It’s a Rocket! It's a Plane! It's ...

It's Space Shuttle anniversary month!

Apr 08, 2023

Exploring the intersection of spaceflight history, pop culture, and art.

This issue of Creating Space celebrates the Space Shuttle. It was forty-two years ago this month that Columbia first spread her wings and successfully orbited the Earth. Befitting this anniversary, I am very excited to share with you my latest work of art depicting a Shuttle launch. I also explore the pages of a 1983 children’s space book about the then-new Space Shuttle. Creating Space is steadily nearing the one-hundred subscriber milestone. In this post, a special token of my appreciation awaits all readers of Creating Space. I hope you will find occasion to benefit from it.

New Space Art of the Month

Double Boosted

This month I debut my newest artwork, Double Boosted. April 12th marks the forty-second anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle in 1981.

The Space Shuttle was arguably one of the most beautiful space vehicles ever flown. While on the launch pad, its tall fuel tank with its ogive-shaped dome, flanked by twin solid rocket boosters, resembled a cathedral pointed toward the heavens. Affixed to the side of the fuel tank was the Orbiter, itself a graceful testament to beautiful engineering form serving multiple functions.

I have attempted to capture the visual experience of witnessing a Space Shuttle launch in person. There is a uniquely awe-inspiring quality to seeing such a beautiful combination of graceful lines coupled with raw power. The title of this artwork refers to the twin solid rocket boosters which provided 83 percent of the total 6.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

The most surprising and extraordinary aspect, for me, was the intense brightness of the solid boosters' flaming exhaust. It was so strikingly bright that it appeared as though a hole was cut out of the sky revealing the brilliant pure white radiance of whatever is beyond the edge of our universe.

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Book of the Month

The Space Shuttle Action Book

Random House, 1983. Text by Patrick Moore, paper engineering by Vic Duppa-Whyte, illustrated by Tom Stimpson.

What begins its flight like a rocket, orbits like a spaceship and lands like a glider? The space shuttle. It is the first spacecraft that can be used again and again. With a crew of seven, it will soon ferry people, supplies, and equipment between space stations and Earth.

A large part of my space collection is comprised of books for children and teens – and, let’s be honest, also for adults who have never grown up. My latest acquisition is a pop-up book about the Space Shuttle published just two years after its first flight.

The Space Shuttle was a marvel of engineering. So too, in their own small way, are the mechanical paper constructions that fill this pop-up book. I have plenty of experience folding paper airplanes, but I’m no paper engineer. Some of the ways in which these pages come to life have me baffled. There are time delays, overlapping animations, compound motions, and even a countdown prior to launch.

The six airbrushed illustrations are equally awe inspiring. The book walks the viewer through some very ambitious missions, reflecting the wide-eyed vision of what might be in store for America’s newest spaceship.

We open the book to catch the Shuttle already firing its three main engines for launch. Its major components are numbered and identified in the text block. As the pop-up pull tab is extended, we see the countdown clock pass ‘3’. Flames churn and smoke billows beneath the spacecraft. The action continues at the rocket’s base as the countdown reaches ‘1’ . Then ‘0’, and liftoff! The Shuttle leaps off the pad and into the sky, rising on twin pillars of blinding exhaust from the solid boosters.

Next, we see the Shuttle drop its expended solid boosters two minutes after lift-off. Here’s an example of that overlapping animation. The boosters drop off in staggered motion as the Orbiter then separates from the external fuel tank and fires its Orbital Maneuvering engines to place the vehicle in the proper orbit.

After an apparent near miss with the communications satellite protruding out of the page (we will allow for artistic license for the sake of storytelling), the Shuttle continues on toward the awaiting wheel-shaped space station. What we now know as the International Space Station would not see its first conceptual reference configuration announced until the year after this book was published.1

We turn the page to a full 3D paper model of the Orbiter floating above the center of the scene. Its open cargo bay contains Spacelab, a reusable laboratory developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). The lab was used extensively throughout the Space Shuttle program beginning with its first flight in November 1981 aboard Columbia.2

There is a lot going on in this scene. An astronaut spacewalks out to repair a television satellite while a cylindrical module floats free nearby. Two, seemingly automated, construction craft work on new solar panels. All these actions are literally tied together with a black thread and are controlled by a single slider.

Additionally, a separate tiered solar panel array unfurls to produce power for the space station or, as the text states, to beam power down to Earth. (As an aside, I first heard of space-based solar power from Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper over twenty years ago. I would really like to see this technology demonstrated and developed for practical use.)

The next scene might cause one to take a step back as a giant girder assembly leaps out of the pages. Two astronauts float free with the aid of their jet-powered backpacks. This may sound like a futuristic description out of a Buck Rogers comic book, but it would only be one year after this book was published that NASA would introduce the world to the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) in 1984. Once envisioned as an aid to constructing the International Space Station, its use was discontinued before work was begun.3 But, here we get a glimpse of what that might have looked like.

Again, we see an example of the ingenuity of the paper engineer employing compound motion. Pulling the pop-up pull tab not only lifts one of the astronauts off the page, but also twists him or her around by ninety degrees and into position for adding a beam to the girder assembly.

We also see something that was never in NASA’s normal operational plan, as far as I know. A second Orbiter! Although just one Orbiter is pictured, the text refers to it as a second one, implying that we may be observing this scene from inside the first one. NASA never flew two Orbiters at once, but they did have plans in place for several potential rescue missions in case an Orbiter was disabled or could not reenter due to thermal tile damage. On one occasion, NASA even had a rescue Orbiter ready for launch on the pad as a precaution, but it was ultimately not needed.4

Now, we get a glimpse inside the Orbiter as we enter the cockpit. Spread before us is a busy array of switches, instruments, and display panels. The detail in this book is impressive. I’ve been inside a Shuttle cockpit trainer, and the illustration gives a very good sense of what it is really like.

Not only are we inside the cockpit, but we are training to be a pilot!

As we look out the windows of our simulated cockpit, we see that we are many miles from Earth! The entire sphere of the planet is visible! And there’s one of our crewmates out there, too! Our mission is to take the controls and maneuver to retrieve our wayward colleague.

This is one of the more unexpected animated effects of this pop-up book. There is a large control stick that is attached, by way of threads, to an articulating external scene. The reader can “take control” of the Shuttle with this stick by moving it from side to side. This pivots the scene outside the cockpit windshield back and forth, giving the illusion of steering the spacecraft.

Our pilot training has paid off! We are now safely touching down on the runway.

Recommendation of the Month

As a reader of Creating Space, I know you enjoy a good space NERDSletter. From time to time, I will share other space-related blogs that I find. This one happens to be written by an acquaintance I came to know from the International Association of Astronomical Artists.

Nick Stevens’ Soviet Space Substack presents his enthusiasm for Soviet space projects – some that you may never have heard of. He shares rare vintage photos and illustrations along with expertly-crafted 3D models that he creates, himself. If you are a Soviet space nerd you’ll be over the Moon reading Nick’s articles.