Lecture: Space as it should have been

How should space exploration really have gone?

It’s a somewhat soberinghttp://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/4/4/6/8/event_87077512.jpeg thought to realise that the Apollo Missions – magnificent achievements that they were – were really a dead-end. This is especially emphasised by the fact that the last mission, Apollo 17, was 1972, and that was it; human crews have not been back since. Personally I have to put the blame fair and square on President Kennedy as it was he who said in that speech of 1961, “We will put a Man on the Moon by the end of the decade…” At that point the Americans were still putting a lone man into low Earth orbit, and the ideas of Lunar travel were, if not in the far future, certainly in the medium – there were other priorities. But their President had given the American aerospace companies an ultimatum, so ways had to be found to achieve this goal ‘within the decade’. Consequently plans that were reasonably well established had to be put on long-term hold, if not abandoned all together, and Project Apollo was born.

But what if President Kennedy had not made that speech in 1961? Instead the ideas that were being proposed on the way “Space – As It Should Be” – had gone ahead? This talk looks at many of the plans that such scientists and engineers, such as Wernher von Braun and Willie Ley, plus visionary artists like Chesley Bonestell and Rolf Klep were proposing. If these had happened, “Space – As It Would Have Turned Out”, would almost certainly have been completely different.

This talk is based around one of Mat’s particular interests – the early spacecraft designs that were being proposed post-WWII. This also links in with his speciality in models of spacecraft, as many of these early von Braun and similar designs were made as model kits, as early as the mid-1950s.

About Mat Irvine

Mat joined BBC Television News in the UK just as the Apollo Missions were at their peak, and devised a number of model set-ups to illustrate the Missions. He then moved to the BBC Visual Effects Department where he spent the next 20 years or so working on a variety of programmes. These included both science fiction, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Blake’s 7’, and science fact with ‘Tomorrow’s World’, ‘QED’, ‘Horizon’, and ‘The Sky at Night’. Also the ‘space studios’ for such as Apollo-Soyuz, Viking and the first Space Shuttle launches.

Mat regularly appeared ‘in front of cameras’ for the Saturday morning children’s series, ‘Multicoloured Swap Shop’ and ‘Saturday Super Store’, talking and explaining about space missions and special effects. There have also been appearances on a number of other programmes, one of the most recent being the 50th anniversary of ‘The Sky at Night’.

Cost and booking:

Members of the British Interplanetary Society can make their free booking on the BIS website here. (http://www.bis-space.com/2012/01/14/3472/space-as-it-should-have-been)

Non-mmebers please book for £10.00 via the Online Booking Form here. (http://www.bis-space.com/products-page/event-bookings/)