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.