Thursday, July 16, 2009

1962: Astronaut In A Can: Updated!

(Click on image to view larger.)


To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing in 1969, here is a scan of a Life magazine from April 27, 1962. Although it might look like a fanciful (and comically off-base) painting of an imagined future, it's actually a photo of a man testing out an early prototype of a moon suit. One can only imagine how heavy that thing must be at 300 lbs, and it would have been difficult to get out of the capsule in something so bulky! And if you fell over, forget getting up by yourself. No, this was one that thankfully never made it past the testing stage. I thought that the science fiction nature of this stage of preparation would be a good way for the blog to salute all the hard work and effort that went into making the dream happen.

Update: Reader Michael Craft left a comment below that identified the moonsuit design as being adapted for the Major Matt Mason moon exploration set. So I found an image online of the toy to post here for comparison. It's a perfect match, even the suit number is the same. Thanks for the heads-up!

1 comment:

  1. That's a Major Matt Mason moonsuit!

    ReplyDelete