New Bellows Design
Getting away from the space station for a while and moving on to astronauts, I THOUGHT I'd locked down the "standard" design for my MMM-inspired alterations to the Lanard Ultra Corps spacesuit. But as you can see in this picture, I've discovered a new material to use for the bellows joints that looks better than the ribbed elastic bands that I was using previously. This stuff is a slit tubing sold for the purpose of bundling wires in automotive and electronics applications. It's made of hard plastic, and unfortunately, it isn't very flexible, so these "flex" joints are primarily for show. I cut short lengths, trim them, then overlap two pieces of equal length to create a complete ring that can adjust to fit the joint. These two figures are early efforts, and I hadn't yet tripped to the idea of overlapping two pieces, so some of the joints are open in the back, and some of them have twisted out of shape. Like the elastic bands I was using before, these joints don't work on the upper arms, and the size of tubing that I got was completely too large for the arms on the GI Jane figure on the left. Other sizes are available though.
Type 2 Spacesuit
Major Matt Mason's suit was inspired by a picture of a NASA prototype pressure suit with bellows joints. It was the height of space fashion for it's day. Fact it, the MMM-style suits are my favorites, but I couldn't lay my hands on an unlimited number, and decided to improvise something else. This is my "Type 2" suit, in male and female versions. It took me a while to warm up to these, but they're growing on me, and interestingly enough they have a connection to a real-life-prototype as well. See the next picture.
Suit Comparison
A few weeks ago I stumbled on the web site for the non-profit Mars Society (http://www.marssociety.org) and if you, as a self-respecting Major Matt Mason lover, haven't checked it out, then you're missing something. These guys are playing Matt Mason for big boys, building simulated Mars Bases in some of the Earth's most inhospitable locations, working on equipment and methods that can be applied to a real Mars mission when we go. Interestingly, their two-level habitat design isn't unlike a fully enclosed MMM space station, and they're holding a competition to design a pressurized rover vehicle that is like a space motor-home. They've also been testing some prototype Mars space suits. Below, you'll see an inset from my "type 2" suit picture next to a picture of the real prototype suit. Not dead ringers, but probably as close as Matt's suit was to the real prototype that inspired it. Interestingly enough, not only was the suit put together long before I ever heard of these people, but the shot on the right was taken several weeks before I saw the picture on the right.
Mars ATV Comparison
While we're on the subject of the Mars Society, how likely is it that future astronauts will ride a 4X4 ATV like mine do? Well, on real Mars, perhaps it's unlikely, but on simulated Mars, it's already happening. Again, I didn't trick out my ATV to match theirs, their equipment just happens to match mine!
Space Gun
Of course Matt Mason wasn't just the astronauts or the station, it was his cool gear. In attempting to recapture some of this, I've tried to accessorize my astronauts in the same style, if not always in detail. Sometimes, I've adapted things completely un-Matt-like, such as the ATV. Other times, as you'll see later, I've come up with original gear with no MMM counterpart. At sometimes, with no effort at all, you find a perfect modern counterpart for a piece of MMM gear. Take a look here. On the left is Matt's Gamma Ray Guard. On the right is a 21st Century Toys Arctic TOW anti-tank missile launcher. It makes you wonder if the engineer who designed the real article played with Matt Mason as a kid.
LLUT Briefing
Some cool gear has to be made from scratch, however. This item, the "LLUT" was inspired by the "rickshaw" that was used to transport surface equipment on Apollo 14, which of course, happened some time after MMM's famous lunar missions.
Motor Pool
My astronaut team has a growing motor-pool of vehicles, and you can see them in the next three shots in various combinations for comparison. The newest edition is toy released in conjunction with the "Small Soldiers" movie. Many of these are still piled up at some Toys R Us stores with clearance stickers on them. I got mine for about five dollars. Interestingly enough, this item reuses the molds for the British "Action Man, Moonraker Rover." Only the colors of plastic have been changed. Clearly this vehicle is inspired by the real lunar rover, another item that didn't yet exist when Matt transversed the Moon, but if they were designing him today, doubtless he'd have his own counterpart, and it might look something like this. Certainly that big console with the two levers has a certain MMM quality to it. Just a hint, if you can find one of these, it might look just fine with Captain Laser, or maybe even Matt himself, in the driver's seat.
Moon Sweet Home
I'll close this round of pictures with a couple of "virtual" lunar shots. My long-term intention with these things is to create a series of photo-stories by combining my 1/6th elements digitally, along with real-life space images. Here are a couple of early, crude, efforts in that direction.
All Mattel images and captions are copyright Mattel and used without permission. All other content, including images and editorial, is Copyright © 1997-2023 John Eaton and/or contributors unless otherwise stated. If there are any comments or objections, please contact John Eaton.
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