Be a Rocketman

I came across this gorgeous booklet on an archival site recently, which appears to be a promotional brochure inviting college graduates to work with NASA. It uses first nations imagery as the background to its theme, with various motifs and symbols culled from tribal artworks from across the nation. Its an interesting choice of design, given the almost exclusively white male dominated industry, which was called to light recently with the publication of Margot Lee Shetterly's book 'Hidden Figures', which showcased the work of three afro-american women, who were pivotal in the early success of the American space race.

The booklet is estimated to have been released around 1962 and encourages college students to join the aerospace industry in an engineering or technology career. As is very much the case with material from the period, it depicts a very male dominated industry, with lots of clean shaven, serious looking technicians peering studiously at complex devices.

Looking past the period aesthetics, there are some gorgeous illustrations and imagery, including material straight from the drawing boards at NASA, as the early sixties were a period of massive optimism and excitement, with sights set not just on the Moon, but to reach Mars and the outer planets. As such, the illustrations include early concepts for electrical ion driven engined spaceships and the massive heavy lift vehicle NOVA.

The tantalising glimpses of exotic craft proposed to journey into space and create habitable environments for humans in orbit are far in excess of the actuality of the state of the embryonic space programme at the time, which at the point of publication, was just finding its feet with early Gemini missions and the lunar impact probe Ranger.

The science fiction look of some of the illustrations is definitely intended to project an impression of a fast moving, innovative industry and would probably have convinced many young men to join the administration. Given the marginalisation of first nation peoples, as well as segregation issues in the states at the time, it seems unlikely that the design choice of tribal imagery would have found any traction with its actual audiences?

 

POLE STARS

Since I began collecting space thematic postage stamps, I have seen several very distinct designs appear in the mixed lots that I usually buy. One set that caught my eye was a 10 stamp commemorative set from Poland in 1963.

The very distinctive style of colour block and reversed out white line drawing, covers space milestones beginning with the conception of space travel via rocket in 1903, by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and marking both Soviet and American milestones in the space race, up to the point of issue.

As the Soviet Union were very keen to keep their programme secret at the time, its interesting to note that the Vostok spacecraft depicted on the stamps only bear a passing resemblance to the actual spacecraft and the Lunik 2 stamp, only shows the spherical emblem that was deposited on the lunar surface following the intentional impact of the probe.

 

The stamps designer is listed as Jerzy Desselberger and each stamp has an image of the craft and a diagram of the orbital path, apart from the Tsiolkovsky stamp, which includes an algebraic equation.

It’s interesting to note the inclusion of the final stamp for the Soviet Mars 1 probe, as it ceased communication with Earth in March 1963, before reaching Mars, due to an onboard systems failure. Whilst the Soviet Union was always keen to whitewash any failures and cover up its disasters, the set was probably published following the successful launch of the probe.

COMET TALES

An upturned bowl we call the sky

Trapped under which we live and die.

I have always been fascinated by the stars, almost as much as the Moon, spending hours as a child watching the wheel of stars above me. It was only when I became able to read and understand, that I  began to fully appreciate what I was looking at. I had always wanted a telescope to be able to view them, but the simple plastic devices I got each Christmas would never be able to show me anything other than a blur. How amazing it must have been for civilisations in ancient time, when faced with eclipses, moon phases and the rare appearance of comets, when understanding of the heavens was even more distant.  Early maps of the sky and illustrations of the stars reveal some quite impressive depictions of celestial objects, such as the sky map shown above, from the book 'The Sky' by Jean Claude Pecker in 1960. It shows a representation of the four lower worlds with the constellation of the Pleiades above, Milky Way at lower left and even the crescent of Venus (upper left), which s normally invisible to the unaided eye. Somehow, the Chukchi tribe in Eastern Siberia were able to observe and record these sightings. 

Possibly one of the most famous records of a celestial event was the passing of Halley's Comet in April 1066, as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. The text 'Isti mirant stella' means, 'They wonder at the star' and its was later regarded as a bad omen fortelling the reign of Harold on the english throne. The comet had been regularly recorded since 240 BC, with sightings from Chinese records and the far east recording a 'bearded star'. It was not until 1705 that Edmund Halley, realised that the comet would make an appearance in 1758, as part of its 76 year orbit. 

There are many recordings of Halley's and other visible comets throughout history, such as this illustration from Peckers book from 1654.  The french miniature painting below shows another astronomical rarity, the fall of a meteor in the 11th century.
 

In Augsburg in Germany in the mid 1550's, a manuscript appeared detailing a whole series of strange events, including several comets reproduced in beautifully painted scenes. Along with scenes from the old Testament, 'The Augsburg Miracles' also included portential sightings such rains of blood, eclipses, earthquakes, strange births and may other events.

In modern times, the nature of comets is much better understood and their appearance can be calculated and predicted with great accuracy. Patrick Moore, the famous British astronomer in his 1972 book 'Challenge of the Stars' predicted the use of probes making close approach to a comet to study their make up. Only six years later, the first cometary probe ICE visited the comet  21P/Giacobini–Zinner and managed a distant observation of Halley's comet in the process. Over the next ten years several missions visited and photographed Halley's Comet as it approached Earth, discovering more and more about the mysterious visitor.

Nicholas Cheetham's photo exploration of the cosmos appeared in 2005, taking advantage of recent deep space and planetary mission data, to show beautiful full page photographs of the planetary bodies and comets such as WILD 2 and the Centaur comet 29P, as visualised by radio telescope.

My own experience of viewing such an occurrence came in March 1997, when comet Halle-Bopp was clearly visible in the heavens from the UK. Unfortunately for me, it was prior to the advent of viable and affordable digital photography, so I was unable to record my own sighting, but I can clearly recall seeing the beautiful dual tails, one faintly green, as the comet hovered on the horizon at dusk.

HALLE-BOPP COMET

11/OUNUAMUA

What prompted this particular post has been the recent arrival of a trio of extrasolar visitors, which began in 2017, when a high speed object was sighted, passing through the solar system on a trajectory which revealed that it had originated in deep space. Oumuamua, as it was known was a small roughly cylindrical object, approximately 1000-3000 metres long. As it approached the sun and began to accelerate, it did not develop the usual cometary coma and was designated as an 'interstellar object' rather than a comet. Naturally, speculation ran wild with suggestions that it was an alien spaceship, or artefact in the fashion of Arthur C. Clarkes 'Rama' device, from his novel 'Rendezvous with Rama'.

21/BORISOV

In 2019, the second interstellar visitor 21/Borisov was spotted, once more on a trajectory from beyond the solar system. Borisov did exhibit cometary activity and on close approach to the sun, developed a huge tail or coma, some 14 times the diameter of the Earth. Once more, speculation suggested another alien invasion, but Borisov continued on its way and subsequently left the system as quickly as it had arrived.

31/ATLAS

Most recently, the third mysterious visitor 31/Atlas was detected in July this year, coming closet to the sun on 25 October. With many telescopes and probes in place to investigate the comet, it was discovered that the comet contained an unusually high degree of carbon dioxide and water ice and was also found to be emitting cyanide gas. Following a hyperbolic trajectory and travelling almost 60 km per second, the comet has now passed close approach to the sun and is beginning it journey back into deep space. First photographed by the Hubble telescope in July, it has been imaged by two orbiting Mars probes and the Perseverance Rover. The James Webb Telescope is scheduled to make observations of it in December 2025, as it passes its perihelion.

Once more the internet and conspiracy theory community have seized upon the heavenly visitor as the topic of vigorous and imaginative speculation. Youtube is alive with clickbait videos purporting all kinds of nonsensical dramas, from mysterious shadowy figures being observed on it surface to intelligent messages being beamed from the object announcing the imminent arrival of mysterious beings, to NASA being responsible for a cover up and the armed forces being on high alert in case of attack or collision. In fact, Atlas will only come within 1,8 astronomical units of the Earth (almost twice the diameter of the Sun, so it does not pose any kind of a threat.

It would appear that in spite of mankind's development from a stone age civilisation, to a modern technocracy, there will always be those individuals who will fear the strange and otherworldly and assume that it portends disaster for us all.

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.