Question: Photo series of paper miniatures of imagined trip to Moon or Mars from late '70s?

chr1sb0y — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:44:42 -0800

Can you help me locate a series of photos of an imagined trip to Mars (or maybe a return to the Moon?) done in papercraft, that was in one of my grade school textbooks around 1979?

I have had visions of these photos stuck in my head since around 4th or 5th grade (1979 or 1980), and I would really love to find them again. I am pretty sure that they were in one of my 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade reading textbooks, from around 1978, '79, or '80.

They were a series of photos meant to predict what a trip to Mars might look like in the near future - but it's possible it was about a return to the Moon, and I've gotten confused. The photos were of miniature rockets, landers, rovers, habitats, astronauts, etc., all done with finely detailed miniature paper models - white paper possibly with some black ink details. The photos were done so that they looked like simulations of a rocket ship in transit against a black starry sky, astronauts exploring the surface of the planet with starry sky in the background, plus rough terrain along the horizon, etc. I am pretty sure I remember some stuff being made of graph paper (maybe the craters and terrain?), and some stuff being made of white paper, folded and squished, with a bit of black ink for details.

In my mind, the miniatures are some sort of weird combination of ultra-detailed origami, and paper architectural models (half folded and half glued and crumpled). The style was very much NASA-realistic, almost like an architect's rendering of a possible future mission.

These photos have been stuck in my head for so long, and I know it's a long shot, but maybe someone will remember these as well, or some askmefi-user's uncle will turn out to be the guy who shot them.

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Question: Photo series of paper miniatures of imagined trip to Moon or Mars from late '70s?