote in message
. com...

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

I was born nine months and one week after the JFK assassination...

This could spawn another whole JFK conspiracy theory

Dale

On Thu, 27 May 2004 06:46:09 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote:

Never leaving good enough alone, I then decided that I could drive at
high speed from the street across the alley and onto the boulevard, and
catch the innertube catapult (now running between a concrete wall and a
tree) on the front of the front fork pivot, stopping the bicycle almost
instantly...the result of this test was a direct hit on the center of
the catapult, the bicycle slowing rapidly, the catapult line sliding
over the top of the handlebars, then tearing the skin off of the tops my
hands and forearms before snapping violently onto my chest, followed by
me being pulled backwards off the bike and hurled down the boulevard
ass-end first as the innertubes retracted.

It must have been a real hoot to be your across-the-street neighbors

Dale