Flight into Cosmic Space (1949)

This one I do not have a title for. I have had it for about a year and haven't turned up another copy with a translated title so I will go ahead and share it.

My readers save me with this comment:

"While not a children's book, this is in the genre of popular science. The book, whose title is "Flight into Cosmic Space," was written by Ari Shternfeld, a Polish writer who emigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s and stayed in the USSR until he passed away in 1980. Shternfeld's earlier book "Introduction to Cosmonautics," published in 1937, was a very famous book that influenced a generation of young Russians. "

My love of space art is well known to my readers, in this case I bought this based on the sample illustrations in the seller's advertisement.

The first thing that caught my eye was this very different version of a rocket ship. It is almost Art Deco in appearance. It also reminds me of Russian domed architecture.

You can see from this diagram why it looks so strange. It was intended to be constructed in orbit and then separate and spin to provide gravity for the residents during their travels.

Here is an illustration of a more traditional space station that this unique ship would depart from. You can see a more traditional rocket leaving the station.

One of the reasons I like space art is trying to find the line that divides it from science fiction.  These illustrations are science-based to show the possibility, but they are as quaint as da Vinci's helicopter to our modern eyes. I am still a reader of Popular Science magazine and wonder which of their images show a true future but with the same "wrongness" of how it will really look.

 This is what rockets were going to look like from 1949, what will manned travel to other planets look like from 2011?