Category Archives: Planes Trains and Automobiles

Space shuttle Atlantis lands for the STS-135 mission marking the final mission of the Space Shuttle Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Time of landing was 5:57 a.m. (EDT) on July 21, 2011.

The “just at dawn” landing was one of the most memorable landings ever, as shown in this picture:

Special edition cars are often just motorized platforms to test the limits of human eye-rolling. There’s something about those Harley Davidson-edition F150s or the Fiat 500 Gucci cars that just feels like shameless brand-whoring. But not this one. Not these Mustangs made to honor the Apollo moon missions. These are terrific.

The car is pretty much exactly what you’d think it is: a Ford Mustang GT (with 627 HP here to make it at feel more rocket-like) done up to resemble a bit of hardware from the Apollo era. It’s got the black-and-white color scheme of a Saturn V, and has vertical USA decals and small American flags and hood stripes that read, again vertically, UNITED STATES in such a way that it’s impossible to look at them and not picture that same stock footage of the Saturn V launching in your head. You know, this sort of thing:

That’s a pretty good thing to pop into your head when you see a car.

The design scheme unquestionably suggests a NASA rocket. It’s stylized and simple and iconic, and they resisted all the temptations I would have had to stick a bunch of fake valves and vents and access panels and stuff on it. But they still manage to get a fun surprise in here, too, with some red-orange LED underbody lighting meant to suggest the heat of re-entry on the Apollo capsule.

I know many out there may find this silly or over-the-top, but I say fuck that, life’s too short. This is simply fun. The Mustang has long established itself as the premiere platform for non-essential accent lighting experiments, with sequential indicators, shaped puddle lights and all that, and this underbody lighting fits in perfectly.

I mean, look at the top image of the car there at night with those lights on. It’s dramatic and exuberant and fun. If that’s too much for you, why the hell would you even consider buying a car designed to look like a rocket? You wouldn’t. This car is an unashamed fantasy-appeasement tool for all of us (myself included) who, somewhere deep down, still want to be an astronaut.

You may have a shitty job, but how terrible would you feel everyday if you left work and walked out to your own personal rocketship? It may be faintly silly, sure, but in the best possible way.

Space shuttle Atlantis launches for the STS-135 mission to the International Space Station in the final mission of the Space Shuttle Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff was at 11:29 a.m. (EDT) on July 8, 2011. Astronauts Chris Ferguson, STS-135 commander; Doug Hurley, pilot; Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim, both mission specialists, were on board.