MOONBASE CENTRAL

Sunday, 22 May 2016

OLD MEETS NEW

Who can come up with the best caption to this?

THE SPACE-PAK PROSPECTOR: NEW RESEARCH

For years I've been fascinated by this card depicting a Moon Prospector-like vehicle.

Its called the Orbiting Geophysical Observatory and is one of an American card set called Space Pak from 1962.

It's odd how the description on the back of the card just doesn't seem to fit the design of the vehicle. The pictured craft is clearly a wheeled rover but the card describes it as an orbiting satellite!

In reality NASA's Orbiting Geophysical Observatory or OGO, launched in 1964, looked like this:

History.nasa.gov

It's true that both the Prospector and OGO concepts were contemporaries as we can see in this magazine illustration from the Michigan Technic 1960. Both the Prospector star shaped base-plate and the OGO are pictured diagonally next to each other.

They are both described in the same paragraph [p.38. far left, bottom] in this 1962 publication, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

So did the Space-Pak Co. Inc of NYC simply get them mixed up?

If so, what is the model they used on their OGO card then?

Well it certainly looks like a Moon Prospector.

That's because it is one!

Here are some photographs I recently located on the online NASA Space Flight Forum and are posted here with permission from Forum member Blackstar, who sourced them from the NASA HQ History Archives [although I have been unable to find them there]:

When we compare the Space Pak vehicle with these we can see that they are one in the same, Space Pak providing us with a colour picture.

And the second photograph showing the upturned Prospector appears to explain the need for that odd threaded bolt protruding from one of the tyres: to easily display it on its side!

Alas the maker of this model is unknown to me but I assume it was an engineer at NASA. Nevertheless, I can well imagine that this is the earliest model of what we came to know as the Moon Prospector when Century 21 delivered our own toy versions at Christmas 1967/68.

A final thought, pure speculation on my part, could it have been available to artist Jo Kotula when he painted the cover for Newsweek in June 1961? As far as I know this was the first artist's impression of a Prospector done in colour for the general public.

You can read the whole Newsweek article on their online archive here.

Does anyone know any more about the Space Pak model readers?

ALL THE TOY PROSPECTORS

Top to Bottom:

US Cardboard Prospector,

UK Century 21 [and US Tarheel] Prospector,

Argentinian Chibi/ Bichi Explorador Planetario,

Imai/ Aoshima snap together Prospector,

T in a Circle [Tai Hing] Prospector,

small group courtesy of Wotan:

Triang Spacex - top

Standard Roxy Moon Traffic - left

Early Roxy Moon Traffic - right

LP Apollo Moon Exploring - bottom

Have I missed any out?

MOON PROSPECTOR TOY LANDING PLATE

I've long been fascinated by what is in the literature described as an Impact Absorber shown alongside NASA's proposed Moon Prospector in early illustrations from 1960 onwards.

Star-shaped, the Impact Absorber was docked to the base of the Prospector or other units in order to create a 'soft landing' on the lunar surface.

You can see the absorber behind the vehicle on the 1961 Newsweek cover below [bottom] and even clearer on the black and white illustration from the Swift Space Flight book of the same year [top].

The Impact Absorber seems like one of those accessories, which should have simply been available with the toy Moon Prospector!

So, not wanting to pass up another opportunity to 'mess around' with Century 21 box art I set about planning a SWORD IMPACT PLATE, which I envisaged being available separately in it's own box.

The basic star-shape reminded me of retro sunburst clocks and I was pleasantly surprised to find that cheap versions are available online.

Rather than spending any money I decided to simply use the image of such a clock at this stage.

Creating the box art was harder as I am somewhat unrefined in my methods and hampered by my basic 'paint' programme.

Nevertheless, you can see my efforts below. To actually go ahead and make a 'toy' would require said clock and it's box if anyone wants to have a go!