Wotan's Project Blue Book

Way back in the day, before blogs, the internet and before computers insinuated themselves into every household, I would pass the time drawing. I liked nothing better than a good packet of felt pens (or fibre tips as they are called now!) and a pad of paper. Perhaps this was the first steps I was inadvertantly taking down the path to design, but at some point, my random scribblings found a purpose. I combined my obsession with all things space with drawing after discovering an especially chunky note pad and began my 'Space Project'. In order to catalogue all my favourite spaceships, I wrote a few lines of text and drew a picture of the relevant vehicle on each page.

Very much a work of quantity over quality, I furiously churned out page after page. Eventually I filled up at least 15 volumes with my scrawls and now all but one or two are lost. One of the more durable was a cool vinyl covered spiral notebook. This was as far as I can recall volume 3 and judging by the inclusion of the piece of newspaper clipping about the Apollo/Soyuz Linkup Mission, would be mid 1975.

Its also a salient volume because it marks the discovery of Spacex 2 vehicles, which I began to cover based on the card back from the Booster Rocket, so my drawing of the Lunar Transporter features a side slung rocket as opposed to the integral cylindrical hull that we now know to be true. Besides actual toys and real craft, I drew on anything for inspiration and my feverish 13 year old imagination made all kinds of spacecraft up from hair dryers, power tools or anything else that took my eye!

Wotan Bill