NATIONAL LUNAGRAPHIC

 One of the great benefits of working in a University library is that there are sometimes large donations of books coming in. Nine time out often, they will be text books or out of date volumes, but now and then we get other materials that donors have brought in, with the intention of being distributed again to students. This week we had 7 crates delivered of books, presumably from a staff member who was having a clear out and amongst the volumes of Shakespeare and linguistics texts, I spotted the unmistakable gold cover of a National Geographic. Even more exciting was the cover feature and the free gift! The July 2019 issue was a Moon Landing commemorative issue and included a facsimile edition of the July 1969 edition too. National Geographic is renowned for its editorials and award winning photography and both the early edition and the new one do not disappoint on either front.

The 69 edition covers the planning and execution of the landmark Apollo 11 mission and includes some wonderful shots of the period. The articles are laid out with large splash pages of glorious colour imagery to compliment the reportage.

 Besides recording the historic event, the article also capture the zeitgeist of the era in classic form

Interspersed with actual photography are some artist renderings of the manoeuvres and landing, as well as flight plans and maps.

The mission photography is glorious and shows all the salient points of the flight, especially interesting are the telescopic shots of the Saturn V separation and the spent stages burning up in the atmosphere.

The final part of the article looks at future ambitions for the space race, with a view towards visiting Mars and the development of the Skylab research station.

The 2019 edition is equally - if not more impressive, making use of modern graphical techniques and a wealth of data from the previous decade.

The article is heavily illustrated with images of Russian rocket launches, as the Soyuz capsule was in frequent use to supply the International Space Station at the time and NASA did not have a regular rocket based service in operation, relying more heavily on the Shuttle.

The main thrust of the edition is the move towards a return to the Moon and ultimately Mars, with a discussion on the projected direction of plans for NASA and commercial vehicles, such as SPACEX. It also looks back at the enthusiasm and wonder of the space age and how it was reflected in the culture of the sixties, from automotive design to toys.

As expected with the National Geographic, the photography is backed up by sumptuous infographics and diagrams, showing the developments of the spacesuit and projected exploration of the Solar System.

Possibly my favourite part of the graphics is the map of the lunar surface, which clearly makes full use of current lunar photographic records as the basis, obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, just as information from the Lunar Orbiter series of probes in 1967 was used as the basis of maps for the Apollo mission.

DREAMS MADE REALITY

As this month was originally going to see the inaugural flight of the private aerospace company Sierra Nevada's spaceplane, 'Dreamchaser' - I was reminded of some of the real space models I have in miniature. Dreamchasers flight has been postponed due to a multitude of reasons, but will hopefully take place next year. Meanwhile, Matchbox released a lovely model of the original crew version of the craft, in diecast form.

Sierra Nevada have since modified the vehicle and re-badged it as a cargo utility craft, which will hopefully be used to re-supply the ISS, depending on whether it is ready before the station is decommissioned in 2030.

A much more successful vehicle is the SpaceX Starship, which was again released by Matchbox as part of the Skybusters line. Looking like a cross between a missile and something from a Georges Melies film, the Starship is a sleek and simple model, with a shaped stand.

Michael Gorn's wonderful book 'Spacecraft' is a marvellous technical reference on 100 iconic spacecraft, from the early space age to present day. Included in its pages are several models in my collection, such as the Hot Wheels Action Pack  'Galileo' Space Probe.

Launched in 1989 from the space shuttle Atlantis, the probe was directed into orbit around Jupiter. During its mission, it deployed a descent module into the jovian atmosphere and witnessed the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy into the gas giant. It also detected the presence of probable sub-surface oceans on Europa. Galileo - NASA Science

The model was produced in 1999 as part of a three set series in conjunction with JPL and featured the Galileo Orbiter itself, the descent probe with aeroshell and parachute and a small deep space antenna.

The Galileo Probe is a very accurate model, even to the point of depicting the unfurled High Gain Antenna. The gold foil covered antenna failed to completely deploy on arrival at Jupiter, due to a mechanical malfunction, impairing the crafts ability to record and transmit data. However, all other aspects of the mission were declared extremely successful and the craft continued to orbit the giant planet until it was directed into the upper atmosphere to burn up, rather than risk collision with the satellite Europa.

Michael Gorn's book also includes some fascinating data about the early Mars rovers, such as the Mars Exploration Rover, which formed part of the hugely successful Spirit/Opportunity mission and the Curiosity Rover.

Hot Wheels released a Curiosity Rover in 2012 as part of the mainline series and later rebadged it as a Perseverance model, cosmetically identical, but with rusty red wheels.

The Curiosity Rover was a car sized vehicle and one of the largest remotely operated vehicles, ever to be sent to another world. Perseverance was a heavily upgraded and modified version of the same basic chassis, both rovers are currently still active on Mars. The photograph below shows the size comparison between Curiosity, the MER and the diminutive Sojourner.

The second of the JPL/Hot Wheels sets was the JPL Mars Sojourner Set, which featured the Pathfinder probe and the Sojourner Rover.

The Sojourner model itself is very simple, but almost as large as the later Curiosity model. It comes with a plastic Pathfinder Probe and Lander and a tiny version of itself, attached to one of the landers leaves.

Inside the aeroshell of the main Pathfinder Probe, is a tiny lander model. The mission was expected to only last around a week, but the rover continued to operate for over three months, before the colder than anticipated Martian nights took their toll on the probes batteries. The Pathfinder featured heavily in the 2015 fim, 'The Martian' - where an astronaut stranded on Mars, uses the defunct probe as a means to    re-establish contact with Earth.

The rover and the lander sent back stunning martian panoramas and shots of sunrise on Mars.

The final of the trio of Hot Wheels Action Packs was the JPL 'Return to Mars' set, designed to show the Mars Surveyor 98 Mission. Unfortunately the real mission was ultimately a failure as all the craft involved in the mission were either lost of destroyed.

The Mars Climate Orbiter was intended to orbit the planet and then the Mars Polar Lander would release two separate, basket ball sized aeroshells, containing a small probe. The Polar Lander was intended to reach the Martian South Pole, but all elements of the mission ended in disaster, due to various malfunctions.

The two small aeroshells each contained a tiny Deep Space MicroProbe, which was included in the set as a small gold capsule.

 

IT'S A BOYS WORLD

In the sixties, children's interests were very strictly polarised, girls had their dolls and their fluffy animals and boys had cars and army and space. This made for very simple marketing of toys and models, as the target demographic was clear cut and easy to identify. As such, annuals and comics could be simply collated with stirring stories of war, adventure, intrigue and heroism for boys, padded out with articles about technology and sports. Odhams 'Boys World' annuals are a fine example of this style of publication, with a round up of hobbies, comic strips and informative articles for the average pre-teen boy. The comic strips are re-prints from various weeklys of the day, supplemented by text stories punctuated with illustrations, which mostly had been published earlier. The 1966 annual catches the moon race zeitgeist and prominently displays a rocket on the cover - something which was at the forefront of almost every advertising avenue at the time, as preparations were well under way for a moon landing just three years hence.

Inside is a generous double page spread showing the projected Project Apollo spacecraft, styled after the early press released images of the LEM and Saturn rockets. 

Like so many early visions of the vehicle, it shows spidery legs and a simple blocky body, far removed from the angular final version. The massive crawler designed to move the rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad is also shown, with a very simplistic Saturn V waiting for launch.

Possibly the most interesting spread is the final pairing, showing a very Major Matt Mason style astronaut happily wandering the lunar surface. The last page shows something which I always looked forward to in any space books and that was a glimpse of the future and projected vehicles which would be used to ferry crews to orbiting space stations. Rather than show an imaginary shuttlecraft, Odhams have managed to procure some good imagery of various designs from Martin, Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed - clearly take from official source materials.

The Martin shuttle design also appeared in a small Odhams pocket book of space, given away around the same time with orange juice. The images would probably be based on official NASA press-releases or information shown in Aviation Week or Popular Mechanics magazines, at the time.

The 1967 annual prominently features Triang Hornby train models on the cover, with a dynamic painting of a tank launching twin surface to air missiles, from the back of a gondola low loader wagon. Presumably this is a bit of product placement by Triang, as the annual has several articles about model railways and aircraft modelling, prominently featuring Triang Hornby products. Presumably the company would have bought space in the annual as a means to advertise their xmas range of products.

Triang Hornby had been well established as a major supplier and maker of HO gauge model trains for some time, but like most other toys companies at the time, they sought to capitalise on the fascination with all things space, which was dominating the headlines.

The Battlespace range were a predominantly military themed range, using earlier army style wagons, which added a more dedicated 'space' feel to the line with the Satellite Launcher wagon, which set a small propeller based satellite speeding into the air as the car went past a track based activator switch.

The satellite set was a development of the Helicopter wagon from the earlier army releases, and the annual cover also features the plane launcher wagon, which carried a foam core flying plane, which kids could launch separately via a catapult.

The large red bomb on the low loader was a cap fired toy, which when thrown, would activate the explosive cap in the nose.

To bring the series firmly into the realm of space, one of the later releases was the Turbo Car, shown above in an early pre-production illustration and below in the final product. The locomotive had a spinning fan at the rear and a large 'ramming spike' on the front for a direct assault on enemy vehicles, which happened to be on the same line! A range of small military figures were included with some sets and rocket launch pads and gun emplacements were available as trackside accessories, although it was never actually made clear who the space battle was taking place with.

Triang also found major success with a much simpler impulse purchase type toy, sold predominately in Woolworths department stores as a cheap rack toy. Spacex Interspace Miniatures were a line of simple plastic rockets and vehicles, which came with a small HO scale golden astronaut figure and most of the spaceships were fitted with tiny unercarriage which resembled locomotive wheels.