Haiku

Sputnik satellite a solar flare picks out a rivet Alan Summers “Rocket Dreams” commission Read/performed U.K. National Poetry Day October 4th 2007 with Space Historian Piers Bizony and NASA images, as part of World Space Week. Continue reading

Posted in Sputnik, Yuri Gagarin, YURI's DAY | 1 Comment

What the CIA knew – or didn’t…

What did the CIA know about the Soviet Space Programme 50 years ago? National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 5 December 1962. The first NIE dedicated solely to the Soviet Space Program was far less cautious than the combined missile-space report … Continue reading

Posted in Sergei Korolev, Sputnik, The Cold War, The Space Race, von Braun, Vostok Rocket design, Yuri Gagarin | Leave a comment

Making a graphic novel 13: Laika

Ah, Laika! A dog so famous, she has her own graphic novel. Why does she appear in ours? Because she represents the fear of the unknown that haunted both the US and Soviet manned space programs. It was simple really. … Continue reading

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Making a graphic novel 12: Cosmodrome & Cold War

It is difficult on a book page to express the monstrous size of the R-7 launch facility. A few years ago, the Russians helped to build an identical launch pad, to the original drawings, in Ghana. There are construction photographs … Continue reading

Posted in Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Making a Graphic Novel, Mig15, Sergei Korolev, Sputnik, The Cold War, The Space Race, von Braun, Yuri Gagarin | Leave a comment

Making a graphic novel 10: V2 to Sputnik

I can’t tell you how many versions this spread went through. Early in the project I had made the decision to use Manga Studio EX4 (™), a drawing and layout program aimed specifically at producers of manga, the popular Japanese … Continue reading

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