New book on space advertizing 1957-1962

[blackstar]

I mentioned this previously. I worked as a fact-checker on it and it's filled with great artwork. The article has an interactive feature that shows some of the work:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/science/space/09space.html

 

[blackstar]

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/qa_another_sciencefiction/

 

[OM]

...I may consider buying a copy. Feel like signing one? I'll even let you use those "colorful metaphors" you so despise

 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

A very favourable review of this book is in the Space Review this week.

 

[blackstar]

The author is going to be making a number of appearances. I believe she will be at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington at the end of May.

 

[antigravite]

Got it. Really great and inspiring: definitely one of my library's bests. Why? Aside from picking up interesting ads and organizing them thematically, the text itself enlights readers on the background, the context, and thus offers some perspective. Missing is a list of artists/illustrators. Like a tribute. At first sight, the most creative, avant-gardist company was Martin. Their ads were so neatly conceived, so perfectly designed and though provoking ("what is time?", "Problem: Gravity", etc.) and coherent, this whole series of ads would deserve a book. Martin's ads raise more questions than answers as to what was considered lab / R&D priority. This book somehow completes McCurdy's "Space and the american imagination" (1994/1995)...

 

[blackstar]

The text explains that it was not possible to figure out what artists were responsible. Commercial artists did not sign their work.

She is going to be on The Space Show in a few weeks.

 

[magnus_z]

Frank Tinsley's pictures very interesting. I like this picture "Mars Snooper".

 

[blackstar]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-05-31-space-ads_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Moon race ads had the right stuff
By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
Nuclear rockets, moon bases, a lunar unicycle — a lost vision of the future?

Or maybe the siren song of the space industry in the first moments of the moon race.

In the just-released Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race, 1957-1962, historian Megan Prelinger takes readers on a tour of the alluring ads used to lure engineers into the rocket racket. In style, the ads seem born more out of the pages of Amazing Stories than any employment notices tried before or since.Fresh from a book signing at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Prelinger stopped by USA TODAY to talk.

 

[sferrin]

Frank Tinsley's pictures very interesting. I like this picture "Mars Snooper".

That ended up being an Estes rocket.

 

[OM]

...And it actually flew better without the three canards in front of the main fin assembly. Most who bought the kit and flew it more than once removed them for later flights.

 

[RanulfC]

...And it actually flew better without the three canards in front of the main fin assembly. Most who bought the kit and flew it more than once removed them for later flights.

They (the canards) are supposed to be closer to the nose because they turn into "tail-fins" when the ship is flying "backwards" using its ramjets after reentry which was supposed to be the "normal" flight configuration for landing. That was the supposed reason for the "W" wing configuration ("M" wing I suppose when it's "backing" in flight) since the aerodynamics were pretty much the same forward or backward.

The "Mars-Snooper" was based somewhat on an earlier suggested design by G.H. Stine for an "interceptor" rocket.

Randy