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Spacesuit worn by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, commander of the Soyuz 19 spacecraft, during the Apollo-Soyuz test project on July 15-19, 1975. Courtesy Bonhams.

On May 5, 2011,  Bonhams auction house will hold its annual space history sale. (The date commemorates the 50th anniversary of Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight in Freedom 7.) Some 250 items are up for grabs, a few coming from the Forbes Collection, others from the personal collections of various astronauts, and some from the estate of NASA administrator James E. Webb. Here are six of our favorites from the list:

Left is one of Alexei Leonov’s spacesuits, this one from the July 1975 Apollo-Soyuz test project. In March 1965, cosmonaut Leonov made the first spacewalk in history, beating American Ed White by almost three months. Floating outside his capsule for 10 minutes, Leonov felt, he writes, “like a seagull with its wings outstretched, soaring high above the Earth.”

On July 17, 1975, the final Apollo spacecraft docked with its Soyuz counterpart, and the two commanders, Tom Stafford and Alexei Leonov, shook hands through the open hatch of the Soyuz, symbolically ending the space race. Bonhams’ catalog notes that “Leonov wore this space suit during the docking operations, and during launch and re-entry. The Sokol-K suit was categorized as a ‘rescue suit’ since it was not suitable for EVA use, but was designed to protect the wearer in the event of spacecraft depressurization…. The Sokol-K was first used on the Soyuz 12 mission in 1973 in response to the loss of the Soyuz 11 crew whose spacecraft depressurized during re-entry.” The suit comes from the Forbes Collection, and is estimated to fetch a whopping $100,000 to $150,000.

National Aeronautic Association (U.S. representative of the FAI) document confirming the first manned space flight. Courtesy Bonhams.

Lot 34, right, is none other than the certificate from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale confirming astronaut Alan Shepard’s May 5, 1961 flight.

In order to qualify for the record of manned spaceflight, the FAI (the governing organization for aeronautical world records) decided that the pilot had to take off and land in the same vehicle. When Yuri Gagarin re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on April 12, 1961, he ejected from his spacecraft, as planned, and landed separately by parachute. Gagarin’s ejection was covered up by Soviet authorities, however, and the truth wasn’t discovered until 1971, by which time the FAI had certified Vostok 1 as the first successful manned spaceflight.

The document at right confirms records set by Shepard in the “non-air breathing manned rocket” category: (a) altitude without Earth orbit, and (b) greatest mass lifted without Earth orbit. The document is estimated between $8,000 and $12,000.

HAM the chimp's flown neck tag. Courtesy Bonhams.

Who could forget the story of Number 65, also known as HAM the chimp? HAM (his name was an acronym derived from Holloman AeroMedical Research Laboratories, where he was sent for training) was one of six chimpanzees-in-training. On January 31, 1961, the little guy flew 157 miles into space, and reached a maximum velocity on his suborbital flight of 5,857 miles per hour. This brass disc, lot 18, is expected to bring between $2,000 and $4,000.

Get your hands on one of the largest model airplanes in the world. The 102-foot-long Concorde, perched atop its former home in New York City's Times Square. Courtesy Brian Abbott.

Below is what may be the largest model airplane in the world, a model of the Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde. That’s right, it’s 50 percent scale, approximately 102 feet long, with a 42-foot wing span, and is estimated to weigh 24,000 pounds.

Bonhams’ catalog notes that in 1996, British Airways commissioned the Texas firm L&L Tooling to build this model. “The cost of the model is believed to [have] been $980,000. It was transported to New York City on five trailers, and assembled in situ by a local sign company, four stories up atop the Times Square Brewery on 42nd Street…. At night it was lit from inside…. The model was taken down in 2001, when the Brewery building made way for a tower block. Initially BA planned to reuse the Concorde model in a different site, but it ended up being transferred to the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, where it has remained, largely undisturbed, for the last decade.” If you’d like your own Concorde, be prepared to shell out $100,000 to $150,000.

Full-scale Saturn V F-1 engine model. Courtesy Bonhams.

Maybe you’d like to have both air and space represented in your yard. Why not add this full-scale Saturn V F-1 engine model, left, to your landscape? This 19-foot-tall model was built for the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, held in Flushing Meadows, Queens. Bonhams’ catalog notes that “At the fair was a Space Park which featured scale models of Gemini-Titan and Mercury-Atlas rockets, the Mercury spacecraft Freedom 7, an Apollo CSM and LM, and the SI-C first stage of the Saturn V, complete with its five F-1 engines. In the decades following the Fair, most of the models remained in place. In the early 2000s, the New York Hall of Science expanded into the Park, tidying up, and restoring the models. The Saturn V first stage was dismantled, and its model F-1 engines were distributed between several museums.”

Interested buyers beware: the model is being sold in situ, and is currently located in Garden City, New York. The winning bidder will have to remove the model from its current location no later than July 5. The estimate is $15,000 to $25,000, plus the cost of removal and shipping.

Early rocketry manuscript by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Courtesy Bonhams.

Looking for something more historic? How about a early rocketry manuscript by none other than Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the man who invented space travel?

This eight-page manuscript, dated 1912, is titled “Latest thoughts regarding construction of jet devices, in the work The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices.” Tsiolkovsky is considered, along with Hermann Oberth and Robert Goddard, to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry and spaceflight, and is said to have inspired both Wernher von Braun and Sergey Korolyov.

Beneath the rocket sketch Tsiolkovsky has written, “Certainly many are frightened by this progressive idea [rocket flight], but life itself will make mankind do everything possible to solve this problem. The conquering of solar space is a necessity dictated by the experience of all history of mankind.”

The manuscript comes with an authenticating letter from the director of the Tsiolkovsky Museum in Kaluga, Russia, and is expected to bring $12,000 to $18,000.

An Air Force Reserve Para-rescueman conducts 100-foot rappel training from an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter. U.S. Air Force photograph by Bennie J. Davis III.

It’s summer 2005. In Afghanistan, a four-man U.S. Navy SEAL team has been ambushed by the Taliban. A Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter is immediately sent to extract them, but as it approaches the rescue site, the Taliban fire a rocket-propelled grenade, hitting the Chinook’s fuel tanks. All 16 crew members on board are killed. The Navy SEALs turn to the Air Force 920th Rescue Wing and their Pave Hawk helicopters for help.

So begins “The Taliban Gambit,” an installment in the Smithsonian Channel’s four-part series Helicopter Missions.

The men of the 920th Rescue Wing are remarkably candid. Initially, Special Ops and the Rescue Wing are skeptical about the others’ ability: “I think they [the SEALs] look down on us, question our training, our crews, our capability,” says pilot Lieutenant Colonel Jeff “Spanky” Peterson.

“[The SEALs are] a very proud community that doesn’t like to ask for help from outsiders. So the initial reception was—I was a little bit cold,” recalls Colonel Jeff “Skinny” Macrander, commander of the rescue wing.

But Macrander convinces the SEALs that his team can do the job. They search for two nights, a faint clicking on the emergency frequency suggesting that survivors are trying to make contact. When the rescue wing finally locates their man, they learn their landing zone is a tiny shelf hacked from the side of the mountain.

“In setting up for the landing,” says Peterson, “I thought ‘This is all going to work.’ And then it all went south in a hurry.”

Did the 920th Rescue Wing save the day? Tune in to the Smithsonian Channel on Demand to find out. Watch a sneak peek of the program, below.

A WAVE parachute rigger. U.S. Navy photo.

On March 23, 1944, a British Lancaster bomber over Germany’s Ruhr River took heavy flak and exploded. As his oxygen mask and goggles began to melt, and his flight suit burned, tail gunner Nick Alkemade heard the pilot ordering the crew to bail out.

The aircraft was at 18,000 feet, and while Alkemade was wearing his parachute harness, he could see that his silk parachute—stored in its rack by the turret doors—was already burning.

What to do?

Well, if you’re Alkemade, you walk calmly over to the turret doors and backflip into space.

As Paul Brickhill wrote in 1950 (“They Fell without Parachutes—and Lived!”), three hours later Alkemade “opened his eyes and saw pinpoints of stars through a screen of pine branches above…. The branches had broken his fall, and then he had dropped into a deep snowdrift, and the snow and his lined leather kit had softened the blow still more.”

Dazed from a bump on his head, and immobile due to a wrenched knee, Alkemade lay in the snow until the Germans arrived. They took Alkemade to Stalag Luft III, where he met Brickhill, an Australian Spitfire pilot and  journalist who had also been shot down.

19th-century concept parachute. Illustration courtesy NASM.

The Germans gave Alkemade a document which said, It has been investigated and corroborated by the German authorities that the claim made by Sergeant Alkemade is true in all respects, namely that he made a descent from 18,000 feet without a parachute and made a safe landing without injuries, the parachute having been on fire in the aircraft. He landed in deep snow among fir trees.

Amazingly, Alkemade was not the only airman in the camp who had survived a parachuteless fall; Brickhill interviewed several others during his time as a POW. There was Wing Commander Ken Burns, whose Lancaster exploded at 18,000 feet, throwing him (still strapped in his seat) from the aircraft. When he regained consciousness, he was lying in a cabbage patch with his parachute still on—unopened. (Burns’ fall resulted in a collapsed lung, a cracked spine, and an amputated arm.)

Flight Lieutenant Gutowski, also in the RAF, had to bail from his Spitfire after being hit by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190. His parachute malfunctioned; after falling 150 feet, he landed in a pile of beet leaves, where he “rolled unhurt to the ground.”

There’s also the case of Pilot Officer Fred Bist, of the Canadian Air Force. His Douglas Boston bomber was strafed at 500 feet when the airplane broke in two; Bist was thrown out of the aircraft—without his parachute. He landed in a plowed field, where he was discovered by two German soldiers. They took Bist to the hospital where he was treated for a broken neck, severe burns, and a broken hand.

French artillery spotter Capitaine Larmier was in a Potez 63 when an enemy shell hit his aircraft and damaged the controls. Larmier jumped over the side. Unfortunately, he was at 100 feet, and parachutes need 400 feet to deploy. Just as the parachute started to stream out of his pack, Larmier hit “the top of a haystack, bounced, and stayed up there, winded, shocked and dumbfounded.”

Alas, his luck didn’t hold out. The Germans found him, “and he went on to five years behind barbed wire.”

By Ismael Roman, third place, category 3 (14 to 17 year olds).

Each year, the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) organize an art contest meant to encourage young people to become familiar with (and participate in) aeronautics, engineering, and science.

“The quality of the art we see is unbelievable,” says Dik Daso, who has been a judge for the past five years. Daso, a curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, along with two other judges, selected nine first-, second-, and third-place winners from approximately 170 state finalists.

The theme of this year’s contest was the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, and more than 6,800 students from 24 states participated in the U.S. competition. (Students first compete at the state level; each state aviation organization then sends its finalists to NASAO.)  The artwork of the U.S. winners (who range in age from 6 to 17 years old) will be entered in the international aviation art contest, held in Lausanne, Switzerland this month.

For those states that do not hold a competition, students and teachers were able—for the first time—to send submissions to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Prescott, Arizona campus, which then grouped submissions by state. “What’s interesting,” says Kathryn Solee, president of the NASAO Center for Aviation Research and Education, “is that New Jersey sent over 400 pieces of art to Embry-Riddle, and had two national winners.”

By Nolan Riggin, first place, category 1 (6 to 9 year olds).

“100 years ago, your great-great-grandparents read about traveling through space in science fiction books,” reads the contest brochure. “50 years ago, your grandparents listened [to] the radio or watched on television when the first human orbited the earth, and today you can watch a small crew of astronauts from around the world share living and research quarters on the International Space Station on your laptop computer….  Time to grab your favorite paintbrush or markers, buckle up into a secure position in front of your desk, and blast off into your imagination…”

By Brian Sun, second place, category 2 (10 to 13 years old).

Through a process of elimination, each judge argues for his or her favorite pieces. Since the winning artwork will be made into posters, “you look for themes that have public appeal,” says Daso, “in addition to artistic skill.”

Daso’s interest in the competition goes beyond enjoying the artwork, however. “I’m very excited to see young people getting involved, really involved with aviation topics,” says Daso.

By Karen Ahn, first place, category 2 (10 to 13 year olds).

Photo: US Navy

Admit it: Sometimes you want to skip all the technical hoo-hah and get straight to the jokes. For your enjoyment, today we’re resurrecting a bit of aircraft maintenance humor that has been roaming the Internet since 1997, and circulating on hard copies before that. The jokes have been attributed to, among others, the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the commercial carrier Qantas, and UPS, the shipping company.

One Internet version claims that these are “actual maintenance complaints/problems, generally known as squawks, recently submitted by pilots to maintenance engineers. After attending to the squawks, maintenance crews are required to log the details of the action taken to solve the pilots’ squawks.” Snopes.com is skeptical. But it really doesn’t matter; compiled or created, they’re still fun.

Problem: Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.
Solution: Autoland not installed on this aircraft.

Problem: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-feet-per-minute descent.
Solution: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

Problem: Dead bugs on windshield.
Solution: Live bugs on back-order.

Problem: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
Solution: Evidence removed.

Problem: DME volume unbelievably loud.
Solution: Volume set to more believable level.

Problem: Number 3 engine missing.
Solution: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

Problem: Target radar hums.
Solution: Reprogrammed target radar with words.

Problem: Mouse in cockpit.
Solution: Cat installed.

Problem: Whining sound heard on engine shutdown.
Solution: Pilot removed from aircraft.

Problem: Unfamiliar noise coming from #2 engine.
Solution: Engine run for four hours. Noise now familiar.

Problem: Noise coming from #2 engine. Sounds like man with little hammer.
Solution: Took little hammer away from man in #2 engine.

Problem: Whining noise coming from #2 engine compartment.
Solution: Returned little hammer to man in #2 engine.