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Space Colony Art from the 1970s
- kirion25 8y agoFor more, you can check the artists websites. Don Davis: http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/allyours.html http://www.donaldedavis.com/PARTS/allyours.html Rick Guidice: http://rickguidice.com/nasaart.html http://rickguidice.com/nasaart.html Roy Scarfo: http://www.royscarfo.com/ http://www.royscarfo.com/
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoSidenote: Rick Guidice also did art for Atari's gaming systems. http://rickguidice.com/illustration/atariart.html http://rickguidice.com/illustration/atariart.html
- jotm 8y agoThe Russians had good art too: https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-soviet-artists-imagined-communist-life-in-space-1558140402 https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-soviet-artists-imagined-communis... Sadly reality is never that good
- philwelch 8y agoI like how they have helicopters on the moon. I guess it might make sense if you're in a dome filled with air.
- lthemick 8y agoProbably not, unless those rotors we're spinning really slowly; you wouldn't need nearly as powerful a helicopter in such a weak gravity...
- bigodbiel 8y agothe ideologies (suburbia vs manufacturing strongholds) behind both visions is striking
- vhodges 8y agoAnd for modern space art: http://spacehabs.com/ http://spacehabs.com/
- benj111 8y agoHow 'serious' were these pictures? Was this something they were seriously expecting in the coming years? I'm mindful of the fact that man had basically gone from just achieving orbit, to landing on the moon in a decade, so anything could have seemed possible at that stage.
- jotm 8y agoWell, riding on the tails of literally landing on the moon, the future must've looked bright and amazing. It probably would've been if the same amount of work and money continued to pour into the space programs. Space - the final frontier and all.
- rwallace 8y agoYes. In the eighties, we seriously expected that such space habitats might be built in the next few decades. It was a reasonable extrapolation from the rapid progress that had occurred in recent decades.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoI suspect no less serious than the various other projects that had concept artwork. Seemed like the 70s and 80s TV news regularly had plans, including an aspirational artist's impression, for a NASA moonbase, orbital ring space station, or Mars mission etc. Couldn't say how serious or not, but serious enough to have made it to UK media back then, fairly regularly. The obvious question after 1972's Apollo 17, was "what's next?". We got Skylab, the Space Shuttle, lots of fascinating probes to other planets, and satellites themselves of course, but those were rather less "grand" in scope. No doubt budget driven. To be fair though, if NASA can't dream big, who can? :)
- vorg 8y ago> Was this something they were seriously expecting in the coming years? I started high school a few months after the last time anyone walked on the moon. If you'd told me then that no-one would ever again walk on the moon in the following fifty years, I'd have told you you were nuts. The general mood in the 1970's was that humankind would start to inhabit space over the following decades, and space colonies like these would be orbiting the Earth. Instead, the only humans publicly known to be in space right now are the 3 aboard the International Space Station.
- jotm 8y agoAnd just because I'm drunk, some music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIN_cpdLyw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIN_cpdLyw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIN_cpdLyw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIN_cpdLyw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCsd5V5axQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCsd5V5axQQ Ban me if you want
- charlesism 8y agoIt would be more apt to use futuristic music from the 1970s https://youtu.be/AHNUQOhEkAo https://youtu.be/AHNUQOhEkAo There was already enough electronic music to form whole genres, like New Age (Space Music) and Space Disco.
- marktangotango 8y agoSome of these arise from of Gerard O’Neill work on space colonies. I saw these in National Geographic in the late 70s they were hugely inspirational to me. Note while Musk advocates settling Mars Bezos has indicated a preference for space colonies such as O’Neills. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
- DennisP 8y agoA modern take on the idea is the somewhat smaller Kalpana One: https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/Kalpana/KalpanaOne.html https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/Kalpana/KalpanaOne.htm... https://medium.com/space-anthropology/kalpana-one-318f4e3bef40 https://medium.com/space-anthropology/kalpana-one-318f4e3bef...
- yreg 8y agoIf this interests you, check this channel out, the man argues the case for space megastructures very well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTDlSORhI-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTDlSORhI-k
- musha68k 8y agoDreams of Elysian Fields. None of these Arks are going to support billions.
- adrianN 8y agoIf you keep building more they'll eventually house billions.
- musha68k 8y agoI remember the painfully slow loading times as well as the excitement over these classic illustration scans back in the 90s. IMHO though we live in a "post scifi" age now (2019!) and should rather discard most of the mainstream utopian/dystopian fantasies already. At least until we manage to envision some pragmatic solutions to the very real and pressing problems we have on this planet right now. We need to work together if we want to even have a slight chance to survive the next couple of decades collectively. We need some genuinely new utopian thinking if we want us all to survive. Most of these billionaire "backup" plans as well as middle class "prepper" movements are dangerous distractions (and unlikely to "work out" for the cohorts pushing for them anyways). If we like it or not we are in this together.
- _iyig 8y agoO’Neill cylinders were the template for space colonies in the Mobile Suit Gundam anime, going all the way back to the series premiere in 1979. One of many details which lent the show an air of gritty realism, despite its colorful giant robot fights.
- skriticos2 8y agoThat's why they reminded me of the series immediately. :) One of my favorites.
- SolarNet 8y agoGundam continues to mix these gritty realistic space ideas with cool fighting robots. I wish more sci-fi shows would do this.
- agent008t 8y agoThey were also depicted quite faithfully and in great detail in Hideo Kojima's Policenauts.
- sktrdie 8y agoWe are so driven by settling other planets, which of course I think we should do, that we forget that space habitats might be a more economical and also healthier first step into space. Apart from the ones depicted in these images I'm more in favour with starting with cheaper techniques where we could wire up an initial station to a wire/tether, and put a weight (or another small station) at the other end, have them spin around to reproduce gravity. Then we can move these pieces closer to asteroid belts to get resources. A planet on the other hand is a gravity-well: it will always cost us energy and money to get out of such wells. My point is that we should start in pieces, and not necessarily put all our efforts to reach a planet. There can be many other steps in between.
- skriticos2 8y agoMy thoughts exactly. Especially since it's much easier to simulate 1 gravity in space with rotating space stations. (You live long enough on Mars/Moon/etc., you are not coming back without being crushed). The stations would need to be rather large, but that's just an engineering and motivation problem. But with a little extra shielding (lot's of water in the hull - could be obtained from asteroids) they'd be very useful as living space (especially after climate change ravages our home planet). They'd also be much better staging places for solar system exploration and have an advantage in trade (refueling, low energy requirement to get anywhere, excellent target for asteroid refinement without having to bring stuff into a gravity well and back up). Not having to fight the atmosphere for solar energy is also a plus. But humanity still clings to traditional gravity wells like the images in the OP show. Old Italian land-house style dwellings in an orbital ring station..
- davidw 8y agoI grew up reading kids sci-fi with those kinds of pictures... makes me nostalgic!
- planktonite 8y agoThere’s an under appreciated problem with spinning space stations: they would be set off balance by uneven distribution of weight around the ring. This would make small scale rings a bit problematic because people and stuff need to move around. Rings the size of halo would have enough mass that the movement of people wouldn’t be enough to matter.
- jakeinspace 8y agoCould possibly use some sort of active control system of counter masses, like water in a lattice of piping.
- jayd16 8y agoDoes it really matter if the axis of spin is in the exact center for a space station? The station would wobble, but would you feel it?
- Pharmakon 8y agoAn issue with larger rings is that the downforce felt around the ring would vary based on your position within a segment. While it would be a more subtle gradient than a smaller ring, and so less nauseating, it would mean that living and working space would vary in terms of perceived gravity. Another problem is transportation, with the fastest way to cross the ring being across a “spoke” with a gravitational gradient that goes to zero and back. To be fair that could also be a benefit, if people can get used to it.
- yreg 8y agoYou don't want rings, you want O'Neill cylinders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
- Pharmakon 8y agoI really, really do. I’d also like a side of Dyson Swarms, hold the butter. Seriously, how amazing would an O’Neill cylinder be? People live inside, and outside you’d have industries using the vacuum to do things that would cost a fortune on Earth. Just a teensy little upfront investment is required, but with SpaceX it might not be so crazy someday soon. If the cost per kilo into orbit drops enough, a lot of sci-fi could become real; not the Dyson swarm, but orbital habitats and industries sure could.
- CapitalistCartr 8y agoPeople raised in Space are going to wonder what we found so enticing about living dirtside, "Fun to visit, but why anyone lives like that is beyond me. We have perfect weather, a beautiful environment, and we're already halfway to anywhere we want to go."
- hutzlibu 8y agoWell, a snowstorm can be beautiful, perfect weather - to feel alive. A sunny beach is nice. But all day, every day? Boooring. I like to travel. I like to see new things, experience new situations - a small space station where I would have to live forever, I would consider a hell in prison. Unless that space station travels around the planets ... where you can visit and explore them ..
- jedberg 8y agoPresumably the station would orbit earth, and so you'd just wait until you were over the place you wanted to visit and then head down to earth for a week, and the trip would be the same hassle no matter where you were going!
- marktangotango 8y agoThere’s no reason to think they’d only orbit Earth!
- dorian-graph 8y agoSlightly related: in Asimov's Robot books, the humans on earth who live in enclosed mega cities (referred to as wombs more than once), struggle to be outside (basically none do go), and wonder why anyone would want to be out there.
- njharman 8y agoThe deflective magnetic field, ablative asteroid armor (aka atmosphere), and poking hole in wall not leading to explosive decompression are but a few of the "pros" to dirtside living.
- exochrono 8y agoOh man - I feel a lot of history with these images - they actually inspired one of the first online businesses I tried to make. I wanted to put one of these images on my wall, but they were niche enough that I couldn't find anybody selling them. I printed one myself using Zazzle, but then I started thinking that it would be cool to create a place where anybody could share cool niche images they found and have them automatically be available as a poster. I built my site - https://postercoop.com https://postercoop.com - over a couple of months at the beginning of last year. Per probably the second-most common fate of hacker projects (after not getting finished at all), I lost interest before doing much marketing or figuring out any sort of product/market fit, but it definitely an empowering experience to at least see a project through to going live on the internet and learn for myself that "build it and they will come" is for the most part a wishful fantasy :D
- dwaltrip 8y agoCool site! Just ordered an awesome poster of the star-birthing region in the Orion Nebula (https://postercoop.com/posters/45/ https://postercoop.com/posters/45/). Thanks for building and sharing your project.
- cellu_cc 8y agoFrom the description on that poster "The artist’s share of profits from sales of this poster will be donated to NASA." How, Though? You can't donate to NASA
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoYou can order pizzas for employees?
- jdavis703 8y agoPotentially... I vaguely remember my anti-corruption training, and the dollar limits for receiving gifts and meals were fairly low.
- sandworm101 8y agoI remember having books with such art as a little kid. Im so old.
- spiffistan 8y agoI just came across this guy who seems to have drawn a lot through the years: http://www.mccallstudios.com/the-space-frontier/ http://www.mccallstudios.com/the-space-frontier/
- davidivadavid 8y agoRobert McCall! A classic, who made "The Prologue and the Promise", a picture I've used as a desktop background for quite a while (nice to make it span several screens). http://www.mccallstudios.com/includes/uploads/2015/10/0037-005_the_prologue_and_the_promise.jpg http://www.mccallstudios.com/includes/uploads/2015/10/0037-0...
- z3t4 8y agoI don't think these kind of colonies would be effective without a strong shield like the earth atmosphere and magnetic field, and the ability to take a hit from a high speed space object.
- manigandham 8y agoLove this art, especially the retro sci-fi look in general. Some similarities to share: NASA's own "visions of the future" poster series: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/ Futuristic concept artists like Syd Mead: https://www.google.com/search?q=syd+mead+art&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=syd+mead+art&tbm=isch "Never Built" series based on city building proposals, starting with Los Angeles: https://www.google.com/search?q=never+built+los+angeles&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=never+built+los+angeles&tbm=...
- dredmorbius 8y agoThe first eight images were published in T.A. Heppenheimer's Colonies in Space, now available online. https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-by-t-a-heppenheimer/ https://space.nss.org/colonies-in-space-by-t-a-heppenheimer/
- Finnucane 8y agoI had that book. I was in 7th grade when it was published.
- m23khan 8y agoto me, colonialization of other planets seem like alchemy of our times. Every basic item is missing in Mars and will people be willing to survive in domes and astronaut type suits for their entire lives? Then there is a matter of what type of meaningful work people will engage in? what type of education to give to kids? Which currency to pay them in? What nationality would they have? Are they a new country?
- empressplay 8y agoHigher resolution images are available from http://marsforthemany.com/news/technology/space-station-art-from-the-1970s/ http://marsforthemany.com/news/technology/space-station-art-...
- ncmncm 8y agoAlexis Gilliland wrote some really excellent fiction around the counter-rotating cylinders design. "The Revolution from Rosinante", "Long Shot for Rosinante", and "The Pirates of Rosinante", published by Del Rey in '81 and '82. They are still as fresh today as when he wrote them. He got the Campbell award in '82, and the Hugo in 1980, 1983, 1984 and 1985 for fan art. His Mitusbishi Dragon-Scale Mirror design cannot be ignored. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Alexis_A._Gilliland http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Alexis_A._Gilliland
- mauflows 8y agoas seen in Halo and Mass Effect
- tigerlily 8y agoSome of the illustrations remind me of a book at my school library titled "50 Facts About Space": https://www.amazon.com/Facts-about-Space-Mark-Lambert/dp/0330267299 https://www.amazon.com/Facts-about-Space-Mark-Lambert/dp/033... These visions of gigantic space colonies were fantastic. I don't know if I could bear to live on one in RL, I'd be too worried about the micrometeorites.
- madengr 8y agoI remember seeing some of these as a kid in the 70’s. Great stuff. Also a lot of art by Chris Foss: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1848566980/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_5?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1848566980/ref=ox_sc_saved_im...
- Animats 8y agoPlus the moon colonies needed to mine materials and launch them to L4 and L5 with a catapult, to be caught by a spacecraft with a "catcher".
- Dyermarker 8y agoThese don’t exist because they can’t fake them like the moon landings. Sad!
- duxup 8y agoI always loved how the show Babylon 5 used a similar design for their space station.
- p1necone 8y agoThese images make me want to play space orbital sim city.
- jboles 8y agoThis artwork reminds me of a book from my childhood, the ‘Usborne Book of the Future’. In addition to being richly illustrated, it predicted a lot of the technology we would have today, as well as described problems society might face in the future. It’s archived online here: https://archive.org/details/Usborne_Book_of_the_Future_1979_pointlessmuseum https://archive.org/details/Usborne_Book_of_the_Future_1979_...
- matt-attack 8y agoI’m almost positive one of those was from National Geographic’s Our Universe. When I was a kid I must have read it a hundred times. The drawings were truly awe inspiring. In fact just googling it and seeing the cover art brought back so many memories. A book could never mean as much again in this age.
- JunkDNA 8y agoYes! I loved that book. Many of these pictures are in there for sure. I actually recently got a copy of the book used and in excellent condition. My mother donated most of my books as I outgrew them over the years. My 8 year old daughter recently got interested in space so we read it cover to cover. While dated (and blatantly incorrect in places) it still managed to spark that same awe and wonder in her that it did in me. I’m so glad to have found this copy. Such a great book.
- ajlburke 8y agoOne of the reasons I loved the Mass Effect games was that their design team had clearly been looking at these same pictures, especially when they built the Presidium. As a kid, I would look at those pictures and imagine my life in the future looking like this. Instead, in the real future, I play video games where I can wander around these kinds of spaces virtually.
- fallingfrog 8y agoI actually think a ring or cylinder in space is a more practical idea than colonizing mars, because 1) you can get 1g earth gravity, 2) transportation to any other floating habitat or asteroid in the inner solar system is easy, 3) you have to build some kind of pressurized dome on mars anyway and 4) it’s easier to resupply from earth
- mackal 8y agoI used to use one of these as my wallpapers. A friend was bugged that had been using it for years so he gave me a nice print of it and I switched to a different image from this archive :P
- JKCalhoun 8y agoLoved the space colony with the hang glider. That one caused me to consider a 2001-style rotating space station — would it be possible to ride your bike counter to the rotation of the wheel and cancel the centripetal force? I reasoned that you could but that your direction of travel, tangential to the inner surface of the wheel, would still keep you "grounded". A simple ramp though should allow you to launch yourself "hub ward". Am I missing something?
- alex_duf 8y agoNo I think you nailed it. It all depends on the rotation speed but in principle it should be possible to do that. That can either be seen as a flaw or as a feature depending on which side you look at it.
- marktangotango 8y agoThere are definitely some effects like this, would make for interesting video gameplay as well, if someone were inclined. Like trampoline bounce to opposite side or catapults?
- JKCalhoun 8y agoSo optimistic. I loved the 70's. It was what drew me into the idea of a "brave new future" (no sarcasm intended).
- lowlevel 8y agoI remember seeing these in some book when I was a kid... pre-internet... thanks for sharing.
- ohiovr 8y agoWhat do they do with all the single use plastic containers?
- kwccoin 8y agoIs the cylinder design related to the Rama?
- Nr7 8y agoI follow 70s Sci-Fi Art account on twitter for this kind of art https://twitter.com/70sscifiart https://twitter.com/70sscifiart I often use some of the book cover art pictures as my phone wallpaper.
- pi-victor 8y agoYou mean retro Elisyum maybe :) Also, how did we get from this cool stuff to zombie apocalypse, dystopian society and barren wastelands in our sci-fi?
- adrianN 8y agoThis graph shows an important reason why Sci-Fi has a lot less cool stuff today than in the sixties: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg
- buboard 8y agoObligatory reference to Isaac Arthur's youtube channel where you often see this artwork https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g
- douglaswlance 8y agoI don't think it makes much sense for us to build earth-like environments in space. It totally negates the benefits of being in a zero-g environment. I think it is more likely that our biology will be forced to adapt to space than the other way around. I can imagine a future where humans live in individual pods while hooked up to virtual reality systems that can simulate all the necessary needs of the person within the pod, while the pod traverses shared space near lagrange points to collect necessary resources. It'd be a sort of "cell" in a larger multi-cellular collective surrounding our local star; much like endosymbiosis lead to mitochondria when eukaryotes first evolved, humans will merge with machines to become space-faring cellular life.
- le3dh4x0r 8y agoThis needs some syd mead
- dalys 8y agoThis reminds of Larry Niven's Ringworld! Although not identical configurations.
- gshubert17 8y agoThe view from Cooper Station at the end of the movie _Interstellar_, of a baseball hit out of the park into the window of an upside-down house reminded me of O'Neill space colonies. I don't recall whether this was a cylinder or torus.
- fallingfrog 8y agoHey I'm just thinking this through, but wouldn't you get atmospheric disturbances with a cylinder of not-gigantic size? Air currents that go antispinwise would experience lift due to coriolis effect, while air currents going spinwise would experience a downdraft. Would that not lead to the development of sideways tornadoes? Just a thought.. The ring or cylinder might have to have a really large circumference to avoid those kinds of things.
- kristianp 8y agoMany of those images were also published in O'Neill's book, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...