DEEP DIVE INTO SPACE

Growing up in the grip of the space age, there was always a wealth of space books available, aimed at both children and adults. A lot of the most prevalent volumes were of the encyclopaedia type, or large pictorial history books.

Looking over vintage books on ebay and other second hand websites, I have been lucky enough to find several great examples from this period. One such prominent edition edited by Werner Von Braun and Frederick Ordway (who advised on the design and production of 2001: A Space Odyssey.), is 'Space Travel: a History'.

It takes the reader from the early days of astronomy and the theories of biblical astronomers and theorists, through to Copernicus and Brahe, with a comprehensive examination of mans' obsession with the heavens. From there, it goes into early examples of rockets and rocket engines, looking at how the chinese warlords used early rocket propelled munitions and the British Army and Navy developed rocket projectiles and successfully used them in combat.

Early rocketry pioneers, such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Herman Oberth, as well as the work of Von Braun himself and his american contemporary Robert H. Goddard are given comprehensive coverage, including rare photographs of the Opel Rocket Car and Glider and pre-war german and russian test rockets.

Possibly a third of the book covers the pre-war period and the development of rockets and missiles, before moving on to the V2 missile and its eventual capture and re-development by the american scientists, with the assistance of Von Braun. With the first rocket boosters established, the book moves into the early space age and the launching of the first satellite, the russian Sputnik and the birth of the space race.

The large format book devotes full page spreads to excellent shots of space probes and launch vehicles, from all over the world, including rare shots of soviet bloc craft. 

Next up, we have a smaller, but equally comprehensive volume, 'The New Space Encyclopedia'. This is a small, but quite heavy book, which looks at the terminology of space and includes an entry for most of the terms emerging at the time. It covers astronomy as well as space technology and dates from the late 1960's. As such, it is interesting to see some of the deep space imagery taken by earth based telescopes, from the pre-Hubble period and some speculative imagery about how future developments such as moon bases and mars missions could be effected.
 

One of the images of a future Moonbase was used as the basis of a toy, made by Triang for the Spacex line and even found its way onto some of the packaging for the toys. It was very common to find toy and model designers using readily available books and magazines as a source of inspiration.

Once more there is considerable interest in the soviet missions into space, largely as hard factual information was difficult to come by due to the tight restrictions by the KGB and soviet news agencies, due to the intense rivalry between the West and Russia in the quest to reach the moon first.

Probably, the biggest and most comprehensive book in this range is the 'Encyclopedia of Space' by Maurice Alward, who also edited the 'Daily Mirror Book of Space' see: https://wotanspacebooks.blogspot.com/2022/06/mirrors-in-space.html

This massive volume begins in a similar vein to the History of Space Travel, but quickly moves into the height of the space race, examining the history of NASA and the Apollo programme.

As I have come to expect with Alward, it is very visual and covers many of the less publicised areas of the space era, such as Lifting Body research and the early Saturn rocket development.

Like the Daily Mirror book, Alward looks far ahead, alongside the contemporary technology, to possible future applications of technology, such as ion and photonic propulsion. Once more, the toy company Triang have clearly used this book as the basis of the toy line Spacex, lifting some of the illustrations for packaging design imagery.

The Photonic Propulsion Space Station toy is based on the illustration above and the final toy also took its colouration from the illustration.

The Astronomical Telescopic Satellite was a design for a satellite which would eventually appear as the Hubble Telescope, but Triang, who were keen to catch the space exploration zeitgeist back in 1969, used the design as the basis of a toy version.

The highly successful Lunar Orbiter series of probes, which mapped the lunar surface in order to find a suitable Apollo landing site, are covered in the book and once more it is apparent where the basis of the packaging design for the Spacex toy was found, although the toy itself would have taken its inspiration from the real craft.

The book itself is a treasure trove of unusual and quite rare photographs and illustrations, which have been selected with care - rather than simply re-using standard publicity shots that often appear in similar books.

Besides photographs of existing technology, there are many conceptual drawings and artists renderings of hypothetical craft, such as designs for inflatable an moonbase and a very early concept drawing of the projected Voyager probe, designed to undertake the grand tour of the solar system.

There are a number of photographs taken at various shows and expo's, together with designs and models submitted by engineering companies.

The Encyclopedia of Space is possibly the best general space book of its time, both due to its huge size and production quality, but also on account of its breadth and depth of information included in its pages.

BEHIND CLOSED HANGAR DOORS

On the back of the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing and to celebrate the freedom of access of information at NASA, Taschen released a special book focussing on some of the millions of images from the NASA archives. Originally released as a large format edition, I recently picked up a smaller pocket version of the volume.

Like all Taschen products, production values are really high and no expense is spared on the reproduction. A inner flap folds out with an illustration of the mission badges and also doubles as a temporary bookmark.

Despite its smaller size, it is full of excellent quality imagery, from recent discoveries such as New Horizon's exploration of Pluto and the interstellar visitor Oumuamua, which sped through the solar system in 2017 and was spotted by the PAN-STARRS observatory.

The book covers speculative designs for future missions and a comprehensive look at every major launch going back to the Mercury programmes.

The research and development aspect of NASA is fully explored with conceptual designs and artwork from the days of Werner Von Braun and the early period of the administration, before the advent of the space race.

Failures are covered as well as successes, such as the lifting body and hypersonic research aircraft such as the X-15.

The text is informative and quite exhaustive, covering the detail of the foundation of NASA and its activity through the sixties until the present day and the advent of the Shuttle and the launch of the Hubble telescope.

CAMERA UNOBSCURED

Despite the main body of the blog being directed towards a space programme which would never materialise, many of the books and media in my collection are devoted to events which actually did take place. Following the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing on 20th July 2019, a wealth of new books and media was made available, including the inevitable ‘previously unseen’ images from over a decade of space missions.

‘Moonshots’ by Piers Bizony is a large format coffee table style volume which details the involvement of the Hasselblad camera company with NASA and shows images taken and of the three main Hasselblad 500 EL cameras on the Apollo missions and other flights.

The specially modified medium format cameras were intended to operate in absolute vacuum of space and on the dusty surface of the Moon. Several different cameras were carried on each mission, some secured on the spacecraft and others handheld for use by the astronauts. Each had special lenses made by Zeiss, to minimise distortion and the Data camera also included the ‘reseau plate’ which aided focussing and scale, by adding a series of crosshairs to an image.

A Hasselblad SWC camera was lost during a Gemini 10 spacewalk, by astronaut Michael Collins and may still be in orbit somewhere to this day.

Such was the quality of the camera mechanism and the fineness of the optics, that images reproduced from the original negatives, for the book show a remarkable level of detail considering the extreme conditions they were taken in.

The book shows a range of images from later Gemini missions through to the Shuttle era, with quite remarkable shots from the moon missions. 

The close ups of the Lunar Rover are clear enough to make out lettering on the instrumentation and photographs shot from inside the capsules are equally clear and sharp.

A beautiful book, which shows the Apollo missions in a clear and colourful presentation, in stark contrast to how they appeared on live television, decades earlier.

As a companion to the large format volume is Deborah Ireland’s small volume, ‘Hasselblad and the Moon Landing’. This discrete little book takes a similar path to Moonshots, but accompanies the images with a transcript of conversations between the astronauts and Mission Control, giving a context to each image in its place in history.

Naturally, there is one slight duplication of images in both books, but the commentary in Ireland’s book as well as the different viewpoint, lends an entirely different feel to the accounts.

In further contrast, I have a vintage Hasselblad promotional brochure dated around 1970, commemorating the company’s involvement with NASA and the Apollo missions. It also contains a flyer and postcard allowing patrons to order specific prints from the mission.

All the classic images are available, such as the 'Pale Blue Dot' and ‘One Small Step’ photo.

It’s interesting to note the difference in colour of some of these images, especially the moon surface, which appears as a pale brown on some shots and grey elsewhere.

Whether this is an artefact of the reproduction process, or fading of the ink, it’s hard to say, but it does provide another different view of a very well publicised series of events.