The Findley Files #1: Untold Tales of the VGL. 1950 - Manned missions resume with Big Boy In 1950, the Virtual Geographic League re-entered the arena of manned inter-stellar exploration, a field it had abandoned thirteen years earlier after the Amelia Earhart disaster. The League benefited from the unfortunate intervention of World War II, for there were many devices invented during that conflict which influenced the design of the modified VGL trans- port pod, nicknamed Big Boy. Among these were a modified cockpit with a self-contained lead-nitogren battery system originally invented for use on Allied bombers; its presence on the pod assured pilots and ground navigators of reliable instrumentation at the same time that it made possible a hospitable cabin environment. Testing systems, especially those for spectometry and astronomical obser- vations, were taken directly from spy airplanes developed by the famous Lockheed Skunk Works. Finally, the refinement of 35mm systems by Zeiss and Leica made the on-board installation of adjustable cameras possible; these, coupled with early strobe lights from the Edgerton laboratories at M.I.T. allowed the pods to make photographic records only dreamed of prior to 1939. (Image is from the unfinished VGL History CD-ROM.)
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 11:39:24 +0000
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