GALLERY OF TEEN SPACE BOOKS

MIKE MARS AROUND THE MOON has a 1964 copyright. Perhaps, it was written in 1963. The plot focuses on the space race to the Moon between Russia and the United States. The "around the moon" Apollo mission flew in December of 1968. In 1963, plans for the lunar landing vehicle were being finalized. These plans included a lunar landing vehicle called the Lunar Excursion Module or LEM.

The cover art of MIKE MARS AROUND THE MOON exhibits a few errors: a cloudless Earth, too jagged lunar features, too large a scale for Earth and other planets, and the usual oversight of no reaction control jets for the command module. Another error is of interest since it also is seen on the Apollo 11 patch. The artist shows the terminator line of Earth's illuminated and darkened hemispheres as almost vertical. It should be horizontal with respect to the illuminated portion of the Moon shown in the scene. Mike Collins, the command module pilot of Apollo 11, admitted making the same mistake in drawing the Apollo 11 seal.

TEEN-AGE SCIENCE FICTION STORIES was published in 1952. Its cover artwork depicts the Collier's Magazine study by Wernher von Braun and others. Again, the Earth has no clouds. The lunar landing vehicle has an ascent stage with wings for reentering Earth's atmosphere and landing on a runway like an airplane. The concept is a prophecy of the NASA space shuttle of the 1980s. Wonder how the astronauts view the runway though? There are no windows or ports for a view of space or land. Additionally absent is a hatch for ingress or egress. How did the crew emerge from their landing rocket? Since all rockets have engines and fuel tanks in their lower portions, hatches are located near the top of the vehicle. Where is the ladder for descending to the Moon's surface?