UFO from a Space:1999 point of view

Hi all,

Here is a web page about UFO that I'd never seen before,
from a Space:1999 fan point-of-view:

http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo.html

Marc

Hello:

Just as a point of introduction, I'm James Williams
George (Ed) Bishop was my father-in-law. Obviously,
I'm a big fan of the series;)

Jim (fully-deputized SHADO operative)


--- Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:




____________________________________________________________________________________
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
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Wow, finally some detail information of the locations of the bases, extracted directly from the series itself. Had no idea that Moonbase was so close to the Apollo 15 landing site. I always thought it was close to the poles, since the earth always appeared so close to the horizon in many of the moon scenes.
Dave H

--------------------------------------------------------------------


----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Martin
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 1:26 PM
Subject: [SHADO] UFO from a Space:1999 point of view


Hi all,

Here is a web page about UFO that I'd never seen before,
from a Space:1999 fan point-of-view:

http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo.html

Marc




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:48:28 -0400
"davrecon" <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> Wow, finally some detail information of the locations of the bases,
> extracted directly from the series itself. Had no idea that Moonbase
> was so close to the Apollo 15 landing site. I always thought it was
> close to the poles, since the earth always appeared so close to the
> horizon in many of the moon scenes. Dave H
>

I'm not sure that there's an actual canonical truth about the site of
Moonbase .. I know that it's been inferred in the past from some
detail or other in the scripts, but to be honest I think that the best
we can legitimately do is "on the Moon".

James

> I'm not sure that there's an actual canonical truth about the site of
> Moonbase .. I know that it's been inferred in the past from some
> detail or other in the scripts, but to be honest I think that the best
> we can legitimately do is "on the Moon".

ahh, but the point was that this website shows a frame grab from
UFO, which I would think as being canon:

http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo/ufo_moonmap_ufospace1999.jpg

Marc

> Just as a point of introduction, I'm James Williams
> George (Ed) Bishop was my father-in-law.

Welcome to the group, Jim!

A few weeks ago I received an email from the son of
Grant Taylor ("General Henderson"), which was kind
of nice (although there was no additional UFO
information to pass on here)

Marc

In a message dated 9/13/2007 1:33:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:

Hi all,

Here is a web page about UFO that I'd never seen before,
from a Space:1999 fan point-of-view:

_http://www.space199http://www.spacehttp://www.shttp_
(http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo.html)

Marc




The section about computers caught my attention. IBM launched it's 3090
computer system around 1980 and is still in use today. It's not a huge machine
but can process huge amounts of data. So I would venture to say that the same
computers used in UFO could have been used in SPACE 1999, with a few of the
upgrades installed, of course.

Wendy



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks, I was only 6 years old when it (UFO) went off
the air. I remember as a child my parents bought me a
Dinky toys Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle from the Captain
Scarlet series (I never saw any of those episodes).

In the mid-70's I saw and liked UFO in reruns when I
was 10-11 years old but admit I did not know it well
and there were only a few episodes anyway.

I am by NO MEANS a UFO Series expert like you folks
but I thought I'd join in.

My wife & I recently acquired and viewed from start to
finish over about a week ,the digitally remastered DVD
series on 8 DVDs in a boxed set.

While they are NOT Blu-Rays, when played on our
Blu-Ray player, the combination of the superb
remastering AND the Blu-Ray upsampling makes for an
excellent picture. Esp. considering the source
material is nearly 40(!) years old.

Jim (officially-deputized SHADO operative, by marriage
to an official SHADO "sub-operative-junior").






--- Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:



____________________________________________________________________________________
Check out the hottest 2008 models today at Yahoo! Autos.
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:40:33 -0700
"Marc Martin" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> ahh, but the point was that this website shows a frame grab from
> UFO, which I would think as being canon:
>
> http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo/ufo_moonmap_ufospace1999.jpg
>

Is the map image from a UFO episode? I don't remember that!

James

>> http://www.space1999.net/catacombs/plus/dt/ufo/ufo_moonmap_ufospace1999.jpg
>>
>
> Is the map image from a UFO episode? I don't remember that!

Well, I don't have my UFO DVDs or a DVD player handy at the moment, but
the site claims that this map is shown in the episode SURVIVAL.

Marc

>> Is the map image from a UFO episode? I don't remember that!
>
> Well, I don't have my UFO DVDs or a DVD player handy at the moment, but
> the site claims that this map is shown in the episode SURVIVAL.

Okay, browsing through the episode SURVIVAL, I found the map:

http://ufoseries.com/temp/map.jpg

That website may have recreated the map, because I didn't notice
a "straight-on" view of the map in the episode (unless it appears
in one of the other episodes)

Marc

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:11:00 -0700
Marc Martin <[hidden email]> wrote:

> >> Is the map image from a UFO episode? I don't remember that!
> >
> > Well, I don't have my UFO DVDs or a DVD player handy at the moment,
> > but the site claims that this map is shown in the episode SURVIVAL.
>
> Okay, browsing through the episode SURVIVAL, I found the map:
>
> http://ufoseries.com/temp/map.jpg

Nice one Marc, thanks!

The suspicion remains though that somebody in the props department
simply found a moon map and slapped a Moonbase symbol on it at
random, probably not expecting frame captures of it to be
scrutinised decades later!

And on this basis, some of the shots of Earth from the vicinity of
Moonbase are plain wrong.

James

On Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:43:33 EDT
[hidden email] wrote:


>
> The section about computers caught my attention. IBM launched it's
> 3090 computer system around 1980 and is still in use today.

Good grief - where?

Lots of places. Most of the global climate change data processing is done on
3090s.

On 9/14/07, James Gibbon <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>
> Good grief - where?
>
>
>
>



--
Mario

http://mario.silent-tower.org/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 9/14/2007 7:30:33 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:

The section about computers caught my attention. IBM launched it's
> 3090 computer system around 1980 and is still in use today.

Good grief - where?




It's a darn good machine and still used in major hospitals, financial and
banking service's, state agency's...etc.. My husband told me that they are still
using it at Aetna (a large health insurer in the USA) where he works.

I agree that it is hard to believe that a computer made 27 years ago is
still in service, but with all the update's it's still a decent system for large
companies. Especially those who don't want to spend the time or money
switching to new systems. Having seen one in person, I thought that is was
relatively small for all it can do, and in fictional settings such as UFO and SPACE
1999, it is plausible that they could have used those computers.

Hey, they said that CICS was a dead language, but many companies are
outsourcing to India for programmers because it's being taught over there and not
here anymore.

Wendy



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 9/14/2007 11:08:42 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:

Hey, they said that CICS was a dead language



Sorry, I meant COBAL, not CICS.



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Actually, you're right about CICS as well...

One of the coolest features of the 3090s (and it's successors) is that they
continuously monitor their own diagnostics and "call for help" when there
are hardware or environmental problems.

One place I worked at in the 80s, we had a 3090 installed. About 3 weeks
after installation, an IBM technician showed up in the middle of the night.
The night time production support was perplexed because no one had called
tech support. Turns out the UPS was not putting out a steady voltage and the
computer had called tech support itself. The technician already had all the
needed parts to perform the repairs, because they had remotely diagnosed it
when the computer contacted them.

On 9/14/07, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:


--
Mario

http://mario.silent-tower.org/


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi All :)

It's strange to hear all this...

My late father was one of the chief architects of the IBM 360 and IBM
3000 range. I went on the outline computer system architecture myself
a generation later in a past career...

Best to all :)

Griff

In a message dated 9/14/2007 1:11:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[hidden email] writes:

One of the coolest features of the 3090s (and it's successors) is that they
continuously monitor their own diagnostics and "call for help" when there
are hardware or environmental problems.

One place I worked at in the 80s, we had a 3090 installed. About 3 weeks
after installation, an IBM technician showed up in the middle of the night.
The night time production support was perplexed because no one had called
tech support. Turns out the UPS was not putting out a steady voltage and the
computer had called tech support itself. The technician already had all the
needed parts to perform the repairs, because they had remotely diagnosed it
when the computer contacted them




I knew that, because my husband worked for IBM as a programming consultant
to taylor the systems to the clients needs. The clients kept thinking it would
take on the average 75% more time do this work then it actually did! :-))

But to get back on the topic, if the bases in UFO were converted for use in
SPACE 1999 (in the fictional world) they would have been using IBM 3090's and
simply retooled-expanded-reprogrammed then for a different purpose. It would
have been a waste to scrap the system, especially since in 1999 the 3090 was
still the most powerful and reliant computer around, except for the CRAY
computer, of course. But since everyone was talking military budgets in both
shows, these were not even close to being affordable for military use.

Wendy



************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi James,
pleased to meet you.
Teresa from ISOSHADO here.
I have a question for you: our website www.isoshado.org
features a photo taken during a dinner Paolo Malaguti had
with Ed and other members of the Family in London in 2000.
I wonder if you are also sitting at that table? Can I
forward a link to that pict?
Thanks, teresa




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