Space As It Was Supposed To Be

      No sorcerer spun this spell of unlimited adventure that waited over there just out of the reach of eager young fingers. Weaving this wondrous vision was a scientist, a man with a German accent named Wernher von Braun. Rather than gesturing with a wand, von Braun held forth models of rocket ships he had designed for the voyage that would come. They were marvels to behold, sleek, winged ships to break the bonds of gravity holding a race prisoner on a single world, strange vessels made of spheres and cylinders that fired the imagination, made one long to don a bulky spacesuit and stand proudly on unknown decks to face a universe of wonder.

      Even if a child wished to escape these sirens of the future, it was impossible. Von Braun's designs for the road to Mars and then the stars were everywhere. Through the paintings of renown artist Chesley Bonestell they graced everything from news magazines to children' books. In the mid-50s Walt Disney brought them to animated life in three one-hour episodes on television. This was the way space would be conquered--every child knew that deep in his or her heart.

      That was before names like Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo became household terms--before von Braun helped guide men to the Moon in a spacecraft with portions of its walls as thin as aluminum foil.

      The space ships that set temples hammering with star-strewn dreams faded into to that Never-Never Land of things past, lost to the light of day. They were, after all, only dreams--although dreams that gave birth to reality, a reality that required practicality to succeed rather than romance.

      This page of The Labyrinth is dedicated to that dream, sparked by von Braun and his rocket ships, and artists who breathed life into them with a stroke of a brush. The images to be found here are an attempt to emulate the illustrations that once appear in science books for children, complete with bright colors and simple presentations. For those who remember, the hope is that these images might re-ignite some of that old magic. For those who have grown up beneath a Moon where human feet have trod, the wish is that the romance of space travel will awaken, perhaps for the first time.