Saturn V.II Build—Day 153
B-Basic Body (continued)After a much longer than anticipated break, I am finally resuming the construction of the 1/100 Saturn V.II rocket.
Since my last post:
-Posters and prints were silkscreened
-Hundreds of packages were sent all over the planet
-There is a…
Last year Paul Sahre ran the Saturn V Relaunch project. As part of it, he’s been running this project blog, where he shows you how to build your own rocket.
10… 9… 8…
Final Frontier Design’s civilian space suit is 90% complete. The team hopes to begin testing at the end of the month and build at least four suits this summer. Lookin’ sharp!
The force is strong with this one.
The White House recently turned down a petition to build a Death Star, so this mysterious Kickstarter creator took matters into his own hands. Behold: The open-source Death Star!
Having backed 178 projects on the site, he’s hoping that a few might lend a hand in return. £19,000 down, £19,000,000 to go!
DIY space race?
“Have you ever dreamed of having your own spacecraft?” An inspiring piece in The Verge on the grassroots space race and the pioneering work of several Kickstarter creators.
The stars on a shoestring: amateur astronauts ignite a grassroots space race
Inside an old storage warehouse in an abandoned shipyard in Copenhagen, Kristian von Bengston and Peter Madsen have been building a one-man rocket ship they intend to send on a 15-minute, parabolic trip to the edge of space and back.
Von Bengston and Madsen’s non-profit, private space agency is called Copenhagen Suborbitals, and is probably the most extreme do-it-yourself project in the world. Von Bengston is an aerospace scientist and former NASA contractor. Madsen is an engineer who founded a DIY collective that built three submarines as a hobby.
Copenhagen Suborbitals has no government grants, no investors, and no academic affiliation. Instead, they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from ordinary people around the world who donated in exchange for a part of their dream.
Small wonders.
Four new projects with clever ideas and modest goals caught our attention over the weekend. Standing out as great examples of Kickstarter ideas on a tight budget, these creators are all seeking less than $1,250.
Created by 24-year-old artist and writer Sam Maiden, Reboot is the first issue of a new comic-book collaboration. Maiden describes his true love as writing and producing comics, and his Kickstarter project is his first attempt to realize his dream in print.
Dalek v Enterprise is a highly ambitious lark: A race to the stratosphere between the spacecrafts of Doctor Who and Star Trek. Creator Karlos Fandango’s previous Kickstarter project successfully sent a TARDIS to space and back — despite an unexpected detour up a tree — and he says that this new sci-fi adventure will be his last in the series.
Sling piping-hot dim sum as fast as you can — it’s Dim Sum Robot #1: Mecha Food Cart Action! This delicious little game puts you in charge of a robot food cart as you prowl the city, fly across buildings, and launch dumplings to happy patrons from across the street.
Repeat creator Ray Sumser is an artist obsessed with cartoons. His ongoing project to catalog the “cartoon universe” has been entirely inspired and funded by his Kickstarter backers.
It’s always exciting to see so many creators realizing little dreams in a big way. Discover more small projects on Kickstarter right here.
Creator Dan Cohen just announced that his documentary project, Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope, will air on PBS beginning January 31.
A dream come true for the filmmaker, Cohen says: “Thanks to your support through our Kickstarter effort, millions of Americans will see this inspiring film.”
Congratulations, Dan!
Deep space strategy.
Sidius Nova is a Kickstarter-funded space strategy game. Just three months after successfully reaching their goal, the game’s creators have launched in the App Store — and it’s free for a limited time.
Sidius Nova is now live on the app store! Get it while it’s free! http://t.co/FQhIzvMU #4x #videogames #indiegames #rts #kickstarter #itunes
Probably our favorite Hex6agon sighting yet.
#Hex6agon up on the window. #kickstarter #hex6 #incamera
One giant leap.
Final Frontier Design (FFD) is a design collaboration between artist and inventor Ted Southern and aerospace engineer Nikolay Moiseev.
After working together on a NASA-sponsored competition and in residence at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City, FFD launched a Kickstarter project to jumpstart its most ambitious project: A flight-certified space suit for the burgeoning commercial space industry.
The project was successfully funded this summer and 383 of 386 rewards have already gone out to backers. But the team continues to update supporters with intriguing behind-the-scenes info, including this diagram of the suit’s breathing apparatus.
Give me all your planets.
Spaceopoly brings all the thrills of interplanetary domination to an iPhone near you.
A combination of civilization-building strategy game and Monopoly-style tycoonery, Spaceopoly will allow players to band together for the good of the galaxy — or crush each other with ruthless back-room deals.
The creators just posted a peek at the exclusive Kickstarter ship, for backers only, which looks pretty awesome when those weapons are leveled up.
It is rocket science.
HyperV Technologies Corp. is a small team of scientists working to build a plasma accelerator for jet propulsion. “Say what,” you ask? Let us explain.
Plasma accelerators allow for low-cost, fuel-efficient space travel. The boys behind HyperV have already constructed a functioning single-shot plasma accelerator, but in order for this machine to be functional for space travel, they’ll need to transform it into a repetitively pulsed, continuously operable, compact plasma thruster.
They’re on their way to infinity and beyond, but they’re making a pit-stop as our Project of the Day. Give them a little boost and they’ll blast off.
Saturn V Relaunch is a lot of things, but most importantly? It is a son’s attempt to redeem his father. In the early ’70s, near the end of the Apollo space missions, Paul Sahre’s father began work on his own model Saturn V.
Standing at a worthy four feet tall, the model took months of meticulous labor to make. When it was finished, Sahre and his entire family were brought out to an open field, where they counted down to launch. The miniature Saturn V rocketed into space, but — to the horror of onlookers — plummeted back to space after its chutes failed to deploy. It was destroyed forever, and Sahre has never forgotten.
Fast forward to present day. Sahre is now a father himself, and he’s ready to set the record right. He’s preparing to reengineer the launch of Saturn V, using the same vintage Centuri model kit and the original launchpad. But this time, he’s determined to have it land safely.
Project of the Day… we have lift-off.
Items brought into space. Left, the flight case that flew back the first lunar rocks. Right, the first hammer to break off a piece of lunar rock. Just two, incredible pieces of history that will be on display at an independent exhibition to be hosted at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the moon landings.
Thanks, BuzzFeed!
On September 22, a group of students is going to send send 1000 ping pong balls into outer space. Well, not exactly ping pong balls, but PongSats — small, ping pong-sized science experiments that can range from the super simple (like a marshmallow!) to the highly complex (miniature data logs). When the PongSats return to earth, they bring back video footage, photographs, and data from the upper strata of our atmosphere. That’s pretty far out! It’s also our Project of the Day.
