Colvin, Neville Maurice, 1918-1991:The big race. [August? 1960]

Two athletes prepare for a race at the 1960 Olympic Games. Each wears a space helmet and one has the United States flag on the back of his singlet while the other has the Soviet hammer and sickle on the back of his. In the sky above floats the winners' podium with '1', '2' and '3' painted on it. Context - The 1960 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held from August 25 to September 11, 1960 in Rome, Italy. In 1955, with both the United States and the Soviet Union building ballistic missiles that could be utilized to launch objects into space, the "starting line" was drawn for the Space Race. In separate announcements, just four days apart, both nations publicly announced that they would launch artificial Earth satellites by 1957 or 1958. On 30 August 1955, Korolyov managed to get the Soviet Academy of Sciences to create a commission whose purpose was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit: this was the defacto start date for the Space Race. Nearly four months after the launch of Sputnik 1, von Braun and the United States successfully launched its first satellite, on a modified Redstone booster, under the "civilian" name Juno 1. both the Americans and Soviets raced to get a human into space in 1961, Korolyov scored another important first for his country, and humankind, when, on 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit around the Earth on Vostok 1. (Wikipedia)

Quantity: 1 original cartoon(s).

Physical Description: Ink, Indian white and on paper 465 x 345 mm