RACE INTO SPACE

One of the very best resources for space exploration imagery was the Brooke Bond  Tea picture card series 'Race into Space'. Arriving in 1971, it was preceded by a set on 'Prehistoric Animals' and superceded by 'History of Aviation' and 'The Sea Our other World', so for me, it was the perfect storm, covering many of my favourite topics in a series of exciting releases. The Aviation set even included a HL-10 Lifting Body as the final card.

'History of Aviation Card No. 50'

The card series brought to light a lot of missions and spacecraft, which I had been hitherto unaware of, as previously the decade had been dominated by the success of Apollo and the Moon Race. The card set was the most recent of a long series of card premiums given away with cigarettes, confectionery and groceries, but Brooke Bond's long history of including collectable cards in packets of tea, ensured that they were a success.

At this juncture it is interesting to note the clarity of the information and illustrations for the western spacecraft, as opposed to the russian projects - the Vostok and Voshkod launch vehicle cards and the Cosmos satellite bear very little resemblance to the actual vehicles, yet the american projects, which were given full disclosure, have much clearer and more accurate illustrations.

Collecting the cards was an exciting process, as I ended up with a large amount of doubles and swaps and also a lot of tea - I hounded my mother to ask the neighbours to keep tea cards for me and I regularly took cards to school to swap. In the end, it came down to a single card, No.13 the Ranger probe and it took many weeks before I finally found it courtesy of a chance comment while visiting one of my mothers friends across the street.

Again, the Ranger card was a revelation, as until I saw the image of the probe section leaving the main vehicle, I had no idea that the Ranger mission crashed a probe onto the lunar surface.

As my father had been a keen collector of tea cards for many years before I was born, he oversaw the process of inserting the cards into the album, but to my continuing dismay, managed to place the Mariner card in the album, upside down!

The inclusion of European and Japanese space programmes was a revelation to me as well, as previously I assumed that space exploration was strictly the province of the US and Russia, with a brief foray by Britain in the late fifties.

Although the majority of the series was fascinating, the real meat of the series began at card no. 45 with the future space station and the subsequent cards showing space shuttle concepts and lunar tugs.

The final card covered the ship which graced the cover of the album so spectacularly, the nuclear powered mars Mission Craft.

The modular components of the vehicle had appeared many times in various guises in other publications, always recognisable by the distinctive NERVA engine array. 

The cylindrical spacecraft originally featured in a NASA proposal for a manned mission to Mars in the early sixties and variations of the craft are shown in a lot of the major space books, such as Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland's 'Frontiers of Space' 1971 (above)  and Patrick Moore's 'Challenge of the Stars'. (Below and See: 'Course Correction for further information).

The Dennis Knight Transfer activity book takes the NERVA rocket and adds a '2001: A Space Odyssey' style cabin on the front, like the signature 'Discovery' spaceship. It also seems to be based on the Hanna Barbera cartoon ship from 'Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space'

The Patterson Blick Space Travel Rub Down Transfer booklet had an illustration in the rear, which seems to have been 'borrowed' from the rear illustration of the Brooke Bond album.

The earlier Walls Moon Fleet confectionary card set included a variation on the modular nuclear rocket design too.

Probably the most recognisable reference for me was the 'Space - Forward to 1988' pull out poster that had recently appeared in Countdown comic the same year as the Race into Space set and showed the Mars mission and Lunar Tug vehicles to have very similar stylistic references.

Modular elements from the various Tug modules, used to construct the Mars liner in orbit

Concept art from NASA archives

Image from a Russian Technical magazine