Man’s lifetime collection of space memorabilia to fetch thousands

By Ed Chatterton via SWNS

A man's incredible lifetime collection of space memorabilia is set to fetch thousands at auction - including meteorites, Moon rock and NASA spacecraft parts.

Phill Parker, 77, an international award-winning writer, lecturer and exhibition organizer, has dedicated his life to space flight since the mid 60s.

During his career he amassed arguably one of Britain's best collections of space-related memorabilia which will now go under the hammer in Lichfield, Staffs.

Space fans have the chance to own their very own meteorite fragments, pieces of the Moon and space-flown components from NASA missions, including Apollo.

Soviet cosmonaut Alex Volkov’s signed MiG helmet and flight suit used during high altitude training ahead of his mission to Salyut 7 in 1985 in also up for sale.

Other stellar objects include spaceflight hardware from rockets and space shuttles used during the Apollo, Saturn V, Mercury-Redstone, Spacelab and Gemini missions.

More bizarre items include seed packets which have made the journey to space, astronaut feeding tubes with a pineapple and grapefruit drink and a peach drink.

They are among more than 100 fascinating lots expected to fetch thousands of pounds when they are sold at Richard Winterton Auctioneers on August 19.

Phill, a retired computer engineer from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs., said: “You look up at the stars and wonder what’s out there.

“I still do. The fact that we’ve been able to go out there through engineering has kept me fascinated throughout all these years.”

Phill began his fascination with the cosmos back in 1952 first borrowing library sci-fi novels before progressing to non-fiction books on missiles by the age of eight.

In 1964 aged 17, he had joined the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) and within months was selected to write articles for the group’s magazine, Spaceflight.

Phill was given the task of covering the USA’s Project Gemini at the height of the Space Race in 1965 and was put in touch with agencies including NASA.

He enjoyed a ringside seat for the golden years of space exploration, communicating with NASA and meeting and interviewing American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts.

He added: “I was then lucky enough to be chosen to cover the early Apollo missions for the BIS.

“I had to get proper press clearance from NASA and the US Airforce to cover the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969.

"I went to America two months later to witness the launch of Apollo 12 and met engineers, managers and quite a number of astronauts.”

Over the years, he attended the launch of Skylab, the United States’ first space station set underway in 1973, visited Mission Control in Houston and the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville.

Phill’s press pass also enabled him to attend press conferences with astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Charles Duke, John Young and Eugene Cernan.

Phill said: “I spent nearly a full day with John Young in Scotland. They were engineers at heart.

“If you asked them what it was like to walk on the moon, they’d heard that question a thousand times before.

“But if you asked them an engineering question then their eyes would light up.

“That was the way I got into correspondence with Neil Armstrong, who was a professor of aerodynamics.”

He also met a number of Russian cosmonauts and traveled to Moscow in 1974 where he was able to visit the historic Soviet spacecraft displays at the Moscow Economic Exhibition – a rare opportunity for Westerners during Cold War Soviet Communist days.

During 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Phill also gave space talks up and down the UK to schools, university and community groups and then started organizing exhibitions featuring some of his archive.

He added: “I was a computer engineer but this was like a secondary job taking up much time from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s."

The Alex Volkov MiG helmet and flight suit was used during training for his Soyuz spaceflight missions.

Phill added: “He was a Soviet Union ‘Top Gun’ pilot – hence why he was chosen because of his piloting and reactionary skills.

“Cosmonauts would enter test vacuum chambers in these suits and helmets at Star City outside Moscow before mission to practice procedures in a mock-up spacecraft inside chamber.

“They were also used at extreme altitude during MiG flights – higher than Concorde I was told – and, of course, used as a ‘spacesuit’ inside the vacuum test chambers that simulate space conditions."

The collection includes more than 50 meteorite pieces including Moon meteorite samples and an Apollo module power supply.

Additionally, there is a Cape Canaveral communication headset as used by ground control during Projects Mercury and Gemini and a mounted replica of the Apollo 11 lunar plaque signed by Buzz Aldrin.

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 summery for the International Space Station.

Other items include around 5,000 photographic slides of space scenes, geological maps of the moon and commemorative badges.

David Fergus, valuer for Richard Winterton Auctioneers, said: “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.

“Many of these items have never appeared at auction anywhere so putting an estimate on is difficult but we expect the collection to realise several thousand pounds.”