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On with the show! What better place to start than with attempts at aerospace engineering! The Moon Rocket Mk I Click here to read the comics relating to the Moon Rocket Mk I! 
While originally unrecognised as the Mark I for the simple reason that IT SHOULD HAVE WORKED, it is still a wonder of design, a work of art in its own right. Unfortunately, artwork is not meant to travel to the moon, and neither was my poor Mark I. It suffered from what I'd like to call a 'gluteus maximus control logic error' or for the 'uneducated' among you, Brainy sitting on the flight stick. 
(behold it's fantastic design! It was a crime for such a craft to fail) Constructed of various metals painstakingly collected from junkyards and abandoned/parked cars, the Mk I was an original that can never be replaced! Look at some of these features!
*Sigh* If I was ever able to rebuild this wondrous craft, I would definitely put red go-faster-stripes on it. Oh, and make Brainy wear a straight jacket and sit in the corner till we reached that big ball o' cheese in the sky. Oh, and try not to slam it into the side of a mountain. The Moon Rocket Mk II Click here to read the comic relating to the Moon Rocket Mk II! 
Departing from my brilliant ideas, the Moon Rocket Mk II features way too much of Brainy's input for my liking, namely the old boring concepts rocket makers have used in the past. 
(talk about CLEAN! No 'real' blueprint should be so neat!) Just to please him, I built that NASA ripoff for him, yet in the end I was fully justified for my distrust in the design, after it exploded on the launch pad! Some may say (ie, Brainy) that it was actually MY highly unstable rocket fuel which ended that day in disaster, yet we can sit around and argue just who's fault it is for hours, or even minutes, before we come to the conclusion that it's mine, so instead, I like to point to the fact that the rocket is gone, and finish by telling people to "let bygones by bygones". (I assume that a 'Bygone' is an alien of some kind, presumably from the planet Bygonia, and that this phrase is one of racial acceptance, along the lines of phrases like "Always be yourself". I'm not sure why it is used in situations where the past should be forgotten, but it shuts the others up, and that's the important thing) The Moon Rocket Mk III Click here to read the comics relating to the Moon Rocket Mk III! 
A return to the unorthodox thinking which is my genius, the Moon Rocket Mk3 was fantastic in its visionary concepts. With flawless reasoning, I deduced that having bulky engines and fuel reserves upon a craft would only make it harder to launch out of the atmosphere. Many of my contemporaries are considering similar options, some investigating the use of rail gun technology as a cheap and effective way to blast into space, while another uses lasers focused onto the underside of the craft to generate superheated air to carry it aloft. I chose to harness the powerhouse of hidden energy which is, the slingshot. 
(Talk about classy... Not a piece of duct tape to be seen!) Launched from a giant slingshot, the process in which the craft was to reach the moon was simpleness itself. I am sure Brainy also realised this, as he announced with great volume that I was indeed a simpleton when he first saw it. Working from the principle that the Earth is a ball, and that planes fly As events unfolded, how ever, it became clear that I had forgotten to take some key points into consideration. For one thing, I had forgotten how big Earth was. For another, for purposes of calculation, I hadn't included air resistance or gravity. And finally, the most important reason why we eventually crashed in the middle of nowhere is Brainy jinxed the whole thing by stepping onto the craft left foot first. I tell him these things, but he never seems to listen! He keeps saying crazy stuff like "What? Where on Earth did you pull that one from?" and just flatly refuses to believe me when I tell him there's a chapter on it in the NASA training manual. The Moon Rocket Mk III version 2 Click here to read the comics relating to the Moon Rocket Mk III v2! 
As much as alternative methods and 'green technology' is good for the planet, I simply missed the 'buzz' of having whacking great rocket engines carry me aloft. So I simply stuck some on the mark 3, which I creatively dubbed 'version 2'. 
While there was a few hiccups, the booster rockets were a work of art. I felt almost unworthy to operate these wonderful creations! So, as is befitting all great works of art, I hacked a bunch of cables into them and wired them up to a computer.
The computer controlled mission was ill-fated from the start when I failed to get out my first game of Freecell. Our chosen operating system prided itself on 'user friendliness', which roughly translates to layman speech as "Get off my keyboard foolish user! Your input is not required!" and so as a result it 'user friendlinessed' into a lake at high speed. Not that I'm bitter, (I gave myself a lick to test this) as I've found out all kinds of neat and helpful things like this 'vacuum in space' that Brainy keeps talking about, so presumably next time, I should build a rocket that's 'air tight'... What ever THAT means! The Cosmic Peanut (or alternatively, The Moon Rocket Mk IV) Click here to read the comics relating to the Moon Rocket Mk IV! 
Never let it be said that I wasn't one willing to dabble in new technology, or I'll get you with my ole' trusty whacking stick. (not like those new fangled plastic whacking sticks, wouldn't get me using one of those in a fit!) Reading about rail guns in newspapers is awfully exciting, especially newspapers designed for people with short attention spans. Hey, did you know I only have three fingers on my right hand? Hmmm, the ceiling looks interesting today. What was I saying? Oh yes, the good thing about the newspapers I read, apart from the ever so bright colours, and all the pictures, is that they never spoil the ending of a good story by giving you all those fuddy duddy details. They let you figure it out yourself! 
(I was all set to market it and everything!) Anyway, utilising electromagnets (I think.. the newspaper article was terribly long, almost a paragraph), I built my 'rail gun', destined to fire our lunar module, the Cosmic Peanut into the heavens. It was tall and very pretty, which is normally the important part in these matters. Well, tell a lie... The most important part in these matters was not getting the wires mixed up, but I found that out, so it's all been a bit of a learning experience. I also learnt what happens when you then over crank the power, (in accordance with Bluey's "brute force fixes all problems" approach to electrical diagnostics) and plug the wires for the electromagnet back in the right way. I think Brainy's still learning what it's like to be in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Still, can't complain, as bad as it is for me to lose my rocket once again, there could be worse places to be. On board said rocket, for one. Brainy's lucky this time, with it being 'air tight' and all, so I expect no whining from HIM if we ever pull him, smoking from re-entry, out of a ocean in the near future. In hindsight, I probably should have packed a magazine or two to give him something to do. |
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| Copyright 2002 Tim Dawson, All rights reserved. | |||
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straight, it is obvious that soon you will simply fly out of the atmosphere, and presumably towards the moon. (I mean, what else is out there, and apparently the moon is HUGE! Big enough for 2 or more people to stand on. I don't see how we could miss it)