We Land on the Moon Coloring Book Based on NASA's Project Apollo : Satellites and planets. [Happiness Coloring Book Series] Solar Communications, Inc 1969. 114 pp. #1052
One of the things most interesting is that in order to fill up the books they found as many space concepts they could and created illustrations of them.
So while this book has some satellite illustrations and drawings of the planets, the real treat is a bunch of space station concepts and interplanetary craft:
This concept from the mid-1960s involved hollowing out an asteroid to make it a habitat either for residence or long-term travel. See Islands in Space, by Dandrige M. Cole and Donald W. Cox and the 1965 book which Cole co-authored with Roy Scarfo, ‘Beyond Tomorrow: The Next 50 Years in Space.’
So July is "Moon Month" for me so here we go.
In the period right after the first Moon landing there was a series of 6 coloring books released that tried to sum up everything about the journey: Where we had been, where we are, and where we were going.
Each coloring book was divided into two parts. The first was on the theme of the book (in this case "Rockets to the Stars") and the second a section called "To the Moon" which summed up the recent moon journey of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.
I have blogged about one of the coloring books on March 5th 2010 but it is time to revisit all of them. Unfortunately this one in particular is the dullest of the coloring books so this is the shortest entry.
We Land on the Moon Coloring Book Based on NASA's Project Apollo : Rockets to the stars. [Happiness Coloring Book Series] Solar Communications, Inc 1969. 114 pp. #1051
Just a quick taste of the futuristic wonderfulness coming up in 3 days!
Something different (and non-illustrated) today. I found this interesting article in Harper's Magazine published in May of 1952. It outlines some of the current thoughts about spaceflight at the time. More interestingly it shares a debate about whether manned exploration is necessary. While this is not my usual post I am fascinated by how there was a decision point where people needed to be convinced whether or not to support space travel.
This first article "The astronauts are serious" tries to convince the reader that this idea is not science fiction but a soon to come reality.
The second article tries to explain why space travel is a bad idea with too many unknowns.
I will be offline for a little while but look forward to my July postings as a share a series of 6 coloring books about the Moon landings. See you then!
This is a bit of a "mystery book". I don't have a date on it so I have to guess it might be mid-1950s. It also seems more British than American so there is that. It is only 10 pages.
It displays a lovely streamlined design sense for future vehicles. The vehicles are all driven by children and are fanciful.
The cars especially remind me of both "Thunderbirds" in the 1960s and of the soviet books that always had: A car, a helicopter, a hydrofoil and a spaceship.
This book also had coloring examples for the illustrations so you could chose to paint them?
But I love rockets for children and this final illustration of rockets to Saturn while the animals of Earth wave is pretty special.
