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THIS NEW OCEAN
The Dawn of the American Space Age
In 1954 many experts predicted that we would build orbital space stations and undertake lunar missions by the early 21st century. None of them imagined that the first humans would venture into space just seven years later.
The “Dan Dare” Dream
This promotional fantasy from the Boeing company was just one of many such visions presented throughout the 1950s by corporations keen to play a role in turning space fiction into scientific and technological fact.
1: This New Ocean
In 1954 the American public was informed that “scientists and engineers now know how to build a station in space that would circle the earth 1,075 miles up. The job would take 10 years and cost twice as much as the atom bomb. If we do it, we can preserve the peace and take a long step toward uniting mankind.” This vision was presented to a wide audience in a series of articles for Collier’s, a popular color illustrated magazine of the time. Between 1952 and 1954 seven major space articles were published, including descriptions of a lunar colony and a mission to Mars. Systems for potential future space missions, devised mainly by German-born rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, were brought to life by illustrators Chesley Bonestell, Rolf Klep, and Fred Freeman. There was a giant wheel-shaped space station gently turning on its axis, its crew enjoying artificial gravity generated by the rotation. A painting by Bonestell shows the station attended by winged rocket planes, while in the foreground huge landing ships are prepared for missions to the Moon “within the next 25 years.”
Willy Ley, a successful space popularizer in his own right, was von Braun’s major partner in creating the articles, along with many followup books. Most of these dreams had been familiar to rocket visionaries and science fiction enthusiasts since the 1930s, but the Collier’s articles represented perhaps the first time the public had been invited to think about rocket ships, space stations, and trips to the Moon as serious elements of national policy. The magazine sold three million copies a month. As a family title it would have been read by perhaps fifteen million people. Space was no longer just a vague dream. It was something for taxpayers to consider in earnest.
Aiming high
In the late 1950s, as America began to consider how to organize its space sector, major companies vied for the attention of Washington policymakers with enticing visions, such as this Boeing artwork of a rocket plane and a gigantic craft about to leave Earth on a great voyage of discovery.
A vision for life in orbit
Chesley Bonestell’s influential illustration for the Collier’s space-themed articles of 1954. A fleet of moon landers is built from components delivered into Earth orbit by winged space planes.
The literature of space
Hundreds of mid-20th century books, from cheap pulp editions to lavish art-quality volumes, helped sell the coming of the “Space Age.” The Conquest of Space, first published in 1949, was among the most significant.
Just four years after the last of the Collier’s space specials, the question of whether to turn any of those rocket visions into reality was becoming a matter of national importance. America had been planning low-key forays into space, but on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union got there first, launching a tiny satellite, Sputnik. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration opened for business ten months later as an emergency response to Sputnik and the likelihood that the Soviets were planning to launch people into space in the near future. The fledgling space agency inherited some ideas for human space flight from various smaller aerospace research organizations across the United States, most of which were swiftly absorbed into NASA. The most developed project was called Mercury. A tiny cone-shaped capsule would ride on the top of a small battlefield missile, the Redstone, based closely on Wernher von Braun’s notorious V2 rocket technology, which he had brought to fruition during World War II under the Nazi regime before escaping to America in the hope of pursuing his deepest ambition: the peaceful exploration of space.
Gaining control
Carl Zoschke’s illustration of a Mercury spacecraft’s reaction control system, manufactured by Bell Aerosystems. Color-coded arrows highlight pitch, roll, and yaw movements enabled by corresponding sets of thrusters.
Spam in a can
An accurate illustration by “A. Pierce” shows the equipment layout of the Mercury spacecraft manufactured by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, in conjunction with NASA’s Space Task Group at Langley, Virginia. This painting dates from 1961, the final months before the Task Group’s relocation to the much grander Manned Space Center in Houston.
Despite the Soviet threat, there were many doubts about the risks and vast expense of launching humans on temperame...
