THERE AND BACK AGAIN

 The Atremis II mission successfully returned in the early hours of this morning and thanks to the wonderful world of live streaming, I was able to watch as the capsule approached Earth, was captured by its gravity and drawn home at Mach 33. Watching the globe draw ever closer, it was impossible to gauge the terrific speed that the capsule was moving at and it was only after it re-entered the atmosphere and began its freefall down to the Pacific Ocean, was it possible to see its velocity.

The proliferation of cameras on board the spacecraft, including GoPro's on the solar panels, ensured that live imagery was available at almost all points during the mission. When the Integrity capsule was traversing the far side of the moon, it was possible to see the crew inside the capsule as well as some of the views they were experiencing themselves.

Inside the capsule, the crew used Nikon Z9 cameras, to photograph the lunar landscape, but also recorded commentary of naked eye observations, such as the fall of micrometeorites at the terminator. The crews descriptions of the lunar surface, including the albedo and colouration of the lunar soil, was detailed and evocative, with greens and browns being visible in some of the newer craters.

Almost all the in flight videos and stills show the crew as happy and having a thoroughly great time on the mission, as can be seen in the selfie shot of Christina Koch in the cabin window. As the capsule crossed the lunar farside, mission Commander Reid Wiseman requested that an unnamed crater be recognised as 'Carroll', after his late wife and a second crater, 'Integrity' after the capsule itself.

It will be fascinating to see all the recorded imagery from the mission, now that the crew are safely returned, although NASA has shared a few choice shots during the mission, such as images of the far side and the Orientale Basin, which has never been seen by the human eye before.

It is fascinating to see the comparison of the camera shots with an informal iphone shot through the cabin window of the lunar surface, which shows a much browner colouration to the moon, more in keeping with the verbal descriptions given by the crew.

The crew also managed to provide some absolutely priceless free publicity for camera manufacturer Nikon, Apple iphones and during a live cast with the Canadian President, an inadvertent product placement - front and centre - of Nutella Hazelnut Spread! During the transmission with Earth, a dislodged jar of the spread floated blithely across the screen, much to the amusement of everyone, including the premier, who commented that he hoped the crew would be using maple syrup on their pancakes instead!

Some of the most ethereal and beautiful shots came during the lunar flyby, as the Moon eclipsed the Sun and was surrounded by a ghostly corona for a few minutes, as the capsule traversed the far side.

Once more, a shot of the crew - presumably by iphone again, wearing eclipse glasses, shows them to be having a great time and almost lends an air of frivolity to what was one of the most dangerous and extreme space missions ever completed.

Following return to Earth orbit and capsule separation from the Service Module - once more, visible in real time - the speed of the vehicle could be appreciated more fully, as the globe of Earth began spin faster beneath the craft, before the re-entry of the atmosphere interfered with communications and an anxious few minutes went by as the capsule returned.

Appearing in the upper atmosphere, cameras were able to clearly capture the descent, as the capsule was in freefall, both in infra red and normal colour, before drogue chutes were deployed to slow the descent from over 25,000 miles per hour.

As speed dropped from the hypersonic, pilot chutes took over and assisted the release of the three main parachutes. At 10,000 feet, and approaching subsonic speed, they began to unfurl and checked the nail-biting descent, so the capsule eventually hit the ocean at a steady 20 mph.

After some anxious waiting for the capsule to settle and perform safety checks before being powered down, the recovery crew were able to make contact with the crew and move in to begin retrieval.

All four crew were rescued and returned to a waiting carrier by helicopter, to be checked over.

NASA has set a date of 2028 for the Artemis 3 mission, which is intended to land a crew on the lunar surface, I sincerely hope the unqualified success of an apparently textbook mission, will spur them on to meet this historic deadline. Godspeed NASA!

CEREAL KILLER

 Christmas 1969 brought me the Daily Mirror Book of Space, a large annual style book chock full of information about space travel, moon landings and all manner of spacecraft. For many years it was one of my favourite reads and a definite go-to for information. Besides the usual Apollo-centric articles and historical information, I found quite a lot of conceptual artwork for proposed spacecraft and vehicles and it was in this volume that I first encountered the concept of a 'space lifeboat', 'photonic propulsion', 'rogallo wing' and a 'molab'.

Although I had come across several different ideas for a lunar rover, this was the first time I had heard it referred to as a 'Molab'. The name is a contraction of 'mobile laboratory' and the idea involved a roving vehicle with a pressurised hull, in which astronauts could work and live on longer duration journeys. The small image in the Daily Mirror book is referred to as a 'Grumman Molab', but may actually be a design by the Bendix company. The real Grumman Molab  actually made it to the full sized prototype version and a model of it is now held in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.

The Grumman Molab appeared in the Gerry Anderson Project SWORD annual, as a background vehicle called 'The Ant'. No toy version of it appeared, although the SWORD toyline did include an Apollo Saturn V on the Mobile Launch Pad.

Fast forward some months and breakfast cereal producer Kellogg's had an established tradition of including a small toy or novelty in boxes of cornflakes, as an incentive to buy the cereal. Australian novelty manufacturer Rosenhain & Lipmann Ltd had been supplying small plastic model kits to Kellogg's for a number of years previously, including Gerry Anderson shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet as well as Wacky Races and many others. With the new series 'Joe 90' adorning the boxes of 'Sugar Smacks' cereal, Kelloggs added a series of space vehicles to the line of models. 

R & L as they were referred to, made 8 simple snap together models featuring a space theme, with a mix of real and conceptual vehicles. Among them was a vehicle described variously as a 'Moon Exploration Rocket Car', 'Moon Vehicle' and 'Shuttle'. The little bubble shaped car had fins and intakes, more reminiscent of a streamlined submarine and a large circular cockpit window with a smaller turret on top. This was the perfect kind of incentive I needed to get my mum to buy more cereal, but as I wasn't fond of the sugary confection, she was very resistant to spending money on something that would invariably get wasted. After much cajolling, whining and badgering, I was eventually allowed to get a box of Sugar Smacks and amazingly, inside was the little buggy I had been desperate to find.

The little kit was sealed inside a cellophane wrapper and moulded in two colours of plastic. The modelling was excellent, with fine detail and smooth castings with no spare flashing. I hastily made it up and added it to my fleet of small space toys. It still survives to this day, battered, repaired, painted, glued and with almost all of the six wheels replaced.

Somehow I also managed to procure the Atlas Rocket on Gantry and my second favourite, the Rocket Transporter. Neither of these have survived the intervening years, but I have since been able to find replacements.

Another later acquisition is the rather cool space station, the design of which is copied directly from a piece of concept art by the Northop Corporation in the mid-sixties.

The same premiums were issued by Kellogg's Japan, but with different packaging art.

The R&L model story did not end there however and it transpired that as the practice of putting small items in children's cereal was phased out due to safety concerns, the company found another way to re-use the kits and the tooling necessary to produce them. The late Andy Yanchus, a model maker and employee of the Aurora Model Kit company, was approached by R & L with a view towards marketing the small kits in a toy line called 'Snap A Roos'. See Andy's fabulous Flickr feed here: Kellogg's Sugar Smacks - Joe 90 Space Vehicle premiums | Flickr

The same models then appeared in a large set by Spanish company Diko  with a cardboard moonscape and 12 mixed models from the range.

In the early 1970's British toy company Tri-ang, which had found great success with a series of inexpensive space toys called Spacex Interspace Miniatures, was preparing the release of a second series of toys, as the company ran into financial difficulties. Most of the second wave of toys made it onto store shelves, including a very distinctive design of moon buggy, which Tri-ang called a 'Molab'.

The Molab shared its design with the little Kellogg's vehicle, with bubble shaped body, jet streamed fins and four large wheels and it was apparent that both Tri-ang and R&L had used the same concept for their model.

Previously, in 1953,  Alex Schomburg had provided a painting for the cover of a short lived pulp magazine called 'Rocket Stories'. It only lasted 3 issues, but the July 1953 issue featured a streamlined red moon buggy, which was indisputably the inspiration for both models. The illustration was also reprinted in a text book in 1964 by Collins: 'Men on the Moon: Based on America's Project Apollo'.

Although the book clearly does not reflect the 'Project Apollo' at all, it is an interesting read, with lots of clear painted illustrations, which have probably been culled from other publications. However, the publication date (and the american version a year earlier) clearly point to a definite source of reference for the two models, although it is clear that both designs evolved independently of each other, as the R&L model has two spare wheels at the rear of the hull.

Despite the fragility and disposable nature of the premiums, a lot still survive, almost half a century later, both as unmade, sealed packs or as pre-built models. Since buying my first box of Sugar Smacks and securing the light green model, I have managed to find three more. Some, such as the latest grey version, were missing wheels, but they are easy to replace, along with a small aerial made from extruded plastic sprue.

I was lucky enough to find a pale blue Rocket Transporter from the same seller, too - the version I originally had back in 1970!