Spacecraft Films

More Stuff From Space Shuttle: First Flights

Another look from the Space Shuttle set: The Von Braun shuttle over Asia on its way to the space station. The reusable shuttle is from the Collier's series of articles on Man in Space, and was a 3 stage vehicle powered by hypergolic propellants. This 3rd stage of the vehicle would land horizontally like an aircraft - one of the many precursor ideas to the modern space shuttle.

Related material on the Von Braun Shuttle can be seen at:

Collier's Space Series

Bonestell Space Art

Man Conquers Space

The Von Braun Shuttle is one of many vehicles leading up to the Space Shuttle depicted in our set. From rollout to launch to orbital operations and landing, the Von Braun Shuttle comes alive to demonstrate its contribution to the development of the Space Shuttle.

Mercury Back In Stock

Our Project Mercury sets are back in stock. Nearly all backorders for Mercury were shipped on Tuesday, December 18. If you are waiting on a Mercury and it didn't ship, this means it is probably waiting on something else in the order and will ship soon.

Also, the STS-27 and STS-29 sets are now enroute to the shipper, so they will ship over the next few days as soon as they arrive.

Space Shuttle: First Flights Production

While we have several products in production at the present time (Apollo 11: To the Moon, The Cape, and Space Shuttles: First Flights), the Space Shuttle: First Flights set represents a massive undertaking, being a 6 DVD set and covering the development of the Space Shuttle and the first four test flights.

In addition to our usual practice of being packed with footage from the missions and the development, this set is our first HD project, and the documentary (probably 2 hours) will be in HD.

In order to cover the subject in the proper way, we felt it was important to show the history of the development and conception of the reusable space shuttle, from as far back as the skip-glide concepts of the Sanger Silverbird through Dynasoar, from von Braun's Shuttle through the contractor phase A, B, C and D proposals and more. In order to make them fly we're using CGI to create significant portions of the flights of these vehicles-that-never-were.

We'll post some progress reports on the set over the production of the set. For now we can present a few glimpses into the flight of the Dynasoar. From launch through orbital operations to reentry and landing, we'll look at many of these proposals and the effect they had on the final configuration of the Space Shuttle. These stills are from the new HD animation we're doing for the set, showing the proposals as they would have looked... had they ever flown. (They are reduced to 400 pixels wide, from their normal 1920)

 
Dynasoar, on the Titan IIIC, sits on the launch pad prior to an orbital mission.

Dynasoar with transtage separates from Titan booster on trip to orbit.

Dynasoar on orbit approaches defense satellite.

Dynasoar re-enters the atmostphere after orbital mission.

Holiday Rush and Production Update

As you might imagine, things get a bit nuts this time of year. But since I'm up late and can't sleep anyway (and am working on some future products, one of which is rendering a file right now) I though I would at least update on some things.

First of all, Project Mercury should be back in stock next week. This is one of our best sets, and the price of the set will be increasing after the first of the year, so if you have been holding back on this set, now is the time to get it.

We just have a couple of items to get back in stock and then shortly after the first of the year we'll have everything in stock (except for the pre-order items, of which we have three at the present time). Apollo 11: To The Moon, which is in production and next, The Cape, which we're working furiously upon, and Space Shuttle: First Flights, which I believe is going to be a set comparable to our Mercury set, but even better with the HD content.

Within the next few days I will share with our blog readers some test stills from some of the animation on the Shuttle set. We are looking deeply into the development of the shuttle, including everything from the Sanger Silverbird through von Braun's Saturn Shuttle to Dynasoar, through the various proposals in all the phases leading up to the final choice. As part of this examination we are using CGI to bring these proposals to life. In the next few days I will share some stills from some of these realizations in bringing these astounding possibilities to life.

More soon....