HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A British man who’s been entranced by space travel from its early days is putting much of his extensive collection of memorabilia on the auction block.
Phill Parker has seen rockets blast off, met with astronauts and cosmonauts, and written about the triumphs and tragedies of mankind’s quest to reach the stars.
Now, the longtime “spacewriter” is ready to part with a wide range of archived items – from meteorite fragments to NASA systems manuals to rocket remnants. Dozens upon dozens of items will be sold by Richard Winterton Auctioneers on Aug. 19.
Parker’s collection spans virtually the entirety of the space exploration era. The 77-year-old immersed himself in the industry as a teenager, when he began writing for the British Interplanetary Society magazine, “Spaceflight.”
Soon, he was covering Project Gemini – and just about everything that followed.
“I was then lucky enough to be chosen to cover the early Apollo missions for the BIS,” he said. “My reports were written on a typewriter and transatlantic calls were very expensive, so it wasn’t feasible to be there in person.
“But I went to America two months later to witness the launch of Apollo 12 and met engineers, managers and quite a number of astronauts.”
Parker was there when “Skylab” was launched in 1973. He’s spent time inside NASA operations in Houston and Huntsville, and he’s witnessed the Soviet side of the space race from Moscow.
His collection is peppered with trinkets and tokens from both sides of the Cold War space race.
There are “space seed” packets, helmets, flight suits, communication headsets, and signed posters. Literature includes NASA press packs for numerous Apollo missions, official NASA photos from Apollo 9 and original systems training and operating manuals, including a reference manual for the Hubble Space Telescope and a technical summary for the International Space Station.
Lots of photographic slides – 5,000 in all – are also for sale.
“This sale is a fantastic opportunity to get a glimpse into one man’s life in the British Interplanetary Society and his dedication to the pursuit of space exploration,” said David Fergus, valuer for Richard Winterton Auctioneers. “Many of these items have never appeared at auction anywhere so putting an estimate on is difficult but we expect the collection to realize several thousand pounds.”
The catalog for the August 19 auction can be viewed a week before the sale via www.richardwinterton.co.uk/auction-dates.