Filed under: Film,History by Orangemaster @ 9:53 pm
Last year, we told you about the booklet ’50 years of human space flight’ written in English by Steve Korver, with photos by film director René Nuijens who had gone to Russia to gather information on Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. This year marks the 51st anniversary of his famous feat, and the guys put together this film about a man from Belgrade who dreamt of becoming a cosmonaut ever since he was a boy.
And if you like your space fix more modern, you have to see Dutch astronaut André Kuipers’ Flickr photostream. He’s up there right now taking pics almost every day.
The watch Dutch astronaut André Kuipers is currently wearing in space was specially designed and made for him by watchmaker Roland Oostwegel from Heerlen, which is positive news from a city that has had to tear down an entire shopping mall right before Christmas for fear of collapse.
The watch bears the name R.O.1 SPACE Special Edition (pics) and will stay five months in space at the ISS on Kuipers’ wrist. It is the first-ever Dutch watch to go into space. I love how the second watch has a number four that looks like the capital Russian letter ‘d’ (Д).
When Kuipers met Oostwegel he told him about how astronauts lose their sense of time. Oostwegel then decided to create a watch for astronauts to solve this problem, with a mission counter that displays the elapsed mission time in days and weeks, and an extra sub dial for when the space ship has made one full lap around planet Earth in 91 minutes and 59 seconds.
Price for the stainless steel limited edition starts at 4900 euro.
The ESA (European Space Agency) is looking for people to come up with a name for Dutch astronaut André Kuipers’ second space mission. He’s going up to the ISS (International Space Station) for six months this time to do scientific experiments and educational activities with schoolchildren throughout Europe. Oh, and fix things.
His first mission was called DELTA, which stood for Dutch Expedition for Life Science, Technology and Atmospheric Research and also echoed the Delta works in the North Sea. This mission is a European one with the environment, climate and biodiversity as a focus.
Send in your suggestions before 6 pm Dutch time, 30 June 2011 at kuipersmissionname@esa.int. Be sure to read the ESA rules, as only people of ESA Member States can send something in. The winning name will be the official mission name and the winner will get a framed mission logo signed by European astronauts.
I was lucky enough to see a draft of this booklet thanks to former Amsterdam Weekly Editor-in-Chief Steve Korver a few years back and I’m happy it’s finally out. ’50 years of human space flight’ was written in English by Steve Korver, with photos by film director René Nuijens. They went to Russia in search of all kinds of info on Russia’s Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Russia recently celebrated the 50th birthday of this world-changing event on 12 April 2011.
Roosmarijn Vergouw measured out parking spaces in white tape around seed locations on the tarmac of Amsterdam, and lo and behold, people started parking their bikes there.
– The Nuna 5 solar powered car ran into a ditch last Saturday while preparing for the annual World Solar Challenge, writes Telegraaf (Dutch). The student-built car was driving at a speed of 110 kph at the time. Driver Jelle managed to get out unhurt, but several components of the car, including the solar panel, turned out to be damaged. The team from Delft University expects to have repaired the damage before the October 25 start.
See here for a drag race between Nuna 5 and its predecessor, Nuna 4, during happier times.
– Layar (augmented reality) includes an application that will let you spot the houses of the famous called BN’er Verkenner (Celeb Scout). US actor Brad Pitt, enjoying a quite afternoon in his Amsterdam canal house, was its victim in this video posted at Engadget.
Layar is a mobile phone tool that adds a geographic layer to your Android phone’s operating system, letting you check out what’s available near your current location.
– The Netherlands has its own space organisation. The NSO (Netherlands Space Office) was kickstarted last Wednesday by Minister Maria van der Hoeven (Economic Affairs) and astronaut André Kuipers. The NSO is supposed to help design and build a Dutch space programme, according to Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch).
Kuipers was recently selected for a half-year stay at the International Space Station starting December 2010.
André Kuipers has been to space before, but according to De Telegraaf (Dutch) this time the Amsterdam medical doctor is scheduled for a half year stay on the ISS as part of expedition 30/31. He should be launched to the space station in a Soyuz TMA space craft (seats three) in December 2010.
Kuipers went to space before as an ESA astronaut on a 10-day trip in 2004 on top of a Soyuz rocket. He was the second Dutch astronaut, following in the footsteps of Wubbo Ockels. I remember his launch rekindled my interest in space exploration back then, and I am only a jaded 41- year-old. Imagine how Dutch kids will respond to seeing a countryman in space.
In such a densely populated country as the Netherlands, it may appear strange that many private parking spaces are empty during the day, when their owners are off to work. Wannapark.nl tries to fill this ‘gap in the market,’ as the Dutch say, by bringing together the owners of both cars and private parking spaces.
A quick look at the Amsterdam section of the website shows that the recently started company hasn’t attracted many users yet—although to be fair, there is fairly little usable private parking space in Amsterdam. The spaces on offer in the old docklands, on IJburg and in West all seem to be in the parking garages of new buildings, with spaces smack in the city center going for 300 euro a month.
Stolen credit card data for sale in user-friendly web shop
Zembla, the news show of Labour broadcaster VARA, bought stolen credit card data from a Russian website and used those data to purchase goods. Director Ton van der Ham told Webwereld: “The site is hidden behind a login. You can search credit cards by country and card type, and then you select a data package which you can pay for online. It’s almost unreal.”
The program got permission from the credit card holders before making the what Webwereld calls “fraudulent” purchases. Either Webwereld knows something about fraud that I don’t, or it’s trying hard to become the Telegraaf of Dutch tech news sites.
In 2006 investigative news show Zembla took claims of 9/11 conspiracy theorists serious by testing them. It concluded most of the claims were unfounded. The show is also famous for “exposing” (the news was not news to a limited circle) that politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lied in her asylum claim, which led to her resignation from parliament.
Serious satire
Perik is a copywriter who, when he noticed that he could write 2000 words about anything, decided to quit and become a bartender. The writing bug has never left him though, and now he is blogging satirical pieces at Sargasso. And darn it, he is good! Today he caught me unawares with his (fake) report about a banned ad in which fathers are encouraged to spend more quality time with their children. The ad is titled: “Who is this whiny broad anyway?” and in Perik’s world raised a storm of protest from the child protection board, which, as everybody knows, “has been campaigning for a radical feminization of the child rearing domain for almost a century.”
Disclaimer: the entire 24 Oranges editorial team has shared alcoholic beverages with Perik, so our conclusion that he’s a good egg might be somewhat clouded by the aforementioned beverages.
What Dutch space travel would look like
(From a 1983 ad for pot plants.)
Via Trendbeheer. Disclaimer: we’ve also shared alcoholic beverages with Trendbeheer contributor Jaap Verhoeven. At the same parties! What can I say? We like our drinks, and we go to the right parties.
Filed under: Design,History by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm
Illustration: the Buran space shuttle on display at the MAKS air show, 1997. Public domain photo by Kobel.
One of the 10 Soviet space shuttles ever built traveled through the Netherlands last weekend on its way to its final destination in Germany. The shuttle, an atmospheric test model code-named OK-GLI or BTS-02, was shipped from Bahrain to Rotterdam, and from there was moved by river barge over the Rhine to the Technik Museum Speyer in Mannheim, German.
The story of the Soviet space shuttle is one of the most interesting of our time. The Soviets saw the Americans build a space shuttle, but could not figure out what it was for. So they built their own, and found out what NASA was desperately trying to hide: that in terms of effectiveness and launch costs, the shuttle is an inferior solution to current non-reusable launch technology (nowadays NASA shuttles costs USD 1 billion per launch). Astronautix even concludes: “The cost of Buran—14.5 billion rubles, a significant part of the effort to maintain strategic and technical parity with the United States—contributed to the collapse of the Soviet system and the demise of the spacecraft.”
The OK-GLI model was never intended to be launch tested. Instead, it was fitted with jet engines so that it could take off and land on its own, and was used to test atmospheric handling of the Buran shuttles. Later it was used as a demonstration model at airshows. It was bought by an Australian company which wanted to use it for the same purpose, but while the OK-GLI was in transit in Bahrain, its owner went bankrupt and the shuttle was stored for four years in parts at a junkyard.
The re-built shuttle drew crowds on its tour through the country, according to Blik op Nieuws (Dutch). Yesterday it passed Nijmegen, its tail clipped to fit under a bridge filled with onlookers.
News from the tech trenches.
André Kuipers has been to space before, but 
In such a densely populated country as the Netherlands, it may appear strange that many private parking spaces are empty during the day, when their owners are off to work. 
Stolen credit card data for sale in user-friendly web shop
