It is early 1968 at the Cape Kennedy launch site. Three astronauts: Shaw, Stokes and Jordan sit atop the mighty Saturn V rocket awaiting final checks from mission control before they are blasted into the Florida sky on what will be mans’ first successful lunar landing on the flat lava plain called the sea of Serenity. – well , not quite.

“Seven steps to Serenity”, a project devised by Sydney Jordan, was conceived as an animated film to be broadcast on TV which would show to the viewing public exactly how NASA proposed to land a man on the Moon in the following year. Sydney suggested the idea to Mike Wooller ,a producer and director for Granada television, responsible for such ground breaking series as “Searchlight” and “ World in action” . Wooller was enthusiastic and Sydney began a series of paintings which would serve as the backdrop to the animations. He produced a “ship’s eye” view of the Lunar landing area ( thought then to be Mare Serenitatis) so that the final animation could show how the LEM (Lunar lander) would be seen from the command module as it made its descent to the Lunar surface. For the astronauts themselves he painted detailed studies of the spacesuits from various angles and super-imposed photographs of three real faces upon them for a more realistic effect. The first of his volunteer “crew” for these photoshoots was his good friend George Stokes, illustrator and writer of the beautifully drawn Wes Slade strip in the Sunday express. The second was actor Richard Shaw , who had appeared as the character Sladden in the TV series “Quatermass and the pit” in 1958 and was to make three appearances in Doctor Who over the coming years. Shaw’s rugged and determined features made him ideal as an astronaut with “The right stuff”. And of course the third crewman was Sydney himself. Sydney completed some very detailed studies for the project showing the different stages of the mission’s progress, but unfortunately the powers that be at Grenada TV began to wax cold after a few months and like many real NASA launches in the 1960’s this animation was cancelled at the last minute. Not much artwork survives now from “Seven steps to Serenity” but the three Astronaut studies included in this post show the meticulous detail with which it was undertaken , and will give us just a little flavour of what might have been.     Skipper Prossit