Its been difficult over the last few years to find any toys worth adding to the collection, as popularity for certain lines has meant that choice pieces are either squirrelled away in private collections or are being offered at hugely inflated prices, to try and make a fast buck. As a result, I have moved onto my other collecting interests to satisfy my cravings!
One of the easiest (and cheapest) is vintage space books. In the seventies, as the moon race peaked, bookstores were awash with space related books and magazines and other memorabilia. As a child, I loved adding to my collection and in more recent years, it has been fun to scour these old volumes for toy design origins.
One of my favourite authors was Kenneth Gatland, who wrote Manned Spaceflight and Frontiers of Space, along with a host of others. Gatland's books always offered good quality research and writing, as well as excellent illustrations. A search for the authors name on book sites brought up a few volumes I hadn't seen, so for a few quid I bought one or two blind. This is the only difficulty with the cheap second hand book markets, unless you know the book, there is very little info to go on. As it transpired however, the Gatland volumes were both excellent. 'The Space Diary' is a children's book, which shows salient events in space exploration history from the late fifties up to the development of the shuttle. A small photo accompanies the entry, with some unusual shots and rare vehicles.
'Battle for Space' is only co-edited by Gatland, but his influence is very clear. The content looks at the cold war spy systems used by the US and Russia and the gradual escalation into the projected use of space weaponry through the Reagan 'star wars' era, to particle beam and laser weaponry. As it is a post
glasnost publication, there is plenty of information about Soviet satellites and the Salyut stations, which were fitted with large optical telescopes for live operations over the USA.
It also shows the development of Soviet lifting body technology and notes the russian objections to the US Space Shuttle design, as the cargo hold was apparently the perfect size to accomodate a Cosmos or Soyuz vehicle in the event of a direct american intervention.
On a less unnerving basis, 'Your Spaceflight Manual' suggests we could all be space tourists within 20 years. Given that it was published in 1992, this seems unlikely, but it does offer a great insight into the project. Again, primarily aimed at teens and adults, it includes lots of excellent illustrations of projected trans-atmospheric passenger vehicles, with air breathing boosters to take the rocket shuttles to the edge of space.
Large colourful and detailed illustrations show the abandoned British Aerospace HOTOL design and the Sanger-Bredt system, along with other more fanciful designs for the space tourist industry.
Coming back down to Earth in terms of space vehicle development, the bound copies of the 1965 'Space' magazine, by Cockatrice Press, arrived in a nice hardback cover and include 10 issues running over a year. As the magazine was pre-Apollo, a lot of the information is very early and not overshadowed by the major developments in NASA. The photography is excellent and the reportage is more scientific than journalistic.
It covers most of the early space probes like Pioneer, Mariner and Telstar, but also covers early lifting body experiments such as the HL-10 and the British MUSTARD project.
In a similar vein, the Nelson Doubleday 'American Science Service' booklets have been a favourite of mine for some time. Covering a wide range of science subjects, they are aimed at school age children and have a self adhesive sticker set included for readers to fill in.
I recently found a lot of booklets in discrete binders, which besides the space volumes I was after, also included books on Gravity, Photography, Sound, Bridges and other subjects. The owner had clearly been very meticulous in his cataloguing of the booklets, as all three versions of the Man in Space booklet were included, the first edition has a Dyna Soar Glider on the cover and dates from 1960, whereas the later versions follow Apollo and have a Lunar Module. Besides the stickers for the book, the space editions included fold out posters too, the 1960 edition focussing on Gemini and the later edition a Lunar Module.
All of the stickers and other illustrations are again, quite rare depictions from space history and the Universe edition also includes a fold out Find a Star Planisphere card.
The Science Series gives space exploration a very comprehensive coverage with a number of space themed booklets in the series, all of which are excellent, with unusual and rarely seen photographs.
Finally, a piece which I have been looking for, for some time, the 'Touchdown on the Moon' pack. This would probably been available at newsagents and is a plastic carrier with a number of separate items included.
Amongst the technical data sheets and specification data, there is a 45rpm single record, a couple of books and some great fold out artwork, including a large post of Robert McCalls 'Roll Out'
Possibly my favourite part is the large format Flight Plan poster, which is accompanied by a press out card model of the final stage of the Saturn V rocket. This could be followed along the flight plan, during the course of the moon mission, to recreate operations in Lunar orbit, back in July 1969.
Again, the artwork is well executed and colourful and some of the pieces are designed to be replicas of actual NASA documents.
John Sissons runs an excellent blog on space books and ephemera here:
http://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/
