I love these letters sent to the American Museum of Natural History by wannabe space explorers from the 1950s. They are so wonderfully naive and full of hope, some of them really funny, others quite sad in hindsight.

People sent these letters to the Museum's Hayden Planetarium when it "began accepting reservations for the first trip into space as part of a publicity campaign for its exhibition Conquest of Space." They got thousands of letters expressing interest in going to the moon. Now the AMNH is publishing them.

I want to believe that many of the young kids writing became engineers during the golden age of American space exploration, engineers on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. But no "saucer pilots." Most of us will never be. Especially the New York guy who wanted to go to Mars to "open the first hot dog stand."

Check out the rest at the [AMNH site]

This one wants to be a "saucer pilot." I don't blame him.

If they don't have money for the space suit, this kid will gladly pay the expense for one.

This one is no space fan. He's a dinosaur fan pretending to be a space fan so he can go to Venus to see the dinosaurs.

If I go to another planet, I hope the spacecraft is express too.

"PLEASE RUSH!" I would be impatient to get into a spaceship too.

I would have send a letter back to this snarky snotty bastards who thinks he's too good for this charade but, deep down, hopes to be part of the space club. With a big "No, jerk, you are NOT going to space!" written all over it (reminds me of some Gizmodo commenters).

I really hope this guy became an engineer for NASA.

This kid is not joking.

Obviously a New York hustler.