THE PROJECT

This is my dream of NASA.

12 April 1981, just before noon on a fine spring day.

I was running back to my house because I was late. My heart thumped with the effort and I was excited and nervous, in case I missed the launch. I ran into the house and straight to the TV where grainy, analogue images showed the Space Shuttle Columbia soaring into a darkening blue sky, immense columns of orange flame from its rocket boosters pushing it beyond Earth’s atmosphere and into space.

I was 11 years old and it seemed to me that the whole world must be watching this. It was magic. And I was mesmerised.

I have been mesmerised by and loved space and space exploration ever since. This book is my expression of that love, a veneration of NASA and the objects it created that made space exploration possible.

The image of the astronaut, or spaceman has been with me ever since, as a sort of talisman to all that is great and good. They symbolise the explorer, the hero, the good character, the leader. The spacesuit takes on that character, the suit and the human become one entity, more powerful than either on their own. Its now a symbol in its own right, and its become greater than the sum of its parts. It has reached an iconic stature that few objects can match.

These objects are astounding creations, many iconic and with meaning that goes far beyond the sum of their parts. They inspired this project. Many are unlike anything else on Earth, otherworldly machines and clothing that, removed from their context, look distinctly alien. Some are deeply ordinary but given immense meaning by their role, such as the rubber stamps used to name the Apollo astronaut’s suits. The Franklin Rubber Stamp Company must have made thousands of similar stamps, and ostensibly these ones are exactly the same as all the others. Yet by virtue of their position in history they reflect back at the viewer the achievements of the names they carry.

The energy and power each object contains, bestowed upon them by their history, has affected me in a profound, semi-religious manner. When I first saw the shuttle Atlantis I felt like a medieval peasant must have done when first encountering a cathedral, a mixture of reverence, awe and admiration. This machine had been into space 33 times, helped build the International Space Station and survived temperatures of up to 1650 C. Its essence and form were the focus of my childhood dreams and I was standing right in front of it.

All of the objects in this book, from the humble to the mighty, have had an impact on me. And in addition to the icons of the past there are those of the future, such as the Boeing Starliner capsule, representing the potential for commercial space flight.

I wanted to show them all as the strange, beautiful and important creations they truly are, to portray them in the way I see them. And to capture the wonder that I first felt on a clear spring day nearly 40 years ago.

Benedict Redgrove
London 2019