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Moon race ads had the right stuff
Updated 17h 41m ago | Comments 34 | Recommend 5 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
Enlarge By Frank Tinsley
A reference in art to the 'Project Orion' nuclear rocket effort, which ended in 1965, in an issue of Aviation Week.
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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.
"Half a million people moved into aerospace jobs in just a few short years," Prelinger says. "How did they get there? I realized the ads told the story."
Prelinger, 42, operates a not-for-profit library with her husband Rick Prelinger in San Francisco, stocking films, books and magazines from the Cold War. Among their holdings, two trade magazines of the era, Aviation Week and Missiles and Rockets, offered page after page of space visions to lure employees. "I realized these two magazines opened a window on the history of the industry," she says.
She started by filling a database ("I'm also a database buff," Prelinger says) with images of some 600 ads, and then started sifting them, looking for the stories they tell from the time when NASA's Project Mercury, Gemini and Apollo roared to life in a post-Sputnik blaze of optimism and "New Frontier" funding.
"The book opens a wonderful window on an almost forgotten period of time," says space historian Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the NASM. "What's really interesting is the way that art and illustration were used to sell a vision of a technological future, and present, to people then."
In one chapter, Prelinger traces the saga of the landing rocket, the Cadillac-finned cone with a little door at its base pictured landing on lunar plains that looked a bit like the badlands of the American West. "In some of the images, the astronauts look like little pioneers waving to new arrivals," Prelinger says. Such depictions, science fiction staples, abruptly died off in 1962, with the space agency's selection of a spider-leggedlunar landing module for the Apollo missions.
Astronauts as fragile, fetal images floating in space recur in other ads, Prelinger says, calling for engineers to shelter the daring explorers. "You see it everywhere, even in life insurance ads," she says.
A final chapter looks at abstract art used in recruiting posters. Never mind the hydrogen bombs or inter-continental ballistic missiles that employees made, the art screamed the future is now, Weitekamp says. "The whole idea was to involve people in a vision of modern times being a living, breathing part of the future no matter the nuts-and-bolts of the actual work." Weitekamp says.
"There are a lot of books that contain space art, but they tend to be repetitive. What's unique about Another Science Fiction is that it has images that have not been seen for decades, and it explores the time when popular imagination about spaceflight had to give way to the practical reality," says historian Dwayne Day, a space policy analyst at the National Academy of Sciences, who has written extensively about the history of the Eisenhower-era space program. "This was a time when people still thought that spacecraft would all be pointy rockets with fins and not the boxy, awkward craft that ultimately emerged."
The recruiting ads stopped after 1962, as funding for moon landing jobs stopped growing. But the vision of the futures glimpsed in Another Science Fiction made sense then, Weitekamp says.
"In 60 years they went from the first airplane to people in space. They went from Sputnik to putting a man on the moon in twelve years, twelve years. No wonder the optimism," she says. "Now, of course, we know space travel didn't get any easier or cheaper as we went on, but that was really another time."
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Science & Space
Shop for Gadgets
Featured video
Fort Hood suspect in court
Man charged in 13 deaths wins delay.
School bans rosary beads
Judge says boy can return to class.
Just say no
Mick Jagger tells his kids to avoid drugs.
More: Video
Moon race ads had the right stuff
Updated 17h 41m ago | Comments 34 | Recommend 5 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |
Enlarge By Frank Tinsley
A reference in art to the 'Project Orion' nuclear rocket effort, which ended in 1965, in an issue of Aviation Week.
PREVIOUS COLUMNS
Moon race ads had the right stuff
Asteroids emerge as next frontier of space exploration
Prehistoric 'footprints' falsified by science
Comet clues buried in Antarctic snow
Bioremediation: a solution for quickly cleaning environmental messes?
'Avatar' renews interest in extra-solar habitats
USA TODAY science
dvergano
RT @Legal_Times: OIG Report: DOJ Needs Response Plan for WMD Attack http://bit.ly/cabtIR #nukes #bio http://bit.ly/cabtIR
14 hours ago
Review science book mailbag: The Zodiac of Paris by Jed Buchwald & Diane Josefowicz An intriguing tale of science, religion and Egyptology
14 hours ago
RT @cshperspectives: Follow "biology, society and future" meeting at #bsf75 RT @CSHLnews
19 hours ago
USA TODAY review of Merchants of Doubt: http://bit.ly/9rQZeL a convincing and thorough looks at the roots of #climate denial
19 hours ago
Blondes have more money, wealthier husbands Science Fair: http://bit.ly/cBMzf7 #economics #psych
19 hours ago
RT @HumanOrigins: Nature on papers questioning Ardi's environment and human family tree inclusion http://bit.ly/azjV5t #evolution
20 hours ago
Energy #media - @KateGalbraith now covering #energy for the @TexasTribune. http://tiny.cc/ajwt8 via @jfleck
20 hours ago
RT @NASA: The full scale model of the Webb telescope is now up at the World Science Festival! - http://cot.ag/aZYmQH
20 hours ago
A CRS history of U.S. ballistic missile defense spending, vis FAS: http://bit.ly/c8tx6P #nukes #tech
20 hours ago
RT @GeologyDotCom: Caves Closing in Response to White Nose Syndrome http://cli.gs/2Yjar | Geology.com
yesterday
RT @USAScienceFest: #SciFest Discover what it takes report #science to public w/ @dvergano Nifty 50 Speaker http://ow.ly/1OPQs
yesterday
A glimpse of the #space race's lost future: http://bit.ly/cfYs49 in Another Science Fiction by Megan Prelinger #NASA #tech
yesterday
Icebergs of the asteoid belt; a look at the Themis asteroids: http://bit.ly/aOj838 #space #planets
2 days ago
@acidflask only if you are assuming spherical cow, bentonite chocolate sauce @improbresearch is that how chocolate milk is made? @dvergano
2 days ago
RT @USAScienceFest: #SciFest Learn about smashing up some atoms with Herman White @USAScienceFest Nifty 50 Speaker Series http://ow.ly/1RHTQ
2 days ago
Rep. Holt: COMPETES Act passes on third try: http://bit.ly/aems5p #science
4 days ago
RT @iPSCellNews: Epigenetics of induced pluripotency, the seven-headed dragon (review; http://stemcellres.com/c...
4 days ago
Today's unfortunate news release hedline: Put More Nitrogen into Milk, Not Manure - http://bit.ly/anxbMQ #food
4 days ago
Dang, I was just there. via @historytweeter: #history Rome to allow tourists underneath the Colosseum http://bit.ly/djUSqk
4 days ago
RT @KeithCowing: Falcon 9 launch no earlier than 4 June.
4 days ago
Interesting plot -- RT @IEEESpectrum: CO2 vs. H2O in Power Production http://bit.ly/dw2UVh #climate
4 days ago
RT @NASAWatch: RT @HiRISE: Planetary Scientists Solve 40-Year-Old Mysteries of Mars' Northern Ice Cap @UofA http://bit.ly/9482U6
4 days ago
Once more unto the breach for #FF scijourn and author of the fabulous The Jasons, and this years's A Grand and Bold Thing @AnnFinkbeiner
4 days ago
Thanks! RT @NobleFreshEnerg: @dvergano typo alert: @eliklint Sorry Eli, that's what I get for trying to work in 140 lines.
4 days ago
RT @kate_sheppard: The Oil Drum has good discussion of top-kill, spill cam http://www.theoildrum.co... (via @akouvi)
4 days ago
beyond polar bears -- visual communication to get #climate #science out to public: http://bit.ly/af6BD1
4 days ago
Roman grave goods uncovered from Thracian nobility: http://bit.ly/9wn0Do #archeology
4 days ago
We few, we happy few, scijourn: @nijhuism, @eliklint, @jfleck, @alexwitze @ivanoransky , @Revkin, @gbrumfiel , @afreedma Happy #FollowFriday
4 days ago
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn... an arcane look at ancient cephalopod http://bit.ly/aHkuGy #paleo #fossil
4 days ago
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5 days ago
myYahoo
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More
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.
"Half a million people moved into aerospace jobs in just a few short years," Prelinger says. "How did they get there? I realized the ads told the story."
Prelinger, 42, operates a not-for-profit library with her husband Rick Prelinger in San Francisco, stocking films, books and magazines from the Cold War. Among their holdings, two trade magazines of the era, Aviation Week and Missiles and Rockets, offered page after page of space visions to lure employees. "I realized these two magazines opened a window on the history of the industry," she says.
She started by filling a database ("I'm also a database buff," Prelinger says) with images of some 600 ads, and then started sifting them, looking for the stories they tell from the time when NASA's Project Mercury, Gemini and Apollo roared to life in a post-Sputnik blaze of optimism and "New Frontier" funding.
"The book opens a wonderful window on an almost forgotten period of time," says space historian Margaret Weitekamp, a curator at the NASM. "What's really interesting is the way that art and illustration were used to sell a vision of a technological future, and present, to people then."
In one chapter, Prelinger traces the saga of the landing rocket, the Cadillac-finned cone with a little door at its base pictured landing on lunar plains that looked a bit like the badlands of the American West. "In some of the images, the astronauts look like little pioneers waving to new arrivals," Prelinger says. Such depictions, science fiction staples, abruptly died off in 1962, with the space agency's selection of a spider-leggedlunar landing module for the Apollo missions.
Astronauts as fragile, fetal images floating in space recur in other ads, Prelinger says, calling for engineers to shelter the daring explorers. "You see it everywhere, even in life insurance ads," she says.
A final chapter looks at abstract art used in recruiting posters. Never mind the hydrogen bombs or inter-continental ballistic missiles that employees made, the art screamed the future is now, Weitekamp says. "The whole idea was to involve people in a vision of modern times being a living, breathing part of the future no matter the nuts-and-bolts of the actual work." Weitekamp says.
"There are a lot of books that contain space art, but they tend to be repetitive. What's unique about Another Science Fiction is that it has images that have not been seen for decades, and it explores the time when popular imagination about spaceflight had to give way to the practical reality," says historian Dwayne Day, a space policy analyst at the National Academy of Sciences, who has written extensively about the history of the Eisenhower-era space program. "This was a time when people still thought that spacecraft would all be pointy rockets with fins and not the boxy, awkward craft that ultimately emerged."
The recruiting ads stopped after 1962, as funding for moon landing jobs stopped growing. But the vision of the futures glimpsed in Another Science Fiction made sense then, Weitekamp says.
"In 60 years they went from the first airplane to people in space. They went from Sputnik to putting a man on the moon in twelve years, twelve years. No wonder the optimism," she says. "Now, of course, we know space travel didn't get any easier or cheaper as we went on, but that was really another time."
You might also be interested in:
Theater owners behind on 3-D projectors (USATODAY.com in Tech)
Has USA hit its final frontier in human space exploration? (USATODAY.com in Tech)
Brett Favre pledges NFL return to Southern Mississippi baseball team if they reach College World Series (USATODAY.com in The Huddle)
Israel: At least 10 killed on Gaza flotilla (USATODAY.com in News)
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