TWO GIANT BOOKS FOR MANKIND

My passion for space books continues unabated, but finding good quality vintage ones is difficult, as unless I am able to physically inspect them, its a bit of a lottery judging by the covers. Luckily, following the 50th anniversary of the moon landing a few years ago, there has been a slight blip in terms of interest in real space history. As a result there are some excellent books available.

One such volume is 'Apollo: Remastered' by Andy Saunders. Unlike many other retrospectives on the classic missions, reprinting photographs that have done the rounds many times before, Saunders has gone right back to the NASA archives themselves to review the original photographic record from the first missions.

Over 35,000 individual images were recorded from the earliest Mercury missions, through the Gemini programme, to the last Apollo mission, 16. As all the photography was analog and film based, the media is now stored in a deep freeze facility, to ensure that the film does not degrade. All the imagery was digitised as a master copy and kept in a secure vault for posterity and it was this archive that Saunders was given access to for the project. As mission time was extremely precious and evey waking moment of the astronauts time, accounted for, there is very little material covering normal human activity on board the Apollo craft, as the crew had their hands full and had little time or opportunity to take candid photos. Also, all film and movie footage had to be accounted for and none was wasted unecessarily. Luckily, automated cine cameras operated in the cabins, recording a total of 16 hours worth of footage across the missions, as timed exposures recorded the conditions in the cabin on a regular basis.

Saunders used the cine footage to isolate still frames to make images of the crew from the film, by stacking several frames together to increase detail.

Almost all the photography across the missions was taken using 70mm Hasselblad medium format cameras, specially adapted for use in extreme conditions and by astronauts in bulky EVA suits. Its testament to the camera manufacturers, how well the images came out as well as the crews skill using the equipment. Some of the photographs were either over or under exposed, but Saunders has painstakingly examined and corrected the images, revealing previously unseen details. Shots of Armstrong planting the flag on the lunar base now reveal his face behind the glare of the visor and the massive contrast of pitch black space and brilliant sunshine has been tempered to reveal the starfield behind the explorers.

As well as the full page spreads, there are individual foldouts of several panoramic shots and the huge page format and unprecedented detail of the images really brings the photographs to life. The book itself is almost 500 pages and is about 14" square and extremely heavy. A beautiful and memorable volume.

 

Next up is what can be described as a coffee table book, not so much that it is intended to be left casually on a coffee table for guests to peruse, but that it could easily be used as one, if it had legs attached, as it is huge. Easily 2' by 1.5', it is vast and while not as high quality as Apollo Remastered, its is very well laid out and full of rare and unusual shots.

Beginning with coverage of the early Mercury missions, it covers Gemini and then on through Apollo and up to the Shuttle, Skylab and the International Space Station.

Although many of the iamges are famous and have been reprinted elsewhere, the sheer scale of the pages, gives them new life and scope.

The book is not restricted to NASA press photos either and shows behind the scenes shots of training, building and development of the space race.

It also cover some of the most famous unmanned missions such as Gallileo and Voyager.

Again, a stunning book, but reinforce the bookshelves first before buying a copy!