by Michael de Silva (Bsodmike) and Ryan Rooney (Rrryan)
This article is dedicated to the memory of Chuck Maddox. Good Luck and Godspeed, Chuck.
X-33 with contrails from Space Shuttle Atlantis launch in background. Note that the Omega Speedmaster Professional X-33’s Mission Time function has been properly activated.
Photograph courtesy of ausrandoman @ ? TZ
Believe it or not, this article about the Omega Speedmaster Professional X-33 was actually written somewhat accidentally, at least in the sense that its authors did not initially set out to create a feature of such length and depth. In fact, neither the X-33 nor space watches are central to the watch collecting interests of either author. Mike has since moved on to collecting more and more Rolex watches, while Ryan remains primarily interested in vintage Omegas and vintage military watches. Neither author even owns an X-33 at present, though both have previously.
It began as a simple, unambitious “first impressions” post and summary of basic features by Mike, to which Ryan added some images and background info. From comments on internet forums we were quickly able to add a lot of information in farily short order with little effort. Then through Mike’s website we were contacted by some very uniquely knowledgeable sources with detailed information, much of it previously unknown to the collector community. We started torealize that not only would it be wasteful and selfish to keep this information to ourselves, but while there was a good deal of information dispersed in the collective heads of the members of the various forums there had really been no effort to centralize information about the Omega X-33 into a “keystone” work like there has been for so many other prominent models.
So we began compiling the various facts and contributions that never seemed to stop coming. Indeed, even as the final draft was being prepared the Military Pilot Program was finally confirmed to still be active and the unlikely presence of a photo of the very rare “America’s Cup” Omega Speedmaster X-33 in the Omega Vintage Database came to light. It required months of work and research, many trans-continenatal email exchanges, numerous fourm threads, and at least one complete rework of the HTML code by Mike after Ryan did a pretty fair job of butchering it with a crummy visual editor. But in the end, while its conception may have been somewhat accidental, we’re rather proud of what we’ve managed to come up with and we hope you enjoy it.
This article makes use of images taken by many members of various watch fora. We have attempted to to contact contributors when possible for permission to use their images and have given credit whenever possible.
We would like to thank all the forum contributors and the Omega TZ community especially; your information, insight and great company make this hobby so much more enjoyable! Last but definitely not least, we would like to thank the many forum members who have contributed images, information, suggestions, and inspiration for this article such as Fatpants (Alex), MartynJC(UK), HercDriver(Andy), CR (Craig), Kieron and all the rest. This article would certainly have been quite short and uninteresting without your contributions.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Chuck Maddox. The quality, detail, and scholarship of his writings were a direct inspiration for this feature.
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