Retrofuturo cosmonáutico soviético
Erik Wernquist, artista sueco especializado en efectos especiales, ha publicado en su cuenta en Vimeo una película corta titulada ‘Wanderers’ (Los trotamundos) con voz del famoso astrónomo Carl Sagan en la que narra “la expansión de la humanidad en el Sistema Solar basada en ideas científicas y conceptos de nuestro futuro”.
Wanderers – a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.
Si el programa espacial soviético N1/L1 hubiese funcionado, quizá esta imagen sería parte de nuestra historia… Los planes originales de comienzos de los ‘60, preveían un primer alunizaje entre los años 1967 y 1968, sin embargo el primer lanzamiento del complejo N1-L3 tuvo lugar el 21 de febrero de 1969, y terminó en una explosión a los 68.7 segundos de vuelo…
O quizás ocurrió en otro universo paralelo…
Como en toda ucronía más o menos rigurosa, es necesario ser sincero con el lector y señalar el punto de divergencia con nuestra realidad. En este caso, he decidido que la ruptura tenga lugar antes del accidente de la Soyuz 1, un punto de inflexión clave en la historia del programa espacial soviético. En esta línea temporal imaginaria el gran Serguéi Koroliov no fallece en 1966 y el programa lunar N1-L3 no se resiente de su pérdida. Por otro lado, no se trata de un simple relato de ficción, así que he intentado ser lo más riguroso posible en mis especulaciones. Aunque en realidad sólo se traten de eso, simples especulaciones sobre lo que pudo haber sido y no fue.
Así lo imagina Daniel Marín en su blog Eureka.
Prepárate para viajar a una realidad espacial alternativa. Allá vamos…
http://danielmarin.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/una-realidad-espacial-alternativa-2-y.html
Just saw this book in a store, and almost didn’t notice the small blue box. Tardis
A Brief History of Robot Birds
Our recent post on the history of the cuckoo clock inspired some research into other examples of early, non-timekeeping robot birds. For centuries, birds–pigeons and canaries in particular–have been a popular subject for inventors and engineers experimenting with early mechanical systems and robotics. Take, for example, Bubo, the ancient clockwork owl seen in the 1981 film Clash of The Titans. Bubo was forged by Hephaestus to aid Perseus in his quest and Bubo was, of course, purely fictional. There were however, actual avian automatons in actual ancient Greece.
The earliest example dates to 350 B.C.E. when the mathematician Archytas of Tarentum, who some credit with inventing the science of mechanics, is said to have created a mechanical wooden dove capable of flapping its wings and flying up to 200 meters, powered by some sort of compressed air or internal steam engine. Archytas’ invention is often cited as the first robot, and, in light of recent technological advancements, perhaps we could even consider it to be the first drone; the very first machine capable of autonomous flight. Very few details are actually known about the ancient mechanical dove, but it seems likely that it was connected to a cable and flew with the help of a pulley and counterweight. This early wind-up bird was chronicled a few hundred years later in the pages of a scientific text by a mathematician, Hero of Alexandria. – Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.
Image: Bubo the robotic owl from the 1981 film Clash of the Titans.
In a sketch prepared in November 1964, Dr. Wernher von Braun envisioned developing a Saturn V S-II Stage into a space station.
Retro publicidad: The VideoBrain Family Computer (model 101) is an 8-bit home computer manufactured by Umtech Incorporated, starting in 1977. It is based on the Fairchild Semiconductor F8 CPU. It was not a large commercial success and was discontinued from the market less than three years after its initial release. Some of its lack of success has been attributed to the decision to substitute the APL/S programming language over the then-standard BASIC. Due to the high cost of RAM memory, it only contained 1 KB. It had a full-travel keyboard, unlike some early home computers that featured membrane keypads (and earlier kit machines that used switches), but with a very non-standard layout. It was designed by Dr. David Chung and Dr. Albert Yu