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Tuesday, November 16, 2021

Gliding into space ?

2001 Space Glider, Hong Kong ? 1970's ?

Just found at the Feira da Ladra !

a one button remote ? really ?

Definitely not the same tooling... 

Project Sword Space Glider, Century 21 Toys, Hong Kong, 1967

This is one I have in my collection since childhood...

A lot of other colour combinations and models of this toy exist. To see more of them, please check the MOONBASE CENTRAL blog.

And if you ask yourself if it ever existed... of course, it did. It was in fact one of the experimental planes (X-Planes) from Nasa itself - so the Nasa markings on the toy make perfect sense !


M2-F2 lifting body (picture courtesy of NASA)

The M2-F2 was a joint program between NASA and Northrop Corporation. The aircraft flew 16 times between 1966 and 1967. All flights of the M2-F2 were non-powered glide flights performed by dropping the aircraft from a modified wing pylon of a B-52 aircraft. See more information on the X-Planes here.

So now you know why they were called Space gliders... these had no power of their own in real life...

2 comments:

  1. Lovely post Geoffrey. That Project SWORD Glider is a really great example. The red 2001 NASA Space Glider is another fine looking toy and one I have too. There are a couple of different remotes, one oblong like yours and one egg shaped. There's a white and green version of this glider.

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  2. Well, I saw yours on the Moonbase Central blog. I had no idea how many different versions existed of this toy. The green Durham version is fabulous !

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