Year: 2012

Categories
Deaths Matters of Life & Death Movies Star Wars

Ralph McQuarrie, Star Wars illustrator, dies

  • March 3, 2012

Star Wars, as envisioned by Ralph McQuarrieRalph McQuarrie, the artist who envisioned key scenes and settings of the Star Wars universe, before sets or models were built and before filming began, dies at the age of 82. As the production artist for Star Wars, McQuarrie got his licks in early on how the “universe” should look, from costumes to spacecraft to weaponry. George Lucas credited McQuarrie’s artwork with keeping the movies’ “look” on track, as well as selling 20th Century Fox on the idea of financing the first movie in the absence of any kind of test footage. McQuarrie also provided concepts for a redesigned U.S.S. Enterprise for an early ‘70s Star Trek movie project, Star Trek: Planet Of The Titans, that ultimately went unfilmed. He also contributed early concept art to Battlestar Galactica, E.T., Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, and many others, and had also worked on the animated artists’ conceptions of the Apollo moon missions played during CBS’ coverage of those flights.

Categories
Movies Video Games

Project Yellow Sphere

  • April 5, 2012

The enigmatically titled internet short film Project Yellow Sphere debuts, revealed to be a semi-serious, six-minute live-action-plus-CGI proof-of-concept trailer for a potential Pac-Man movie. Shot and produced entirely at commercial production house Steelehouse Productions in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s the closest anyone has gotten to mounting a long-talked about Pac-Man film.

More about Project Yellow Sphere in the LogBook
Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Discovery Space Shuttle

Discovery retired

  • April 19, 2012

Space ShuttleHaving completed its last mission, Space Shuttle Discovery is retired, stripped of working engine parts and other items, and donated to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum by NASA. The workhorse of the shuttle fleet, Discovery flew in space 39 times starting in 1984, visiting both Mir and the International Space Station, and racking up a cumulative total of an entire year in orbit. Discovery takes the place of the test orbiter, Enterprise, which has been on display at the Smithsonian since the 1980s.

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Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station Soyuz

Soyuz TMA-04M

  • May 15, 2012

Soyuz TMA-04MPart of the 31st full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-04M. Gennady Padalka, Sergei Revin and Joseph Acaba take up residence on the ISS for 124 days, becoming part of the Expedition 31/32 crews. All three return to Earth in September 2012 aboard the same vehicle.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight International Space Station

SpaceX Dragon visits the ISS

  • May 22, 2012

Dragon at ISSSpaceX launches its second Dragon unmanned cargo vehicle, this time as the first privately-owned spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Carrying only supplies, equipment and experiments, the Dragon capsule carries out a program of closing to within a certain distance of the station and then slowly approaches until it is close enough to be grabbed by the station’s remote manipulator arm and attached to a docking port under the station crew’s control. The Expedition 31 astronauts aboard the station report that the interior of the capsule has a “new car smell” that is quite noticeable when compared to the atmosphere aboard the station. Over the course of a week, fresh cargo is unloaded into the station from the Dragon capsule, and cargo intended for return to Earth is loaded into the capsule. NASA is satisfied with the results and contracts SpaceX to begin routine cargo flights via Dragon later in the year.

Categories
Deaths Matters of Life & Death

Caroline John, Doctor Who actress, dies

  • June 5, 2012

Caroline JohnCaroline John, who joined the cast of Doctor Who for only a single season (also the show’s first season in color), accompanying incoming third Doctor Jon Pertwee as the Doctor’s scientific assistant Liz Shaw, dies at the age of 72 due to complications from cancer. Despite her brief connection to the series, Caroline John has remained associated with Doctor Who, from reprising the role of Liz Shaw repeatedly for Big Finish Productions, to making a cameo appearance in 1983’s The Five Doctors, to reviving Liz as the head of a secret scientific think tank in the fan-made PROBE video series of the 1990s.

Categories
Books

VWORP!1

  • June 5, 2012

VWORP!1theLogBook.com releases its first book, VWORP!1 by Earl Green. Spanning nearly 400 pages, the book covers Doctor Who on TV from 1963 through 2011, with an emphasis on story threads that hold “classic” Who (1963-1989) and “new” Who (2005-present) together. The book makes its “live” debut at the 2012 Oklahoma Video Gaming Exhibition (OVGE) in Tulsa a few days later; an ebook version is released at a later date.

Order VWORP!1 from theLogBook.com Store

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Crewed Spaceflight Shenzhou Tiangong

Shenzhou 9

  • June 16, 2012

Shenzhou 9China launches its fourth manned space mission, Shenzhou 9, on the first manned flight to the small space station Tiangong-1. The crew consists of Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang, and the first female space traveler from China, Liu Yang. Automated docking at Tiangong-1 has been rehearsed by ground controllers during the unmanned Shenzhou 8 mission, but this mission requires both automatic and manual dockings to be carried out. The crew will spend a total of 13 days in space.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight Shenzhou Tiangong

Shenzhou 9 docks at Tiangong-1

  • June 18, 2012

Tiangong-1The three-person crew of Chinese space vehicle Shenzhou 9 successfully achieves an automated docking at Tiangong-1, China’s first space station. The crew spends a total of six days aboard the station, described by the Chinese government as an orbital laboratory, before undocking and then successfully attempt a manual docking maneuver. The nature of the crew’s work during its stay aboard Tiangong-1 is not revealed.

Categories
Music

Star Trek: The Motion Picture soundtrack

  • July 2, 2012

Star Trek: The Motion PictureSoundtrack specialty label La-La Land Records releases a long-awaited 3-CD set featuring – for the first time – the entirety of Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Including spin-off singles (such as Shaun Cassidy’s infamous vocal version of the Ilia theme), unused music from an early draft of the score, and extensive liner notes, half of the set’s limited print run of 10,000 copies sells out within days, forcing the label to ask customers to wait for the rest of the copies to arrive at their warehouse.

More about Star Trek soundtracks in Music Reviews