Rare images reveal incredible story behind America’s early space race

11-03-2012 • http://www.rawstory.com, By Robin Stummer

Collection of 4,500 photographs to fetch £480,000 at auction

They are images from the golden age of space exploration: thousands of rare photographs recording the early days of manned flight into space. The collection, to be sold at auction this month, is the largest on the subject ever offered on the open market.

It features more than 4,500 shots from the days when rockets were little more than guided missiles, adapted to carry a passenger or two instead of a warhead, through to the sudden sunset of manned moonshots in the 1970s.

The photographs were amassed by a European collector. They are to be sold in just two large lots in Vienna and have an estimate of €400,000-€600,000 (£320,000-£480,000).

The images shed fresh light on the extraordinary period of technological advance and human achievement that sprang from the struggle between the US and the former Soviet Union.