lunes, 11 de diciembre de 2017

Portada del Sky Masters a color y texto promocional.

LA OBRA MAESTRA PERDIDA DE KIRBY

En 2008 la desaparecida editorial Glénat presentó al lector español una de las obras más desconocidas de Jack Kirby y, al mismo tiempo, uno de sus trabajos más espectaculares.

La combinación de los puntos fuertes de Kirby y Wally Wood, en un momento en que ambos estaban totalmente motivados y en la plenitud de sus carreras, llevaron el nivel del arte a cotas jamás vistas con anterioridad.

La tira de prensa narra, con enfoque realista, las aventuras del comandante Sky Masters durante la exploración espacial a finales de los años 50. La obra se produjo en plena guerra fría, cuando la rivalidad entre EEUU y la URSS se convirtió en una frenética carrera espacial.

Pero el ansiado sueño de Kirby de triunfar en el mundo de las tiras de prensa enseguida se convirtió en una pesadilla a causa de unas negociaciones conflictivas. Sus consecuencias tuvieron importantes repercusiones en su carrera y en el mundo del cómic USA.

La editorial Glénat llegó a publicar los dos libros que recopilaban las tiras diarias pero el tercero, que presentaba el culmen de la obra, las dominicales, jamás llegó a salir... ¡hasta ahora!

Sólo la perseverancia y el sacrificio de Ferran Delgado han permitido publicar en primicia mundial todas las planchas dominicales a color, remasterizadas con un nivel de calidad raramente visto en el panorama español.

Este libro no sólo contiene las 54 planchas dominicales existentes, sino que por primera vez se reeditan todas las viñetas perdidas. Además, contiene una amplia selección de guías de color pintadas por el propio Kirby, originales, artículos e infinidad de extras.

¡EL PUNTO CULMINANTE DE LA COLABORACIÓN DE DOS TITANES DEL CÓMIC!

lunes, 4 de diciembre de 2017

Modelos de referencia para el libro del Sky Masters.

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Double page spread included in the Collier's mag dated March 22th, 1952, which featured "Man Will Conquer Space Soon". As you can see, Kirby based his design of the Wheel in this painting by Chesley Bonestell.
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The first photo of Earth from a satellite in orbit. This is the first crude picture obtained from Explorer VI Earth satellite launched August 7, 1959. It shows a sun-lighted area of the Central Pacific ocean and its cloud cover. The picture was made when the satellite was about 17,000 miles above the surface of the earth on August 14, 1959. At the time, the satellite was crossing Mexico. The signals were received at the South Point, Hawaii, tracking station.
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Liquid-propellant rocket (Wikipedia)

"A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket is a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because their reasonably high density allows the volume of the propellant tanks to be relatively low, and it is possible to use lightweight centrifugal turbopumps to pump the propellant from the tanks into the combustion chamber, which means that the propellants can be kept under low pressure. This permits the use of low-mass propellant tanks, resulting in a highmass ratio for the rocket."

More info in the Wikipedia entry here.

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Van Allen radiation belt (Wikipedia)
"A Van Allen radiation belt is a zone of energetic charged particles, most of which originate from the solar wind, that are captured by and held around a planet by that planet's magnetic field. The Earth has two such belts and sometimes others may be temporarily created. The discovery of the belts is credited to James Van Allen, and as a result the Earth's belts are known as the Van Allen belts. Earth's two main belts extend from an altitude of about 500 to 58,000 kilometers[1] above the surface in which region radiation levels vary. Most of the particles that form the belts are thought to come from solar wind and other particles by cosmic rays. By trapping the solar wind, the magnetic field deflects those energetic particles and protects the Earth's atmosphere from destruction."
More info in the Wikipedia entry here.
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Women in space (Wikipedia)
"Women of many nationalities have worked in space. The first woman in space, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, flew in 1963. Space flight programs were slow to employ women, and only began to include them from the 1980s. Most women in space have beenUnited States citizens, with missions on the Space Shuttle and on the International Space Station. Three countries maintain active space programs that include women: China, Russia, and the United States of America. In addition, a number of other countries — Canada, France,India, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom — have sent women into orbit or space on Russian or US missions.

Women in space face many of the same challenges faced by men: physical difficulties posed by non-Earth conditions and psychological stresses of isolation and separation. Scientific studies on female amphibians and non-human mammals generally show no adverse effect from short space missions, although the effect of extended space travel on human female reproduction is not known."

More info here.
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Amazon Prime Air plan.
More info in the Amazon site here.
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SAMOS satellite (Wikipedia entry)

Samos started as part of the WS-117L satellite reconnaissance and protection program of the United States Air Force in 1956. In May 1958 the Department of Defense directed the transfer of the WS-117L program toARPA. Significant parts of the Samos development program were Samos-E (visual reconnaissance), Samos-F (ELINT Ferret reconnaissance), and Samos-H (communications).
More info in the Wikipedia entry here
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First ever reconnaissance picture made by a specialized satellite, depicting Mys Shmidta airfield on 18 August 1960.
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Cape Canaveral Air force Station (Wikipedia entry)

"Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) (known as Cape Kennedy Air Force Station from 1963 to 1973) is an installation of the United States Air Force Space Command's 45th Space Wing.

CCAFS is headquartered at the nearby Patrick Air Force Base, and located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida, CCAFS. The station is the primary launch head of America's Eastern Range with three launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 37B, 40, and 41). Popularly known as "Cape Kennedy" from 1963 to 1973, and as "Cape Canaveral" from 1949 to 1963 and from 1973 to the present, the facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Skid Strip provides a 10,000-foot (3,000 m) runway[4] close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape.


A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCAFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite in 1958, first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. unmanned lunar landing (1966), and first three-man U.S. spacecraft (1968). It was also the launch site for all of the first spacecraft to (separately) fly past each of the planets in the Solar System (1962–1977), the first spacecraft to orbit Mars (1971) and roam its surface (1996), the first American spacecraft to orbit and land on Venus (1978), the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (2004), and to orbit Mercury (2011), and the first spacecraft to leave the Solar System (1977). Portions of the base have been designated a National Historic Landmark for their association with the early years of the American space program."

More info here.
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Download the complete book from this site.
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Whipple Shield (Wikipedia)

The Whipple shield or Whipple bumper, invented by Fred Whipple, is a type of hypervelocity impact shield used to protect manned and unmanned spacecraft from collisions with micrometeoroids and orbital debris whose velocities generally range between 3 and 18 kilometres per second (1.9 and 11.2 mi/s).
More info here.
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Hubertus Strughold (Wikipedia)

"Dr. Hubertus Strughold MD, Ph.D (June 15, 1898 – September 25, 1986) was a German-born physiologist and prominent medical researcher. Beginning in 1935 he served as chief of Aeromedical Research for the German Luftwaffe, holding this position throughout World War II. In 1947 he was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and held a series of high-ranking medical positions in both the US Air Force and NASA.


For his role in pioneering the study of the physical and psychological effects of manned spaceflight he became known as "The Father of Space Medicine". Following his death, Strughold's activities under the Nazis came under greater scrutiny and allegations surrounding his involvement in Nazi-era human experimentation greatly diminished his reputation."

More info here.

Operation Paperclip (Wikipedia)

Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by Special Agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were recruited in post-Nazi Germany and taken to the U.S. for government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. Many were former members, and some were former leaders, of the Nazi Party.

More info here.

From the Collier's magazine dated February 28th, 1953.
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Popular Science July 1959. "How to live in the Moon."


In between finding water and figuring out how to grow crops, adjusting to life on the moon ain't easy, which is why the Martin Company designed a 32-foot lunar simulator to prepare would-be moon settlers for the drastic change in environment. In addition to providing living quarters, the "moon-on-earth" would provide hydroponic gardens, an animal colony, a science laboratory, and tanks of algae that would remove carbon dioxide while producing oxygen. A steel globe would trap the lunar simulator in a near-vacuum sphere to reproduce the moon's lack of atmosphere. Five men would live in the globe for a month, while wearing spacesuits and growing vegetables, so they would be better equipped for the problems of living in on a moon settlement.


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NAR, America's largest and oldest rocketry organization


"The National Association of Rocketry (NAR) is a non-profit tax-exempt scientific organization (IRS EIN 13-6165575) dedicated to consumer safety, youth education, and the advancement of technology in the hobby of spacemodeling (sport rocketry) in the United States. Founded in 1957, the NAR is the oldest and largest spacemodeling organization in the world with over 5900 members and 165 affiliated clubs across the U.S."

More info in the NAR site here.
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History of rocket engines (Wikipedia)

"According to the writings of the Roman Aulus Gellius, in c. 400 BC, a Greek Pythagorean named Archytas, propelled a wooden bird along wires using steam.[41] However, it would not appear to have been powerful enough to take off under its own thrust.

The aeolipile described in the first century BC (often known as Hero's engine) essentially consists of a steam rocket on a bearing. It was created almost two millennia before the Industrial Revolution but the principles behind it were not well understood, and its full potential was not realised for a millennium.


The availability of black powder to propel projectiles was a precursor to the development of the first solid rocket. Ninth Century Chinese Taoist alchemists discovered black powder in a search for the elixir of life; this accidental discovery led to fire arrows which were the first rocket engines to leave the ground."

More info here. 
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RSE Kriens (Wikipedia)

RSE Kriens was a Swiss-developed air defence missile. It never entered service. Kriens stands for the village in the canton of Lucerne Kriens.


From 1959 to 1966 Contraves developed -along with many other Swiss companies - the Kriens drawing on the experience of the guided missile system RSC / D, RSD 58. The missile project was funded by Swiss industry and the federal government, and was developed up to production-ready stage. The first flight was on 23 March 1964.



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Machine to explore Moon (Popular Science July, 1959)

"FIRST EXPLORER of the moon may be a machine. Roaming the crust, it would collect samples of rocks and dust with mechanical fingers, under remote control of spacemen remaining safely within a landed rocket ship. Hughes Aircraft company designers say it could be patterned closely after their Mobot, a mobile mechanical manipulator whose dexterity inspired the idea."



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Shklovsky's "Hollow Phobos" hypothesis

"In the late 1950s and 1960s, the unusual orbital characteristics of Phobos led to speculations that it might be hollow.

Around 1958, Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos's orbital motion, suggested a "thin sheet metal" structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations that Phobos was of artificial origin. Shklovsky based his analysis on estimates of the upper Martian atmosphere's density, and deduced that for the weak braking effect to be able to account for the secular acceleration, Phobos had to be very light—one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) across but less than 6 cm thick. In a February 1960 letter to the journal Astronautics, Fred Singer, then science advisor to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said of Shklovsky's theory:


If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big 'if' lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them."

More info here.

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Alpha Centaury (Wikipedia)

"Alpha Centauri (α Centauri, abbreviated Alf Cen, α Cen) is the closest star system to the Solar System, being 4.37 light-years (1.34 pc) from the Sun. It consists of three stars: Alpha Centauri A (also named Rigil Kentaurus[13]) and Alpha Centauri B, which form the binary star Alpha Centauri AB, and a small and faint red dwarf, Alpha Centauri C (also named Proxima Centauri[13]), which is loosely gravitationally bound and orbiting the other two at a current distance of about 13,000 astronomical units (0.21 ly). To the unaided eye, the two main components appear as a single point of light with an apparent visual magnitude of −0.27, forming the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus and is the third-brightest star in the night sky, outshone only by Sirius and Canopus."

More info here. 

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Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Wikipedia)

"The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was passed as a part of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson's "War on Poverty" and has been the most far-reaching federal legislation affecting education ever passed by the United States Congress. The act was an extensive statute that funded primary and secondary education. It also emphasizes equal access to education and establishes high standards and accountability.

In addition, the bill aimed to shorten the achievement gaps between students by providing each child with fair-equal opportunities to achieve an exceptional education. As mandated in the act, the funds are authorized for professional development, instructional materials, for resources to support educational programs, and for parental involvement promotion.


The act was originally authorized through 1965; however, the government has reauthorized the act every five years since its enactment. The reauthorization of ESEA by President George W. Bush was known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. ESEA was reauthorized on December 10, 2015 as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) by President Barack Obama."

More info here.

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Pioneer P-30 (Wikipedia)


"Pioneer P-30 (also known as Atlas-Able 5A, or Pioneer Y) was intended to be a lunar orbiter probe, but the mission failed shortly after launch on September 25, 1960. The objectives were to place a highly instrumented probe in lunar orbit, to investigate the environment between the Earth and Moon, and to develop technology for controlling and maneuvering spacecraft from Earth. It was equipped to estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles, record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, and study radiation, magnetic fields, and low frequency electromagnetic waves in space. A mid-course propulsion system and injection rocket would have been the first United States self-contained propulsion system capable of operation many months after launch at great distances from Earth and the first U.S. tests of maneuvering a satellite in space."

More info here.

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Timeline of the Space Race (Wikipedia).

"This is a timeline of first achievements in spaceflight from the first intercontinental ballistic missile through the first multinational human-crewed mission—spanning the era of the Space Race. Two days after the United States announced its intention to launch an artificial satellite, on July 31, 1956, the Soviet Union announced its intention to do the same. Sputnik 1 was launched on October 4, 1957, beating the United States and stunning people all over the world."

More info in the Wikipedia entry.

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Mutant (review from Goodreads.com)
by Lewis Padgett,  Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore

After the Blow-Up, the children of a small group of the survivors were born with the capacity for telepathy - to perceive and share the thoughts of others. This minority, once the children became able to communicate their ability, became a feared and quarantined group; "ordinary" humans felt that their privacy had been taken from them and that the mutants, the "Baldies" (so called because of their most distinguishing visible characteristic) by knowing their most secrets could destroy them.

Most of the Baldies submit to the quarantine. They seek peaceful accommodation with the "Normals". A small minority of this minority, however, known as the "Paranoids" sought the destruction of humanity, felt that no co-existence with the majority would ever be possible because their fear and hatred could only lead to a pogrom. 

In four novelettes published in 1943 - The Piper's Son, Beggars in Velvet, The Lion and the Unicorn and Three Blind Mice - Kuttner explored the struggle within and without the community of Baldies, the menace presented to peaceable telepaths by their faction of Paranoids and by non-telepathic humans who feared them. 

Some accommodation seems possible at times, at others it seems chimerical because of the influence of the Paranoids within the community and the hatred for the normals which the Paranoids express. As circumstances move inexorably toward what will be a murderous and devastating confrontation between the two species of humanity, the final novelette, Humpty Dumpty, depicts a possible solutions found by the Baldies. It is a solution shrouded with risk and suspicion which, although offered to humanity may never be accepted, so deeply advanced are strife and suspicion.
"The pogrom might go on until the last Baldie died. But until then, no Baldy would live or die alone. So they waited, together, for the answer man must give."