The Scottie Book of Space Travel - Arthur C. Clarke (Transworld, 1957)

Take me to your place in space...I'm sick and tired of the rat race...

Yes, space mates, lets go. Why not? 

Arthur C. Clarke wrote: 'If one made a survey among scientists and engineers working in the rocket field, one would find very few who consider it likely that we shall reach the Moon within the next thirty years.'

Oh ye of little faith! The Cold War space race saw to that. 

Major Robert H. Lawrence, America's First African American Astronaut,
killed on December 8, 1967 during flight training

In 1970, Gil Scott-Heron saw the Moon landing in a more cynical light, comparing the cost of space programmes to poverty in the USA. 

But the black American outer space experience came to us music-lovers from another source...the cosmic imagination of Sun Ra, Parliament and many other less dedicated Afronauts of sound seeking to cash in on the post-Apollo 11 space-age.

So here's a nice little book I found a few weeks back...