WOW!! Nice one Doug............... , nearly fell off my chair when I logged on....

Brian

It all began 50 years ago today. We couldn't let that milestone go un-marked, and hence until Jan 4th ( the 50th anniv of Sputnik 1's re-entry) we will be wearing a celebratory logo.

very nice! though from the colour scheme it looks like we're mourning

Unexpected and beautiful!

I spoke with my father last night (he is 91) and we both recalled going out for several weeks and trying to see sputnik during those chilly fall nights 50 years ago! I don't recall ever seeing anything (I guess only the booster was visible since sputnik was only a foot or two across), but I do remember one night when he took me outside and we both saw Echo (200 foot mylar like beach ball) fly over the house just when the paper said it would !

thanks Doug

Nice work Doug, looks distinct.
Happy Aniversary Travelling Companion!
And thank you, both, Sputnik and Ellison, for gathering us all!

Nice, but it took me a while to find it. It only appears on the "Pro" skin, and I am set to use the default.

Doug,

I was wondering if you are going to do some commemorative merchandise for the shop based on the new ( if transient) logo?

Cheers

Brian

...everything was black and white then...except for Disneyland and Dorothy

Yup - that was the plan all along. The pro-skin is now the forum default - and the older skin remains as a legacy for people who don't like the font of the new skin. What I hope to do is generate a second version of the Pro skin with the font of the old skin, so the option actually just becomes between two fonts.

I don't intend to sell anything with the logo on -it's just a temporary marker and the hassle involved in getting new CafePress stuff sorted far exceeds any returns from sales.

Doug

Very clean and classy look, Doug! The new color scheme seems easier to read and navigate. It also feels rather more upscale, and I think I will have to behave myself when I am in here.

It's about time for a fresh look.

Looks great.

Wow - very nice. I second Brian's suggestion - some merchandise would be good, I need a couple of new T-Shirts .

After that you can rotate it 90 degrees to represent the UMSF balloon.

Waaw, I was amazed when I first saw the webpage... Great initiative!
Happy Birthday Sputnik!

Nice forum logo. And Happy Birthday to Sputnik (and me)!

Very nice especially the top banner.
A happy sputniki birthday to all.
Roy

What a nice surprise, and a perfectly fitting tribute...very well done, Doug!

PB: Way to choose a birthday, you sly dog! Hope we're on Mars when you hit the big five-oh...

OK, I guess it's up to me to play dissenter then.

While I like the new logo--and a well done is definitely in order there--I much prefer the previous colour scheme. It was much easier on the eye and (just MHO) distinctive. Also as someone else pointed it looks like the forum is in mourning.

Space may well be black (although the forum's new colour scheme looks more a kind of greenish-black than the jet black variety; but maybe that's just my own eyes), but I'm not sure that black is an appropriate colour for a forum with a subjet-matter like this one when the era we live in is one where money for unmanned spaceflight is so hard to come by and missions are either suffering cutbacks (eg MSL) or are not happening at all (eg the NASA's promised follow-up missions to next year's lunar orbiter, not to mention the perennial bridesmaid which keeps being left behind at the altar: the Europan orbiter). And all the more so if you tie that colour to Sputnik. It could be construed to imply that the Sputnik era was the dead pinnacle of unmanned space exploration we're all in mourning for rather than just the beginning of a bright new era in human accomplishment. That is, as if we're looking back toward a dead utopia rather than looking forward (and with hope) towards the future.

Just my two cents.

=====
Stephen

Ok, here is my space age rant, FWIW. This is without a doubt one of the most important space anniversaries we have had to celebrate in recent times. It truly is worthy of reflection now that it is 50 years later. As a civilisation, we probably could have advanced further into space exploration and space mobility than we have over the past half century, but the Sputnik program was beyond any doubt, the beginning marker of the space age and the subsequent space race. It essentially sparked the creation of NASA, and ultimately all the other national space agencies. It is a bit early to comment on the private space enterprises, but we've certainly come quite a long way since the early days.

One can argue that we should be further along with the agenda by now, but as we look at the great variety of exploratory missions that our species has recently launched, and are currently controlling, I look back at the collective enterprise as quite an outstanding accomplishment for our planet's diverse nations. I think we can all feel proud, and thank the Sputnik creators for kick-starting the whole thing.

As I think back on my personal experiences from 50 years ago, they very much parallel those described by PDP8E. I was 7 years old that day, and I remember my Dad taking me outside at night to see if we might see the satellite pass overhead. We didn't see it, but we did watch the evening or nighttime news, where we heard television broadcasts of the audible signal from the satellite. It was a special day for me, and one that turned me into a space exploration enthusiast 50 years ago. On a later date, we did go out to see the Echo satellite pass overhead, which also turned me into a satellite hunter. My dad gave me a 1x1 inch sample of the metallicized Mylar material used in the "beach ball" before we went out and saw that artificial satellite pass overhead. That pretty much cemented my interest in space.

As an international community, we all need to find ways to instill the wonders of space into the minds of our children.

My 2 pence in reply - you're SERIOUSLY over analyising it by about 20 orders of magnitude.

The criteria are quite simple.
1) Is derived from the default
2) Doesn't look like complete crap. (A bit like crap is fine)

Here is the exact thought process that went on to come to the new logo

• Right..that's the upgrade for Invision 2.3 done. Oh - a new default forum skin.
• That's nice - a bit more 'sensible' that the light blue colours. I'll have to do what I did last time and make a UMSF banner derived from the Invision banner.
• Oh - October 4th isn't far away - I'll save it till then and put Sputnik in instead of the logo for a while.
• Oh crap - it's the 4th already....and I'm on a train...let's have a think about this Sputniks round.....0 is round..... 5=0 That'll work.
• Lunch time at work .... 'Josh - what do you think of this?' 'Nice!' 'I thought so as well - now what the hell is CSS again?'

Finished. If you're trying to invoke some sort of deep rooted subversive commentary on the status of exploration of space...you SERIOUSLY need to lighten up. I am not, for instance, about to look at the extension lead I'm using and go :

'hmm - a red led on it - suggestive of 'stop' and 'evil' - infering the suggestion that using too much electricity is a bad thing that contributes detrimentally to the state of our climate and counters my responsibility as a member of the global commuinty to be as low impact as I can and furthermore, by buying the cheapest extension lead I could find, I am funding the evil capitalist exploitation of low wage far eastern factory workers that once more, is damning of my efforts to be a globally social and environmentally responsible human...'

...no - it's just an LED - like that's just a logo, made in the laziest way possible.

The basic premise of always having the default skin with a tweaked banner is that as I'm not a code monkey ( as I've said about 1.6x10^58 times before) - I do know how to add skins to the forum, but I occasionally need the Invision tech support guys help . So I want to keep the forum as 'default' as possible to make the ammount of effort involved in maintaining it as minimal as possible.

If someone asked me what I thought the logo looked like I'd go 'Quite nice, simple, clean, a bit corporate perhaps, but nothing wrong with a bit of professionalism'

The theme's staying. If you want to use the old one - the option is there at the bottom left of every single page for you to select which one you want to use - but the old theme is designed around Invision 2.1 - and we're on Invision 2.3 - so compatability issues may exist.

If someone want's to make an Invision 2.3 theme all of their own - I'll happily install it - but the default theme will always be the default as installed with Invision...simply because, as a great guy once said - better is the enemy of good enough.

Doug

I like it. It's minimalist, but I like minimalist in this case.

For those who feel inclined it is possible to compare the new look with the old look using Google's cached pages.

For example, here's the front page in the old look..

A few notes:

1) The lineup of the planets in the new logo is rather harder to make out than in the old one. To make the lineup standout better I would suggest either lightening the shade of black used in it or brightening the outlines of the planets. Or if the lineup no longer matters any more (and maybe it doesn't; Sputnik did, of course, only go round and round, as opposed to go outward bound) then alternately drop the lineup altogether.

2) I notice there are still nine planets in the logo's lineup. Was that a subtle message of defiance to the IAU? Or merely an artifact of the speed with which the new llogo was designed? :-(

3) The icons marking the subforums look slightly larger than the old ones, but I presume that is just an optical illusion.

4) Quotation mark icons have replaced the "IPB" icons. I take it this to be just a feature of the new Invision version. That said, if you look closely at the old version the non-IPB icons (those with backward "L"--or whatever that corner icon thingie is) in fact have an "IPB" inside of them. The new ones have a slightly larger backward "L" but no "IPB" or quote mark.

5) Looks like the text font used has been altered also. If you compare "Front Page Stories" in the two versions, for example, you will notice that the letters are slightly more widely spaced in the old version than in the new, which have a slightly more "squashed" look, which is more obviously a variable size font than the old one. If the font used for the message text has also changed then that potentially can play havoc with certain things like user sigs. (Like, well, um, mine for example.)

6) The "5" in the logo looks noticably larger than the (filled in) "O". But I presume this is just an optical illusion too.

But of course I guess I'm just "over analyzing" again. Best of luck with the new schema.

=====
Stephen

Both versions look identical to me -- it is best to grab screenshots for comparative studies. If you don't like the color scheme, just override it within your browser. Here is how I see the forum:

Click to view attachment

In fact, that's the way I've always viewed the forum (and every other website, for that matter). I personally could not give a rat's about the way websites look; I'm only interested in the content.

Amen to that!



In celebration, I watched the movie October Sky last night, one of my all-time favorites -- very evocative. As you were there, would you say it captured the feelings of the era accurately?



Indeed we do! Being envious about their future is silly and unproductive.

I second the request for increasing the contrast between the outlines of the planets and the background.

In fact I was about to post a reply saying that I don't see any planets at all, but by carefully adjusting the angle of the screen and twisting my head back and forth, I can just barely tell that they're there. The planets still don't register unless I consciously look for them.

The 50/sputnik logo is wonderful; good work.

TTT

I am amazed by this whole discussion. I come to this site for the CONTENT not the garnish.
I don't know what skin I was using before -- for me the main change has been from a light
blue scheme to a gray. I find both simple, pleasant, and NON-DISTRACTING from the content.

OK, I do have to agree with this

I think you guys either need to calibrate your displays (LCD?) or buy better ones.
I'm using a low-end shadow-mask CRT that cost all of £20 new, yet the planet outlines are very obvious. Very nice job on the logo.

My thought too...although I would like to see fresh flowers everyday on the top right corner...

Previously someone asked about the numbers of planets in the line up. Until someone recalls the two Pioneer spacecraft and etches out Pluto on their plaques (for that is where they, and the normal logo come from) then it will remain as it is

Dou

I find it very productive actually, and I suspect others here do too. Being envious of what the youngsters of today will see and do in their future is the main driving force behind all the Outreach work I do in schools, and also behind writing the children's space books I've written: I want to make sure they appreciate the opportunities they'll have and the wonders they'll see, and don't just lose themselves in an apathetic world of iPods, gangsta-rap and celebrity worship. I can't tell them what it WAS like to fly into space because I haven't done it myself, but I can tell them what events will happen, eventually, in their future, and encourage them to be a part of that future, an active part and not just an armchair observer.

When I stand in front of a classroom packed with over 100 7 and 8 year olds, and take them on my "Tour of the Solar System", and show them how when they grow up people will be walking on the Moon again, and walking on Mars for the first time, am I thinking "Won't that be great?" You bet. Am I also scanning the faces of the kids around me and wondering "Will it be YOU doing that for real one day?" Absolutely. Am I growling inside, thinking "You lucky, lucky *****s, you'll get to see things I have dreamed about for years"? Damn right. But it's that jealousy and enthusiasm that I hope - and I'm told - helps make my talks in schools so useful, because the message is a positive one. A jealous one, yes, guilty as charged, but in that I think I'm no different to many people here, or to people in previous ages who've wished they could see the next generation of racing cars, or fighter aircraft, or musicians or sportsmen or etc etc...

Somewhere, right now, there's a kid who'll grow up to become the first person to stand on the edge of Valles Marineris and peer down at its floor. I hate him or her and am jealous of them for that, sure, but not in a vindictive way.

Envious? Fair enough. Silly? Don't think so.

That's interesting, Stu. I've also given talks at local schools (spurred on by encouragement via e-mail from David Levy) but I only ever talk about the past and present. My talks are driven by the excitement of what we've learned and our current exploits. The future is not something I ever think about. As a consequence, I'm not envious at all. Not sure why I am "future-blind"; is it a blessing or a curse?

Good to hear of someone else doing schools Outreach Del! Personally, I can't imagine going into a school and giving a talk without mentioning what those kids could do in the future. I like to leave a school thinking that I've maybe helped inspire just a couple of the little monsters young children enough to make them at least want to find out more on their own, or maybe think seriously about how they might go into space, or science, when older. I also shine a spotlight on what we've achieved, and are doing today, but I can't imagine not discussing the plans to send people to the Moon and Mars, or land probes on Europa, or one day take images of Earth-like worlds orbiting distant stars... If you don't talk about the future, it's just history and current affairs.

Different when I talk to a U3A or WIDENING HORIZONS group - all retired people - because chances are rather slim that they'll ever "grow up" to walk on the Moon but with a school class or a church hall full of Brownies or Scouts or whatever I feel a kind of obligation to try and get them excited about the possibilities in their future, and maybe help give them something else to think about instead of hanging around street corners listening to 50 Cent on their mobile phones and secretly swigging cider out of Coke cans...

I like the new design, it IS a significant anniversary worth marking, and I was pleased to see some recollections from the few of us old enough to actually recall the event.

Here, for anyone interested, is my take on Sputnik and the first 50 years of the space age, as it appeared in The Herald newspaper, Glasgow, last week. To test the observant and the knowledgeable, there is a small error re Laika.

The Herald on Sputnik at 50

Great to see the Sputnik logo is still 'alive & kicking'
What will be the next Unmanned spacecraft in the logo ( Echo 1 ) ???

There are plans.

Ha! 100,000 posts, I take it? Congratulations, Doug!

Kudos to Astro0 who has been my banner-logo guru for a long time - we've got a conjunction special for the next couple of weeks

How fitting, good call Doug, I was wondering when you were going to change the logo;-)

It's all Astro0's doing - suddenly my inbox will have a pertinent, stylish logo in it :0

No offense to Astro0, but when it first popped up I tried to brush whatever it was off my monitor.

Is everyone ready for a completely ignorant question? ^_^

... what exactly is it?

The Sun between Mars & Earth.

I like it! Thanks, Astro0 & Doug.

Ohh... will it be changed after conjunction is over?

Shortly after conjunction we will be in the lead up to the 5th anniversary for the twin Rovers.
Keep an eye out for a new addition the banner.

Not long after that, UMSF reaches 5 years!!!
Astro0

Another great logo and we're already looking forward to the next and to an amazing 5th anniversary !!!!!

Take a look at the logos of the planets on the cover of this 1983 NASA-JPL publication:

Doug, you may be want to change the forum's name to UnMARSned Spaceflight

What the hell is that little symbol out from Pluto? Eris?