2012-04-01
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Donna Plotner
Plotner (who later married and took her husband’s name) posed in Gus Grissom’s suit in the 1960s. When this photo appeared for sale on eBay in 2006, it caused some confusion:
Has anyone ever seen photos of women wearing Mercury spacesuits?
My first thought was to respond that it had to be Jerrie Cobb or one of the other “Mercury 13” ladies. But then I saw the photos.
I don’t recognize her. Maybe some of our more “senior” members will recognize her.
Why would NASA allow a model of uncertain provenance to pose in a bespoke B. F. Goodrich spacesuit?
The Collect Space forums never did find the answer, but Bob Crowe did:
”The images (and there were a lot of them) were shot on June 10, 1965 and the requestors were R. Crowe and J. Riehman with three entries for Project: Sentinel, Advertizing and TRW advertizing (yes, spelled like that). Another name mentioned was Don Stoehr. Since Williams knew that Bob Crowe was editor of the employee news paper “SenTineL” back then he immediately went to the Archives files and there in the July 2, 1965 issue were several of the photographs and the mysterious blonde woman was identified as Donna Plotner, executive secretary to Frederick W. Hesse, Vice President of Operations at that time.
The “mystery” featured in the last NNG has been solved. A note from Donna (Plotner) Bane who looked so appealing and mysterious in Gus Grissom’s space suit cleared it all up. Turns out Donna, who is now living in Oregon, married Don Bane (now deceased), also of TRW and they eventually left and went to JPL. She well remembers the day of the photo shoot and the difficulty she had in fitting her small frame into Gus Grissom’s even smaller suit.
(I wonder if there’ll ever be a better quality version of this photograph online than the roughly 270x370 image used here? Probably not. Perhaps it would take finding the July 2, 1965 issue of SenTineL.)
(Source: sohologramic)
2012-03-31
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An RAF officer in front of a completed radome at RAF Fylingdales.
Taken from this Flickr post of a page of Jonathan Glancey’s Lost Buildings.
2012-03-28
2012-03-27
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Back Cover of the Pan An Complete Reference Guide to France.
Azimuthal polar projection, cropped and rotated. See also.
2012-03-26
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Margaret Calvert’s classic UK “children crossing” roadsign, from the Guardian’s gallery for the new exhibition, Celebrating in style: British Design at the V&A, London.
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Betty Skelton on the cover of Look magazine, January 1960, from her New York Times obituary:
Whether in the air or on land, Ms. Skelton, who died on Aug. 31 at the age of 85, was a celebrated daredevil who shattered speed and altitude records. She was a three-time national aerobatic women’s flight champion when she turned to race-car driving, then went on to exceed 300 m.p.h. in a jet-powered car and cross the United States in under 57 hours, breaking a record each time.
From a Associated Press article from 2008, when she was inducted to the Motorsports Hall Of Fame:
In 1959, at 33, she was the first woman to undergo NASA’s physical and psychological tests _ the same that seven original male astronauts were put through. “I complained that NASA wasn’t giving more thought to women pilots,” she said.
See also: The Mercury 13:
Cobb, already an accomplished pilot, became the first American woman (and the only one of the Mercury 13) to undergo and pass all three phases of testing. Lovelace and Cobb recruited 19 more women to take the tests, financed by the world-renowned aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran. 13 of the women passed the same tests as the Mercury 7.
(picture via)
2012-03-24
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Buzz Aldrin and Ted Freeman. (via, via)
This looks like it was taken in October 1964:
On Friday, October 30, Ted Freeman and Buzz Aldrin were engaged in a little public affairs activity for NASA, demonstrating their spacesuits and a mock-up of the Gemini spacecraft for a few members of the press.
However, Freeman would never fly a Gemini mission:
On October 31, 1964, Theodore Freeman was killed when a goose smashed through the cockpit canopy of his T-38 Talon jet trainer. Flying shards of Plexiglas entered the jet engine intake and caused the engine to flameout. Freeman ejected from the stricken aircraft, but was too close to the ground for his parachute to open properly.
Buzz Aldrin went on to be the second man on the Moon.
(via hammerandcode)
2012-03-21
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Mirella Petteni by F.C. Gundlach, at iainclaridge.co.uk.
A couple of years ago I saw an exhibition of Gundlach’s work at the Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin. I’m not usually a huge fan of fashion photography, but I think Gundlach deserves to be well (better?) known. His black and white work, in particular, hits all the right spots for me.
This photograph is from 1963, and it’s not the most practical space suit in the world, but I like the angle and the parachute, so here it is.
2012-03-18
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Tomorrow’s Lestoil! (via)
Commercial art is such a hungry culture it constantly demands new ways of looking at things, which is why they’re always looking for what’s novel. For example in the 70s the cool, novel thing was the space race which is why you got hundreds of ads and logos and album covers that had space in them for no reason whatsoever.
2012-03-12
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looking at london illustrated map, via maraid on Flickr.
I love that the illustration contains the cover (and that you can make out the tube map on the back). Somehow I doubt that Piccadilly Circus was ever that bright, mind.
