An Unusual Bionic Blog

Ordinarily, there's a thousand-and-one things to write about, and I do my best to pick one topic and develop it in a sensible and worthy way.  But this weekend has flown by so quickly!  My wife was supposed to have Friday off, but right now she's got an unusually high workload, so she had to work part of the day.  This allowed me to put in a few pages on the Science Fiction novel I'm currently writing.  It's set on another planet several hundred years from now, and the rough draft is coming along nicely, even if my direction sometimes waivers, and the inspiration comes in fits and spurts.  Then we went out to lunch, ran errands, did some Christmas shopping, and spent some time wrapping up gifts.

Of course, that didn't mean that we couldn't bring a friend with us.  Or, for that matter, buy him lunch!

The manager, who always goes the extra mile to make his customers feel special, surprised us with two small orange ice cream shakes as we finished up our burgers and fries.  What a wonderful way to express the meaning of the holiday season!  

Of course, we shared our shakes with our friend.

Saturday we worked out at the gym, enjoyed another lunch out, ran more errands, and wrapped more gifts.  Sunday ditto, except that we stayed home all day, and took advantage of a few really nice hours outside to do some yard maintenance.  Oh yeah, and during lunch we took out an hour for Jaime Sommers.  As the third season of The Bionic Woman progressed, producers Harve Bennett and Kenneth Johnson departed the show.  (Kenneth Johnson would go on to helm The Incredible Hulk, and Harve Bennett to oversee the Star Trek movies).  

The episode we watched represents the direction the new production team wanted to steer the show, more toward science fiction topics than just slice-of-life or secret agent stories.  In "The Pyramid," Oscar Goldman oversees a program in which Saturn V rockets deliver chemical payloads to the upper atmosphere.  These are then exploded, and the dispersed chemicals intended to rebuild the planet's ozone layer.  Jaime accompanies a friend in Launch Control to investigate a radio signal that caused interference during a test launch.  

Warning: The next two paragraphs contain plot spoilers!

Underneath a former military bunker, they discover a forgotten pyramid, which has sunk down under the ground in the centuries since it was built.  During their exploration, they are incapacitated by an ancient Indian (Mesoamerican) warrior.  Jaime and her friend awaken to find themselves paralyzed by an old man with telepathic abilities.  From him they learn that another spaceship containing his people will arrive soon, but unless he can signal them to turn back, the chemicals recently dispersed into the atmosphere will destroy the ship, and his people will interpret its destruction as an act of war.  

Jaime and the Aztec warrior must steal an experimental crystal from Dr. Rudy Wells' lab, and Jaime must give up the atomic power pack in her bionic replacements, and hope that the old man can signal his people in time.  Needless to say, it's important to her that, in her weakened state, she can nonetheless return to Rudy's lab, and get a new power pack installed before she dies.  It's a fun episode, and a neat look back at the topics that fascinated us in the late 1970s, from Chariots of the Gods (the book that explored mankind's possible extraterrestrial origins), telepathy, pyramid and crystal power, UFOs and alien contact, and our depleted ozone layer.

Well, that's all from me for now.  A rather unusual (and bionic!) blog, covering topics of interest from a show made nearly forty years ago, many of which remain as relevant today as when the episode was filmed.  But then, this is a rather unusual season of the year, in which we all put out a little extra effort, to remind others that, even if we don't get to see each other as often as we would like, we still care for each other.  Now, I need to do my part, and stop by the Post Office this week, so that Santa can deliver all his gifts by Christmas day.

If my discussion of The Bionic Woman episode intrigued you, follow the link below, and watch "The Pyramid" on your computer.  Consider it my gift to you this holiday season.  Enjoy!

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links
Watch "The Pyramid"

Touring NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building

The VAB from 3.5 miles away.

From a distance, NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, doesn’t look so big.  Even up close, it’s hard to comprehend that it’s the fourth-largest building by volume in the world.  Yet the building was constructed to house the Apollo program: not just the astronauts’ capsules, but also the enormous Saturn V rockets that launched them into space.

Given the role it has played in the American space program, my wife and I were excited to learn that we could tour the VAB, now that the shuttles have been retired.  We would only have this opportunity for a limited time, we were told.  Once the Orion project gets into full swing, the VAB will be filled with new rockets, spaceships, and people, and it will be impossible for the ordinary person to tour it.

I soon realized that a tour through the VAB was not a tour through the VAB.  Plastic cones and portable fencing limited our footsteps to a short, L-shaped section of floor floor.  Security guards kept watch over us, just in case, driven mad by the immense structure, one of us made a wild dash across the open concrete floor.  So we made an effort to ignore the guards, and their holstered weapons, as we listened to our guide’s words, and studied the signs and displays.

Still, the eyes tend to wander amid such vastness.  Beyond the cones and plastic fencing, construction vehicles and supplies awaited their time of service.  The building is sectioned off, so we couldn’t see the complete interior.  Overhead, strange industrial cranes that had once pulled the space shuttle up, stood it vertical, and lifted it to a place where it could be worked on sat idle.  Apparently, their operators had needed to take special care with the shuttles’ wings, as they only had inches of clearance in the VAB when the cranes hauled the great space planes around like one of those arcade game claws that grabs a stuffed animal.  As we listened to our guide, workers entered and left the facility.  Occasionally we heard a motor start up, and we would turn to watch an elevator merge with the vast grid-work above our heads. 

Welcome, Orion.

A mockup of the new Orion capsule gave us a sense of the sheer magnitude of our surroundings.  As a cluttered house disguises its true size, NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building has so much moveable infrastructure that it’s difficult to take in how large it really is.  I could only imagine what my days might be like, were I a worker in such a hive of activity.  Then our guide led us out, and the guards followed in lockstep, ensuring that none of us were driven mad by an insatiable desire to actually tour the VAB. 

Dragon Dave