Earth Satellite Game: Fight your way to the Moon in a 3-stage rocket (1956)

 

Sometimes the images just grab you and you don't care about the source.  One such example is the cover to the 1956 board game "Earth Satellite: Fight your way to the Moon in a 3-stage rocket."

It is an expensive game to find complete but I was lucky enough to find a broken one which had many of these cool images intact.  Since I never planned to play the game, these evocative fragments are cool decorations. The game pieces are really cool, with their approach to what might happen during a space mission.

One of the things that I didn't know about the game was that the game pieces are 3-stage "Bonestell" rockets. As part of the game you get to build your game piece.

I also love the board. Although tough to show completely it gives a wonderful sense of how you have to climb to get to the Moon.

Finally I like this game board spinner. I am tempted to have it made into a T-shirt because it is such a perfect 1956 image of how children dreamed of spaceflight even while many adults did not have a clue what was coming in a year or so.

The Milestones of the Space Epoch (1967)

Yet another nice Russian book. This everything included approach suggests it might have been for young adults/popular consumption.

Vasiliev, M. The milestones of  the space epoch. Moscow: Mashinostroenie. 1967. (226 p.) 17.5 cm x 22.3 cm.

The colored plates in this book make it very attractive. The text and most of the illustrations focus on the history of Russian space exploration. The plates however convey the romantic visions of places people had yet to go.

 While the Russians never made it to the Moon, this vision of an astronaut seeing where the first unmanned probes had landed is a powerful thought.  The Apollo 12 mission got to enact this painting with their retreval of the Surveyor 3 Surface sampler scoop.

 The Russians seem to love paintings of Saturn in their space art. This painting of a colony on one of Saturn's moons is very striking.

 Viewing the earth from space was already happening when this book was published but the "airiness" of the space station structure gives a  different emotion to seeing the home planet.

 A fully developed moonbase has been a long-time dream. In this one we observe mining the Moon for resources.

Finally an illustration of a solar sailor, using sunlight to propel a probe.

ZUMM (1967 spanish coloring book)

 Just a very quick fun cover.  Not a lot to say about this one. It was a coloring book published in Mexico. It was about man's pursuit of flight and his eventual use of rockets.  Mostly I just like the cover.  Happy Monday!

"2001: A Space Odyssey" Howard Johnsons Children's Menu (1968)

Sometimes work gets in the way of blogging but I am back with lots of cool stuff.

I never thought of 2001 as a children's film, but it did make an impression on me when I saw it as a child. While incomprehensible in some ways (especially the ending) it did show a grand scheme for my future in space.

Howard Johnsons was actually aboard the 2001 space station in a brief product placement.  They also issued a children's menu which highlighted the movie (and their placement) but gave the story of the movie in a slightly different way than I remember.

However the comic itself reproduces some great visuals from the movie. Cue the music....

I love the final stereotyping where the boy wants to be a space pilot and the girl a space stewardess!

And just for fun, here is your activity page:

5-16-13 By popular demand here is the whole activity page and the menu.

 

Also someone commented on the cover's resemblance to Jack Kirby's cover of Race for The Moon (1958). I happen to have a good copy of the original art of that cover. What do you think?

 

 

 

 



Kevin Kelly, forgotten space celebrity (1968)

One of the most famous junior testing astronauts was a 14 year old boy named Kevin Kelly. He and groups of dedicated  youth tested the limits of survival in a space capsule and led the way to our landing on the Moon.  This October 30, 1968 story in Current Science the outlines these heroic efforts. Unfortunately this coverage was limited to a newpaper distributed in classrooms so few recognize this hero today.

Kevin spent a grueling 336 hours in a test capsule in order to prove that the human body was capable of a flight to the Moon. By locating the expensive test apparatus in the basement of a suburban house they were able to avoid harmful media exposure during the testing.

 Furthermore these brave young men built their own test apparatus and capsule from scratch in order to spare the Apollo funding program from further overspending.

 

Their efforts and the efforts of other youth across the nation are a monument to how the youth of yesterday moved mountains and endured great hardships to help man land on the Moon.  We celebrate on this April 1 their brave achievements!