ASTRO AUGMENTATION

Santa did not disappoint on the book front this year, delivering three large format space books for me. All three are by the same author, Rod Pyle and are fairly recent publications. ‘Missions to the Moon’ was released to co-incide with the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 and features some beautiful imagery from the space race. As with many of these books, the images have been released previously, but Pyle also includes less common shots of NASA staff and photographs from Mission Control and the training procedures.

Background information also includes some rare documents and diagrams from the planning stages of Apollo, such as this drawing of the projected mission.

However, the books greatest strength lies in its use of ‘AR’ or augmented reality. By combining the use of a mobile device and a dedicated app, certain images in the book can connect automatically to the app and show video and audio clips on the device, open digital copies of online documents, or most surprising of all, display full 3d models, seemingly overlaid on the pages of the book, which can be viewed at any angle.

Probably the most impressive application of the technology is the large model of the Lunar Module, which springs out of the photograph and sits on the page of the book, to be viewed by moving the phone around the main spread.

A separate image supplies a fully realised image of the Lunar Rover too.

Pyle’s earlier book, ‘Destination Moon’, takes a similar look at existing NASA photographs documenting the moon missions, but includes transcripts of the conversations and transmissions which occurred during the periods covered by the photography.

Probably the most interesting section covers the dialogue between Mission Control and Apollo 13, after the Service Module was crippled in an explosion, leaving the three astronauts stranded in a failing spaceship en-route to the Moon.

Images show the ground crew desperately formulating plans to rescue the crew and figure out ways to use the limited resources aboard the Command and Lunar Modules.

Finally, we revisit Mars with a large format hardback, again by Rod Pyle, which looks at Man’s attempts to send a probe to the red planet, documenting the many failures by Russia and America, before a probe finally managed to photograph the mysterious planet.

Again Pyle includes a range of interesting informational sources, including diagrams, maps, historical photographs and artist impressions of projected vehicles and missions.

It is difficult to present information which has been published many times previously, in an interesting fashion, but Pyle achieves this very well, with coverage of all the major missions from the early sixties, up to the successful Curiosity Rover.

He also provides an some speculative detail on how future Mars exploration might take place, following the establishment of a lunar gateway and manned moon base.

 

SPACE ODDITIES

Xmas has just dropped over the horizon and 2024 has arrived. Santa’s supply drop brought some wonderful gifts as usual and included one or two space themed curiosities. Although the first of these arrived last Xmas and was technically pre-blog, it was joined this year by another unique item from my good friend and fellow collector, Arto, who lives in Finland. Arto sent me the above card in 2022, which was apparently a premium from ‘Rex’ brand coffee and is part of a small set of space themed collectors cards from Scandinavia. It’s almost impossible to find any information about them, let alone any extant cards!

This year Arto kindly sent me a lovely card premium from a Finnish gum series, no 116 of 120. It was a satellite themed set from the 60’s and this image shows the Convair Manned Lunar Reconnaissance Vehicle from 1958.

Convair designed a number of craft which used nuclear propulsion, the large fuel tanks held the hydrogen fuel and the reactor was placed as far from the crew compartment as possible, resulting in some extremely elongated vehicles.

Another small gift was a pack of Polish space thematic stamps. The first shows the Soviet Mars 1 probe, which was launched on November 1 1962. After a successful launch and trajectory set for the Red Planet, communication with the probe was abruptly lost, some weeks into the mission.

From the same series, comes a stamp showing the American Mariner 3 mission, which again was fated to be lost en route to Mars. Some weeks later, the almost identical Mariner 4 was launched, again in November, 1964. It became the first probe to make a close fly by and transmit photographs of the Martian terrain.

Along with the two Martian themed stamps, came a trio celebrating the Apollo/Soyuz linkup mission, with two stamps joining to show the successfully docked soviet and American capsules. A third stamp shows the main docking apparatus and connecting airlock. 

A separate stamp commemorates the Apollo 11 moon landing and Neil Armstrong exploring the lunar surface and two final stamps show satellite coverage of the Montreal Winter Olympics and another space rocket themed issue.