Snail Mail

This is the nearest I will get to stamps this weekend as I cannot match the lighthouse theme on Sunday Stamps II.

Early breakfast was disrupted one day earlier this week by the arrival of - 

Snail climbing up the kitchen window

Fortunately it was outside - 5ft from the ground.

From a different angle it still looks the same.

Slowly does it.

If it's trying to get into space

It has a long way to go (view from outside)

I had to let in into the secret that it would never reach the escape velocity required to take it into space.

The only lift-off it achieved was when I plucked it off the window and deposited in a garden refuse bag. It should take it a month to eat its way out of there.

Journeys into Space - Sunday Stamps

The countries issuing space related stamps often surprise you, like these two:

Dominica

 

Dubai

Earlier this week I was posting a letter to my daughter in the USA and there, in the post office counter window was the set of space science stamps which were issued on 16 October 2012.

Great Britain - Space Science

I was quite impressed by them, but when I got them home I was even more impressed by the information on the accompanying card. Here's a sample:-

This is just one panel of the three section folds on the reverse. There is more on the front two sections as well as the stamps themselves. I take back all those rude things I've said about Royal Mail stamps in the past.

Meanwhile for more space adventures you should check out others at Viridian's Sunday-stamps-111.

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

Spaced Out - Sepia Saturday

Alan's photo for this week is a researcher testing out an early space suit for the Apollo Moon Project. I thought I would acknowledge the debt we owe to animals that led the way in space. I hope you like my choice.

Enos

Chimpanzee Enos is pictured wearing a space suit and lying in his flight couch as a handler holds his hands. He is being prepared for insertion into the Mercury-Atlas 5 capsule. You may read his story at here. There is also a film clip of his journey into space which you may like to see Enos space flight.

Not so well known is the story of Teddy Bears in space.

Teddies in space

(Image courtesy of the University of Cambridge Department of Engineering and Nokia;

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

 

Four teddy bears travelled(voyaged) to the edge of space in an experiment run by Cambridge University Spaceflight, with the SPARKS science club at Parkside Community College and Coleridge Community College. The bears were lifted to 30,085 metres above sea level on a latex high altitude balloon filled with helium. The aim of the experiment was to determine which materials provided the best insulation against the -53 ° C temperatures experienced during the journey. Each of the bears wore a different space suit designed by the 11-13 year olds from SPARKS.

Im sure you all remember the Russian dogs that were sent into orbit in the early days of space flight. They deserve a tribute and I found this,

Belka & Strelka space dogs on graffiti, Kharkov 2008

(By V Vizu - Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Don't forget to check out other space odysses at Sepia Saturday 84

Journey Into Space - Sunday Stamps

It was back in 1957 that the Russians astonished the world with the launch of Sputnik. It was Britain's Jodrell Bank radio telescope that alerted the world to its presence.

At the time neither the Russians nor the Americans had the technology to track rockets in space.

The earliest Russian space stamp in my albums is this from 1966:

 

 I was disappointed to find that I had no stamps from the USA to commemorate Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon in 1969. I've had to settle for one from Dominica instead.

I

To see more you can get spaced out at Viridian's Sunday Stamps