posted 06-07-2016 04:21 AM               

In 1957, at the time of the launch of the first Sputnik, spacewriter Piet Smolders started collecting documents, pictures, transparancies and slides related to the evolving conquest of space. Now, more than fifty years later, his archives have grown to an impressive and up to date collection of the history of space flight.

The files have been arranged in a simple alphabetical order: Alpha, Alpha 2, Apollo 1, etc. The Smolders Space Archives consist of four subdivisions:

• American spaceflight (360 files)
  
• Soviet and Russian spaceflight (270 files)
  
• European and Chinese spaceflight (160 files)
  
• Astronomy (75 files)

  All together: 865 files

  Four original oil paintings by painter Andrei Sokolov and several museum models, for example Vostok capsule 1/4. The files occupy 27 drawers located in eight cabinets.

Apart from those archives there is a 35 mm slide archive about astronomy and space flight, arranged in alphabetical order. This archive contains about 10.000 slides.

Although Peter Smolders is probably best known for his writings about the Soviet-Russian space program his archives prove that he devoted no less attention to the American, European and other spaceprograms.

Smolders published 40 books on Space and thousands of articles. He worked and works for radio and TV.

He is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, Member of the Acadamy of Cosmonautics of Russia, Honorary Member of the Dutch Space Organisation NVR, Laureate of the Yuri Gagarin Medal, Minor Planet 10958 has been named after him.

The combined archives (including colorslides) are available for around 25000 Euro. Interested? Please contact:

Piet Smolders
The Netherlands
Tel 31-411-677403
kosmol@planet.nl