A NEW SPACEX ATS ILLUSTRATION FOUND
1966
One of the most mysterious of the SpaceX range of toys has to be the ATS or Astronomic Telescopic Satellite. For me the mystery lies in its rarity. I never owned one and have never seen one. The closest I've come to one in the flesh was handling the remains of Bill B's childhood toy. The ATS has appeared a number of times on the blog and it's origin was discovered by superSpacexer Paul Vreede way back in 2009. Since then I have occasionally tried to find other examples of the elusive concept and last week I came up trumps with this cover of the Australian Science Fiction Review dated September 1966. It is a beautiful design but I imagine it was quite fragile as a toy, which Bill B can no doubt confirm! Below is the Tri-ang artwork from the SpaceX backing card. As always more ATS art, drawings, models, toys and facts are welcomed.
Yes, ridiculously fragile mesh solar panels. Tubular hull was a working toy telescope too! Probably the weakest model in the second serue
ReplyDeleteThat illustration is probably the basis for the card back illustration too!
ReplyDeleteYou should restore your toy Billster. I for one would love to see it in all its glory!
ReplyDeleteAs for the inspiration for the backing card, my money's on the artwork that Paul V found back in 2009. It would be interesting to know where the Australian Sci Fi Review magazine got their image from though. It must be out there somewhere in NASA's vaults!
ReplyDeleteIf i wasnt so cack handed,id have a go at a restoration, but the solar panels were really fiddly
ReplyDeleteAnother marvellous find, Paul! And I think you're right, that review will have used another NASA image. They were pretty serious about that telescope in space (which eventually became the Hubble) so there will have been quite a lot of documents and illustrations of it. But it's old history, so there's nothing about the ATS to be found online (at least when I was seriously digging for it some years ago). So it's really good to know there's another illustration of it, and you're an absolute star for finding it!
ReplyDeleteBest -- Paul