Enjoy:

Original vintage Willy Ley 1960s documentary

Fantastic! Thank you!

That's great, thanks! I wish that some kind of grand tour like this existed with up-to-date information. Imagine how much more interesting Titan could have been than "eternal methane snowstorm"!

By the way, I think we can pinpoint the year of production to 1963 or 1964. It mentions the results of Mariner 2 (December 1962) but not those of Mariner 4 (1965)

That was way cool, KarolP; thanks!

Reminds us yet again what an important role science educators & popularizers play <cough, cough, DOUG, cough, cough>...

Confess that this is the first time I ever saw Willy Ley...boy, did I love his books (illustrated by Chesley Bonestell) when I was a kid...access to them justified having a library card all by itself!

I'd liked it!
Did you notice that they've got a storm on Mars nearly on arrival? Our Laddies has been much more luky
Only mistake : Pluto is not a planet

My favorite Willy Ley story comes from Isaac Asimov's autobiography, in which Asimov tells of an early science fiction convention attended by, among others, Willy Ley. Willy was in fine form, apparently, entrancing the ladies with his charming, thick German accent and his boundless energy when it came to putting words to his visions of space exploration. He was so impressive to the ladies, apparently, that on Sunday morning, the running joke around the convention was that if you posed Willy's name as a question -- "Willy Ley?" -- the answer was an obvious and resounding "yes."

-the other Doug

One of the things I will *NOT* forgive the universe for is Willy Ley's death from a heart attack one month before Apollo 11.

Speaking of which, he anticipated some views from Mars actually imaged a few decades later by the MER rovers.

My friend Giuseppe De Chiara owns a copy of L'esplorazione di Marte (the exploration of Mars), the 1959 Italian edition of the 1956 original book by Willy Ley and Wernher von Braun illustrated by Chesley Bonestell.

An illustration of the book shows a diagram of how a simultaneous transit of Phobos and Deimos might look like on Mars. The caption says more or less:

Similar transits of Phobos and transits of Deimos were imaged decades later by the Spirit and Opportunity Martian rovers.

I wonder what other planetary views imagined by early space exploration popularizers and pioneers were actually imaged by probes.


Paolo Amoroso

I have just seen that Youtube video and I liked it alot. Goes to show how our knowledge of the solar system has really improved since then. As I was born in 1970, I missed all those shows completely and it is nice we can see them again.

And I wish we could have a video like that again with all the infomation we have as of 2007, but I suspect poor Pluto would now be called a "dwarf planet" now. The video shows Pluto as a "terrestial planet".

Score one (well, maybe more than that), for the spacenerds!

You know, this little parable just might be the key to saving civilization. If only being a scientist was perceived as cool by youngsters in the Fonzie/Michael Jordan/insert-name-of-current-celeb-here sense...

What a hoot!!!! I love it.

I think Paolo is correct in the timing, since Mariner 2 is mentioned.

I used Willy Ley's book on the Mariner 4 Mars flyby for a ninth grade science report that I had to give verbally in front of the class. My science teacher raved!!!!! Thanks Willy.....

Back then, in 1967 (science report year), it was still possible to dream of a near future walking the solar system.

Now, I wish that wonder on my Grandsons.

Craig

Guess what... I found another one. This one has its year shown in Roman letters - it is at least 1963 or earlier:

The Sky and the Telescope

I wonder what you think about this one....

.

See http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4558

I wouldn't consider Pluto being labeled a planet as a mistake. Given that there is an ongoing controversy about its status, presenting only one point of view as a fact does the public a disservice. Isn't there a way for the newest publications to discuss both sides of the issue and leave it to the readers to come to their own conclusions?

People, please don't start this debate again; it's been talked to death elsewhere on this forum, and my migraine is finally almost gone...

When speaking of the 1950s and 60s, many people assume Pluto had a diameter of ~6,000 km. This is because they assumed it would have a very low albedo. In other words, they thought it was a larger, less reflected world. Some of this came from guesses that proved wrong, and the rest came from the the fact that they were observing the combination of Pluto and Charon and assuming it to be entirely Pluto. Ley probably put it with the terrestrials because it is solid, unlike the four gas giants. Even then, that was a stretch, but I can at least see the line of reasoning.