Gerry Anderson, creator of a host of children's TV series, including classics such as Stingray, Thunderbirds, and Space 1999, has just died, at 83 years old. More on the Anderson legacy at our sister site Starcruzer.
Mat Irvine reports Recently I looked at the Aoshima 1:32 scale Hayabusa spaceprobe kit, but had to add the rider that as soon as it was issued, it appeared to have been withdrawn. This was a great shame for, as I said then, conventional injection kits of satellites and spaceprobes - as against rockets and manned spaceflight - were extremely few and far between. Hayabusa in the shops But it’s now it's back, as reported by Hobby Link Japan, the company that had kindly supplied the sample kit. So for those of you who missed it first time around, you now have a second chance to experience this detailed kit, from the neatly-engraved solar panels and sensors to the thruster engines and antenna dish. Interesting stand The asteroid-shaped stand is a bonus too, with the tiny Minerva sub-satellite shown landed on the surface, though this was an event which did not succeed on the mission itself. The stand's shape echoes that of Hayabusa’s target, asteroid Itokawa, a chunk of space rock so...
MAT IRVINE REPORTS Ask any film enthusiast, and probably many non-enthusiasts, to name the best science-fiction movie of all time, and you will probably get 9 out of 10 voting for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . For all those fans - and for space modellers too - comes the new book, 2001: The Lost Science by Adam K. Johnson. About the book Adam Johnson - also the driving force behind specialist model outfit AJA Models - has compiled and written the most detailed reference book on the movie so far, full title 2001: The Lost Science - the Frederick I. Ordway III Collection . With much material supplied by Dr Fred Ordway ( more on him below ), a great deal of the content has never been published before. Its 112 pages are full of detailed original plans (of which there were originally 2,400!), many of them painstakingly digitally enhanced, as the original blueprints have long-since faded. Examples of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ process are shown in the introduction. Other 2001...
Mat Irvine reports Mike Mackowski is a long-time space modeller and one of the main members of the online Yahoo ‘Space Modelers’ group. Over some years now, Mike has compiled seven hardcopy books especially for modellers on spacecraft topics, including titles for Gemini, Mercury and two volumes on Apollo, one for the Command Service Module and one for the Lunar Module. Now he has produced his first ‘Tech Report’, a series intended to be shorter and to be available only as a download, thus having the advantage that they can be in colour. Skylab details Tech Report #1.0 (TR1) is on Skylab, prompted by Mike’s particular interest in America’s first space station. Mike worked for a time at McDonnell Douglas in St Louis, where Skylab’s airlock module was built. Previously he had spent time as a student at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Skylab trainer was housed. He was also at Marshall when Skylab was actually launched in 1973. What’s in the TR1 pdf TR1 ...
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