PIXELS 
5th and Howard, SF
  POSTCARD 

weathervane

±  Roosevelt Island
Tata Innovation Center

Tata Innova­tion Cen­ter on Roose­velt Is­land, de­signed by Weiss/Man­fredi Archi­tec­ture.
Sitting on the East River in New York is a cigarette-shaped island, two miles long and under a quarter-mile wide. Known then as Mason's Island, it was a yellowed blade of ne­glect­ed farms. Today, the island has a new name, where a five-acre plot is home to Cornell Tech Cam­pus, sit­ting among restored woods and wet­lands.


±  New Zealand
cone of Maungawhau (Mt Eden) looking down into the city

Ringed by extinct volcanoes, Auckland looks east over Hauraki Gulf to the horizon.  + Billboard on the way to the airport.
Located in the North Island of New Zea­land, home to the largest Polynesian population in the world, and where the Symonds St Ceme­tery gives context to when this port-of-call was a ‘fledging colonial country’.

±  Brazil
National Museum of Brazil on fire the night of September 2 2018 + skull

National Museum of Brazil vanishing.  + Luzia’ is twelve thousand years old. She is the oldest person in South America, and now has lost 20% of her skull.
 A fire on September 2 2018 gutted the National Museum of Brazil, turning a million art objects into ash and smoke. Gone are col­lec­tions on paleon­tol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, archae­ol­o­gy, and in­dig­e­nous Bra­zil­ian eth­nol­o­gy. Dis­ap­peared is a wing devoted to ancient Egypt, in­clud­ing a throne room. Bendego meteorite pre-inferno Mostly intact is the second largest space rock on Earth. The Bendegó mete­or­ite was discovered in 1784 by a boy in Monte Santo, Bahia. ... Watch a 38-min. documentary from 2019 of the retrieval phase; in Brazilian-Portuguese.


±  Western Australia
Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia + 2016 Supermoon over Perth + Geode from Mammoth Cave

Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia.  + 2016 Super Moon over Perth.  + Geode from Mammoth Cave, a 1,600-ft wide by 98-ft deep lime­stone cavern.
Yagan Square + brick building + wall plaque for J. Crothers Yagan Square honors the fourteen Noongar lan­guage peoples of West­ern Aus­tra­lia.  + Repur­posed building in William St down­town, detail of orig­i­nal façade with a mod­ern top­ping.  + Plaque for J. Crothers Perth, con­struct­ing West­ern Australia since 1896.
detail of carbon fiber outdoor sculpture Spanda, a carbon fiber sculp­ture by Christian de Vietri, can be seen at Elisa­beth Quay on the Swan River.

±  Reno
vintage hot rod in front of Horseshoe Casino + St Francis Hotel (1925) catered to those seeking a divorce

Vintage hot rod cruises N. Virginia St.  + St Francis Hotel (1925) used to be where visitors roomed while seeking a divorce.
The city of Reno in Nevada came into being around 1852 by western-bound settlers chose a spot along the Truckee River, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then, when nearby Virginia City struck silver, someone built a toll bridge across the Truckee River. This new route allowed for an easier to and from the California Trail, and the spot became known as Lake’s Crossing. The First Transcontinental Railroad would make Reno a depot, and the Lincoln Highway system connected the city via automobile with the rest of the United States.
Reno is now a city of casi­nos. Watch six minutes of 1953 in color, featuring neon signs, one-armed ban­dits, and Harold’s Club and the Ship Bar, when the Nevada state speed limit was 25mph.


±  Four Corners
sandstone formations rising high into the air

Spanning the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii ‘valley of the rocks’ is home to Navajo people. Monument Valley is also non-federal terri­tory and a park, where sand­stone for­ma­tions ‘rise into the air’. The entrance by way of Utah, on U.S. Highway 163.

±  Great Barrier Reef

Pages from ‘The Great Bar­rier Reef of Aus­tra­lia’ (1893) by William Saville-Kent.
Found in the Coral Sea off Queensland on the north-east coast of Australia, part of indigenous spirit­ual­i­ty, a built structure, the largest one in the world made by living organisms, this World Heritage site comprises some 900 islands and 2,900+ individual reefs.


±  Osaka
Yodo River courses through the neon night of Osaka

The Sun descends over an 18th-c. roadway to give way to 21st-c. Osaka night, a jumbo colony of joined cities, the ‘kitchen of Japan’, where nine­teen million people call home. The ‘mega­lop­olis of water’ has an under­ground city of ar­cades, cafés, and peo­ple movers to get around.

±  Paris
Notre Dame on fire 2019

The last mass of the day was in session when a fire alarm went off. It was Mon­day during Holy Week 2019; and mass resumed when nothing was found. Thirty minutes later a second fire alarm went off: the attic was on fire. Soon the roof of the world’s most famous cathe­dral, built between 1163-1345, was burn­ing. The spire then snapped and col­lapsed into the inferno. Response arrived, just ‘fifteen to thirty min­utes’ away from the com­plete destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.
An onsite journalist wit­nessed Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, chap­lain to the Paris Fire Brigade, run­ning into the burn­ing church and saving the Crown of Thorns. Bought by Louis IX in 1239, and believed to be the one worn by Jesus Christ.
+
(excerpt) ‘The Hunch­back of Notre Dame’ (1831) by Victor Hugo. ❝He therefore turned to man­kind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tran­quil­li­ty and benev­o­lence. The other stat­ues, those of mon­sters and demons, had no hatred for him—he resem­bled them too close­ly for that. It was rather the rest of man­kind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the mon­sters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would some­times spend whole hours crouched before one of the stat­ues in solitary con­ver­sa­tion with it. If any­one came upon him then he would run away like a lover sur­prised dur­ing a serenade.❞ 1859 architectural model of the roof and spire An 1859 model, made for architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of the spire sitting on the wooden-beamed roof, known to habitués as the ‘forest’.


±  Prague
2015 foto of Charles Bridge

The construction of Charles Bridge in 14th-c. Prague took up 45 years. Built of stone, this span over the Vitava River became, until 1841, the only ‘solid-land’ trade route between east­ern and western Europe.

±  PNG
looking over the Gulf of Papua towards the horizon

Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, looks south­east over the Gulf of Papua to the Coral Sea.
Motuans were the orig­i­nal people. To trade with others in the Gulf of Papua, ex­pe­di­tions of up to 600-men would em­bark on sea voyages.
+
(excerpt) In his auto­biog­ra­phy ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’ (1959), actor Errol Flynn de­scribes sailing to Port Moresby in 1930: ❝We piloted our ship into the rather fine harbor of Port Mores­by. We arrived during the rainy season and the whole area was bril­li­ant green. The region seemed beau­ti­ful to me and I poked around searching its re­sources. About thirty miles from the port the Laloki River flowed through an emerald country­side. I fell in love with it. My partners made their way back to Australia, but I decided to settle there. ... Around me, from Laloki to Port Mores­by, was a territory plentiful with nutmeg, rattan cane, the okari nut, bananas, man­grove, coconuts, and sandalwood. There was fish in the river, and the natives brought food to my door. For a pence or two I could have the fruit of the region.❞

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-¦  January 2022  ¦-


  WHAT HE SAID 
Gary Hustwit quote: I saw Helvetica everywhere [in New York City], and watched how people were interacting with - but not really thinking about - it. People going about their lives, letting a typeface tell them which direction their subway train was headed, where they could park, where the bathroom was, how much to pay for a hot dog. I felt like I’d stumbled onto a secret language.  
  STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN 


a n a l y s t   █   On April 15, 1726, while taking tea in the garden w/ his friend, Issac Newton b.1642 pondered on an apple which had just fallen to the ground. William Stuckeley records how Newton mused:
   █    “Why should that apple al­ways descend per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly to the ground? Why should it not go side­ways, or up­wards? but con­stant­ly to the earth”s centre? As­sured­ly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a draw­ing power in, and the sum of the draw­ing power in the mat­ter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth. There­fore does this apple fall per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws, it must be in pro­por­tion of its quan­tity. There­fore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.”

a n g e l   █   The ancients, even if concerned of this “drawing power” that Newton was to articulate, mocked the gravity throne by continuing to send prayers up to heaven. En­treat­ies in temple script on paper were folded into a lantern, a candle is attached so that heat and smoke from the flame collects inside the lantern -- caus­ing its ascent to gods and god­dess­es.    █    Man­kind eventually followed that lantern, yet the ear­li­est airmen didn’t know to carry oxygen, and re­turned spouting the wildest tales of beings living in the upper air, and among them were four broth­ers, who were curious and would ap­proached w/ whistles and roars and yells, about many subjects, including that con­found­ed new contrivance, a wind tunnel.
   █    Sensing fear in the visitors’ eyes, their thun­der abated. Then Zephros drew even closer and whis­pered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a rea­son for exis­tence, and wheth­er or not it be­comes us to be suit­ed up in turbines, pumps, and such.”    █    Notos spread icicles when parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help w/ my rest­less­ness? and what’s up w/ welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grum­ble rumbled: “Mag­ne­to­sphere con­strains our empire but why? and who are these rocket­men and their aerial ad­ven­tures in guidance and control?”

a v a t a r   █   Then the wind gods would in­var­i­a­bly take their guests on a grand tour. Earth’s at­mo­sphere is sphe­ri­cal and con­tains a precise mix­ture of gases such that oxygen be­comes its mir­ac­u­lous chem­i­cal product. The at­mo­sphere has the same shape as Gaia due to her gra­­vi­ta­tion­al grit, which she be­stows to water and all things living. And just as the sea and moun­tains are deemed sentient so too should Aether be con­sid­ered a be­ing, hav­ing un­der­gone “bio­chemical modifications by liv­ing or­gan­isms” ever since his ab­orig­i­nal form co­a­lesced into a paleo-atmo­sphere. Material enough for mother Earth to lassoo the invisible entity w/ a girdle tight enough to sep­a­rate him into distinct layers and is the main cause of clouds.    █    Ancients can discern this sky god only when he digs into his bag of op­ti­cal tricks and throws mir­ages or scatters light. Aether is des­ign­at­ed the patron deity to life on Gaia, whose exis­tence de­pends on a narrow band of the bottom layer, be­gin­ning at sea level.

a i r m a n   █   Im­ag­i­na­tive proto-aviators studied birds, how they populate the air and go where they will. Wings got built, men got strapped, jumps hap­pened -- all to naught or worse. Leo­nar­do da Vinci b.1452 had sketched out such dreams of levi­ta­tion but his idea, wings that can flap, never left the sketchbook.

⁝   Bird wings are folding fans, able to expand and collapse. Each wing is a web of arm bones, having joints which, by evolutionary decree, have quills on the knuck­les; each quill grasps one feather.

a e r i a l i s t   █   The wind gods liked to play w/ man­kind’s kites and were com­plete­ly en­tranced by paper prayers heaven-bound using only heated air. They then found out that hy­dro­gen, dis­cov­ered c.1780, has levi­ta­tion­al abilities also -- but only in unadulterated form; other­wise, being a gas, it would simply dissipate. Rare and difficult to distill, hydro­gen requires a cham­ber, white-hot iron, running water; and had to wait until a non-porous material to con­tain the new gas had not yet been de­vel­oped. In the in­ter­im, heated air would have to make do for heady in­ven­tors.    █    A ginor­mous pillow, w/ a small open­ing and tied to a large basket, was deemed capa­cious enough that, by tak­ing in a healthy gulp of hot air, the entire con­trap­tion will rise into the air (1783). Then, as the trapped air cools, the hot-air balloon will descend. The first volun­teers chosen to carry out this maid­en flight were a french sheep, duck and rooster.

a c r o b a t   █   Kites were originally devised to bring the way wind into better play. Kites (and smoke) could and were used for military reasons: as a signal, a measurment of dis­tance, to “test the wind”. Dog-earred generals carried mint edi­tions of The Myth of Icarus into battle and tasked military engineers to make accessories to kites so that, adding a pas­sen­ger, the gimmick can be carried upwards.    █    Starting in the late 1850s, the idea of a man in the air, tethered to a kite, got serious attention. Could it be that sending up an en­tire lab was so 1847 al­ready? That was when the first use of a kite to forecast the weather occurred at Kew Ob­ser­va­to­ry, when a “very stable” one was able to support “meteorological instruments at height”. Benjamin Franklin b.1706 had got there first w/ a simpler laboratory: kite, key, lightning storm.
   █    Then the golden age of kiting came to an end around 1910, when the mil­i­tary began to pay visits to the sky, giving notice that the empire of the winds was coming to an end.

a l c h e m i s t   █   Gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive. Adding heat to a mixture of carbon, sulfur and saltpeter (an ef­flor­es­cence mineral found on stones) will cause a flash accompanied by fire that burns off. China’s alchemists had learned how to extract saltpeter, during a medicinal quest to find the elixir of life -- what they got instead “smoke and flames”.
   █    Although the ear­li­est pyrotechnics in the sky were to send signals they were al­so used, in pro­fu­sion, on any occasion for pomp that need­ed a pop.    █    Paper tubes filled w/ confetti and a spoon of gun­powder were then sealed w/ a fuse stick­ing out. The tube is secured to a long stick that acts as a tail, is aimed to­wards the sky -- fire is in­tro­duced to the fuse gets ig­nit­ed. The deto­nation pro­duces a pro­pul­sive force, the fire­work ascends and the con­tents spill out.
   █    In­ge­nui­ty on how the fire­smith fills the tube is what will ha­ppen next.    █    Fire­works are pro­pelled mis­siles guid­ed dur­ing a brief ini­tial phase of pow­ered flight. Each fire­work has a sub­sequent tra­jec­tory that obeys the laws of grav­ity, codified as clas­sic­al mechanics.

a r c h e t y p e    █   When the Second World War end­ed in 1947, pilots from many nations re­turned to the civil­i­an ranks.    █    Some, how­ever, to­geth­er w/ their ground me­chan­ics and radio op­er­a­tors, were eager to go further into the sky, and by the late 1950s heaven was beginning to get crowded.
   █    Gov­ern­ments were wont to fund space ex­plo­ra­tions, but only after the re­main­der of Earth not yet bound by pass­ports -- the north and south poles -- were divvied up. Long­i­tude and latitude deter­mi­na­tions then led to pre­ci­sion map­ping of the world, and in the co-mingling of new dis­ci­plines, rock­et science took off to map all the others.


Nile from outer space

South African National Space Agency

Formed in 2010 to manage sat­el­lites that monitor the con­ti­nent for flooding and fires, pro­vide an earth watch record, play host to the only regional space weather warn­ing center for Africa, and the inheritor to a re­cord­ing sta­tion, the Her­ma­nus Magnetic Ob­ser­va­to­ry, set up to be a geo­mag­net­ic research center and part of a net­work taking meas­ure­ments of the global mag­net­ic field.    ❚ ❚ ❚     Now the station is a part of the site that ad­min­is­ters South Afri­ca’s space pro­gram.


European Space Agency

A com­pact for western Europe after inter­gov­ern­men­tal dis­cus­sions for a cohesive ap­proach to space. Designed for uncrewed mis­sions in 1975, ESA soon enough changed its approach to space science. Today, ESA does so much more than ex­plor­a­tion. There is de­vel­op­ment going on for a space­plane and a project to turn earth-watch data into apps. A sur­vey of one per­cent of the known universe (2019), which will result in a map. What hap­pens when regular and dark mat­ter meet, and how both act, together and sep­ar­ate­ly, when mingled w/ dark energy (2019). A study the Sun up close. Search for life on Mars. Planned mis­sion to Mercury (2025). Several exo-planetary hunt­ing missions. Orig­ins of phos­phor­us. Then a deep dive into an asteroid defense shield. The agency’s major space­port is in French Guiana, where it con­ducts human space­flight, launches Earth observation sat­el­lites, and sends space­probes to explore. Found­ed by ten nations, the European Space Agency now has 22 mem­bers, and a wait­ing list of ± eleven applicants.


国 家 航 天 局

China launched into outer space in 1970 w/ a song. The satellite con­tained a perpetual loop of Dong Fang Hong, a sung eulogy to Mao Zedong, bringing the rev­ol­u­tion to the subhurbs of the solar system.    ❚ ★ ❚     Formed in 1993 from input by four bodies: sys­tems en­gin­eer­ing, space sci­ence, gen­er­al plan­ning, for­eign af­fairs. China’s space pro­gram was made possible be­cause of Hsue-Shen Tsien b.1911, ex­pelled from JPL for political un­cer­tain­ties. Aero­space scientists in Chengdu have shown interest in launching an artificial moon as a fixed sat­el­lite no more than 50 miles wide and 22,000 mi (35,400 km) away. When the re­port­er asked, the de­vel­op­ers of this secondary source of il­lu­mi­na­tion at night promised a “dusk-like glow” that won’t dis­turb nocturnal animal rites. Today, the CHINA NATION­AL SPACE AGENCY has landed on the moon twice -- the first since the Apollo missions. Recently named an as­ter­oid it discovered for Wu Wei­ren (2020), a pioneer of deep space ex­plor­a­tion. Yes­ter­day, China thanked its stars that an out-of-control space­craft, spinning and tumbling going on two years, fi­nal­ly crashed into the south Pacific (2018).
Moon

Mercury

Ελληνικός Διαστημικός Οργανισμός

Experiencing a malleable mo­ment w/ yearnings for a return to Olympus, Greece put away the telescope and announced the cre­a­tion of a    ≡ ≡ ≡    HEL­LEN­IC SPACE CENTER in 2019, in­vit­ing divine mes­seng­ers Her­mes and Iris to issue a di­rec­tive that greek culture plans to again be a par­tic­i­pant in “space events”.



Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ

Vietnam’s interest in space, if any, falls under the pur­view of the ministry of science and tech­nol­o­gy, which has thrown a bu­col­ic blanket over its astro-plans.    ❙ ★ ❙    Back in 1980, the coun­try was proud to have had a viet­naut join a cosmo­naut to pilot Soyuz 37 onto the Sal­yut-6 space station, the first of three such pair­ing of viet- and cosmo- nauts, under a pro­gram from the soviet union for social­ist coun­tries allied to the war­saw pact. Phạm Tuân, born in Quoc Tuan village (1947), flew a jet fight­er in the people’s air force (1965) and died age 32 in a Mig-21 crash.


International Space Station

The era of comfort in space took place silently when the first com­po­nent to a future space sta­tion com­plex was launched (1988), carrying container con­nec­tions for con­tin­gen­cy transfer of water, con­tain­er bags, wipes, “filters”. The space module also carried six nickel-cad­ium bat­ter­ies, two solar arrays, three docking ports. A pres­sur­ized valve unit w/ air ducts, funnel con­tain­ment fil­ters and dust col­lect­ors. Smoke de­tec­tor, gas anal­yz­er, gas masks, port­a­ble fans. The cabin has a pole, hand­rails, hooks, in­stru­ment con­tain­ers. Zarya was the first com­po­nent to ISS, de­signed to be au­ton­o­mous for eight months. More mod­ules then ar­rived to inter­lock and create an ex­po­nen­tial habitat. Fif­teen na­tions and five space age­ncies co­or­di­nate this mis­sion -- Can­a­da, Japan, Rus­sia, United States, the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy -- sign­ing agree­ments cov­er­ing legal, fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions in how the station is util­ized; day to day; traf­fic; crew time. Ser­viced by a team of three robots capable of in­de­pen­dent or con­joined ac­tiv­i­ties. Legacy loos are being re­placed w/ new com­fort stations (2020); a waste man­age­ment sys­tem common for all vehi­cle plat­forms is on the draw­ing table.
ISS flies in front of the Sun.

Indian Space Research Organisation

A moon mission, led by female scientists in 2017, detected “mag­mat­ic water” -- first evidence of h-two-oh. Chandrayaan-1 then had a mishap and crashed, adding a new crater. A second moon mis­sion, having re­leased a land­er which was within a mile from touch­down, sud­den­ly be­came dis­abled from a cyber­attack and ceased func­tion­ing (2019). Re­port­ing to the depart­ment of space, the space pro­gram also develops and deliv­ers sat­el­lite apps for smart phones, includ­ing in car­tog­ra­phy and dedi­cated distance edu­ca­tion.    ❚ ❚ ❚    India’s space program (1969) had humble begin­nings, when iono­sphere sound­ings were be­ing con­duct­ed in Cal­cut­ta (1920s). Today’s sky watch­ers prefer to do so in a theater, watch­ing the latest bolly-fi release.


Zambian Space Programme

Edward Nkoloso was an african grade school teacher tink­er­ing with a catapult capable of send­ing a spaceship car­ry­ing ten or so to Mars.    ❚ ❚ ❚    When Zambia gained in­de­pen­dence in 1964, he was then ap­point­ed liai­son w/ re­gion­al free­dom fight­ers; all the while ­ his space pro­gram going. There is foot­age of his training camp for afro­nauts from 1960. Born a prince of the Bemba tribe, Ed­ward Ma­ku­ka Nko­loso had a mis­sion­ary edu­ca­tion in latin, french and the­ol­o­gy; he died in 1989, age 70.
Canadian Space Agency

Continuing to maintain its air fleet after World War Two, Canada paid attention to the upper atmosphere and in 1962 launched a satellite.    ❚ • ❚    Formed in 1990, the Canadian Space Agency now shares its space knowledge for the “ben­e­fit of can­ad­i­ans and humanity”, and has chal­lenged its youth to submit ideas for “mak­ing space easier and more fun”, w/ the promise to prototype the best entry. There is a trove of footage from a canadian astro­naut training camp.

Royal Canadian Air Force WW-2

Hubble Space Telescope 1990

NASA

As the outcome to World War II turned in their favor, the United States set in motion “oper­a­tion paperclip” to re­trieve nazi rocket tech­nol­o­gy, and came back w/ 100 V-2 rockets, production site draw­ings, and Wernher von Braun b.1912, amenable to con­tin­ue where he had left off. Home­grown rocket science was al­ready hap­pen­ing at the Jet Pro­pul­sion Lab­or­a­to­ry, so Amer­i­ca made plans for a future in space and in 1958 created the NATION­AL AERO­NAU­TICS AND SPACE AD­MIN­IS­TRA­TION.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Seven years later there was an orbiting lab. Then a duo-man program left foot­prints on the Moon (1969). The first un­teth­er­ed spacewalk was in 1984, when astronaut Bruce McCand­less performed free flying 320 feet away from his craft: “... overused lines ‘slipped the sur­ly bonds of Earth’, but when I was free from the shut­tle, they felt ac­cur­ate”. From its in­cep­tion, NASA hired tal­ent, and some of these stor­ies are dramatized in 2017’s Hidden Figures, about three african american female mathe­ma­ti­cians.
Soon attention will be paid to samples brought back from apol­lo asteroid Ben­nu by the Orig­ins Spec­tral In­ter­pre­ta­tion Re­source Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Secur­ity Rego­lith Explor­er (2020). These days NASA has plans for an inter­stel­lar mission to the Alpha Cen­tau­ri system (2017). Elated about the scholarship named for Dr Kath­er­ine Coleman Goble John­son (2018). Perturbed that “poor rec­ord keeping” con­trib­ut­ed to the loss of an Apollo 11 lunar col­lec­tion bag that con­tained lunar dust par­ti­cles (2018). Released a 60-year an­ni­ver­sary video (2018). Es­tab­lished as a civilian space program, Amer­i­ca’s space pro­gram was militarized sixty years later.

Cape Canaveral 1965 Lunar Mobile 1972
Technicians at Goodyear Aircraft Corp work on an inflatable space habitat concept for NASA
Mary Jackson. Judy Sullivan. Betty Skelton. Eleanor Burbidge. Dr Mae C Jemison. Laurel van der Wal. Grace Hopper. Dorothy Vaughan. Judith Love Cohen. Katherine Johnson.

Venus

UK Space Agency

Britain caught the space flu ear­li­er than most, and by 1933 al­ready had an inter­planet­ary society. Post World War Two, re­covered ger­man rocket sci­ence under­went forensics and soon enough test launches were conducted, in 1957 reach­ing an altitude of 125 mi (200 km). Eventually a national space agency was set up in 2010, ab­sorb­ing an ear­lier iteration from 1985.    ❚ ❚ ❚    UKSA offers an apprenticeship pro­gram, is not­ed for sus­tain­a­ble de­vel­op­ment, and now fo­cused on space debris -- an emerg­ing real­ity. A folder on UFOs, “com­prising en­tire­ly of cor­re­spon­dence w/ mem­bers of the public” going back 50 years, is to be re­leased through the royal air force website.



New Zealand Space Agency

❚ ❚ ❚    When it became ap­par­ent their location was be­com­ing an ideal spot for space launches, New Zea­land donned min­is­ter­ial gloves in 2016 to fetch back a suitable space scarf to add to the coun­try’s wardrobe.


宇 宙 航 空 研 究 開 発 機 構

On a hunch, three research labs decided to merge, bringing to­geth­er experience in radio as­tron­omy, the magnetosphere, and x-ray (1955) (1964) (1969). The team went on to found the JAPAN AERO­SPACE EX­PLOR­A­TORY AGENCY in 2003. Where­as it used to send sat­el­lites to watch the earth and report on the trop­i­cal rainfall sea­sons and at­mo­spher­ic dy­nam­ics (1997), JAXA now con­ducts innovative research -- based on their encounter w/ Ryugu in 2019. As Haya­busa-1 was approaching the half-mile wide asteroid the space­craft took a pot­shot (creating a new crater) be­fore its lander board­ed this fly­ing rock. Then it flung samples back to Earth. Pro­ject­ed to hit the ocean off Australia, the envelope, con­tain­ing sam­ples be­twen 10 million and 20 million years old, was re­trieved in the outback (2020).    ❚ • ❚     Japan’s dream of space came from Hideo Ito­ka­wa, who test-launched a small missile in 1955. Grad­u­ate of the imperial uni­ver­sity w/ a major in aero­nautics (1935), Ito­ka­wa was a vis­ion­ary and is grand­pa to Japan’s space program.
Ryugu 2019

Asteroid belt objects Vesta Eros Ida Juno Mathilde Dactyl Ceres


Centre National d'Études Spatiales

When France went over the rub­ble of World War 2, any bal­lis­tic missile, ex­ploded or not, were gingerly handled. Vic­tor­ious though shell-shocked, the nation had once set records for hot-air balloon feats when the 18th-cen­tury was still young, now she sat about to tinker w/ these wea­pons in order to glean aero­dynam­ic achieve­ments from the german school of “rock­et pro­pul­sion and guid­ance”.     ❚ ❙ ❚     Enough inter­est that the NATION­AL CEN­TRE FOR SPACE RE­SEARCH was created in 1961, and gave space medicine a face when astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien was mon­i­tored med­i­cal­ly in 1982. Then military wings sprouted in 2019, when NCSR joined the air force, and is planning to re­lease a trove of UFO files go­ing back to 1954. With a heady mis­sion to trans­pose civ­il­i­za­tion to space, France’s space pro­gram is the largest budg­et­ary contributor to the European Space Agency.

Agentur für Luft-und Raumfahrt

In 1961, a manuscript by Con­rad Haas b.1509 ap­peared, waxing poet­ic of his ex­per­i­ments in cross­ing wea­pon­ry w/ fireworks, what China knew as a “fire lance” he called his “flying jave­lin”. Lab work in ion­o­spher­ic phys­ics, wave pro­pa­ga­tion (U of Graz) and plas­ma physics (U of Inns­bruck) would have in­trigued Haas, an austrian mil­i­tary en­gin­eer from Tran­syl­va­nia.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Seeking a foun­da­tion­al start­ing point, the acad­e­my of sci­ences con­vened, in 1972, the AUS­TRI­AN SPACE AGENCY.


Державне космічне агентство України

By the time H.F. Proskura b.1876 began to specialize in helicopters (1914), a Ukraine space program was already in situ. He was a hy­draul­ic en­gin­eer who built sys­tems for regulating hydro­dynam­ism, and together w/ like-minds launched a missile to the strat­o­sphere in 1937. This feat prompt­ed the re­tooling of an auto­mobile plant into manufac­tur­ing rockets (c.1960s).    ❚ ❚    Today’s NA­TION­AL SPACE AGEN­CY OF UKRAINE (1992) is child to the soviet space program.
Uranus + moons Ariel Titania Oberon Miranda Umbriel

Neptune + moons Nereid Galatea Proteus Triton


Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

19th-century Italy looked at the sky w/ scientific eyes, keeping up a study begun 300 years or more ago. Luigi Gussali b.1885 would go on to propose solar power as a propellant in 1946. Nuclear pow­er would work, Gioulio Go­stan­zi b.1875 had said earlier, in 1914 -- pos­tu­lat­ing on the plights of weight­less­ness, heat death as well as poisonous rays from the Sun.    ❚ ❙ ❚    Today their re­search are a part of the ITAL­IAN SPACE AGENCY, which opened next door to the Vat­i­can in 1988, now studies “habit­able space in­fra­struc­ture” and all things gamma-ray related.



Magyar Űrkutatási Iroda

The ministry of national de­vel­op­ment oversees a civil­ian space pro­gram, w/ aero­space re­search­ers and advisory board (1992).    ❚ ❚ ❚     Then money for the nation’s science sector dried up and has jeo­par­dized the HUN­GAR­IAN SPACE OFFICE.



Роскосмос

The Russian space program has claim to many fathers, some al­ready delving into reactive pro­pul­sion tests when the 20th-cen­tu­ry was yet a babe. Kon­stan­tin Tsiol­kov­sky b.1857 the­or­iz­ed about aeronautics and rocketry in 1929. Fried­rich Zander b.1887 finetuned liquid-fuel research for practical ap­pli­ca­tions. Then a space acad­e­my blos­somed before being folded in­to a clas­si­fied mil­i­tary pro­gram in 1992 -- and ROSCOS­MOS its public face.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Left behind are icon­ic mo­ments from the soviet space program. First wo­man in space Valen­tina Teresh­kova (1963); the cosmo­naut who pre­ced­ed her Yuri Gagarin (1961). Stand­ing on their shoul­ders Alexei Leonov, who made the first space­walk (last­ing 12 min­utes and nine seconds): “I stepped into that void and I didn‘t fall in. I was mes­mer­ised by the stars. They were every­where – up above, down below, to the left, to the right” (1965). The best looking satellite is still the first, Sputnik-1 (1957), a globe w/ four an­ten­nae.
Sputnik-1 1957

Rocket City 1956



Agenţia Spaţialǎ Românǎ

Early 20th-century Romania had enough enthusiasts build­ing and test­ing aero­planes that the na­tion developed five air­craft com­pa­nies into a national in­dus­try.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Com­bin­ing in 1990 to be­come the ROMAN­IAN SPACE AGEN­CY, and tasked w/ space research activ­i­ties and “secur­ity ap­pli­ca­tions”. Member of ESA since 2012.



Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.

By 1907 Germany had al­ready set up an ex­per­i­men­tal aero­dy­nam­ic station (1907). Soon eough at­tract­ing in­ter­est from an in­sti­tute, as­so­ci­a­tion, con­sor­tium and a society.     ❚ ❚ ❚     In­ter­est in space never waned, and in 1989 this pro­duc­tive R&D all came to­gether to form the GER­MAN AERO­SPACE CEN­TER, w/ a cur­rent em­pha­sis on hy­dro­gen as an energy carrier, and research into traffic con­ges­tions.


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  WHAT SHE SAID Mae West quote: His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.  
  ROMANCE COMICS 


♛  EPILOGUE  

Looking back at the Golden Age (which took place on Earth-Two), it has come to light that the biog­ra­phy of Lois Lane, begin­ning in the early 1950s, has prop­er­ly be­longed to the Silver Age.

All along, readers had grown up w/ a golden-age Lois. There was a golden-age Clark; and Super­man too. It turns out there has been – and al­ways has been – some oth­er Lois, who lived on Earth-One, w/ anoth­er Clark and a dif­fer­ent Super­man.

In 1956, fan loyalty was rewarded when DC Comics put out the first issue of SUPERMAN’S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE. Once again, a newer Lois Lane sprang forth, and helped to usher in the Silver Age. This Lois again came fully formed – and a lived-in back­story spooled out. The first two tales, about a witch and a wig, looked for­ward to­wards the ex­pe­ri­men­tal 1960s -- when beauty was re­de­fined, and back­wards, w/ a ginned-up glance at the bat­tle of the sexes, when it was still in black-&-white.

What is left of the original Lois are some stories about the Man of Steel in which she fea­tures prom­i­nent­ly, where she proves her­self an intel­lectual equal of a super man. These historic events em­bark em­bryon­ic­ally from the heart­land of America dur­ing the on­set of World War II. They then roam globally, and extra-globally, only to dis­em­barked at the un­test­ed out­post of the Cold War.

Lois of Earth-Two became marooned until the DC uni­verse took on a re­im­ag­in­ing. By 1978, her story was re­thread­ed in­to the con­tin­uity. Lois mar­ried Clark in the late 1950s, dis­cov­ered his secret identity, went on to new adven­tures -- even after their son was born, pass­ing the mortal coil in 2005, in events occur­ring dur­ing Infinite Crisis. All of this hap­pened be­fore the 21st cen­tury woke up.


I Love Lois

Lois Lane

Working nine to five as a reporter for a city daily must not leave time to do much else. As a single female work­ing and liv­ing alone in Metrop­­lis, how do you find bal­ance in your life?

Lois Lane, Clark Kent and Super­man are the creations of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, two Cleve­land teen­agers nur­tur­ing keen tastes and quick psyches, who com­bined com­ple­men­tary skills to make mani­fest their dream of another world. Invent­ing a city of sky­scrapers where an other­world­ly creature lives and makes its living as a news­paper­man, while woo­ing a wonder­ful woman, and using as his secret iden­tity a coward’s persona. Over­night their comics become a best­seller, star­ring the Man of Tomor­row oppo­site Lois Lane.






The Golden Age 1938-1955 

Lois Lane is already there when Clark Kent arrives on his first day at the Daily Planet, she’s a lonely hearts advice columnist. Clark, a seasoned reporter, gets called in to the editor‘s office and is assigned a new beat. In a supreme act of irony, he’s to cover some­one who has been seen in Metrop­o­lis and word has it a cham­pion of the op­pressed. Proxim­ity to the vibra­tions of an un­known being not­with­standing, Lois soon slips into a vaude­villian vortex. Some­how a das­tard is sure to create chaos, usually a damsel-in-distress epi­sode plays out, acrobatic acts can follow before dis­plays of un­natural skills bring back the normal. This and a secret iden­tity plot to string it all to­gether and tie in­to a bow.

Page after page, the reader gets to know more about a super-being living in Metrop­o­lis, while he him­self is get­ting to know more about Lois -- expos­ing her to the maw of may­hem by his dada duels w/ weird foes. Lois can’t see Clark for the super-simula­crum that he’s hiding be­hind; is drawn to Super­man instead. Clark smiles and winks at the fourth wall, at ease and worldly wise.

Lois and Clark start dating right away, in the first story they put on evening attire and go out on the town. The next week she flies off on assign­ment to a foreign land and, due to mis­adven­ture, ends up blind­folded and stand­ing in front of a firing squad. Back home again, Lois thinks little of drop­ping a sleep­ing pill into Clark’s cock­tail so as to chase a lead and beat him to a scoop. This brazen stunt back­fires when she lands in trouble and, for the very first time, falls out of a window.

But first, she hones in on Clark’s beat by looking up the Man of Mys­tery herself, trying to score an exclusive. Go­ing to a travel­ing circus where he was perfor­ming for charity, an unexpected occur­rence ensures she will not get her scoop. Editor Perry White some­times sends both out together, espe­cially when murder has occurred. On these occa­sions, Lois often ends up solo because Clark can and will dis­appear at the first sign of trouble. One time this hap­pened, she was tied down next to a table saw w/ the on-switch deployed, too an­noyed though not sur­prised w/ Clark to bother about her imminent demise.

Chastened to live anoth­er day, Lois ex­pands her com­fort zone, find­ing it in her­self to bring joy to a thawed cave­man, out of time and grave­ly dis­ori­en­ted. Lois was as one reborn some other time when she ran around w/ a great ape. Through all this, Lois kept up her advice column, where once a grate­ful writer be­queathed a gold mine to her and which, sad­ly, she lost. She then plunged her­self into a murky episode about a fifth colum­nist move­ment in Metrop­o­lis, wad­ing into espio­nage, dis­infor­ma­tion, and sab­otage.

Around this time she meets Lex Luthor. Picking through the day’s press releases, Lois sees a tony and toothy one: Some­one has called a gather­ing of the million­aires of Metrop­o­lis. Intrigued, Lois finds a way into the man­sion and hides behind dra­pe­ries. Eight men enter, followed by their host; Lois pulls out her notepad. Al­to­ge­ther, these men con­trol rail­roads and air­lines, real estate and finan­cial firms. Each in­volved in pro­hi­bition-era rac­kets. One has a pub­lish­ing firm haw­king inspi­ra­tion­al books. Another runs a secret fascist cell. The last to speak turns out to be a com­mon man who had shown up dis­guised in order to give a rant on the wicked­ness of wealth. Lois is taking this all down, fill­ing one comic book page w/ nine long speech balloons. When sud­den­ly Luthor ap­pears w/ a wea­pon and knocks every­one -- in­clud­ing Lois -- out.

By 1943, budding popularity for her charac­ter pro­pels Lois on­to the cover w/ Super­man, gasping as he goes head-to-head with crime’s comedy king, the Prank­ster. Lois is also on the splash page, be­cause she has in­ad­ver­tent­ly wan­dered too close to a giant jack-in-the-box … Then a year later lands her first series, LOIS LANE GIRL REPOR­TER, focus­ing on her exploits with­out Super­man or Clark, which had a thirteen issue run.






The Silver Age   1956-1970 

The winds of change began blowing in the mid-1950s, when DC Comics re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed a dor­mant charac­ter from the past and re- intro­duced Flash, giving him a new back­story and wear­ing a dif­fer­ent cos­tume. Grad­u­al­ly, this new uni­verse fold­ed out­wards and at first divi­ded into two.

In 1956, a seminal tale had taken place on Earth-One, where Barry Allen was work­ing late one stormy night, when a light­ning bolt comes crashing in, strik­ing chem­i­cal vials filled w/ stuff. Bar­ry is knocked out and falls to the floor. Ly­ing in a sus­pi­cious-look­ing soup of labor­a­to­ry juices the entire night, he under­goes a molecular sea change. What had lain on the lab floor that Octo­ber night was a police-lab scien­tist. What woke up the next morn­ing turned out to be an agile Adam – har­bin­ger to a new aeon.

This refashioned “human thun­der­bolt” draws a chalk line at the start­ing point, re­sets the timer to zero, jumps into his cos­tume and takes off. Soon enough he learns of the exis­tence of Earth-Two, and he visits w/ the orig­i­nal Flash, semi-retired but still con­tend­ing w/ super-foes. Overnight, the aggregate number of costumed beings doubled -- then grew, as readers couldn‘t get enough.

The Lois of Earth-One lived a com­pli­cat­ed exis­tence, be­ing rou­tine­ly sub­ject­ed to Imag­i­nary Tales of what-ifs that bedevil story­lines, con­found­ing known facts w/ famil­iar fan­tasy. This Lois had her own title, which ran for 137 issues, end­ing just in time to usher in the Bronze Age, and are known chief­ly as hav­ing im­part­ed a level of light-heart­ed­ness to her life.

In between, Lois left her clas­sic looks be­hind and is shown on a 1968 cover tear­ing down part of her own mast­head con­tain­ing the words "GIRL FRIEND", and throw­ing it to the ground. This was just one step less shock­ing than her get-up: knee-high go-go boots and a rock­ing aqua­net hairdo, declar­ing that she was over the Man of Might. This fit of fem­i­nist zeal sub­si­ded, though, and the des­ig­na­tion re­ap­peared on the next cover. Lois Lane, born on Earth, had up until then led an un­earthly exis­tence, all because she chose to be near the one she loves, and do bat­tle w/ battalions of babes intent on becom­ing the one to make children w/ the alien Adonis.

★   As our story begins, Lois is about twenty-three years old, and Clark is two years older than that.




▶ Champion of the Oppressed
Action Comics №1 - 1938
Lois Lane sprang into life fully formed, along­side the genesis story of Superman. On his first day at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent is smit­ten and begins to court Lois.

When Clark is then assigned to cover a mys­tery man show­ing remark­able poten­tial, Lois is intrigued and goes on a first date to find out more. Twirling about the dance floor, he asks pointedly, “Why is it you always avoid me at the office?”

“Please Clark-! I’ve been scribbling sob stories all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.” Bored and star­ing away, her eyes hap­pen to lock on­to Butch, who’s been star­ing at her for quite some time.

See­ing his move Butch cuts in, then things turn ugly, and Lois gets an ink­ling that Clark may not be a man’s man. When Butch facepalms her date she storms out and calls Clark, for the very first time, “… a spineless, un­bear­able coward!”. Catching up w/ the car that has just abducted her, Superman up­turns the vehicle and catches Lois, for the very first time, as she spills out of the back­seat win­dow. What he does next is famously depicted on the iconic front cover - lifting the car above his head. ... turning his attention back to Lois, she backs away in mild terror until he says, “You needn’t be afraid of me. I won’t harm you.”

Transfixed, she lets the strapping stranger scoop her up into his arms and, leaping high, carry her away. This winning formula provided years of creative chaos as the three main characters circled each other round and round.

This ends the first tale of Lois Lane’s life, and the beginning of her startling adventures to document the existence of this mental marvel and physical wonder, devoted to daring deeds she knows will reshape the destiny of a world.




▶ How Lois Got Her Job
Lois Lane №17 - 1960
(An Untold Story) (Demand Classic)

Every year on the anniversary of her first day to work for him, Perry White has thrown an office party to celebrate. One time he turned sentimental -- opened up: “... When Lois first asked me for a job, I told her I would hire her if she brought me three scoops in three days! She did it ... w/out Superman’s help!”

Picking up the cue, Lois blows out the candles and hands the first slice to Perry. While his mouth is full, she gives her side of the story. On the first day at work Perry had given her a choice of several assignments, she chose the easiest one: securing evidence on a team of safe-crackers.

Dressed as a clean­ing lady, Lois walked into their lair w/ a vacuum clean­er, plugged it in, turned it on. This dis­guise turned up pure gold when a torn-up note was re­trieved, then taped back to­geth­er. Impli­ca­tions were de­duced; arrest war­rants even­tual­ly issued. More cake was passed around.

Her next assign­ment was to secure the first-ever photo­graph of a reclu­sive royal, prone to strong­arm tac­tics to en­sure his pri­vacy -- she comes back w/ the photo. Clark and Jim­my ask for an­oth­er slice -- at the same time.

The guest of honor takes this oppor­tunity to sit down, staring into the cavern now develop­ing in the cake. Her car had un­ex­pec­ted­ly broken down on the third assign­ment, and she ended up walking miles out to now­here in order to inter­view an ar­chae­o­lo­gist who was claiming a new dis­covery. She gets her story, and it’s a doozy but, w/ no easy access back, Lois devises the most inge­nious meth­od known to cor­re­spon­dents worldwide – en­ab­ling her post to reach Perry. It is front page news, and Lois lands her dream job.





▶ Man or Superman?
Superman №17 - 1942
Lois and Clark once teamed up to track down the Talon, titular head to a gang of thieves. She later returned to her desk, think­ing she was go­ing to write up a scoop, only to learn that Clark got there first. Exas­pe­ra­ted, she then asked and he then gave a reason so lame that it was enough to make her wonder if Clark might be Super­man. (There have been many ver­sions of this story since.) Clark is the arche­typal nerd, wear­ing glasses be­cause he really has to -- it’s his secret iden­tity. But how his phys­i­og­no­my didn’t give him away as son of Kryp­ton is one for the books. This instance of will­ful ignor­ance appar­ently is im­pos­sible. Because mental snapshots. In one telling, while at the office a com­mo­tion on the street below draws them to the win­dow -- a neck­lace rob­bery was in pro­gress. She sud­den­ly got a feel­ing she knew what Clark would do next, which was to give a flim­sy ex­cuse and dis­ap­pear, then a min­ute will pass and Super­man should (and will) fly past the win­dow. This quiz­zi­cal look does not go un­noticed by eagle-eyed Clark as he stages a retreat. Chang­ing into his cos­tume he thinks back to the very first time Lois ever did all of her won­der­ing. It had hap­pened one morn­ing when he had flown over the Daily Planet, and she had caught a quick glimpse. Lois was round­ing a corner and be­came aware of his land­ing on the roof of her office build­ing. “… and now he’s dropped out of sight! Good gra­cious! Maybe he works on the Planet staff, under a secret iden­tity!”





▶ Miss Lonelyhearts
Lois Lane №3 - 1958
Lois once went above and beyond her duties as the advice columnist. She had shown up at the eighth floor landing window of the Belvue Apartments, where a despondent man was threatening to jump. Lois climbs out, telling him she too wants to jump, “Er-(gulp!) Do you think you’re the only person in the world w/ a broken heart?” Prompt­ly los­ing her foot­ing, Lois goes over the edge. Man­ages to catch the cor­ner of a elec­tion ban­ner hang­ing be­low. Be­fore it can tear off she has swung into po­si­tion to plum­met through a num­ber of wind­ow awn­ings. Cushioning her fall un­til a fire­man’s net catches her. This viv­id dem­on­stra­tion of fall­ing in love cures the man’s sick heart, so he climbs back in and goes to where Lois is being treat­ed. “You’re won­der­ful, Miss Lane! The next time I com­mit sui­cide, it’s go­ing to be over you!”





▶ School for Scoops
Lois Lane №29 - 1961
Through pluck and per­ser­ve­rance Lois becomes the number one female reporter in the United States! The Uni­ver­sity of Metrop­olis asks her to give a lecture course. Hearing this news, racketeer Nick Roker sends two gun­men to the campus. Because.

Lois proves a preco­cious professor and, w/ the help of Jimmy Olsen, stages re-creations of actual cases. Jimmy walks the class through the first scenario. Drugged by a gang she’s been after, Lois gains conscious­ness to find that she is bound, gagged, inside a tiny base­ment. Some­one behind is about to put a blind­fold on her. At this critical moment, Lois locates the base­ment’s electric meter and mem­orizes its serial number.

This bit of infor­ma­tion helps break the case and gets her a scoop. Before dismiss­ing the class, she hands out wri­ting assign­ments.

The next day students are greeted by a grue­some set piece: Hav­ing once crossed the line w/ racket­eer “Duke” Benson, he has en­ticed her over to his office and there ties her to a chair, plac­ing a bomb beneath the chair before his exit. Ignor­ing the lit fuse, she leans for­ward and nudges the phone off its cradle, picks up a pencil w/ her mouth, and dials 9-1-1, ... in the time it takes for her to grade this sec­ond assign­ment, Lois has deduced that two are not written by journal­ism students.

Think­ing to instruct her class by treat­ing this develop­ment as a case study, she outs them on­ly to real­ize too late they were sent to off her. Lois’s quick think­ing dis­tracts them long enough for Jim­my’s signal-watch to sum­mon Super­man, who makes a brief cameo at the very end.





▶ Lois’s College Scoops
Lois Lane №55 - 1965
(An Untold Tale)

One time, Lois took Jimmy Olsen and Super­man to her college re­union. There she grew nostalgic and, picking up a school scrap­book, leafed through to find a clip­ping of her first scoop for the Raleigh Review. It was an im­possible first assign­ment: to join an all-male only fenc­ing team and write about the expe­rience. The fenc­ing captain, who was a good sport and will­ing to go along, gives Lois a week to practise before they were to meet in a bout.

Through diligence and sheer love-of-report­ing, she out­fences the cap­tain, land­ing Lois her very first scoop.

Then she puts down her cup of punch and begins to leaf through a second scrap­book, lo­cat­ing a clip­ping of her first-hand ac­count of dis­cov­er­ing a new comet – by fluke, dur­ing a night at the Small­ville ob­ser­va­tory, where she was using the tele­scope to write a paper for astronomy class.

The last page held a tat­tered clip­ping of her strang­est scoop. Tak­ing a solo field trip for biol­ogy class, Lois had stum­bled across – and captured on film – a live pter­an­don and a liv­ing sabre-tooth. Her biolo­gy teac­her is wowed. “Those pre­historic crea­tures van­ished with­out a trace, Lois! But thanks to the movies you took, we know exactly how they looked and acted!”





▶ How Clark Kent First Met Lois Lane  (Bonus Tale)
Adventure Comics №128 - 1948
(An Exclusive Adventure of Superboy)

While still in high school, Clark receives a letter from the Daily Planet:  Clark Kent, 713 Main Street. Con­grat­u­la­tions! You are one of the two winners of our an­nual con­test to hon­or the best school news­paper re­por­ters. Your prize is a free-trip to Me­trop­o­lis, where you will be al­lowed to work as cub re­por­ter for one week. 

Overjoyed and full of bonhomie, Clark shows up and is introduced to Lois Lane, the other winner; he takes an instant shine to her. The editor tries to break this spell by assign­ing a competition to see who can bring in the best story of the day, with the winner getting a front page byline! Lois suggests a side bet to Clark, “The loser treats the winner to an ice cream sundae?”

“I never bet … but I’ll make an excep­tion in your case!” After handshakes, Lois ventures out and, based on a hunch, stumbles into criminal activity, resulting in being tied up and about to meet her end – Superboy arrives and saves the day. After he has dispatched her attackers, this unknown being glides over and unties Lois. On an impulse she jumps into his arms and asks to be carried away from the scene, a request the Boy of Tomor­row was fated to grant. She later on wins the compe­tition (Clark has been busy else­where) and, after work, he takes her to a soda fountain and pays his bet. They spend the week chas­ing stories, then it’s time to wave good­bye to Lois from a train plat­form, wondering if he’ll ever cross paths w/ her again.


|  NOTES

[1]
BASED ON reports from, among others, Tricia Annis, Tim Hanley, Steven Thompson, and Internet searches.
[2]
BACK COVER AD – The back cover ad for Action Comics №1 was bought by the Johnson Smith & Company in Detroit, Michigan. They were purveyors of, among other things:
- pocket radios - midget radios - midget pocket radios - magic radios - crystal radios - radio & television books - experiment sets - wireless transmittals - telegraph sets - electric phones - electric baseballs - world mikes (a microphone) - deluxe microphones - big entertainers (an air mattress) - Stinson Reliant giant flying planes - all-metal model airplanes - wigs (blond only) - yacht caps - live chameleons - x-ray glasses - booklets on hypnotism, learning to dance, learning to tap dance, ventriloquism, and ju-jitsu - whoopee cushions - joy bussers - rings - luminous photos - luminous paints - movie projectors - telescopes - field glasses - world's smallest candid cameras - bull dog fish hooks - and Japanese rose bushes.


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  PIXELS 
5th and Howard, SF
  POSTCARD 

weathervane

±  Roosevelt Island
Tata Innovation Center

Tata Innova­tion Cen­ter on Roose­velt Is­land, de­signed by Weiss/Man­fredi Archi­tec­ture.
Sitting on the East River in New York is a cigarette-shaped island, two miles long and under a quarter-mile wide. Known then as Mason's Island, it was a yellowed blade of ne­glect­ed farms. Today, the island has a new name, where a five-acre plot is home to Cornell Tech Cam­pus, sit­ting among restored woods and wet­lands.


±  New Zealand
cone of Maungawhau (Mt Eden) looking down into the city

Ringed by extinct volcanoes, Auckland looks east over Hauraki Gulf to the horizon.  + Billboard on the way to the airport.
Located in the North Island of New Zea­land, home to the largest Polynesian population in the world, and where the Symonds St Ceme­tery gives context to when this port-of-call was a ‘fledging colonial country’.

±  Brazil
National Museum of Brazil on fire the night of September 2 2018 + skull

National Museum of Brazil vanishing.  + Luzia’ is twelve thousand years old. She is the oldest person in South America, and now has lost 20% of her skull.
 A fire on September 2 2018 gutted the National Museum of Brazil, turning a million art objects into ash and smoke. Gone are col­lec­tions on paleon­tol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, archae­ol­o­gy, and in­dig­e­nous Bra­zil­ian eth­nol­o­gy. Dis­ap­peared is a wing devoted to ancient Egypt, in­clud­ing a throne room. Bendego meteorite pre-inferno Mostly intact is the second largest space rock on Earth. The Bendegó mete­or­ite was discovered in 1784 by a boy in Monte Santo, Bahia. ... Watch a 38-min. documentary from 2019 of the retrieval phase; in Brazilian-Portuguese.


±  Western Australia
Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia + 2016 Supermoon over Perth + Geode from Mammoth Cave

Aerial view of the coast to Western Australia.  + 2016 Super Moon over Perth.  + Geode from Mammoth Cave, a 1,600-ft wide by 98-ft deep lime­stone cavern.
Yagan Square + brick building + wall plaque for J. Crothers Yagan Square honors the fourteen Noongar lan­guage peoples of West­ern Aus­tra­lia.  + Repur­posed building in William St down­town, detail of orig­i­nal façade with a mod­ern top­ping.  + Plaque for J. Crothers Perth, con­struct­ing West­ern Australia since 1896.
detail of carbon fiber outdoor sculpture Spanda, a carbon fiber sculp­ture by Christian de Vietri, can be seen at Elisa­beth Quay on the Swan River.

±  Reno
vintage hot rod in front of Horseshoe Casino + St Francis Hotel (1925) catered to those seeking a divorce

Vintage hot rod cruises N. Virginia St.  + St Francis Hotel (1925) used to be where visitors roomed while seeking a divorce.
The city of Reno in Nevada came into being around 1852 by western-bound settlers chose a spot along the Truckee River, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Then, when nearby Virginia City struck silver, someone built a toll bridge across the Truckee River. This new route allowed for an easier to and from the California Trail, and the spot became known as Lake’s Crossing. The First Transcontinental Railroad would make Reno a depot, and the Lincoln Highway system connected the city via automobile with the rest of the United States.
Reno is now a city of casi­nos. Watch six minutes of 1953 in color, featuring neon signs, one-armed ban­dits, and Harold’s Club and the Ship Bar, when the Nevada state speed limit was 25mph.


±  Four Corners
sandstone formations rising high into the air

Spanning the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii ‘valley of the rocks’ is home to Navajo people. Monument Valley is also non-federal terri­tory and a park, where sand­stone for­ma­tions ‘rise into the air’. The entrance by way of Utah, on U.S. Highway 163.

±  Great Barrier Reef

Pages from ‘The Great Bar­rier Reef of Aus­tra­lia’ (1893) by William Saville-Kent.
Found in the Coral Sea off Queensland on the north-east coast of Australia, part of indigenous spirit­ual­i­ty, a built structure, the largest one in the world made by living organisms, this World Heritage site comprises some 900 islands and 2,900+ individual reefs.


±  Osaka
Yodo River courses through the neon night of Osaka

The Sun descends over an 18th-c. roadway to give way to 21st-c. Osaka night, a jumbo colony of joined cities, the ‘kitchen of Japan’, where nine­teen million people call home. The ‘mega­lop­olis of water’ has an under­ground city of ar­cades, cafés, and peo­ple movers to get around.

±  Paris
Notre Dame on fire 2019

The last mass of the day was in session when a fire alarm went off. It was Mon­day during Holy Week 2019; and mass resumed when nothing was found. Thirty minutes later a second fire alarm went off: the attic was on fire. Soon the roof of the world’s most famous cathe­dral, built between 1163-1345, was burn­ing. The spire then snapped and col­lapsed into the inferno. Response arrived, just ‘fifteen to thirty min­utes’ away from the com­plete destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.
An onsite journalist wit­nessed Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, chap­lain to the Paris Fire Brigade, run­ning into the burn­ing church and saving the Crown of Thorns. Bought by Louis IX in 1239, and believed to be the one worn by Jesus Christ.
+
(excerpt) ‘The Hunch­back of Notre Dame’ (1831) by Victor Hugo. ❝He therefore turned to man­kind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tran­quil­li­ty and benev­o­lence. The other stat­ues, those of mon­sters and demons, had no hatred for him—he resem­bled them too close­ly for that. It was rather the rest of man­kind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the mon­sters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would some­times spend whole hours crouched before one of the stat­ues in solitary con­ver­sa­tion with it. If any­one came upon him then he would run away like a lover sur­prised dur­ing a serenade.❞ 1859 architectural model of the roof and spire An 1859 model, made for architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, of the spire sitting on the wooden-beamed roof, known to habitués as the ‘forest’.


±  Prague
2015 foto of Charles Bridge

The construction of Charles Bridge in 14th-c. Prague took up 45 years. Built of stone, this span over the Vitava River became, until 1841, the only ‘solid-land’ trade route between east­ern and western Europe.

±  PNG
looking over the Gulf of Papua towards the horizon

Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, looks south­east over the Gulf of Papua to the Coral Sea.
Motuans were the orig­i­nal people. To trade with others in the Gulf of Papua, ex­pe­di­tions of up to 600-men would em­bark on sea voyages.
+
(excerpt) In his auto­biog­ra­phy ‘My Wicked, Wicked Ways’ (1959), actor Errol Flynn de­scribes sailing to Port Moresby in 1930: ❝We piloted our ship into the rather fine harbor of Port Mores­by. We arrived during the rainy season and the whole area was bril­li­ant green. The region seemed beau­ti­ful to me and I poked around searching its re­sources. About thirty miles from the port the Laloki River flowed through an emerald country­side. I fell in love with it. My partners made their way back to Australia, but I decided to settle there. ... Around me, from Laloki to Port Mores­by, was a territory plentiful with nutmeg, rattan cane, the okari nut, bananas, man­grove, coconuts, and sandalwood. There was fish in the river, and the natives brought food to my door. For a pence or two I could have the fruit of the region.❞

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-|  January 2022  |-

  STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN 


a n a l y s t   █   On April 15, 1726, while taking tea in the garden w/ his friend, Issac Newton b.1642 pondered on an apple which had just fallen to the ground. William Stuckeley records how Newton mused:
   █    “Why should that apple al­ways descend per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly to the ground? Why should it not go side­ways, or up­wards? but con­stant­ly to the earth”s centre? As­sured­ly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a draw­ing power in, and the sum of the draw­ing power in the mat­ter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth. There­fore does this apple fall per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws, it must be in pro­por­tion of its quan­tity. There­fore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.”

a n g e l   █   The ancients, even if concerned of this “drawing power” that Newton was to articulate, mocked the gravity throne by continuing to send prayers up to heaven. En­treat­ies in temple script on paper were folded into a lantern, a candle is attached so that heat and smoke from the flame collects inside the lantern -- caus­ing its ascent to gods and god­dess­es.    █    Man­kind eventually followed that lantern, yet the ear­li­est airmen didn’t know to carry oxygen, and re­turned spouting the wildest tales of beings living in the upper air, and among them were four broth­ers, who were curious and would ap­proached w/ whistles and roars and yells, about many subjects, including that con­found­ed new contrivance, a wind tunnel.
   █    Sensing fear in the visitors’ eyes, their thun­der abated. Then Zephros drew even closer and whis­pered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a rea­son for exis­tence, and wheth­er or not it be­comes us to be suit­ed up in turbines, pumps, and such.”    █    Notos spread icicles when parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help w/ my rest­less­ness? and what’s up w/ welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grum­ble rumbled: “Mag­ne­to­sphere con­strains our empire but why? and who are these rocket­men and their aerial ad­ven­tures in guidance and control?”

a v a t a r   █   Then the wind gods would in­var­i­a­bly take their guests on a grand tour. Earth’s at­mo­sphere is sphe­ri­cal and con­tains a precise mix­ture of gases such that oxygen be­comes its mir­ac­u­lous chem­i­cal product. The at­mo­sphere has the same shape as Gaia due to her gra­­vi­ta­tion­al grit, which she be­stows to water and all things living. And just as the sea and moun­tains are deemed sentient so too should Aether be con­sid­ered a be­ing, hav­ing un­der­gone “bio­chemical modifications by liv­ing or­gan­isms” ever since his ab­orig­i­nal form co­a­lesced into a paleo-atmo­sphere. Material enough for mother Earth to lassoo the invisible entity w/ a girdle tight enough to sep­a­rate him into distinct layers and is the main cause of clouds.    █    Ancients can discern this sky god only when he digs into his bag of op­ti­cal tricks and throws mir­ages or scatters light. Aether is des­ign­at­ed the patron deity to life on Gaia, whose exis­tence de­pends on a narrow band of the bottom layer, be­gin­ning at sea level.

a i r m a n   █   Im­ag­i­na­tive proto-aviators studied birds, how they populate the air and go where they will. Wings got built, men got strapped, jumps hap­pened -- all to naught or worse. Leo­nar­do da Vinci b.1452 had sketched out such dreams of levi­ta­tion but his idea, wings that can flap, never left the sketchbook.

⁝   Bird wings are folding fans, able to expand and collapse. Each wing is a web of arm bones, having joints which, by evolutionary decree, have quills on the knuck­les; each quill grasps one feather.

a e r i a l i s t   █   The wind gods liked to play w/ man­kind’s kites and were com­plete­ly en­tranced by paper prayers heaven-bound using only heated air. They then found out that hy­dro­gen, dis­cov­ered c.1780, has levi­ta­tion­al abilities also -- but only in unadulterated form; other­wise, being a gas, it would simply dissipate. Rare and difficult to distill, hydro­gen requires a cham­ber, white-hot iron, running water; and had to wait until a non-porous material to con­tain the new gas had not yet been de­vel­oped. In the in­ter­im, heated air would have to make do for heady in­ven­tors.    █    A ginor­mous pillow, w/ a small open­ing and tied to a large basket, was deemed capa­cious enough that, by tak­ing in a healthy gulp of hot air, the entire con­trap­tion will rise into the air (1783). Then, as the trapped air cools, the hot-air balloon will descend. The first volun­teers chosen to carry out this maid­en flight were a french sheep, duck and rooster.

a c r o b a t   █   Kites were originally devised to bring the way wind into better play. Kites (and smoke) could and were used for military reasons: as a signal, a measurment of dis­tance, to “test the wind”. Dog-earred generals carried mint edi­tions of The Myth of Icarus into battle and tasked military engineers to make accessories to kites so that, adding a pas­sen­ger, the gimmick can be carried upwards.    █    Starting in the late 1850s, the idea of a man in the air, tethered to a kite, got serious attention. Could it be that sending up an en­tire lab was so 1847 al­ready? That was when the first use of a kite to forecast the weather occurred at Kew Ob­ser­va­to­ry, when a “very stable” one was able to support “meteorological instruments at height”. Benjamin Franklin b.1706 had got there first w/ a simpler laboratory: kite, key, lightning storm.
   █    Then the golden age of kiting came to an end around 1910, when the mil­i­tary began to pay visits to the sky, giving notice that the empire of the winds was coming to an end.

a l c h e m i s t   █   Gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive. Adding heat to a mixture of carbon, sulfur and saltpeter (an ef­flor­es­cence mineral found on stones) will cause a flash accompanied by fire that burns off. China’s alchemists had learned how to extract saltpeter, during a medicinal quest to find the elixir of life -- what they got instead “smoke and flames”.
   █    Although the ear­li­est pyrotechnics in the sky were to send signals they were al­so used, in pro­fu­sion, on any occasion for pomp that need­ed a pop.    █    Paper tubes filled w/ confetti and a spoon of gun­powder were then sealed w/ a fuse stick­ing out. The tube is secured to a long stick that acts as a tail, is aimed to­wards the sky -- fire is in­tro­duced to the fuse gets ig­nit­ed. The deto­nation pro­duces a pro­pul­sive force, the fire­work ascends and the con­tents spill out.
   █    In­ge­nui­ty on how the fire­smith fills the tube is what will ha­ppen next.    █    Fire­works are pro­pelled mis­siles guid­ed dur­ing a brief ini­tial phase of pow­ered flight. Each fire­work has a sub­sequent tra­jec­tory that obeys the laws of grav­ity, codified as clas­sic­al mechanics.

a r c h e t y p e    █   When the Second World War end­ed in 1947, pilots from many nations re­turned to the civil­i­an ranks.    █    Some, how­ever, to­geth­er w/ their ground me­chan­ics and radio op­er­a­tors, were eager to go further into the sky, and by the late 1950s heaven was beginning to get crowded.
   █    Gov­ern­ments were wont to fund space ex­plo­ra­tions, but only after the re­main­der of Earth not yet bound by pass­ports -- the north and south poles -- were divvied up. Long­i­tude and latitude deter­mi­na­tions then led to pre­ci­sion map­ping of the world, and in the co-mingling of new dis­ci­plines, rock­et science took off to map all the others.


Nile from outer space

South African National Space Agency

Formed in 2010 to manage sat­el­lites that monitor the con­ti­nent for flooding and fires, pro­vide an earth watch record, play host to the only regional space weather warn­ing center for Africa, and the inheritor to a re­cord­ing sta­tion, the Her­ma­nus Magnetic Ob­ser­va­to­ry, set up to be a geo­mag­net­ic research center and part of a net­work taking meas­ure­ments of the global mag­net­ic field.    ❚ ❚ ❚     Now the station is a part of the site that ad­min­is­ters South Afri­ca’s space pro­gram.


European Space Agency

A com­pact for western Europe after inter­gov­ern­men­tal dis­cus­sions for a cohesive ap­proach to space. Designed for uncrewed mis­sions in 1975, ESA soon enough changed its approach to space science. Today, ESA does so much more than ex­plor­a­tion. There is de­vel­op­ment going on for a space­plane and a project to turn earth-watch data into apps. A sur­vey of one per­cent of the known universe (2019), which will result in a map. What hap­pens when regular and dark mat­ter meet, and how both act, together and sep­ar­ate­ly, when mingled w/ dark energy (2019). A study the Sun up close. Search for life on Mars. Planned mis­sion to Mercury (2025). Several exo-planetary hunt­ing missions. Orig­ins of phos­phor­us. Then a deep dive into an asteroid defense shield. The agency’s major space­port is in French Guiana, where it con­ducts human space­flight, launches Earth observation sat­el­lites, and sends space­probes to explore. Found­ed by ten nations, the European Space Agency now has 22 mem­bers, and a wait­ing list of ± eleven applicants.


国 家 航 天 局

China launched into outer space in 1970 w/ a song. The satellite con­tained a perpetual loop of Dong Fang Hong, a sung eulogy to Mao Zedong, bringing the rev­ol­u­tion to the subhurbs of the solar system.    ❚ ★ ❚     Formed in 1993 from input by four bodies: sys­tems en­gin­eer­ing, space sci­ence, gen­er­al plan­ning, for­eign af­fairs. China’s space pro­gram was made possible be­cause of Hsue-Shen Tsien b.1911, ex­pelled from JPL for political un­cer­tain­ties. Aero­space scientists in Chengdu have shown interest in launching an artificial moon as a fixed sat­el­lite no more than 50 miles wide and 22,000 mi (35,400 km) away. When the re­port­er asked, the de­vel­op­ers of this secondary source of il­lu­mi­na­tion at night promised a “dusk-like glow” that won’t dis­turb nocturnal animal rites. Today, the CHINA NATION­AL SPACE AGENCY has landed on the moon twice -- the first since the Apollo missions. Recently named an as­ter­oid it discovered for Wu Wei­ren (2020), a pioneer of deep space ex­plor­a­tion. Yes­ter­day, China thanked its stars that an out-of-control space­craft, spinning and tumbling going on two years, fi­nal­ly crashed into the south Pacific (2018).
Moon

Mercury

Ελληνικός Διαστημικός Οργανισμός

Experiencing a malleable mo­ment w/ yearnings for a return to Olympus, Greece put away the telescope and announced the cre­a­tion of a    ≡ ≡ ≡    HEL­LEN­IC SPACE CENTER in 2019, in­vit­ing divine mes­seng­ers Her­mes and Iris to issue a di­rec­tive that greek culture plans to again be a par­tic­i­pant in “space events”.



Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ

Vietnam’s interest in space, if any, falls under the pur­view of the ministry of science and tech­nol­o­gy, which has thrown a bu­col­ic blanket over its astro-plans.    ❙ ★ ❙    Back in 1980, the coun­try was proud to have had a viet­naut join a cosmo­naut to pilot Soyuz 37 onto the Sal­yut-6 space station, the first of three such pair­ing of viet- and cosmo- nauts, under a pro­gram from the soviet union for social­ist coun­tries allied to the war­saw pact. Phạm Tuân, born in Quoc Tuan village (1947), flew a jet fight­er in the people’s air force (1965) and died age 32 in a Mig-21 crash.


International Space Station

The era of comfort in space took place silently when the first com­po­nent to a future space sta­tion com­plex was launched (1988), carrying container con­nec­tions for con­tin­gen­cy transfer of water, con­tain­er bags, wipes, “filters”. The space module also carried six nickel-cad­ium bat­ter­ies, two solar arrays, three docking ports. A pres­sur­ized valve unit w/ air ducts, funnel con­tain­ment fil­ters and dust col­lect­ors. Smoke de­tec­tor, gas anal­yz­er, gas masks, port­a­ble fans. The cabin has a pole, hand­rails, hooks, in­stru­ment con­tain­ers. Zarya was the first com­po­nent to ISS, de­signed to be au­ton­o­mous for eight months. More mod­ules then ar­rived to inter­lock and create an ex­po­nen­tial habitat. Fif­teen na­tions and five space age­ncies co­or­di­nate this mis­sion -- Can­a­da, Japan, Rus­sia, United States, the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy -- sign­ing agree­ments cov­er­ing legal, fi­nan­cial and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions in how the station is util­ized; day to day; traf­fic; crew time. Ser­viced by a team of three robots capable of in­de­pen­dent or con­joined ac­tiv­i­ties. Legacy loos are being re­placed w/ new com­fort stations (2020); a waste man­age­ment sys­tem common for all vehi­cle plat­forms is on the draw­ing table.
ISS flies in front of the Sun.

Indian Space Research Organisation

A moon mission, led by female scientists in 2017, detected “mag­mat­ic water” -- first evidence of h-two-oh. Chandrayaan-1 then had a mishap and crashed, adding a new crater. A second moon mis­sion, having re­leased a land­er which was within a mile from touch­down, sud­den­ly be­came dis­abled from a cyber­attack and ceased func­tion­ing (2019). Re­port­ing to the depart­ment of space, the space pro­gram also develops and deliv­ers sat­el­lite apps for smart phones, includ­ing in car­tog­ra­phy and dedi­cated distance edu­ca­tion.    ❚ ❚ ❚    India’s space program (1969) had humble begin­nings, when iono­sphere sound­ings were be­ing con­duct­ed in Cal­cut­ta (1920s). Today’s sky watch­ers prefer to do so in a theater, watch­ing the latest bolly-fi release.




Zambian Space Programme

Edward Nkoloso was an african grade school teacher tink­er­ing with a catapult capable of send­ing a spaceship car­ry­ing ten or so to Mars.    ❚ ❚ ❚    When Zambia gained in­de­pen­dence in 1964, he was then ap­point­ed liai­son w/ re­gion­al free­dom fight­ers; all the while ­ his space pro­gram going. There is foot­age of his training camp for afro­nauts from 1960. Born a prince of the Bemba tribe, Ed­ward Ma­ku­ka Nko­loso had a mis­sion­ary edu­ca­tion in latin, french and the­ol­o­gy; he died in 1989, age 70.
Canadian Space Agency

Continuing to maintain its air fleet after World War Two, Canada paid attention to the upper atmosphere and in 1962 launched a satellite.    ❚ • ❚    Formed in 1990, the Canadian Space Agency now shares its space knowledge for the “ben­e­fit of can­ad­i­ans and humanity”, and has chal­lenged its youth to submit ideas for “mak­ing space easier and more fun”, w/ the promise to prototype the best entry. There is a trove of footage from a canadian astro­naut training camp.

Royal Canadian Air Force WW-2

Hubble Space Telescope 1990

NASA

As the outcome to World War II turned in their favor, the United States set in motion “oper­a­tion paperclip” to re­trieve nazi rocket tech­nol­o­gy, and came back w/ 100 V-2 rockets, production site draw­ings, and Wernher von Braun b.1912, amenable to con­tin­ue where he had left off. Home­grown rocket science was al­ready hap­pen­ing at the Jet Pro­pul­sion Lab­or­a­to­ry, so Amer­i­ca made plans for a future in space and in 1958 created the NATION­AL AERO­NAU­TICS AND SPACE AD­MIN­IS­TRA­TION.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Seven years later there was an orbiting lab. Then a duo-man program left foot­prints on the Moon (1969). The first un­teth­er­ed spacewalk was in 1984, when astronaut Bruce McCand­less performed free flying 320 feet away from his craft: “... overused lines ‘slipped the sur­ly bonds of Earth’, but when I was free from the shut­tle, they felt ac­cur­ate”. From its in­cep­tion, NASA hired tal­ent, and some of these stor­ies are dramatized in 2017’s Hidden Figures, about three african american female mathe­ma­ti­cians.
Soon attention will be paid to samples brought back from apol­lo asteroid Ben­nu by the Orig­ins Spec­tral In­ter­pre­ta­tion Re­source Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Secur­ity Rego­lith Explor­er (2020). These days NASA has plans for an inter­stel­lar mission to the Alpha Cen­tau­ri system (2017). Elated about the scholarship named for Dr Kath­er­ine Coleman Goble John­son (2018). Perturbed that “poor rec­ord keeping” con­trib­ut­ed to the loss of an Apollo 11 lunar col­lec­tion bag that con­tained lunar dust par­ti­cles (2018). Released a 60-year an­ni­ver­sary video (2018). Es­tab­lished as a civilian space program, Amer­i­ca’s space pro­gram was militarized sixty years later.

Cape Canaveral 1965 Lunar Mobile 1972
Technicians at Goodyear Aircraft Corp work on an inflatable space habitat concept for NASA
Mary Jackson. Judy Sullivan. Betty Skelton. Eleanor Burbidge. Dr Mae C Jemison. Laurel van der Wal. Grace Hopper. Dorothy Vaughan. Judith Love Cohen. Katherine Johnson.

Venus

UK Space Agency

Britain caught the space flu ear­li­er than most, and by 1933 al­ready had an inter­planet­ary society. Post World War Two, re­covered ger­man rocket sci­ence under­went forensics and soon enough test launches were conducted, in 1957 reach­ing an altitude of 125 mi (200 km). Eventually a national space agency was set up in 2010, ab­sorb­ing an ear­lier iteration from 1985.    ❚ ❚ ❚    UKSA offers an apprenticeship pro­gram, is not­ed for sus­tain­a­ble de­vel­op­ment, and now fo­cused on space debris -- an emerg­ing real­ity. A folder on UFOs, “com­prising en­tire­ly of cor­re­spon­dence w/ mem­bers of the public” going back 50 years, is to be re­leased through the royal air force website.



New Zealand Space Agency

❚ ❚ ❚    When it became ap­par­ent their location was be­com­ing an ideal spot for space launches, New Zea­land donned min­is­ter­ial gloves in 2016 to fetch back a suitable space scarf to add to the coun­try’s wardrobe.


宇 宙 航 空 研 究 開 発 機 構

On a hunch, three research labs decided to merge, bringing to­geth­er experience in radio as­tron­omy, the magnetosphere, and x-ray (1955) (1964) (1969). The team went on to found the JAPAN AERO­SPACE EX­PLOR­A­TORY AGENCY in 2003. Where­as it used to send sat­el­lites to watch the earth and report on the trop­i­cal rainfall sea­sons and at­mo­spher­ic dy­nam­ics (1997), JAXA now con­ducts innovative research -- based on their encounter w/ Ryugu in 2019. As Haya­busa-1 was approaching the half-mile wide asteroid the space­craft took a pot­shot (creating a new crater) be­fore its lander board­ed this fly­ing rock. Then it flung samples back to Earth. Pro­ject­ed to hit the ocean off Australia, the envelope, con­tain­ing sam­ples be­twen 10 million and 20 million years old, was re­trieved in the outback (2020).    ❚ • ❚     Japan’s dream of space came from Hideo Ito­ka­wa, who test-launched a small missile in 1955. Grad­u­ate of the imperial uni­ver­sity w/ a major in aero­nautics (1935), Ito­ka­wa was a vis­ion­ary and is grand­pa to Japan’s space program.
Ryugu 2019

Asteroid belt objects Vesta Eros Ida Juno Mathilde Dactyl Ceres


Centre National d'Études Spatiales

When France went over the rub­ble of World War 2, any bal­lis­tic missile, ex­ploded or not, were gingerly handled. Vic­tor­ious though shell-shocked, the nation had once set records for hot-air balloon feats when the 18th-cen­tury was still young, now she sat about to tinker w/ these wea­pons in order to glean aero­dynam­ic achieve­ments from the german school of “rock­et pro­pul­sion and guid­ance”.     ❚ ❙ ❚     Enough inter­est that the NATION­AL CEN­TRE FOR SPACE RE­SEARCH was created in 1961, and gave space medicine a face when astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien was mon­i­tored med­i­cal­ly in 1982. Then military wings sprouted in 2019, when NCSR joined the air force, and is planning to re­lease a trove of UFO files go­ing back to 1954. With a heady mis­sion to trans­pose civ­il­i­za­tion to space, France’s space pro­gram is the largest budg­et­ary contributor to the European Space Agency.

Agentur für Luft-und Raumfahrt

In 1961, a manuscript by Con­rad Haas b.1509 ap­peared, waxing poet­ic of his ex­per­i­ments in cross­ing wea­pon­ry w/ fireworks, what China knew as a “fire lance” he called his “flying jave­lin”. Lab work in ion­o­spher­ic phys­ics, wave pro­pa­ga­tion (U of Graz) and plas­ma physics (U of Inns­bruck) would have in­trigued Haas, an austrian mil­i­tary en­gin­eer from Tran­syl­va­nia.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Seeking a foun­da­tion­al start­ing point, the acad­e­my of sci­ences con­vened, in 1972, the AUS­TRI­AN SPACE AGENCY.


Державне космічне агентство України

By the time H.F. Proskura b.1876 began to specialize in helicopters (1914), a Ukraine space program was already in situ. He was a hy­draul­ic en­gin­eer who built sys­tems for regulating hydro­dynam­ism, and together w/ like-minds launched a missile to the strat­o­sphere in 1937. This feat prompt­ed the re­tooling of an auto­mobile plant into manufac­tur­ing rockets (c.1960s).    ❚ ❚    Today’s NA­TION­AL SPACE AGEN­CY OF UKRAINE (1992) is child to the soviet space program.
Uranus + moons Ariel Titania Oberon Miranda Umbriel

Neptune + moons Nereid Galatea Proteus Triton


Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

19th-century Italy looked at the sky w/ scientific eyes, keeping up a study begun 300 years or more ago. Luigi Gussali b.1885 would go on to propose solar power as a propellant in 1946. Nuclear pow­er would work, Gioulio Go­stan­zi b.1875 had said earlier, in 1914 -- pos­tu­lat­ing on the plights of weight­less­ness, heat death as well as poisonous rays from the Sun.    ❚ ❙ ❚    Today their re­search are a part of the ITAL­IAN SPACE AGENCY, which opened next door to the Vat­i­can in 1988, now studies “habit­able space in­fra­struc­ture” and all things gamma-ray related.



Magyar Űrkutatási Iroda

The ministry of national de­vel­op­ment oversees a civil­ian space pro­gram, w/ aero­space re­search­ers and advisory board (1992).    ❚ ❚ ❚     Then money for the nation’s science sector dried up and has jeo­par­dized the HUN­GAR­IAN SPACE OFFICE.



Роскосмос

The Russian space program has claim to many fathers, some al­ready delving into reactive pro­pul­sion tests when the 20th-cen­tu­ry was yet a babe. Kon­stan­tin Tsiol­kov­sky b.1857 the­or­iz­ed about aeronautics and rocketry in 1929. Fried­rich Zander b.1887 finetuned liquid-fuel research for practical ap­pli­ca­tions. Then a space acad­e­my blos­somed before being folded in­to a clas­si­fied mil­i­tary pro­gram in 1992 -- and ROSCOS­MOS its public face.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Left behind are icon­ic mo­ments from the soviet space program. First wo­man in space Valen­tina Teresh­kova (1963); the cosmo­naut who pre­ced­ed her Yuri Gagarin (1961). Stand­ing on their shoul­ders Alexei Leonov, who made the first space­walk (last­ing 12 min­utes and nine seconds): “I stepped into that void and I didn‘t fall in. I was mes­mer­ised by the stars. They were every­where – up above, down below, to the left, to the right” (1965). The best looking satellite is still the first, Sputnik-1 (1957), a globe w/ four an­ten­nae.
Sputnik-1 1957

Rocket City 1956



Agenţia Spaţialǎ Românǎ

Early 20th-century Romania had enough enthusiasts build­ing and test­ing aero­planes that the na­tion developed five air­craft com­pa­nies into a national in­dus­try.    ❚ ❚ ❚    Com­bin­ing in 1990 to be­come the ROMAN­IAN SPACE AGEN­CY, and tasked w/ space research activ­i­ties and “secur­ity ap­pli­ca­tions”. Member of ESA since 2012.



Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.

By 1907 Germany had al­ready set up an ex­per­i­men­tal aero­dy­nam­ic station (1907). Soon eough at­tract­ing in­ter­est from an in­sti­tute, as­so­ci­a­tion, con­sor­tium and a society.     ❚ ❚ ❚     In­ter­est in space never waned, and in 1989 this pro­duc­tive R&D all came to­gether to form the GER­MAN AERO­SPACE CEN­TER, w/ a cur­rent em­pha­sis on hy­dro­gen as an energy carrier, and research into traffic con­ges­tions.


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  WHAT SHE SAID Mae West quote: His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.  
  ROMANCE COMICS 


♛  EPILOGUE  

Looking back at the Golden Age (which took place on Earth-Two), it has come to light that the biog­ra­phy of Lois Lane, begin­ning in the early 1950s, has prop­er­ly be­longed to the Silver Age.

All along, readers had grown up w/ a golden-age Lois. There was a golden-age Clark; and Super­man too. It turns out there has been – and al­ways has been – some oth­er Lois, who lived on Earth-One, w/ anoth­er Clark and a dif­fer­ent Super­man.

In 1956, fan loyalty was rewarded when DC Comics put out the first issue of SUPERMAN’S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE. Once again, a newer Lois Lane sprang forth, and helped to usher in the Silver Age. This Lois again came fully formed – and a lived-in back­story spooled out. The first two tales, about a witch and a wig, looked for­ward to­wards the ex­pe­ri­men­tal 1960s -- when beauty was re­de­fined, and back­wards, w/ a ginned-up glance at the bat­tle of the sexes, when it was still in black-&-white.

What is left of the original Lois are some stories about the Man of Steel in which she fea­tures prom­i­nent­ly, where she proves her­self an intel­lectual equal of a super man. These historic events em­bark em­bryon­ic­ally from the heart­land of America dur­ing the on­set of World War II. They then roam globally, and extra-globally, only to dis­em­barked at the un­test­ed out­post of the Cold War.

Lois of Earth-Two became marooned until the DC uni­verse took on a re­im­ag­in­ing. By 1978, her story was re­thread­ed in­to the con­tin­uity. Lois mar­ried Clark in the late 1950s, dis­cov­ered his secret identity, went on to new adven­tures -- even after their son was born, pass­ing the mortal coil in 2005, in events occur­ring dur­ing Infinite Crisis. All of this hap­pened be­fore the 21st cen­tury woke up.


I Love Lois

Lois Lane

Working nine to five as a reporter for a city daily must not leave time to do much else. As a single female work­ing and liv­ing alone in Metrop­­lis, how do you find bal­ance in your life?

Lois Lane, Clark Kent and Super­man are the creations of writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, two Cleve­land teen­agers nur­tur­ing keen tastes and quick psyches, who com­bined com­ple­men­tary skills to make mani­fest their dream of another world. Invent­ing a city of sky­scrapers where an other­world­ly creature lives and makes its living as a news­paper­man, while woo­ing a wonder­ful woman, and using as his secret iden­tity a coward’s persona. Over­night their comics become a best­seller, star­ring the Man of Tomor­row oppo­site Lois Lane.






The Golden Age 1938-1955 

Lois Lane is already there when Clark Kent arrives on his first day at the Daily Planet, she’s a lonely hearts advice columnist. Clark, a seasoned reporter, gets called in to the editor‘s office and is assigned a new beat. In a supreme act of irony, he’s to cover some­one who has been seen in Metrop­o­lis and word has it a cham­pion of the op­pressed. Proxim­ity to the vibra­tions of an un­known being not­with­standing, Lois soon slips into a vaude­villian vortex. Some­how a das­tard is sure to create chaos, usually a damsel-in-distress epi­sode plays out, acrobatic acts can follow before dis­plays of un­natural skills bring back the normal. This and a secret iden­tity plot to string it all to­gether and tie in­to a bow.

Page after page, the reader gets to know more about a super-being living in Metrop­o­lis, while he him­self is get­ting to know more about Lois -- expos­ing her to the maw of may­hem by his dada duels w/ weird foes. Lois can’t see Clark for the super-simula­crum that he’s hiding be­hind; is drawn to Super­man instead. Clark smiles and winks at the fourth wall, at ease and worldly wise.

Lois and Clark start dating right away, in the first story they put on evening attire and go out on the town. The next week she flies off on assign­ment to a foreign land and, due to mis­adven­ture, ends up blind­folded and stand­ing in front of a firing squad. Back home again, Lois thinks little of drop­ping a sleep­ing pill into Clark’s cock­tail so as to chase a lead and beat him to a scoop. This brazen stunt back­fires when she lands in trouble and, for the very first time, falls out of a window.

But first, she hones in on Clark’s beat by looking up the Man of Mys­tery herself, trying to score an exclusive. Go­ing to a travel­ing circus where he was perfor­ming for charity, an unexpected occur­rence ensures she will not get her scoop. Editor Perry White some­times sends both out together, espe­cially when murder has occurred. On these occa­sions, Lois often ends up solo because Clark can and will dis­appear at the first sign of trouble. One time this hap­pened, she was tied down next to a table saw w/ the on-switch deployed, too an­noyed though not sur­prised w/ Clark to bother about her imminent demise.

Chastened to live anoth­er day, Lois ex­pands her com­fort zone, find­ing it in her­self to bring joy to a thawed cave­man, out of time and grave­ly dis­ori­en­ted. Lois was as one reborn some other time when she ran around w/ a great ape. Through all this, Lois kept up her advice column, where once a grate­ful writer be­queathed a gold mine to her and which, sad­ly, she lost. She then plunged her­self into a murky episode about a fifth colum­nist move­ment in Metrop­o­lis, wad­ing into espio­nage, dis­infor­ma­tion, and sab­otage.

Around this time she meets Lex Luthor. Picking through the day’s press releases, Lois sees a tony and toothy one: Some­one has called a gather­ing of the million­aires of Metrop­o­lis. Intrigued, Lois finds a way into the man­sion and hides behind dra­pe­ries. Eight men enter, followed by their host; Lois pulls out her notepad. Al­to­ge­ther, these men con­trol rail­roads and air­lines, real estate and finan­cial firms. Each in­volved in pro­hi­bition-era rac­kets. One has a pub­lish­ing firm haw­king inspi­ra­tion­al books. Another runs a secret fascist cell. The last to speak turns out to be a com­mon man who had shown up dis­guised in order to give a rant on the wicked­ness of wealth. Lois is taking this all down, fill­ing one comic book page w/ nine long speech balloons. When sud­den­ly Luthor ap­pears w/ a wea­pon and knocks every­one -- in­clud­ing Lois -- out.

By 1943, budding popularity for her charac­ter pro­pels Lois on­to the cover w/ Super­man, gasping as he goes head-to-head with crime’s comedy king, the Prank­ster. Lois is also on the splash page, be­cause she has in­ad­ver­tent­ly wan­dered too close to a giant jack-in-the-box … Then a year later lands her first series, LOIS LANE GIRL REPOR­TER, focus­ing on her exploits with­out Super­man or Clark, which had a thirteen issue run.






The Silver Age   1956-1970 

The winds of change began blowing in the mid-1950s, when DC Comics re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed a dor­mant charac­ter from the past and re- intro­duced Flash, giving him a new back­story and wear­ing a dif­fer­ent cos­tume. Grad­u­al­ly, this new uni­verse fold­ed out­wards and at first divi­ded into two.

In 1956, a seminal tale had taken place on Earth-One, where Barry Allen was work­ing late one stormy night, when a light­ning bolt comes crashing in, strik­ing chem­i­cal vials filled w/ stuff. Bar­ry is knocked out and falls to the floor. Ly­ing in a sus­pi­cious-look­ing soup of labor­a­to­ry juices the entire night, he under­goes a molecular sea change. What had lain on the lab floor that Octo­ber night was a police-lab scien­tist. What woke up the next morn­ing turned out to be an agile Adam – har­bin­ger to a new aeon.

This refashioned “human thun­der­bolt” draws a chalk line at the start­ing point, re­sets the timer to zero, jumps into his cos­tume and takes off. Soon enough he learns of the exis­tence of Earth-Two, and he visits w/ the orig­i­nal Flash, semi-retired but still con­tend­ing w/ super-foes. Overnight, the aggregate number of costumed beings doubled -- then grew, as readers couldn‘t get enough.

The Lois of Earth-One lived a com­pli­cat­ed exis­tence, be­ing rou­tine­ly sub­ject­ed to Imag­i­nary Tales of what-ifs that bedevil story­lines, con­found­ing known facts w/ famil­iar fan­tasy. This Lois had her own title, which ran for 137 issues, end­ing just in time to usher in the Bronze Age, and are known chief­ly as hav­ing im­part­ed a level of light-heart­ed­ness to her life.

In between, Lois left her clas­sic looks be­hind and is shown on a 1968 cover tear­ing down part of her own mast­head con­tain­ing the words "GIRL FRIEND", and throw­ing it to the ground. This was just one step less shock­ing than her get-up: knee-high go-go boots and a rock­ing aqua­net hairdo, declar­ing that she was over the Man of Might. This fit of fem­i­nist zeal sub­si­ded, though, and the des­ig­na­tion re­ap­peared on the next cover. Lois Lane, born on Earth, had up until then led an un­earthly exis­tence, all because she chose to be near the one she loves, and do bat­tle w/ battalions of babes intent on becom­ing the one to make children w/ the alien Adonis.

★   As our story begins, Lois is about twenty-three years old, and Clark is two years older than that.




▶ Champion of the Oppressed
Action Comics №1 - 1938
Lois Lane sprang into life fully formed, along­side the genesis story of Superman. On his first day at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent is smit­ten and begins to court Lois.

When Clark is then assigned to cover a mys­tery man show­ing remark­able poten­tial, Lois is intrigued and goes on a first date to find out more. Twirling about the dance floor, he asks pointedly, “Why is it you always avoid me at the office?”

“Please Clark-! I’ve been scribbling sob stories all day long. Don’t ask me to dish out another.” Bored and star­ing away, her eyes hap­pen to lock on­to Butch, who’s been star­ing at her for quite some time.

See­ing his move Butch cuts in, then things turn ugly, and Lois gets an ink­ling that Clark may not be a man’s man. When Butch facepalms her date she storms out and calls Clark, for the very first time, “… a spineless, un­bear­able coward!”. Catching up w/ the car that has just abducted her, Superman up­turns the vehicle and catches Lois, for the very first time, as she spills out of the back­seat win­dow. What he does next is famously depicted on the iconic front cover - lifting the car above his head. ... turning his attention back to Lois, she backs away in mild terror until he says, “You needn’t be afraid of me. I won’t harm you.”

Transfixed, she lets the strapping stranger scoop her up into his arms and, leaping high, carry her away. This winning formula provided years of creative chaos as the three main characters circled each other round and round.

This ends the first tale of Lois Lane’s life, and the beginning of her startling adventures to document the existence of this mental marvel and physical wonder, devoted to daring deeds she knows will reshape the destiny of a world.




▶ How Lois Got Her Job
Lois Lane №17 - 1960
(An Untold Story) (Demand Classic)

Every year on the anniversary of her first day to work for him, Perry White has thrown an office party to celebrate. One time he turned sentimental -- opened up: “... When Lois first asked me for a job, I told her I would hire her if she brought me three scoops in three days! She did it ... w/out Superman’s help!”

Picking up the cue, Lois blows out the candles and hands the first slice to Perry. While his mouth is full, she gives her side of the story. On the first day at work Perry had given her a choice of several assignments, she chose the easiest one: securing evidence on a team of safe-crackers.

Dressed as a clean­ing lady, Lois walked into their lair w/ a vacuum clean­er, plugged it in, turned it on. This dis­guise turned up pure gold when a torn-up note was re­trieved, then taped back to­geth­er. Impli­ca­tions were de­duced; arrest war­rants even­tual­ly issued. More cake was passed around.

Her next assign­ment was to secure the first-ever photo­graph of a reclu­sive royal, prone to strong­arm tac­tics to en­sure his pri­vacy -- she comes back w/ the photo. Clark and Jim­my ask for an­oth­er slice -- at the same time.

The guest of honor takes this oppor­tunity to sit down, staring into the cavern now develop­ing in the cake. Her car had un­ex­pec­ted­ly broken down on the third assign­ment, and she ended up walking miles out to now­here in order to inter­view an ar­chae­o­lo­gist who was claiming a new dis­covery. She gets her story, and it’s a doozy but, w/ no easy access back, Lois devises the most inge­nious meth­od known to cor­re­spon­dents worldwide – en­ab­ling her post to reach Perry. It is front page news, and Lois lands her dream job.





▶ Man or Superman?
Superman №17 - 1942
Lois and Clark once teamed up to track down the Talon, titular head to a gang of thieves. She later returned to her desk, think­ing she was go­ing to write up a scoop, only to learn that Clark got there first. Exas­pe­ra­ted, she then asked and he then gave a reason so lame that it was enough to make her wonder if Clark might be Super­man. (There have been many ver­sions of this story since.) Clark is the arche­typal nerd, wear­ing glasses be­cause he really has to -- it’s his secret iden­tity. But how his phys­i­og­no­my didn’t give him away as son of Kryp­ton is one for the books. This instance of will­ful ignor­ance appar­ently is im­pos­sible. Because mental snapshots. In one telling, while at the office a com­mo­tion on the street below draws them to the win­dow -- a neck­lace rob­bery was in pro­gress. She sud­den­ly got a feel­ing she knew what Clark would do next, which was to give a flim­sy ex­cuse and dis­ap­pear, then a min­ute will pass and Super­man should (and will) fly past the win­dow. This quiz­zi­cal look does not go un­noticed by eagle-eyed Clark as he stages a retreat. Chang­ing into his cos­tume he thinks back to the very first time Lois ever did all of her won­der­ing. It had hap­pened one morn­ing when he had flown over the Daily Planet, and she had caught a quick glimpse. Lois was round­ing a corner and be­came aware of his land­ing on the roof of her office build­ing. “… and now he’s dropped out of sight! Good gra­cious! Maybe he works on the Planet staff, under a secret iden­tity!”





▶ Miss Lonelyhearts
Lois Lane №3 - 1958
Lois once went above and beyond her duties as the advice columnist. She had shown up at the eighth floor landing window of the Belvue Apartments, where a despondent man was threatening to jump. Lois climbs out, telling him she too wants to jump, “Er-(gulp!) Do you think you’re the only person in the world w/ a broken heart?” Prompt­ly los­ing her foot­ing, Lois goes over the edge. Man­ages to catch the cor­ner of a elec­tion ban­ner hang­ing be­low. Be­fore it can tear off she has swung into po­si­tion to plum­met through a num­ber of wind­ow awn­ings. Cushioning her fall un­til a fire­man’s net catches her. This viv­id dem­on­stra­tion of fall­ing in love cures the man’s sick heart, so he climbs back in and goes to where Lois is being treat­ed. “You’re won­der­ful, Miss Lane! The next time I com­mit sui­cide, it’s go­ing to be over you!”





▶ School for Scoops
Lois Lane №29 - 1961
Through pluck and per­ser­ve­rance Lois becomes the number one female reporter in the United States! The Uni­ver­sity of Metrop­olis asks her to give a lecture course. Hearing this news, racketeer Nick Roker sends two gun­men to the campus. Because.

Lois proves a preco­cious professor and, w/ the help of Jimmy Olsen, stages re-creations of actual cases. Jimmy walks the class through the first scenario. Drugged by a gang she’s been after, Lois gains conscious­ness to find that she is bound, gagged, inside a tiny base­ment. Some­one behind is about to put a blind­fold on her. At this critical moment, Lois locates the base­ment’s electric meter and mem­orizes its serial number.

This bit of infor­ma­tion helps break the case and gets her a scoop. Before dismiss­ing the class, she hands out wri­ting assign­ments.

The next day students are greeted by a grue­some set piece: Hav­ing once crossed the line w/ racket­eer “Duke” Benson, he has en­ticed her over to his office and there ties her to a chair, plac­ing a bomb beneath the chair before his exit. Ignor­ing the lit fuse, she leans for­ward and nudges the phone off its cradle, picks up a pencil w/ her mouth, and dials 9-1-1, ... in the time it takes for her to grade this sec­ond assign­ment, Lois has deduced that two are not written by journal­ism students.

Think­ing to instruct her class by treat­ing this develop­ment as a case study, she outs them on­ly to real­ize too late they were sent to off her. Lois’s quick think­ing dis­tracts them long enough for Jim­my’s signal-watch to sum­mon Super­man, who makes a brief cameo at the very end.





▶ Lois’s College Scoops
Lois Lane №55 - 1965
(An Untold Tale)

One time, Lois took Jimmy Olsen and Super­man to her college re­union. There she grew nostalgic and, picking up a school scrap­book, leafed through to find a clip­ping of her first scoop for the Raleigh Review. It was an im­possible first assign­ment: to join an all-male only fenc­ing team and write about the expe­rience. The fenc­ing captain, who was a good sport and will­ing to go along, gives Lois a week to practise before they were to meet in a bout.

Through diligence and sheer love-of-report­ing, she out­fences the cap­tain, land­ing Lois her very first scoop.

Then she puts down her cup of punch and begins to leaf through a second scrap­book, lo­cat­ing a clip­ping of her first-hand ac­count of dis­cov­er­ing a new comet – by fluke, dur­ing a night at the Small­ville ob­ser­va­tory, where she was using the tele­scope to write a paper for astronomy class.

The last page held a tat­tered clip­ping of her strang­est scoop. Tak­ing a solo field trip for biol­ogy class, Lois had stum­bled across – and captured on film – a live pter­an­don and a liv­ing sabre-tooth. Her biolo­gy teac­her is wowed. “Those pre­historic crea­tures van­ished with­out a trace, Lois! But thanks to the movies you took, we know exactly how they looked and acted!”





▶ How Clark Kent First Met Lois Lane  (Bonus Tale)
Adventure Comics №128 - 1948
(An Exclusive Adventure of Superboy)

While still in high school, Clark receives a letter from the Daily Planet:  Clark Kent, 713 Main Street. Con­grat­u­la­tions! You are one of the two winners of our an­nual con­test to hon­or the best school news­paper re­por­ters. Your prize is a free-trip to Me­trop­o­lis, where you will be al­lowed to work as cub re­por­ter for one week. 

Overjoyed and full of bonhomie, Clark shows up and is introduced to Lois Lane, the other winner; he takes an instant shine to her. The editor tries to break this spell by assign­ing a competition to see who can bring in the best story of the day, with the winner getting a front page byline! Lois suggests a side bet to Clark, “The loser treats the winner to an ice cream sundae?”

“I never bet … but I’ll make an excep­tion in your case!” After handshakes, Lois ventures out and, based on a hunch, stumbles into criminal activity, resulting in being tied up and about to meet her end – Superboy arrives and saves the day. After he has dispatched her attackers, this unknown being glides over and unties Lois. On an impulse she jumps into his arms and asks to be carried away from the scene, a request the Boy of Tomor­row was fated to grant. She later on wins the compe­tition (Clark has been busy else­where) and, after work, he takes her to a soda fountain and pays his bet. They spend the week chas­ing stories, then it’s time to wave good­bye to Lois from a train plat­form, wondering if he’ll ever cross paths w/ her again.


|  NOTES

[1]
BASED ON reports from, among others, Tricia Annis, Tim Hanley, Steven Thompson, and Internet searches.
[2]
BACK COVER AD – The back cover ad for Action Comics №1 was bought by the Johnson Smith & Company in Detroit, Michigan. They were purveyors of, among other things:
- pocket radios - midget radios - midget pocket radios - magic radios - crystal radios - radio & television books - experiment sets - wireless transmittals - telegraph sets - electric phones - electric baseballs - world mikes (a microphone) - deluxe microphones - big entertainers (an air mattress) - Stinson Reliant giant flying planes - all-metal model airplanes - wigs (blond only) - yacht caps - live chameleons - x-ray glasses - booklets on hypnotism, learning to dance, learning to tap dance, ventriloquism, and ju-jitsu - whoopee cushions - joy bussers - rings - luminous photos - luminous paints - movie projectors - telescopes - field glasses - world's smallest candid cameras - bull dog fish hooks - and Japanese rose bushes.

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 WHAT HE SAID 
Gary Hustwit quote: I saw Helvetica everywhere [in New York City], and watched how people were interacting with - but not really thinking about - it. People going about their lives, letting a typeface tell them which direction their subway train was headed, where they could park, where the bathroom was, how much to pay for a hot dog. I felt like I’d stumbled onto a secret language.