'Eagle Book of Rockets and Space Travel', by John Taylor and Maurice Allward

'Eagle Book of Rockets and Space Travel', by John Taylor and Maurice Allward

This Eagle book, written by John Taylor and Maurice Allward, was a spin-off production from the makers of the British children's comic of the same name. First published in 1950, the Eagle comics were incredibly successful, in part as a result of their most recognisable comic story - Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future.

John Taylor and Maurice Allward wrote this book as a companion to their 'Eagle Book of Aircraft', which they had written in the 1950s. This new book focussed on spaceflight and was written shortly after Yuri Gagarin had become the first person to travel into space and Alan Shepard had become the first American astronaut. Therefore, it is an interesting example of the thoughts and opinions of what the future of space travel would hold, right at the beginning of human spaceflight history.

The book contains a chapter titled, 'Man on the Moon', examining the possibility of a crewed mission in the coming decades. In the absence of published information on lunar plans from the USA and the Soviet Union, the authors included a section on a Moon exploration study produced by Peter Stewart of the Astronautics Section, Advanced Projects Group, of British company Hawker Siddeley Aviation. Stewart's plan included use of the British Blue Streak rocket, an example of which can be seen at the National Space Centre. Later modified versions were intended to be converted into crew carrying rockets, as well as individual stages of much larger rockets capable of landing on the Moon.