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When people talked about a race between the United States and the
Soviet Union in the 1950s they had something much bigger in mind than
what became the reality in the '60s.
Look at this magazine cover from 1955. At first glance, it
looks like a somewhat overdone version of a three stage rocket.
But on closer inspection, there are some oddities. Why are there
buses and private cars pulling up at the base of the rocket?
What is that third-stage doing parked outside the admin building with
all those people around it? For that matter, what the heck is
the rocket doing outside the admin building?
Hang on. That isn't an admin building. It's a terminal.
And that isn't some Alan Shepard one-man "Let's light this candle!"
job on the launch pad. That is a full-fledged passenger rocket
boarding tourists for a quick hop to the space station. That is
the sort of thing they meant by "space travel" in '55.
No wonder the public got so excited about the Space Race; they
expected stakes that were way higher than we remember them. |
