As a huge Superman fan, I’ve been wanting Action Comics No. Own issue #419, published in 1972, with an iconic cover showing the Man of Steel soaring into the sky that seems to fly right off the page. Which is why, earlier this year, I was delighted to finally find a copy in the second-hand section of my local comic shop.
But I quickly discovered that this comic has another claim to fame. In its pages, Superman entered one of the most significant chapters in the history of space science.
On the first page, reporter Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego, describes the launch of a new NASA satellite while on board the space shuttle. “I’m in orbit with NASA’s Large Space Telescope, the LST. Here, above the haze of our atmosphere, astronomers will get a clear view of the stars and planets,” Kent says in the comic.
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On the page itself, there was a dead call for the actual real-life Hubble Space Telescope. I was wondering: how did a cartoon version of a space telescope launched in 1990 make it into a comic published in 1972?
On the first page of Action Comics #419, Superman visits the Great Space Telescope.
There was a hint in the story credits. Pete Simmons, then director of space astronomy at Grumman Aerospace Corporation (now Northrop Grumman), is credited with “technical assistance.” A Google search was enough information, and he found a documentary clip from 1997.
What I learned surprised me. Large Space Telescope was Hubble. While the project was named after astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1983, NASA had been developing plans for what it called the Large Space Telescope since the late 1960s. The agency successfully launched its first successful space telescope, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 (OAO-2), in 1968, and in 1971 began feasibility studies for a larger deep-space instrument.
But such an expensive project would be a tough sell in Congress. Simmons, who previously worked at OAO-2, took on the challenge of showing the public—and Congress—that LST was worth the scientific investment. One day Simmons was on a plane to New York City when he saw a kid in the seat next to him reading a Superman comic, he recalled in one episode. documentary series People Near Here, produced by Mountain Lake PBS.
“I thought, ‘Gee, those are pretty popular,'” he said in the documentary. He invited DC Comics staff to Grumman labs and showed them models of the LST, believing that the telescope should appear in a Superman story. The result was Action Comics #419. The comic sold well, as Superman comics tended to do, giving Simmons tangible evidence of the American public’s interest in the LST that he could share with Congress.
“I went to Washington, (DC) … and we gave every member of Congress a copy of this Superman comic,” he recalled. “I remember asking a lot of people I could find…, ‘If I get to talk about the Great Space Telescope in the Superman comics, would you think it’s popular enough…?’ Then I would give them a copy of this issue.’
I needed to know more. My two great interests—comics and space science—were colliding. Could we really have Superman to thank for the important discoveries and amazing images made by the Hubble Space Telescope?
Sadly, Simmons passed away in 2018. So I contacted Charles Robert O’Dell, the observational astronomer and chief scientist of the Large Space Telescope project from 1972 to 1983.
O’Dell told me that in the early days of the project, the fate of the LST was not solely in the hands of Congress. The promoters also had to convince fellow astronomers, many of whom would rather spend their money on Earth-based telescopes, that the LST was worth the investment.
“We hosted what we called ‘dog and pony shows’ of NASA engineers and managers,” he says. “(We) went to (Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the California Institute of Technology) and spoke at those places, proselytizing for LST. And that moved people.”
But in the eyes of astronomers, Action Comics No. The 419 was not a selling point of the LST. “It was actually a diversion,” says O’Dell. “Remember how conservative astronomy as a body was at the time… And so looking at a comic, it was just a foreign concept.”
To convince Congress, O’Dell believes the comic book would only be useful in the hands of a natural salesman like Simmons. “(Simmons) would come in with this dealer’s enthusiasm for the project and pull out that comic … He could pull out something like that,” O’Dell says.
O’Dell can’t confirm how much influence the comic had on Congress. And the telescope still faced an uphill battle for funding. In 1974 and 1976 astronomers campaigned in Congress to support the project. They sent letters and telegrams and even made personal visits to Capitol Hill.
In 1977 the legislature finally approved the funding of the LST. Thirteen years later, under a new name, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. It has been in operation for more than three decades, and was the first observatory to detect elements of the early universe, image the surface of a star other than the sun, and confirm the presence of supermassive black holes. And its existence, I learned, owes more to the work and passion of people like O’Dell and Simmons than to any fictional superhero.
But somehow, I think Superman would have preferred it that way.
