It’s time for us to return to one of our favorite topics—Cartoons! And not just any cartoons, but the animation produced for the United States Information Agency (USIA). You may already have joined us for our exploration of anti-Communist Mexican cartoons, animation and animatics by the “Walt Disney” of Thailand, or this psychedelic symbolic history … Continue reading Drawing Benefits: The USIA’s Space Race Message and the Animators Who Brought It to Life
RG 77: Records of the Office of the Chief of Engineers, Lunar Maps, 1961–1962 (NAID 1077479) On April 3, 2023, NASA announced that humans are soaring back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, since the return of Apollo 17 in 1972. Four astronauts, Americans, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, … Continue reading Mapping the Moon
As I am writing this, there are six people in space, all aboard the International Space Station. While these missions are now routine, in the 1950s scientists weren’t certain that the human body could survive in a weightless environment. Years before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent Alan Shepard into space, American rockets carried … Continue reading A Medal for Miss Baker, the Original Space Monkey
The launch of Sputnik and the space race led to an era of optimism which influenced pop-culture in America and overseas. We imagined where we might live, the clothes we might wear and the cars we might drive. Words and phrases such as astro and space age entered our vocabulary as a way to describe … Continue reading Looking to the Future: Space Culture on Film
Today is the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the fifth manned mission in NASA’s Apollo program, and the first to land humans on the surface of the Moon. Apollo 11 was the culmination of a decade of work to develop the technology necessary to meet President Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on … Continue reading Stepping Stones to the Moon
