Common Themes

Photos and quoted material courtesy of TechVantage Consulting, L.L.C..

I never saw this 1984 pinball machine, but my husband remembers it being in his local pizza joint when he was a kid — here’s two restoration stories, both with lots of pictures! I love how the Space Shuttle is named Defender (as if the shuttle could defend… anything?) Ed points out that the playing field has an image of the Hubble Space Telescope, six years before launch; very cool in hindsight! Between these two sites, I’ve no doubt that if you stumbled upon a Space Shuttle pinball machine in need of repair, you’d have abundant resources to fix it up and ship it to me. You know you want to. At least, *I* want you to!

Space Shuttle was manufactured by Williams in 1984. A total of 7,620 games were produced. The game was designed by Barry Oursler. Space Shuttle was one of only three System 9 games released by Williams, the other two being Comet and Sorcerer. Fun fact: Space Shuttle was the first Williams game to feature a “toy” on the playfield.

One thing that makes this restoration unique is that the owner was directly involved with the Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained quite a few autographs on his playfield from astronauts and NASA greats. I’m sure every restoration is unique, but this one takes the cake!

Let me just state up front that I found the “stars” of American Chopper completely and utterly OBNOXIOUS… but they did happen to do a really spectacular tribute bike themed around Space Shuttle Discovery’s Return to Flight mission in 2005, STS-114.

Orange County Choppers‘ site is all Flash-based, so I can’t give a direct link to the photo album of this bike, but it’s on the third page of “On-Air Theme Bikes”, under the Choppers section on the main page. I’ve taken screencaps to show here.

The bike’s episodes are #58 & #59, which aired October 3 & 10, 2005. Minus the stars’ antics, fights and general… drama… the bike is a thing of beauty, and if these guys have one thing right, it’s an eye for minute detail. The gas tank is shuttle-shaped, the exhaust pipes (shown below, my favorite detail) are tipped with a replica of the Space Shuttle Main Engines, and the airbrush work and detailed painting throughout is just… spectacular. I particularly like the miniature orbiting shuttle “spinners” on the wheels, front and back. The gallery is definitely worth a look!

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History presents a history of the lunch box, with a section specifically for cowboys and astronauts. Today’s box features art from Tom Corbett: Space Cadet.

Comic books, radio shows, and television introduced a cast of action characters to American school children. Fearless champions of a mythical Old West joined with explorers of outer space on the illustrated metal lunch box and its companion drink container.

The steel box had reached its ideal form. Change shifted to the action circulating around all sides of the two containers. Manufacturers competed for rights to the latest horseback hero or starship warrior.

2001: A Space Odyssey premiered 40 years ago this week:

2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. The film deals with thematic elements of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life, and is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, provocatively ambiguous and often surreal imagery, sound in place of traditional narrative techniques, and a very minimal use of dialogue. … The film’s world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.

Many things in the film came to pass within the time constraints; sadly, permanent colonization of the Moon did not.

More retro album covers that Brian found on 317x.com. Featured today are a pair of ku-raaaaaazy guys and a number of musical-instrument-shaped constellations. Gotta love those horn-rimmed glasses!

These retro album covers are again the findings of Brian, and are from 317x.com. Featured today are an artistic rendition of Sputnik, and man’s first spacewalk. (I think. If not the first, please correct me.)