A Matter of Control...

Hello to the 52nd installment of Shroudlines, the Blog. It's not actually our one year anniversary because we double posted one week. Such is life.

Anyway, this week I'm going to look at a really cool item in my collection, the Command Control Launch Controller by Estes.

The front of the box

The back of the box is more interesting than the front...

Out of the box....

Instructions and whatnot....

As you can see, this controller was designed and marketed with the "High Impulse" crowd in mind. It was part of the North Coast Rocketry line (a company which shall be mourned for many moons) and as such was aimed at mid-power flyers. This just in: North Coast Rocketry lives again thanks to Matt Steele! Thanks for the info, John Dyer!!

The controller itself is an over-engineered thing of beauty. Why only have a safety key when you can also have dual launch buttons? Why not have a display that shows battery life? Why not have muti- power settings? Why not have a spool for the launch wires? Why not design it for nicads? Why not charge almost 60 bucks for it???

The sound you just heard was the echos of hundreds of rocketeers wallets slamming shut. The fact of the matter is that for what it did, the controller was just too danged expensive. A more powerful controller was designed over 50 years ago that can still be built for about ten bucks (not including the car battery, but you already have one of those under your hood). And thus we have a lesson in "new and shiny is not always better."

I purchased my controller on closeout at a local hobby shop for a little less than 20 bucks. I have never used it, and probably won't. Why? Well, first of all DARS has wonderful launch equipment that it provides at all club launches. Secondly, I have this:

Yep, its my original 1970's Estes Solar Launch Controller. A little grimy, a little worn, but still functioning perfectly after 40 years. (I did rewire it a couple of times). And it fits in my range box. That was $3.95 well spent in 1973! So in the launch controller showdown, old-school wins!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

NASA Meets Snail Mail

As you know, I am always on the lookout for space related items. If said item is related to Project Apollo, so much the better. One such piece I picked up in Denison, Tx a while back is this:

As you can see, it is a letter opener from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I found it sitting on a shelf of totally unrelated items at an antique mall. It was cheap (I think about a buck) so I snapped it up!

Now it is always neat to find a piece of space history, but it is even more fun to try to figure out when the object was purchased. In this case, I had precious few clues. Consulting "The Great and Mighty Google" was little help in that it simply pointed out that the letter opener isn't particularly rare, since there are no fewer than five for sale on eBay at the time of this writing. I therefore had to rely on some good guesswork. The date I came up with was....the 1970's.

The reason I chose this date is as follows:
1. All of the eBay listings state that it is "vintage." Now that can mean almost anything, but at least it tells me that the sellers didn't pick it up at the gift shop yesterday.
2. Speaking of the Kennedy Space Center gift shop, they don't sell letter openers now. I checked.
3. The vinyl case and plastic handle seem of that time period.
4.It isn't stamped "Made in China."
5. It has a Saturn V on the handle. The 80's would see merchandising shift to the Shuttle. (I saw it myself when I visited there in the early 90's. There was very little Saturn merchandise at that time.)
6. The graphic of the Saturn is detailed enough to make it pretty clear that it wasn't the 60's. 1960's pictures of the Saturns were often very simplistic.
7. It's a letter opener. How much more 70's can you get?

So there you have it. I might be right or I might be wrong, but it really doesn't matter. Either way, I think its a cool addition to my collection. If anyone has any more info on it, I'm all ears! (Well, not literally. That would be weird.)

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

A Bit Late, But Plenty Silly...

Well, I usually post on the weekend, but this past weekend was my birthday so I didn't. So there. That also meant that I really didn't think about what TO post. What do you do in a situation like that? You pull out a bit that you wrote a while back that is so silly that you considered not using it at all! So, for your Monday morning blahs, I give you:

Collecting Space...Part Two....Christmas Comes Early!

In our last post I shared a Space Ark model that I picked up at a local garage sale.... Here are three more items I picked up there (I got seven items in all, for under ten bucks...it turns out the prices on the items were "suggestions.")

Anyway, here they are!

The Enterprise, from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum!

The Enterprise, out of the box...

From the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, we have the solar system....Complete with Pluto!

Also from the Kennedy Space Center...

The LEM! Notice the little astronaut...

Now, the point in sharing these finds isn't to brag (well, maybe a little) but what I'm trying to point out is that the next time you are cruising down the street and you see a Garage Sale sign, it might be worth your time to take a quick look!

And for those who are good with math you will note that I have only shown 4/7 of what I got at this sale. Maybe the rest is coming soon....

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high!

Of Collecting, The End of the World, and Dixieland Jazz...

Because of our side business, I do a bit of buying and selling. However,  sometimes items fall into the "buy" but not "sell" category.  For example, a couple of weeks ago I found this (along with other cool space related items) at a garage sale...

New, in shrink wrap...Score!

Of course I snapped it up! You see, I had to because it went so well with one of my other finds (that I already had)...

From the George Pal estate....

Yep, my Firehouse Five Plus Two album autographed by Ward Kimball to George Pal...

For those of you who might not have followed the jump in logic; George Pal directed "When Worlds Collide." Ward Kimball was a Disney artist who also lead a Dixieland band. He and Pal became friends when Kimball was put in charge of directing the Tomorrowland episodes of Walt Disney's "Disneyland" tv show. When worlds collide, indeed!

So there you have it; collecting for science nerds! And I didn't even bring up the other space stuff I got at that sale...Maybe next time!

Until then, fly 'em fast and high!

Books of Future, Past....

Well, school is starting back once again, and as I get ready to greet students old and new, my mind turns to.....books! Books are actually taking a slightly lessor role in schools now (what with all them fancy-smancy electronic tablets and such) but in my day if you wanted to know something, you grabbed a book, dadgumit! Now excuse me, I gotta take a nap....

Ok, I feel better now. So, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, books! For this week's post, I walked all the way over to my small bookcase behind my chair and grabbed the following:

Some of the most interesting books from the space race were actually aimed at kids. (Not literally, throwing books at children is wrong.) These books give us a pretty good feel as to how the typical American was viewing space travel at the time.

The first book, "Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles and Space Ships" was written in 1951 by Jack Coggins and Fletcher Pratt. The forward was written by none other than Willy Ley, who went on to become a consultant for Walt Disney's Tomorrowland series (see what I did there). The science is pretty sound 1950's stuff, but the illustrations are wonderful. If only things had turned out this sleek and shiny. Sigh... In the illustration for the trip to the moon, the TWA Moonliner's father sits proudly on the lunar surface.

We flash forward almost 20 years with the next book. Published in 1969, "Man in Space" was part of a subscription series put out by Doubleday and the National Science Service. These books came with stickers to place in the appropriate places on the pages because what with all the money they were spending putting man on the moon, they couldn't afford to do it at the factory. Just kidding!  Everything is better with stickers, even science!

You can see by the illustrations that pretty much everything had been worked out for the moon shot at this point, and, in fact, they actually had to include a typed "Science Bulletin" to update the info when we actually made it! Pretty cool stuff, but I still prefer the 1950's vision.

So there you have it. You know, I can't help but think that although new technology has us viewing science and news in pretty much real time, what will future generations pull off of their bookcases to explore our take on the world? Could our technological enlightenment bring about a future "dark ages" situation with our way of life? (cue ominous music)

Probably not.

Until next time fly 'em fast and high!

A Tale of Two Novas

For this post, I give you the following photo:

The Nova...and the Nova...

What we have here are clearly two Flight Systems "Nova" kits. The one on the left was packaged sometime in the 70's and was obtained from my long time rocket friend Bob Turner (who happened to have a birthday last week..Happy birthday, Bob!).
The one on the right is clearly the same kit, but packaged in the late 80's or early 90's, just before FSI ceased production, right?

WRONG!

The one on the right is actually much more interesting than that! You see, it was actually packaged a few weeks ago and then purchased at NARAM by John Dyer!  FSI is coming back, folks; and one of the ways the new owners celebrated that fact was to package "NOS" kits (New Old Stock) out of parts and packaging left over from the original company and sell them at NARAM! And what's even more exciting is that in addition to the cool FSI kits, they intend to release new versions of those ultimately cool FSI black powder motors!!!

So, we here at STB are wishing them the very best and are eagerly standing by with credit card in hand!

Until next time, fly 'em fast and high! (with FSI!)