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1950s
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This is it: The Golden Age of Concept Spacecraft. The 1950s marked the official start of the "Space Age." At White Sands, New Mexico, in Huntsville, Alabama, and at Cape Canaveral, Florida, American rocket scientists -- many of them ex-Germans -- worked sleeplessly to design and perfect launch vehicles that would boost artificial satellites -- and eventually human beings -- into the cosmos. To drum up public support for this dangerous and expensive undertaking, rocketry experts, including Dr. Werner von Braun, Willey Ley and Krafft Ehricke were enlisted to share their visions of space travel that, God- and Congress-willing, lay just around the proverbial corner. Such first-generation plastic model manufacturers as Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg and Strombecker were more than happy to contribute to this public information campaign by kitting the widest variety of conceptual spacecraft models ever to make their way to hobby store shelves. No period before or since has yielded such a vast array of imaginative "could be" spacecraft kits as this one. |
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VON BRAUN CARGO ROCKET (1953) |
VON BRAUN 3-STAGE FERRY ROCKET (1953) |
DISNEY SATELLITE LAUNCHER (1955) |
MAN-IN-SPACE SHIP (1955) |
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RM-1 LUNAR RECON VEHICLE (1955) |
SPACE STATION S-1 (1955) |
BELL ROBO (1955) |
ATLAS/SATURN ICBM (1956) |
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MOON SHIP (1957) |
XSL-01 MOON SHIP (1957) |
DISNEYLAND ROCKET-TO-THE-MOON (1958) |
U.S. MOON SHIP (1958) |
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TRANSPORT ROCKET (1958) |
U.S. SPACE STATION (1958) |
CONVAIR MANNED LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE VEHICLE (1958) |
CONVAIR MANNED OBSERVATIONAL SATELLITE (1958) |
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PASSENGER ROCKET (1958) |
ORBITAL ROCKET (1958) |
CONVAIR ATLAS MOL (1958) |
CONVAIR SPACE SHUTTLE (1959) |
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SPACE TAXI (1959) |
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Concept Spacecraft |
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