I 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 aspira

I 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? :)