I have owned speedmasters before - Sapphire sandwich; Speedy Tuesday, I'm sure some others. And this does not include the digital variations, X-33 of various editions. But last week I took delivery of another Speedmaster. Oh no I can hear you say - not one of the Special Editions / Limited Editions? Well in fact yes. It was released in 2018 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8, the first manned space flight to reach the moon and back.
This reminded me I visited the Houston Command Centre back in 2009, when on a brief visit with some of our management team, over in Houston at our head offices. I thought I'd share some photos relevant to the Apollo program as a bit of history.
There we visited a Saturn rocket used to propel the Apollo missions into space. It was truly colossal and lay sideways in a huge hanger. Along one side were displays commemorating each of the Apollo missions along with the insignias of each. You can just make out Apollo 8 down the end there.
Other parts of the site were working labs - it was not a museum - we were lucky to see the training cockpit for one of the space shuttles. Loads of buttons and controls. I guess a lot more than the simple command modules of the Apollo missions.
Here is the Mission Control Center (sic)
I have quite a few other pictures but most relevant to us is:
Omega can't help but go for some 'free' publicity!
This neatly dovetails to my new acquisition. It nominally is 44.5mm diameter, but the dimension that I read that affects fit for me is the lug to lug length is 49mm - so I knew this one would not be too big for me. It is not too thick either at around 12mm. It is a full ceramic case like other DSOM - but what makes it so different is the movement is based on the manual wind 1861 of Speedmaster Professional fame and is called the Cal 1869 - which I don't know if on purpose - is a numeric anagram for 1968, the year Apollo 8 was launched.
Couple of reasons I really like this - I am a massive Pink Floyd fan so how cool to have Lovel's words, "We'll See You on the Other Side", so close to the words from the 1976 Dark Side of The Moon Album, "See you on the Dark Side (as a matter of fact their is no dark side) - and escribed "Dark Side of the Moon"
Immediately you can see something is quite peculiar about the version. It is almost a skeltonised styling with bridges laser etched to simulate the surface of the moon. I like the yellow accents which is mirrored in the leather strap with racing hole finishes - the tang buckle holes are reinforced though for the ceramic pin fastening. The skeleton faced is shown here:
On wrist it looks so different - I hope you agree in a good way - from any others I have. The lume includes all hands / chronograph measures as well - which lights up rather well in the dark - here is an approximation
I hope you enjoyed this mini-review.
FootNote: Thank you Kash for not buying this one!
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Originally Posted by Crouchy
I had to pay the dealers price though - which was at discount but not what it was on briefly here.
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