Bruce Balfour

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THE BALFOUR Gallery

A few photos for your entertainment — some are of me and my artwork, while others
refer to locations, vehicles, or other strange and obscure things mentioned in my books.

Bruce Disguised as an Artist with a Welding Torch (although it kind of looks like a saxophone)

ART Gallery

Some of my artwork, as noted.

Eye of the STorm

(c) Bruce Balfour 2017

Painting with Flow Medium

Dancer

(c) Bruce Balfour 2017

Bronze sculpture

 

Defiance

(c) Bruce Balfour 2012

Steel sculpture

TALL MAN

(c) Bruce Balfour 2018

Steel sculpture

DIGITAL DEAD REFERENCE Gallery

Below are a few of the references I used for The Digital Dead. Many of the locations were photographed during my travels, while others were drawn from public sources (e.g., NASA aircraft aerial views, old missile bases) and from my time working at NASA-Ames Research Center in 1981-1982. The Lotus is the same car mentioned in the novel.

NASA Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) C-141 Bruce flew on in 1981-1982. Open hatch behind cockpit contains infrared telescope.

NASA KAO C-141

When I worked at NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, I made several high-altitude flights as experiment operator on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory in connection with the Infrared Imagery of Shuttle (IRIS) project in 1981 and 1982.

Infrared Imagery of Shuttle (IRIS) heat image of STS-3 Columbia in 1982 from NASA Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) with comparison photo.

IRIS INFRARED STS-3

With the NASA KAO flying at about 400 mph at 46,000 feet, we intercepted Shuttle Columbia on re-entry at 185,000 feet at about Mach 16 to capture the first infrared (heat) image of the Orbiter’s underbody. We didn’t actually know if we had successfully acquired this image until I processed the data tape after the flight, and I was the first person to see it. The black lines are from two bad cells in our infrared array on the KAO telescope. We only captured half of the Columbia underbody because it passed over the end of the infrared array, so we paired it with a standard photo. This image then appeared on the following week’s cover of Aviation Week magazine.

 

Bruce (location marked at right in back row) and the IRIS team with NASA Kuiper Airborne Observatory C-141 in 1982 at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

KAO IRIS TEAM

One of the more unusual things I’ve done. Even the safety training for flying on the KAO was interesting since it required a high-altitude flight clearance from NASA. That included going through the “chamber test” with some fighter pilots and astronaut trainees so I’d learn how it felt when the oxygen slowly left my body at low atmospheric pressures. The final exercise was an explosive decompression simulation that left me with a headache for a week, but I successfully got my oxygen mask on and that meant that I had passed. Fortunately, I only had to do the chamber test once.

 

 


Bruce and his Lotus Turbo Esprit

 

Lotus Turbo Esprit rear view

LOTUS

Originally owned by a Hollywood film crew guy, this car appeared in some low-budget films before I bought it. Unlike the Lotus in one of the James Bond films, this one could not travel underwater like a mini-sub, so its only other claim to fame was appearing in The Digital Dead.

 

Grave marker for Emperor Norton the First, Emperor of the US and Protector of Mexico. A location in The Digital Dead.

Emperor Norton

One of the quirkier characters from the Gold Rush era in San Francisco, Norton was a rice merchant who tried to corner the market on rice coming into San Francisco, then lost all his money when his plan failed. He disappeared for a while, then surfaced again as Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. His funeral was attended by over 5,000 people in 1880. His body was later moved from its original location (when most other graves were also being moved out of SF due to rising real estate values) and relocated to the “City of the Dead,” Colma, California. Wyatt Earp is also buried in Colma, in a cemetery across the street from Norton.

 

Glen Canyon AZ cliffs

GLEN CANYON, ARIZONA

Slot Canyon in Glen Canyon

 

Contact Info

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