Its fascinating to read about the early plans for space exploration in the late fifties. Colliers magazine ran a sequence of articles detailing the United States future plans to reach the Moon and beyond.
In an effort to drum up support and public backing for the space programme, Werner Von Braun skillfully exploited the media of the time to show the wonder and excitement of space travel.
He would later collaborate with Walt Disney to produce a series of animated films showing the 'World of Tomorrow' and a manned journey to Mars. Its interesting to look at the proposals for these early craft - huge ungainly moonships with crews of 10 or 20 astronauts and beautiful aerodynamic winged rockets to transport the crews up to the waiting ships, moored alongside orbiting space stations.
The new plans for the next generation of moon ships are more substantial than the Apollo programme, but no nearly as vast as the fuel hungry giants proposed by Von Braun in 1958.
Colliers magazines spreads were all lavishly illustrated by the amazingly accurate artwork of painter Chesley Bonestell, who captured Von Brauns plans and illustrated a brave new world of wonder.
Some stunningly evocative space art by the late Chesley Bonestell. Guaranteed to stir the imagination, then and now :)
ReplyDeleteThe visual design of concept spacecraft of the 1950s was a singular moment in time, and thanks to artists like Bonestell, really came to life for us youngsters who were obsessed with all things space. Sadly, the economic reality of spacecraft design yielded dismal things like Apollo Capsules, Saturn Rockets and Space Shuttles, boringly conventional vehicles which left this viewer cold, at least. The spacecraft design genre "jumped the shark" on TV shows at around the same time - I vividly recall how disappointed I was when I first gazed upon the boring and ugly Eagle/Hawk craft in Space 1999. I said to myself, "What the hell happened!?!?" At that moment, I realized that the Golden Age of Groovy Spaceships was definitely over. Thank goodness we have reproductions of artwork, models, DVDs, etc, to keep the 1950s/1960s dream of "fantastic spacecraft" alive!
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I did love the Eagle design, especially with its nod to the 2001 design aesthetic.
DeleteI recall watching George Pal's Conquest of Space, which brought these designs to life and thought, Wow! Then years later, saw the Space Shuttle and after being weaned on fabulous piggyback designs from Northop and Boeing and the unusual British triple hulled Mustard vehicle, and felt short changed.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to play devil's advocate here-
ReplyDeleteFor a while I have been feeling that the "space" seen in science fiction films is portrayed as more exciting, fast moving and exotic than real space exploration. I worry that this will cause a lack of interest in actual achievements in space, and a subsequent lack of funding. It seems the same feeling was about in the 1950s-60s.
Absolutely Andy, the Star Wars 'spacesuitless', whizz bang vision of space dominates the public perception now, so the nuts and bolts, physics dependant reality looks dull and uninteresting by comparison. 'Gravity' came pretty close to the harsh reality of real space travel, but then stretched the believability a little too far by the overly simplistic way in which Sandra Bullock was able to hop from one capsule to another, without even a working knowledge of chinese!
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