Monday was a busy day of organizing, shopping, and opening molds. I got the cyclops out of the mold and I’m running another this morning.

Raw rubber mask fresh out of the mold.

Mercury Redstone molds. Capsule fins, escape tower tank, and engine bells.

We have more heavy rain today making it impossible to paint models well. It’s the middle of March now, almost spring and we still have this non-stop rain. The temperatures are warming though so we are hopeful the warmer dryer conditions will be with us soon.

I did have a little time at the end of the day to work on the new Mercury Redstone kit. The prototype is coming along well. No painting here the body tube as paper wraps on it with 3m 77 making the paint job accurate and a bit easier to do.

Engine mount is in, shock cord, and the fins will be placed on today. That leaves the escape tower to do. It will be made of hardwood doweling which will be quite durable and stronger than plastic.

This rocket will fly April 8th. The rocket will finish this week. So I’m hoping for better weather next week to finish the Battlestar. Once that’s built I have an EVA pod to build from 2001: a space odyssey.

Mask will get trimmed today and made ready to paint. With mask paints there’s no problem with the paint. It is non toxic and water soluble. You can dry it with a hair dryer if necessary.   

Yesterday I spent some serious rather difficult time at the dentist office but returned to the studio to put in some time as best I could. None the less I finished off the first large V-2 prototype which launches this Saturday morning. 

And Ken Kerbal arrived last night in the mail! What a great little figure from a great program, The Kerbal Space Program. Rocketeers and aerospace folks love this program. He will be our SNG Aerospace mascot at our launches and more.

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/

It will take me a few days to feel better but I’ll be pouring rubber and working on Battlestar today as long as I can. As they say, “Life happens”.

Yesterday I had to order rubber to fill more mask orders. I have been buying from the same company for years. They are old friends and the last time I bought rubber a few months ago it was around 180 dollars.

I have two choices. Either pay and have it shipped or drive into town which is a long drive and pay the same in gas not to mention the stress and the loss of a day. It is brutal driving into LA. Worth your life. That’s just the way it is and losing a day is losing money too.

Shipping has gone up a great deal and by the time it is delivered to the studio is nearly 300 dollars for 5 gallons of rubber. That will make about 7 masks if I really stretch it.

I started doing the math again and found that on the average it costs me about 110 dollars a mask in materials alone. Then 25-45 dollars for shipping. On the average about 30 dollars. I could make them out of thinner rubber as most cheap mask makers do. Then they would rot in a few years. Mine will last for decades. 

And then there’s the labor. I take a lot of care in finishing and painting my masks. It’s all being done by me, not in China. It can take me up to 8-10 hours to finish a mask. Why 8-10? Because some have hair and hair takes a long time to lay on.

I’m a well known Hollywood makeup effects artist, filmmaker and creature actor. And I sign all my work.

I have heard I charge too much for my masks and I can get the same thing from another company for 50 dollars. But it’s not a signed hand made Steve Neill mask and they rarely look authentic if they are recreation of a classic monster or creature. 

I have been under-pricing my art for years. People have been buying my masks and reselling them online for what they are actually worth. The Studio has been relying on charity to pay for rent and utilities. I can no longer afford to give my work away for basement bargain prices. I am charging reasonable prices for Artisan labor. I will never get rich doing my art but I at least want to pay the rent.

So I am starting today raising the prices of my masks to reflect these costs and the worth of my labor to produce them. Everyone is raising their prices to me from rubber to shipping. I just have to pass that along.

Anyone that has recently made and order will not pay more. But at some point today I will be changing the prices.

Working hard to get some new kits on the market and added to our store I worked on the Big V-2 Rocket yesterday and got pretty far.

I know this was a war machine and a pretty gruesome one at that but it also paved the way to space, the Moon, and beyond for all of us. After WW2 many were captured and brought to the United States for study. They were flown in test flights from White Sands into space for the first time.

Often the pressing of new technologies for warfare lead to technologies of peaceful use. It’s a shame that so much of our tech came out of a need to kill each other. I hope that one day this will cease to be the motivation for the development of such technology and instead be the desire to explore the universe in peace and wonder. Together as one race, one world. But I digress. 

The V-2 was the very first rocket I saw as a child and it filled me with wonder as our scientist sent it to the edge of space. At that time I didn’t know it was a flying bomb. Only a rocket ship to the stars. To this day it holds a special place for me as it does with any childhood wonder. Other kids had teddy bears. I had rockets and telescopes. I did it again. I digressed. 

So this larger V-2 I’m hoping to launch this Saturday(weather permitting). I’ll be using an Estes F15-4 as I need to limit the altitude where we launch.

This rocket with a G64-W is capable of reaching 2000 ft according to simulations I have run. 5000 ft on a H motor.

I love doing this. It was a dream of mine as a child to have my own space program. Now I do. Dreams do come true. 

 

Three different sized V-2 rocket kits I have made.

I woke up to this beautiful slot car from Mary.

And today I’m planning on putting 3 little Kerbals into orbit around the Mun. That’s moon in Kerbal.

I bought myself Kerbal 2 for my birthday and I’m loving it.

Yesterday I made my first successful orbit.  

This week has been cold and difficult to work. Despite that Mary and I press on. It’s been this way for far too long. I have been working in our studio kitchen where it’s heated and so is upstairs. But spray painting and working with toxic chemicals has to be done in the bay or assembly building as I like to call it. After all, we do have a space program. 

I managed to make the silicone molds I need for our new Mercury Redstone kit in the kitchen. In the assembly building I cast a nose cone for the new larger V-2 rocket in two part resin.

I also received my parts for the scratch built open wheel Indy slot car I have been working on. It’s now sporting its new aluminum wheels and rubber tires.

Yesterday was Mary’s birthday and we had a quiet day.

This video is excellent and the closing statements by the developers is every reason we need to to embrace this game. If you care about our future and the postive things we can do as a race of beings please watch this.

There have been a lot of bad reviews and winning from the so called experts about Kerbal 2 release but I’m enjoying the heck out of it! 

People always have to have something to complain about but they fail to remember that all early releases of any game or simulator aren’t without bugs and hiccups. In time they are always patched, fixed, an or improved. Many have asked for refunds? For 49 dollars? Really. This points out to me these people are operating 10 year old machines that won’t perform well with this 2023 release. I’m running on a 4 year old machine with a 1080 card and a bunch of ram and it’s smooth without issues.

In the meantime I embrace anything like Kerbal 2. With all the war games, violence, killing each other, end of the world armageddon and the rest of these types of games that palithorate the game market, this breath of fresh air. In my opinion they are just bad for the human spirit.

This sim has no weapons or space wars. It teaches you space flight, allows you to build space vehicles and explore space, land on planets and explore.

It teaches you basic aerospace engineering and what it takes to build a launch vehicle and successfully launch it and return it and your astronaut safely to the planet. You can build anything from a simple one stage sub orbital flight to something more sophisticated that you can take to the moon and beyond.

I highly recommend you show this to your kids, especially if they have an interest in space flight. Letting them play endlessly violent video games can serve little or know purpose. I used to play them myself. I was a big fan of the BattleField series. And then what day I just asked myself, what am I doing.

Since then  it’s all been about flying and space exploration. I have a saying, make spaceships, not war.

Engage!