PLANET SEARCH
FUTURES:
Winner of Sir Arthur Clarke Award for 'Best Written
Presentation', 2005
FUTURES
: 2 
Subtitled '50 YEARS IN SPACE ART' this is a modern update of David Hardy's original 1972 book with Sir Patrick Moore, Challenge of the Stars. Much of the new art has been created digitally, but there are also new paintings. Now revised and reissued in paperback as simply 50 YEARS IN SPACE (2006).
| "As a Space Travel enthusiast since the Late Jurassic (well 1933, when the British Interplanetary Society was founded) I welcome David Hardy's new book with my old friend Patrick Moore. Space has inspired many fine illustrators ~ their Patron Saint is Chesley Bonestell ~ but today David is its most gifted exponent. He is also very lucky: more and more wonderful images are arriving from Space to inspire both artists and writers." Sir Arthur C. Clarke |
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| Beneath the cracked ice crust of Jupiter's moon Europa, there is believed to be an ocean. Current hopes for life elsewhere in our Solar System are based on the possibility of volcanic 'black smokers', since this is where the most alien lifeforms yet found on Earth exist. These depend not upon sunlight or oxygen, but on mineral-enriched, super-hot water and sulphur compounds. A meteorite has punched a temporary hole in a thin area of crust, and a submarine probe is shown. | ) |
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A balloon probe or dirigible hovers over the surface of Titan, Saturn briefly visible through a gap in its dense clouds. Dark organic materials are precipitated onto the surface, and seas of ethane are shown. |
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Iapetus ~ the only one of Saturn's major moons from which the rings may be seen tilted at an angle (the rest being in the plane of the equator, so they would be seen as a line). It surface is overlaid with a mysterious dark, possibly organic compound, which may have come from a nearby satellite in the distant past. |
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| The surface of Neptune's major moon Triton, covered in nitrogen/methane ice. Geysers are shown jetting gas high into its thin atmosphere, where winds shear it into horizontal streams. | ) |
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One of the surprises of the Voyager 2 mission was the view of steep ice-cliffs near the south pole of its moon Miranda. They rise up to 5km from the valley floor, at an angle of 45 - 50 degrees. The view shown here may only be seen in the year 2029, as I wanted to show the Sun shining on the pole of Uranus, tilted by more than a right-angle to the planet's orbit. |
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| The beautiful Orion Nebula forms a backdrop to an Earthlike planet and its small rocky satellite ~ probably a captured asteroid. The colours of the nebula (in which stars are being formed) are a compromise between the bright blues and reds seen in Hubble photographs and the more greenish hues to which human eyes are more sensitive. (This also forms the cover for this book.) | ) |
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