Qué Es La Astronáutica.

Number 39 in the Colección Esquemas of Editorial Columba S.A.C.I., Sarmiento 1889, Buenos Aires. The copyright page reads 1958 and the colophon says the book finished printing on 3 October 1958 at Rosso S.A.I.C.I., Buenos Aires; the first edition appeared in 1952. A frontispiece pen portrait of the author carries the artist’s printed signature, Ramón Columba (“del natural”), and the dust jacket flaps carry Tabanera’s biography.

The jacket biography records that he graduated from the National University of La Plata in 1936, published his first article on interplanetary navigation in 1931, joined the British Interplanetary Society and the American Rocket Society in 1945, founded the Asociación Argentina Interplanetaria and attended the First International Congress of Astronautics at the Sorbonne in 1950, where the International Astronautical Federation was founded. The minutes of that congress are in the collection (see the First Astronautical Congress feature). He served as its vice-president for five consecutive terms and presided over the Argentine association for eight years.

Twelve short chapters run from “Ubicándonos en ambiente” and “El cohete” through energy and propulsion, forces and velocities, interplanetary voyages, artificial satellites and their observation, space stations and “El tripulante,” to “Ayer, hoy y mañana,” followed by a schematic bibliography. His La Exploración Del Espacio (1955) and Cohetes y Satélites (1957) are also in this catalog.