50 Years Beyond the Infinite - Kubrick's Space Odyssey

Back in September I saw the 4K (digital) re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey on the Carnegie Science Center's big screen (yeah, if you' look at the dates that was about 4 months ago - now you know how long it can take me to write these). The digital version was released at roughly the same time as a new 70mm film print produced under the supervision of Christopher Nolan, and there is a lot of discussion as to whether the digital "print" was made from the new Nolan print or the original negative and how accurate the colors in the digital version are - it seems that the two are unrelated and the 4K version has received good reviews for image quality and for its accuracy in reproducing the original theater images. It certainly looked really good to my untrained eye. The 4K print is now available on Blu-ray disk for a very reasonable (about $20) street price.

Well worn 1968 paperback copy of 2001 - bought at a used book sale for $1.

Warning: this article contains spoilers about the movie and book 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you've managed to never see the movie or read the book or hear them discussed in the last 50 years, you're probably not going to, but don't complain to me if I ruin the surprise...

The Death of Apollo: A Failure of Science Fiction?

One of the things that keeps me writing these little essays is that whenever I research something I find two or three other seemingly unrelated bits of trivia I never knew about, and since I'm willing to write about most anything, there is always a story to be told. In one of my recent missives I wrote about the demise of the 1960s muscle car, I mentioned that like the Vietnam War, spending on the 1960s US Space Program contributed to the inflation and economic turmoil of the 1970s. I still believe that is true, but proving it to myself sent me down a research rat hole to try to understand why the space program met with the same fate as the Pontiac GTO, so all that remains are a few artifacts in museum displays. Its an interesting tale, so pull up a chair...

Apollo 12 Command Module Yankee Clipper, on display at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, VA.

For a kid growing up in the 1960s the space program was hard to miss.  At school the Weekly Reader (a kind of newspaper for 8 year olds) was full of stories about the astronauts and the Apollo program. As the TV generation, we were treated to frequent "Breaking News from the Cape" reports in the middle of our after school cartoons, and then there were prime-time TV shows like Lost in Space and Star Trek.  And for birthdays and Christmas there were space related toys - space helmets and ray-guns and model kits and action figures and flying model rockets. Not surprisingly lots of kids wanted to be astronauts, except the geeky kids like me who wanted to be engineers and build the space ships (we also thought Scotty was way cooler than Captain Kirk).

One small step for (a) man

With Neil Armstrong's passing there are lots of people on the internet recalling where they were and what they were doing as they watched Neil come down the ladder and speak his immortal words.  Thanks to a near flawless landing by both men and machine there was no need to use the padding built into the schedule, allowing Neil to take his historic step onto the Moon just minutes before 11 pm on the east coast - prime TV watching time across the continental U.S.

In those pre-VCR days if you wanted to see something on TV, you had to be there in front of the TV when it happened. I was an 8 year old kid obsessed with the space program and  I know I was parked in front of the family Zenith, but after all these years I must admit I can't truly remember watching it; especially given all the times I've seen the footage re-run since then.  I vaguely remember my parents waking me up to go to bed, so I probably didn't stay awake to see Neil go back up the ladder.

I recently came across a recording of a History Channel rebroadcast of the moon walk on my DVR (from the 40th anniversary in 2009). I was amazed at how poor the images were: shadowy, low-resolution, snowy - and get this - black and white.   NASA contracted with Westinghouse (the Aerospace division in Baltimore) to develop something unheard of in 1964:  a small, light weight, low-power TV camera. Image quality was not exactly a priority: the camera gave 250 lines of resolution at a whopping 10 frames per second, but it used about as much power as a single Christmas light bulb.  All of the crisp images of Buzz and Neil you find on the internet (like the one above I stole from a NASA website) are photographs taken by old-fashion film cameras, that had to be returned to earth for processing before anyone got to see them.

What I do still remember from the space race were the models.  I have clear memories of sitting on my front porch one summer building Monogram's 1/48 LEM - trying to freehand brush paint the various black panels - and then having Dad show me the magic of masking tape. At some point the big 1/24 Gemini capsule - painted bright silver - took a place of honor on my bedroom dresser. And then one Christmas I opened a really big package: the 1/96th Saturn V that occupied my after-school hours for the rest of the winter and most of the spring.

I also remember - quite vividly - my cousin having a big 1/48 model of the Apollo CSM and LEM, a model my mom and dad could never find at the KMart or even the one hobby shop in driving distance of our small town.  My cousins had actually piled into the family station wagon in the summer of 1970 and driven the 1000 odd miles to Florida, just like Chevy Chase in that movie.  They had visited the just opened Disney World park and the Kennedy Space Center. Apparently the big Revell kit was right there in the KSC gift shop, which made it seem even more magical to my nine year old self.

When I got back into modeling in the 90s I saw a Revell Germany reissue of this kit for sale in a mail order catalog - only to discover the meaning of limited reissue.  I dropped more than enough hints to be sure I'd get one for my next birthday, but before I blew out the candles it was out of production.  And a few years ago I saw one in a battered box at a model show going for $100+, but I wasn't quite ready to pay collector prices for it, so it stayed just out of reach.

But when I saw someone carrying one out of the vendor room at the Orlando Nats (the box-art was new, but I knew what it was just by the size of the box) I knew it was time; I emailed my favorite styrene dealer and told him to get me Revell kit 5090, and I didn't even ask what it would cost (the street price is around $50). After 42 years I finally have one in the stash.

So was it worth the wait? If you're read the reviews, you know that its not a great kit.  The tooling was based on early prototype (Block 1) hardware that never flew, and accuracy took a back seat to play value (all the modules separate so you can simulate your own moon landing).  A quick look in the box reminds you how far the state of the art has come; the detail is soft and and the parts count seems a little low compared to the size of the kit. If you want a super accurate model in 1/48 scale, the new Dragon kits are the way to go.  But if you're just looking to relive a bit of 1969, get the Revell kit while its still in production - it might be another 20 years before Revell dusts off the molds again.

Don