Pages

Thursday 28 July 2011

Bumpers - Sepia Saturday




Little did I think when I saw Alan’s photo this week of a lady perched on a car bumper that I would continue my space theme from last week. I knew I had no bumper photos of my own but then I hit on a series of photos from NASA.

Bumper Rocket
In February 1949 a high altitude test vehicle was launched. Called Bumper WAC it became the first recorded man-made object to reach extraterrestrial space at a record altitude of 250 miles. This record was held until 1957.

The first stage of the Bumper WAC was a German V-2, the warhead replaced by a launching compartment. The photo shows the second stage, a modified WAC Corporal rocket mounted in the nose cone. Bumper WAC was the world’s first large two-stage liquid propelled rocket.

Launch of Bumper 8
 Bumper rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure conditions such as air temperature and cosmic ray impact. Bumper 7 and Bumper 8 were used for early studies of the earth’s upper atmosphere.
In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and II the first satellites in earth orbit; the US created NASA in 1958. The rest is history.

Nature has its own bumpers in space.

Galactic 'Bumper Cars'
(by NASA, William C Keel, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.)

This picture, taken by NASA's Hubble Space telescope reveals an intergalactic "pipeline" of material flowing between two battered galaxies that bumped into each other about 100 million years ago.
Astronomers expect more fireworks to come. The galaxies are doomed to continue their game of "bumper cars," hitting each other and moving apart several times until finally merging in another 200 million years. The galaxies are situated about 300 million light-years from earth in the constellation Taurus.

My final picture from space shows how galaxies go wild. Astronomers study how gravity choreographs their motion in the game of celestial bumper cars

Galaxies gone wild.
(by NASA/ESA, The Hubble Heritage - ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A Evan, University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

If you have not enjoyed this post then I suppose I shall have to scrap the bumpers and add them to this pile.

Scrapped car bumpers, Wharf Street, Warwick
 (geograph.org.uk:by Robin Stott; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License)

Alan's photo at Sepia Saturday 85 was the lady at Warwick Farm Racecourse so I maintained a 'Warwick' connection. Check it out there for more bumper fun

17 comments:

Little Nell said...

Now that is a very clever link! The galaxy shots are superb.

shelly said...

Too bad NASA won't being going up anymore.

Postcardy said...

I didn't know that there are so many kinds of bumpers.

tony said...

I imagined Space was just empty/dark/quiet........seems,in fact, its a busy wee place!

Christine H. said...

Very clever. That launch of Bumper 8 is superb.

Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy said...

Hi Bob! What a cool post. I knew nothing of the bumper rockets or of the galaxy collisions. Thanks so much for stopping by.

Kathy M.

Bob Scotney said...

Apologies to dakotabo, I hit delete instead of publish. Fortunately my email still retained his comment.

www.dakotabo.com
"Wow! Those galaxy pictures are incredible.

Mike Brubaker said...

A nice unexpected tangent to the theme!

Howard said...

Fascinating, I'd never heard of the Bumper Rocket. Hubble pictures of galaxies are always mind-blowing. Discarded car-parts less so...

PattyF said...

Galaxies gone wild, indeed! What a clever and unique take on the bumper theme! Did I mention informative, too? Great post! Thanks so much!!

Unknown said...

Love the space bumpers. Pretty creative post too.
QMM

Doctor FTSE said...

Excellent post, Bob. When does our Milky Way galaxy get entangled with Andromeda? Before or after our expanding Sun fries us? What a lot we have to look forward to!

Alan Burnett said...

Another tour de force. I had never even heard of the Bumper rockets and as soon as I saw your comment on the Blog I was intrigued to see how you would make the connection. The answer - perfectly.

Sheila @ A Postcard a Day said...

Bumper rockets - who knew? I love the way the series led us on. The picture of galaxies gone wild is amazing.

Bruno Laliberté said...

well, i certainly didn't expect this. smart!! those galaxy pictures are amazing. and those rockets, a great find!!
:)~
now i need to post some stamps based on the sepia theme...
:)~
HUGZ

North County Film Club said...

I love the way you said you had no bumper photos of your own and then came up with this wonderful bunch of (borrowed, I presume) photos of Bumper Rockets and then ended with the more familiar bumpers.
BTW, I was launched from high school the same year that Sputnik was launched. Oh yes, I remember it well! Barbara

Tattered and Lost said...

That final shot is certainly an example of bumper whack.

The galactic bumper cars are amazing. It's like seeing science fiction come alive.