Until very recently I wasn’t aware that NASA’s Gemini astronauts were issued with switchblades for emergency use, it’s likely that the knives were intended to be used in the result of a crash landing in a forest or jungle rather than the ocean as planned. Soviet cosmonauts from the same era were issued with machetes for much the same reason.
The knife you see here spent 25 hours and 52 minutes in space on the Gemini 6 mission in late 1965, it was made by Camilus of New York and it still bears it original NASA serial numbers and documentation. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid on it you can click here to visit RR Auction.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The Ford Mustang driven by Steve McQueen in the 1968 cult classic “Bullitt”, now known as the Bullitt Mustang, has become one of the most memorable and iconic cinema cars of the 20th century. The Bullitt Ford Mustang Steve McQueen is almost as famous for his love of cars and motorcycles as for his career…
The new Bell MX-9 MIPS Presence Helmet makes use of the revolutionary Multi-Directional Impact Protection System, a technology designed to protect the brain from traumatic injuries caused by rotational energy. What is MIPS and how does it work? The Multi-Directional Impact Protection System (MIPS) was developed by Swedish neurosurgeon Hans von Holst in collaboration with…
The Espresso Veloce Royale is almost certainly the most opulent espresso maker released this year, it was designed for those of you who have a super yacht or a helipad in your backyard, the rest of us lower down on the economic scale will have to stick with our trusty french presses for now. The machine…
This film is a little different to many that I’ve featured here on Silodrome in the past, there’s no commentary or sound of any kind, just 17 (and a bit) minutes of people sending their motorcycles up a hillside somewhere in the USA in the 1930s. The machines are mostly American V-twins from Harley-Davidson and…
The GMC Caballero is the far less famous sibling of the iconic Chevrolet El Camino, Caballero sales were tiny compared to El Camino sales, but this has caused a signifiant uptick in interest around the less well known GMC utility and good examples are now highly sought after. The Caballero was unveiled in 1977 as…
The Basecamp Standard is an automatic mechanical wristwatch by the team at Undone that was designed to be a daily wearable tool watch – a no nonsense watch with a reasonable MSRP and a rock solid list of specifications. The movement is an almost bulletproof Seiko Instruments NH35a automatic movement with a 42 hour power…
