Almost all the information presented in Space Lists comes from John Pitfield's Rocket Services historical archive, which began in 1968 and now has about 250,000 pages of data plus about 80,000 pictures. Articles, tables and lists are assembled, then prepared for publication by the computer team of Nick Clark and Scott Maytum. Where possible, checking is done by an international selection of correspondents and contributors.
The company was formed in 1986 by John Pitfield, as an out-growth of a company called Rocket Propulsion Systems, to make studies of pure rocket research, and to trouble-shoot technological problems in the aerospace and propulsion fields.
SPACE LISTS No1 was our 199th publication since the first in the 1970s. Most of these earlier works were commercial reports or esoteric documents on research programmes, and are not available to the public.