MONSTROUS BEAUTY FROM NORMAN BEL GEDDES

Flying boats were all the rage in the 1930s, and some designs were spectacular, such as the huge Norman Bel Geddes concept, seen here in poster form flying over New York.

The NBG never got built, which was probably just as well - it would have struggled to get airborne, even with 20 piston engines roaring away. Still, flying boats of all kinds - Boeing, Sikorsky, Short were just three manufacturers - opened up the international airways, and their grace still resonates in much the same way as those giants of the skies, airships and dirigibles.

The sight of a three-engined Dornier Do-24 flying boat taking off from St Helier Bay, Jersey, a couple of years ago was amazing. Hundreds of us watched as a fine mist of seawater cascaded from the hull as she (definitely a ‘boat’ then!) took to the air, and a ripple of applause greeted the unlikeliness of it all. Aaah, what a sight!

Will we ever see the huge clippers return? It’s unlikely, sad to say - the economics of long-haul jet flight demand the efficiency of a high-flying tube with turbofan engines (aka Boeing 747, Airbus 380 et al), something that flying boats cannot match. However, all is not lost - smaller designs such as the 12-passenger Dornier Seastar will continue to fill a niche role in littoral waters around the world. Just make sure you take a flight when it’s on offer!

Buy a model kit of a Dornier here

Visit Dornier's website here

STEAMPUNK RAYGUNS FROM NEW ZEALAND

These highly collectible rayguns are produced at Weta, the special-effects outfit that has worked on a host of leading edge movies, from Narnia to Lord of the Rings.

Steampunk as a genre has come on like a train in the last few years, with books and comics aplenty. On the big screen, several movies have used steampunk elements, but nothing as yet with the genre as its core. Here's hoping - maybe John Carter of Mars, now on the production line at Disney, will do the biz.

For more on Weta's killer collectibles, and a video interview with the man who dreams them up, visit our related site at Scale Model News.

NASA PROBE TO EXPLORE LIFE ON EUROPA

Here's a video that talks about a future NASA probe to Europa, moon of Jupiter. It's an ice-covered little world, but one that appears to have a vast sub-surface ocean... and where's there's water, they may be life.

Meantime Starcruzer's new site is looking good for launch later this year. Check back often.

STARCRUZER BOLDLY GOES TO A NEW SITE

Starcruzer is moving to a new site very soon, so please check back from time to time to view progress.

See you in the new dimension.

WEIRD MONOWHEELS PAST AND FUTURE

Retro futures make a fascinating study - all those amazing ideas that never saw the light of day, and others that became so changed as to be almost unrecognizable.

And it’s interesting too, to see what subjects exercised thinkers; ideas rarely arrive singly, instead fresh takes from different creators get outlined, and the best one usually wins. However, in the real world other factors (such as marketing skills) may outweigh technical merits, examples including VHS vs Betamax, 8-track vs Compact Cassette, or Mac vs PC.

Even so, some concepts are just so plain weird or impracticable that any number of designs won’t change the way things already are, and here’s the monowheel to prove the point. Magazines from before World War II were forever featuring strange giant-wheel machines, as if they were ready to kill the standard automobile dead. But sometimes an idea alone is not enough to change the world, as these retro offerings show.

Mind you, designers are still at it - the bottom picture (actually a bi-wheel not a pure mono) was conceived only recently. Will it be a future winner? The Starcruzer crew reckons it looks cute, but isn’t placing any bets on success.

FROM ZEPPELIN TO MOSQUITO MINI-FLYER

Today’s the day, back in 1889, that the famed Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented his first airship design, called a ‘navigable balloon’. Airships became a major part of early aviation, and were pressed into combat service on bombing missions in World War I. Later on, they never really stood a chance against the speed and practicality of fast-developing conventional aircraft, and with the 1937 loss of the giant Hindenburg (its splendid dining room is shown in the top picture) while attempting to land in New Jersey, the airship age came to a halt. Small numbers are still made today, but the ‘age of the airship’ is long gone.

Meantime, what about that smaller, yet hugely desirable object, the personal aircraft? One that you can use as casually as an automobile is probably as far away as ever, but that doesn’t stop people from dreaming up new ideas. And here’s a nice little concept for a single-seater called the Muecke, or Mosquito (lower pictures). The designer, Daniel Kocyba from Germany, reckons his concept would be good as a personal sports machine, but it could also be used as a spotter or control craft for fire, police and coastguard operations. The tiny Muecke might also provide a neat solution for rushing emergency medical packages - nothing like sailing over traffic jams with that vital supply of blood.

An important feature of the Muecke is the contra-rotating lift rotor layout, which does away with the need for a tail rotor, so reducing the helo’s weight and complexity. Will the Muecke - or something like it - ever get built? We can only hazard a ‘maybe’, but computerized easy-fly controls make such machines a strong future possibility.

Visit Daniel Kocyba here.

METEOR STORM - TARGET EARTH!

Today’s the day for Perseid-max, the peak time for the annual Perseid meteor shower that we see as a splendid ‘shooting stars’ display: brief streaks of light in the sky as cosmic particles burn up in the upper atmosphere. These particular ones are so-named because they appear to come from the part of the heavens occupied by the constellation Perseus.

The Perseids should be visible in the pre-dawn and evening skies, and usually peak at a rate of around one or two a minute. They appear every August with such regularity because they are a part of a meteor stream, a vast quantity of dust and rock particles orbiting the Sun. They are the broken remains of an ancient comet that we pass through as the orbits of the stream and the Earth intersect once a year.

Sky map courtesy StarDate Online