Modern space themed books are invariably large glossy and full of high definition colour photographs and garish illustrations, so its sometimes easy to forget what early technical journals and textbooks were like. Usually, the reason I buy vintage books and magazines from the 1960's is for the occasional illustration or diagram which shows futuristic or conceptual designs for spacecraft, but as my more recent acquisitions have shown, the real details behind the space race are often as interesting and exciting as the theoretical.
Most of my books are from ebay or second hand book sites, where its only possible to get a small preview of the content, so a certain amount of guesswork and luck is always needed when buying blind. Sometimes I can end up with a bland, text heavy tome, with no illustrations and other times, the edition can be full of great photographs and engaging material. One lucky outing brought home a small binder of ten issues of a magazine entitled simply 'Space'. Published from 1965 onwards by Cockatrice Press in London, the small squarebound magazines are clearly aimed at the enthusiast, rather than a scientific audience and show the annual developments in the race to explore space and reach the Moon. Predominantly printed in two colours, with monochrome photographs, the occasional section has full colour illustrations.
The first volume (I have been unable to find further issues, but editions 11-14 are visible on a dutch space museum website) covers the advances made from the Gemini era of manned space flight and the first missions to the moon and inner planets.
The low resolution photographs show a grainy, blurry succession of shots, taken by the onboard cameras, which were then electronically stored, before being radioed to Earth. The text discusses the process used to capture the photographs and the editor even asks the JPL scientist, whether there is any evidence of vegetation on the surface!
A section on the soviet Luna 9 probe, shows the amazing panoramic photographs taken by the probe of the lunar surface, whilst the preceding chapter details the US preparation to launch a probe to land on the Moon.
There are a number of excellent articles about the Mariner missions to Venus and Mars which were ongoing at the time of publication and the first photographs of the surface of Mars are included.
When you consider the imagery revealed by the recent Curiosity and Perseverance rovers and the ability for anyone to view the raw photographic material as it arrives and freely post-process the images, its amazing to consider the massive technological developments which have occurred in the intervening decades.
Even as I scanned the pages of the magazine to publish them on the blog, I was able to drastically enhance the quality and detail of the photographs, compared to the printed versions. It puts the achievement into stark focus, when considering that the technology was pre-digital and by todays standards, extremely primitive, but at the time, was considered cutting edge.
As it was published at a critical time in the space race, so many of the achievements we might take for granted were yet to happen. There are articles detailing the US ambition to map the moon and soft land a prbe on the surface, in advance of the manned landings, some five years in the future. the US Surveyor probe is discussed in some detail, even though the Soviets had already made considerable headway and landed a probe in the form of Luna 9 on the moons surface.
Space magazines coverage of the developments in the industry are thorough and very visually appealing with lots of good quality images of spacecraft from the western powers, even showing the British endeavours in the form of Black Arrow and Black Knight rockets and the proposed MUSTARD shuttle programme.
Naturally, there is little coverage of the russian space programme, aside from information which was publicised by the Kremlin news agencies behind the iron curtain, as the shroud of secrecy which had developed through the Cold War, obscured the many soviet failures and disasters as it silently competed with NASA, careful to only release information and photographs of the resounding successes such as the Sputnik, Vostok and Voskhod programmes.
In contrast to the clear and abundant photographs of American and European spacecraft, only artist impressions of the Soviet vehicles, simply rendered and lacking any important detail, are available.