I was born into the Space Age and even now, at 60, I have never left it. Even though the promised vision of the future shown in the sixties, never actually materialised.
From a very early age, I was carried away by the news and the excitement of the moon race - the year before I was born, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space and on the night of my birth, Ranger 3 sailed past the moon. Space was everywhere, on TV, in books, in comics, on the news and in the shops, so as a youngster - I was surrounded by imagery which grabbed at my attention.
Books however, became my go-to information source, as we only had a black and white tv, the imagery on telly was not half as exciting as the beautiful coloured paintings depicting rocket launches, space stations and teams of intrepid astronauts clambering down from moon landers to explore the lunar terrain.
When I was about 7, I was given my first Tri-ang Spacex miniature toy - an inexpensive spaceship from Woolworths, packed on a colourful card. This and the rest of the series of toys which I would begin to religiously collect over the next twelve months - cemented my love of space.
The little toys came with a small one inch high golden astronaut figure and on the reverse of the card were photographs of other models, each shown on a fabulously colourful and imaginative background. What was more amazing for me was that I could see similar vehicles in the medley of s pace books that I craved, either in libraries or bought with my pocket money or brought by Father Christmas.
I became increasingly disillusioned with the reality of space exploration as I saw that it had clearly diverged sharply from the promised future I had seen in toys and in books, so I adhered to my own vision of the future and waited patiently for it to arrive.
My fascination with the space race never abated, has never receded, but I now have a special nostalgic fondness for a future which seemed to be just over the horizon, waiting just out of reach, the day after tomorrow.
That tomorrow never came and now, decades later, I look back on that period by way of the books and magazines, posters, comics, stamps and toys which seemed to shape a bold and promising future. This blog will explore this forgotten vision and try to recapture some of the excitement and wonder of the Moon Race.
As I watched the moon race unfold on tv and in the media, I wondered why the rockets where uniformly white or grey and not glossy red or sparkling blue and why they weren't carrying balloon tyred rovers or orbiting massive wheel shaped space stations on the way to the moon. Why was reality so divorced from my vision of the space age? The endless stream of Gerry Anderson shows and films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey seemed to show the 'real' future, why was what was happening at Cape Kennedy so staid and dull? Why were the pictures of the moon landing in black and white and why were they so fuzzy ?
I became increasingly disillusioned with the reality of space exploration as I saw that it had clearly diverged sharply from the promised future I had seen in toys and in books, so I adhered to my own vision of the future and waited patiently for it to arrive.
In 1971, Countdown comic presented a poster showing preparation for the space programme up to 1988 - Gerry Anderson's UFO was set in 1980 and had a base on the moon even then. The poster showed how the moon would be used as a staging post to Mars and huge space stations would ship men back and to the Moon via elaborate shuttles, while in the background, the Grand Tour of the Solar system would be effected by remote probes. now a quarter century later, only the smallest part of this vast plan has been effected.
