The Art of NASA. The Illustrations That Sold the Missions

Пирс Бизони

From space suits to capsules, from landing modules to the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, and more recent concepts for space planes, The Art of NASA presents 60 years of American space exploration in an unprecedented fashion. All the landmark early missions are represented in detail Gemini, Mercury, Apollo as are post-Space Race accomplishments, like the mission to Mars and other deep-space explorations.

The insightful text relates the wonderful stories associated with the art. For instance, the incredibly rare early Apollo illustrations show how Apollo might have looked if the landing module had never been developed. Black-and-white Gemini drawings illustrate how the massive NASA art department did its stuff with ink pen and rubdown Letraset textures. Cross-sections of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project docking adapter reveal Russian sensitivity about US «male» probes «penetrating» their spacecraft, thus the androgynous «adapter» now used universally in space. International Space Station cutaways show how huge the original plan was, but also what was retained.