series. These were career books, mostly about jobs a kid could reasonably expect to grow up to be. But then there was this book. Children knew at the time that being an astronaut was going to be hard work. So this book was to satisfy the curiousity of what would/is it really like.
Evidently it was pretty cool! They used illustrations from those aerospace company and NASA proposals to show a job not as it was but as "it soon will be."
The space station is the same one as those Disney "Man in Space" movies (with the 3 radial arms that were only there to avoid conflict with the Colliers copyrighted illustrations).
When you found this book on the shelf along with: What does a plumber do? and What does a pilot do? You thought that life was going to be pretty neat right around 1977 when you graduate from high school.
So that is today's "dream of space"
Hi! I'd like to say how much I enjoy your site and blog! If you go here:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.modernmechanix.com/category/space/
and search a bit, you'll find some more space art by Frank Tinsley, who did most of the pix you've shown from this book - and a load more good stuff!
Grif Ingram
Oh very cool site - just found your site when I was looking up this book which I found today in a thrift store. Going to check out more of your blog - love space ephemera stuff too :-)
ReplyDeleteSpiffy. The vehiclke depicted on the cover, with its radiating panels, seems to have been the inspiration fore the design of "Thunderbird 3", the spaceship featured in a few episodes of Gerry Anderson's THUNDERBIRDS.
ReplyDelete