“Man Conquers Space:” kaput??

 AARRRGH, blather, Gah., history, Hmm..., news, rockets, science fiction, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  127 Responses »
Mar 162015
 

I’ve mentioned off and on that I did some work (well, a lot of work) as a technical advisor on the Australian independent alternate history movie “Man Conquers Space.” This project started, at least for me, not long after the turn of the century. Issues of what I assume were the usual sort kept pushing the movie back and back; eventually I fell out of touch with the filmmaker, David Sander. In the past year or three I’ve made  a handful of attempts at contacting him, to no avail.

And now, the website seems to have been dumped:

http://manconquersspace.com

It now pulls up a “godaddy” page letting you know that that domain is for sale. Additionally the Wikipedia page for it has been deleted.

Feh.

Anybody have details? I’ve found a few recent discussions here and there with people lamenting the fact that the movie seems to have evaporated. Some are hopeful that the intentional dumping of the films webpages down the memory hole indicate that it might have been picked up by a major studio, and they want full control, but that sounds like wishful thinking to me.

 Posted by at 2:40 am

Hottest 12 months on record

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Gah., history, Hmm..., news, science, ಠ_ಠ  20 Responses »
Mar 152015
 

That would be March 2014 through February 2015, according to NASA.

As for what this past February looked like… sure, the eastern half of the US had one hell of a winter. But then… so did the rest of the northern hemisphere. For an entirely different definition of hell:

nmaps

If you’re in the US, you’ve probably heard a lot of grumbling out of California about the drought. Unless things change, you’ll probably hear a lot more as summer comes along. The farmers out here are already talking about water rationing, which is kinda bad because agriculture out here is almost entirely dependent upon irrigation using snow melt water… and there has been very little snow. But note the vast bulk of Asia. If that heat translates into drought… well, Putin has been goofy *before.* Wait until the Russian and Chinese crops fail.

 Posted by at 1:24 pm

Incremental Growth Vehicle

 aircraft, history, models, projects, rockets  5 Responses »
Mar 132015
 

A recent ebay auction was for a display model of the early 1970’s McDonnell-Douglas Incremental Growth Vehicle. This was a proposed manned hypersonic “X-Plane,” designed from the ground up to be capable of having major components replaced. This would allow a simple rocket vehicle to be tested first, and then the fuselage could stretch, or new rocket engines tested, or new wings, or new wings, a fuselage stretch and airbreathing engines, whatever the experiment called for.

s-l1600-4 s-l1600-2 s-l1600-3 s-l1600

s-l1600-5

 Posted by at 10:28 pm

And now…. Flash Gordon, the sequel??

 art, Crazy, history, Hmm..., science fiction  6 Responses »
Mar 132015
 

Grain of salt taking time:

Sam J Jones Interview: Flash Gordon, Ted 2, Flash Remake

There were plans for sequels, right?

That was then, but up to date now Matthew Reilly, VP of production at Fox Studios, acquired the screenplay rights to Flash Gordon last year, and he hired [Predator/ Chronicle/ Man From U.N.C.L.E producer] John Davis and his staff to write the script. They’re looking to bring out a sequel actually. I met with Matt, we’re in talks about that. I’m very excited. A lot of people over the years, including Stephen Sommers and Neil H Moritz, have acquired the screenplay rights, but for whatever reason they did not do a follow up on the option. So I’m very excited about it.

So would you want to play an older Flash, or a mentor to younger star?

However they want to use me, I’m very excited. I told Matt, however he wants to use me, keep one thing in mind: whatever a younger, leading man can do, I cannot only match him, I can do more! If he does 20 pull-ups, I can do 30 pull-ups. If he can do 100 push-ups, I can do 150 push-ups. Just keep that in mind!

Ummm. A sequel???

Sure, why  not. But if they do a sequel rather than a reboot, they kinda gotta go with pretty much the same exact art direction. Which… well, that might not be such a bad thing.

And besides… Brian Blessed is still alive. So there’s the potential for bringing back *that* particular brand of crazy.

I’ve always found “Flash Gordon” to be a very odd movie, and I’ve been torn between seeing it as terrible and terribly awesome. Max von Sydow’s Ming, Blessed’s Voltan and the overall art design of the movie are points firmly in the “awesome” category.

 Posted by at 1:39 pm

That’s a lot of onions

 blather, critters, photography, Utah  5 Responses »
Mar 132015
 

For some reason, my neighbor dumped a couple truckloads of onions in his field for his sheep critter to nom upon. I first noticed this one day a week or two back when, going into my garage, I was hit with the overwhelming smell of onions. As my garage is not normally the sort of place that encompasses a great many culinary smells, my first thought was “oh, no, what horrible chemical disaster has occurred to my home and/or car that has resulted in the co-incidental odor?” And then the garage door opened and, behold, a field of onions.

And for those interested… living for a decade next to a field full of sheep, an overwhelming scent of onions is *far* from the worst stank to come from that direction.

WP_20150312_002

 Posted by at 1:06 pm

A reason to wake up early tomorrow.

 blather, news  1 Response »
Mar 132015
 

So, what will you be doing at 9:26 AM tomorrow? Specifically 9:26 and 53.589793 seconds. Why? Because at that precise moment, it will be 3/14/15 9:26.53589793. In other words, pi to high precision.

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510the-more-you-know

 

 Posted by at 10:15 am
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