Name: CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
Brand: THE BABY SPACE STATION
Price: 95000.00 USD
Availability: SoldOut

CHESLEY BONESTELL (1888-1986)
THE BABY SPACE STATION
signed Chesley Bonestell (lower right)
oil on board
21¹⁄₈ x 16¹⁄₄ in. (53.7 x 41.3 cm.) (sight)
Executed circa 1953.

Chesley Bonestell (1888-1986), California.
Frederick I. Ordway III (1972-2014), Huntsville, Alabama, acquired from the above on 15 August 1964.
Acquired by the late owner from the above, 2003.

Wernher von Braun with Cornelius Ryan, "Baby Space Station," Collier's, 27 June 1953, front cover, illustrated (Schuetz 116).
Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun, The Exploration of Mars (New York, 1956), p. 92, pl. XX, illustrated (Schuetz 167).
Frederick I. Ordway III and Randy Liebermann, eds., Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact (Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 143, illustrated (Schuetz 659).
Ron Miller and Frederick C. Durant III, The Art of Chesley Bonestell (London, 2001), pp. 184-185, illustrated.
Frederick I. Ordway III, Visions of Spaceflight: Images from the Ordway Collection (New York, 2001), p. 148, illustrated.

Seattle, Pivot Art + Culture, Imagined Futures: Science Fiction, Art, and Artifacts from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, 7 April- 10 July 2016.

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Lot Essay

The cover art for the June 1953 issue of Collier's "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" series.

"BABY SPACE STATION. An unmanned rocket, whizzing around the earth 200 miles high, pouring vital facts back to ground stations ... Scientists now know that's the first step in the conquest of space" (article lede).

The June 1953 issue of Collier's was the penultimate in he "Man Will Conquer Space Soon!" series, and contained Wernher von Braun and Cornelius Ryan's article "The Baby Space Station: First Step in the Conquest of Space" as it was titled on the cover. This image depicts the following: "We are at the threshold today of our first bold venture into space. Scientists and engineers working toward man's exploration of the great new frontier know now that they are going to send aloft a robot laboratory as the first step—a baby space station which for 60 days will circle the earth at an altitude of 200 miles and a speed of 17,200 miles an hour, serving as a scout for the human pioneers to follow...

The baby satellite will look like a 30-foot ice-cream cone, topped by a cross of curved mirrors which draw power from the sun. Its tapered casing will contain a complicated maze of measuring instruments, pressure gauges, thermometers, microphones and Geiger counters, all hooked up to a network of radio, radar and television transmitters which will keep watchers on earth informed about what's going on inside it ... If you live in Philadelphia, one morning you may see the satellite overhead just before sunup, moving on a southeasterly course. Ninety-one minutes later, as dawn breaks over Wichita, Kansas, people there will see it, and after another hour and a half it will be visible over Los Angeles—again, just before the break of dawn." (p.33). This article appeared over four years before the launch of Sputnik.