Nov 292009
Here’s a little teaser promo for the next issue (V2N5) of Aerospace Projects Review. Does it look familiar? If you are at all aquainted with 1950’s American science fiction movies it damned well aughtta… it looks like *someone* in the aerospace industry watched the movie “When Worlds Collide” and decided that George Pal’s rocketship “Ark” was a good design.
10 Responses to “When Worlds Collide”
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Read somewhere “When Worlds Collide” is going to be remade and released sometime next year.
Yep:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455856/
Now, if only someone would remake Red Planet Mars . . .
well let’s hope this time they do it right,
unlike ‘the day the earth stood still’…..
> let’s hope this time they do it right
Seems doubtful. The description has *Alpha* *Centauri* on a collision course with Earth.
Oy.
Somewhere more than a year back I started working on my own revision of the original novel, updating it from the mid-1930’s to the 2030’s. Back then, the big challenge was simply “can we build a rocketship.” And of course they did, with an atomic powerplant and a whole lot of bad physics and worse engineering… but it’s still one hell of a yarn. In my version, it was no long “can we build a rocketship,” but “how many rocketships can we build, how long can we keep knowledge of doom from the public, and how can we assure that we not only survive Out There, but also prevent our enemies from grabbing a toehold on the future.”
And then I found out that Spielberg was involved with a new WWC. Bleah.
A few years ago I was wandering through the NACA reports online. I realized that there was interest in lenticular re-entry designs all during the 50s. I have a feeling that some NACA space and rocket guys were seriously concerned that the UFO reports might be real and that the shape needed to be tested just in case it might actually be a good idea. Pye Wacket seems to have been the only result. It’s been noted that “someone from Washington” would appear to ask the “Men In Space” writers about the basis for some of their plot devices and space gadgets. So maybe the USAF types went to moves more than they admitted
Scott:
Nice idea for an update, maybe you’ll feel like giving some more details someday :o)
Something about that drawing bugs me though… The nose and leading wing edge are white hot in spots, along with high heating all along where the ‘diamond’ airfoil wings hit thier highest point…
But the engine intakes seem to not just be on the ‘down-wind’ side of a diamond-airfoil section but a WHOLE different section! The “upper” wing-tip seems to extend beyond the wing itself???
Mike: Pye Wacket was actually a seperate program from the “normal” Lenticular vehicle work which was basically to combine a nice “simple” capsule with the ability to generate more lift on entry and allow for a gliding landing without having to resort to a winged structure.
The folks working on Pye Wacket only became aware of the Lenticular Vehicle research when they too ran across some of the Lenticular studies during the initial concept design.
Pye Wacket was proposed as a disk shaped airfoil because such a shape allowed for all-aspect launch from a supersonic platform in flight. Since it was supposed to be a “high-maneuver” thrust control only self defense missile for the B-70 the entire design process was narrowed down to a very specific point design missile.
Randy
In the anime TOPPU O NERA E! GUNBUSTER (AIM FOR THE TOP! GUNBUSTER!), the human race constructs an earth evacuation ship called the _Eltreum_. The vessel, constructed in 2035, is 70.74 kｍ in length (Manhattan Island: 20.75 km) and is intended to transport one million of the Earth’s remaining population of four billion (.025% of the remaining human population) to another planet. (Earth is under attack from space monsters in the story, and the population has been thinned out a bit.) _Eltreum_ does not travel by reaction drive or warp, but rather by changing the physical principles of the spacetime around itself using pure mathematics. This “Algorithmic Image Drive” is powered by thought based upon pure mathematics controls the motion. The weakened causation around the ship requires the use of psychics and cyborg dolphins as navigators.
In the end, the ship is retrofitted as a battleship when the Earth forces deploy their ultimate weapon, the Black Hole Bomb, which uses the planet Jupiter (compressed to a diameter ≈3 m) as its core.
> The weakened causation around the ship requires the use of psychics and cyborg dolphins as navigators.
Well, sure, yeah, it would, wouldn’t it. It goes without saying.
> uses the planet Jupiter (compressed to a diameter ≈3 m)
I’m guessing Michael Moore was employed at some point…
Hey, put that WWC novelization you did up on the site. I’d read it!
It exists solely as outlines and ideas. When I found out that a Big Name/Big Money Hollywod adaptation was coming along, I put it aside. I’ve other ways to waste my time that aren’t quite as obvious a money-sink.