Author: theLogBook.com

Earl Green is the creator, curator, and head writer of theLogBook.com.

The Empire Strikes Back – Wave 1

The Empire Strikes BackIn contrast to 1977, where no toy licensee had a lock on the right to make Star Wars toys until weeks after the movie’s premiere, Kenner rolls out the first toys for The Empire Strikes Back nearly a month ahead of the movie; kids (and their long-suffering parents) make the first wave of figures an immediate sell-out, despite not knowing anything about the movie’s plotline. Read more Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Galactica 1980: The Night The Cylons Landed – Part II

Galactica 1980The eighth episode of a vastly retooled Battlestar Galactica (or, depending on how you look at it, the show’s 29th episode) premieres on ABC. Wolfman Jack guest stars. Read more

Missile Command

Missile CommandAtari scores a direct hit on arcades everywhere with Missile Command, a game which reminds video game-obsessed youth that the Cold War is still on. (In the months it takes to develop the game, programmer Dave Theurer has recurring nuclear-war-themed nightmares.) Cementing the trakball as a viable controller for fast-paced, non-sports games, Missile Command inspires a popular home video game cartridge (which, in the interest of not giving young gamers nightmares, dispenses with the Cold War theme in favor of a science-fiction explanation of the missiles’ origin). Read more Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Future Cop: the lawsuit

Future CopWriters Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova win a copyright infringement/breach of contract lawsuit against Paramount Television, ex-Paramount exec Terry Keegan, and ABC-TV over the short-lived 1976/77 TV series Future Cop, which they contend that the studio and network launched within months of an option lapsing on Brillo, an Ellison/Bova “robot cop” pilot script submitted in 1973. After a four-year wait to get the case into court, a jury takes only four weeks to find that the similarities between Brillo and Future Cop outweigh the differences, and award the writers $182,500 in compensatory damages and $154,500 in punitive damages, falling a bit short of the $3,000,000 sought. Ellison spends part of his proceeds from the suit to buy a billboard across from Paramount Pictures bearing the warning, “Writers, don’t let them steal from you!” Hear about it on the Sci-Fi 5 podcast

Galactica 1980: The Return Of Starbuck

Galactica 1980The tenth episode of a vastly retooled Battlestar Galactica (or, depending on how you look at it, the show’s 31st episode) premieres on ABC. This is the final episode of the original Battlestar Galactica. Dirk Benedict stars as Starbuck. Read more

Voyager 2 and the Backup Mission Load

Voyager 2 at SaturnWith the Jupiter encounter behind it, NASA’s Voyager 2 unmanned spacecraft is given a new backup mission plan, replacing the original Jupiter/Saturn backup plan implemented after a radio receiver failure befell the spacecraft in 1978. Intended to reap the minimum acceptable science observations (including photography) and transmit them to Earth should Voyager 2’s ability to receive new commands be lost, this new backup mission load now includes automated observation plans for Saturn and Uranus, the latter of which will not be reached until 1986.

Mt. St. Helens explodes

Mt. St. HelensFolllowing a lull in its recent frequent earthquake and minor volcanic activity, the summit of Mt. St. Helens in Washington disappears in a massive landslide, releasing a powerful (300mph) lateral explosion that flattens nearby forest land ahead of a devastating release of debris and snowmelt mud known as a lahar. Within an hour, with the summit crater exposed, the remaining magma stored under Mt. St. Helens surges upward, resulting in a massive eruption from the summit, lasting nine hours and wiping out hundreds of square miles of forest and killing dozens of people, including geologists who had been on station to monitor the volcano’s activity. Following the eruption, Mt. St. Helens is over 1,000 feet shorter, its peak replaced by a mile-wide crater. This is the first significant volcanic eruption on the American mainland since 1915.

Apple III

Apple IIIApple Computer introduces the newest upgrade of its Apple II architecture, the oversized Apple III computer, aimed squarely at the business computing market that Apple has stumbled into as a result of VisiCalc‘s success. The monolithic machine suffers from technical problems from the outset, resulting in recalls and repairs to most early adopters’ Apple III units. With barely 100,000 units sold over three years, Apple pulls the Apple III off the market before 1984 is out.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes BackWith expectations riding higher than they probably ever will for another sequel in movie history, the first Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, hits theaters and kicks off a whole new wave of merchandise. Yoda, AT-ATs, and The Imperial March are unleashed on the world, while the cliffhanger ending hooks everyone in for the third movie with a shocking revelation about Luke’s lineage. Read more

Pac-Man

Pac-ManUnder license from Namco, the game’s Japanese originators, Midway Manufacturing introduces the obsession that is Pac-Man to American arcades. Titled Puck-Man in its homeland (due to the yellow character’s resemblance to a round hockey puck), Midway swaps vowels for fear that vandals will turn the letter P into an F on the arcade cabinets. With its cute characters and instinctive game play, Pac-Man catches on immediately, propelling the video game industry into overdrive. Read more

Rally-X

Rally-XArcade game maker Midway introduces the coin-op video game Rally-X in American arcades. The game, originated in Japan by Namco, is rolled out at a 1980 trade show for amusement and arcade machine operators alongside another Namco/Midway import, Pac-Man. With its more-accessible-to-mainstream-America race car elements, Rally-X is considered the hot favorite of the two, possibly a major hit in the making. Read more

Soyuz 36

Soyuz 36Soyuz 36 is launched by the Soviet Union on a one-week mission to space station Salyut 6. The crew consists of Apollo-Soyuz veteran Valery Kubasov and the first Hungarian in space, Bertalan Farkas. During the crew’s week-long visit to Salyut 6, they undertake an exhaustingly jam-packed series of experiments before swapping Soyuz vehicles with the long-duration station crew – technically, the Soyuz 36 crew returns in the Soyuz 35 vehicle on June 6th.

Soyuz T-2

Soyuz T-2An advanced version of a new Soviet Soyuz spacecraft is launched with a crew for the first time. Soyuz T-2 is launched on a three-day mission to visit the Salyut 6 space station, with its primary goal to test a new automated approach and docking system for use with the Salyut space stations. After spending almost four days in orbit, cosmonauts Yuri Malyshev and Vladimir Aksyonov return to Earth; due to their vehicle’s flight test status, the T-2 crew does not swap spacecraft with the Salyut 6/Soyuz 35 crew.

The Chicxulub Crater Theory

BOOOOOOOOOMIn the journal Science, in an article titled “Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction”, Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, propose their theory that the 110-mile-wide Chicxulub Crater discovered in the past few decades on the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico is evidence of a large asteroid collision with Earth, resulting in the widespread death of the dinosaurs 65 million years before the modern day. A contentious peer review of the published theory follows, with many opposing theories proposed, though the Chicxulub hypothesis is eventually accepted as the “smoking gun” that killed the dinosaurs (the theory of an asteroid collision with Earth causing the extinction had been in circulation since the 1950s; the Alvarez theory is the first to point to a specific geological feature as evidence).