
Space Colony Art from the 1970s - tintinnabula
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/space-colony-art-from-the-1970s/
======
exochrono
Oh 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
Cool 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
From 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
You can order pizzas for employees?

~~~
jdavis703
Potentially... I vaguely remember my anti-corruption training, and the dollar
limits for receiving gifts and meals were fairly low.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
So work with the pizza place to get a special 95% discount then hand them cash
"not related to the order". For something that's obviously a good faith
contribution everyone involved will err toward the side of rubber stamping it
as ok.

The rules are just a rule of thumb that we can apply evenly at scale to avoid
corruption. When there's legitimately no corruption happening the rules get
more flexible. If it ever becomes an issue HR will frown (because rules) but
legal will apply the duck test and conclude that ~$10 pizza/person paid for by
someone who doesn't need/want/isn't in a position to benefit from preferential
treatment is not corruption.

------
sktrdie
We 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.

~~~
kakarot
From what I understand, a structure needs to be quite massive to get
meaningful gravity from a rotating hull unless you attempt to approach
ludicrously unsafe angular velocity which would make repair / docking a big
challenge. In _The Expanse_ , Ceres station was spun up over many, many years
and still only achieved about 1/3G. Not to use a fictional universe as a basis
for science but afaik they at least tried to do the math correctly.

~~~
tomp
I think it doesn't need to be massive, it just needs to have massive radius.
Could be as simple as having a really long and strong wire between two
habitation modules. And you can start small (low distance, slow spin, little
gravity) and increase gradually.

Expanse is neat, but spinning asteroids isn't realistic. The idea is that the
acceleration at the surface of Ceres is 1/3g, pointing _outwards_ (i.e. you
fall "out" into space). That would imply that the ground/rocks etc literally
floats away in space. Unless the surface is structurally strong enough to
resist that (unlikely with most asteroids, many of which are literally rubble
piles
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile)
) the whole things would just disintegrate.

~~~
kakarot
Very interesting point about the wire. Seems like a great idea and definitely
worth exploring, but imagine if that wire got cut ;)

> but spinning asteroids isn't realistic

Ceres isn't an asteroid. It's a dwarf planet. It's not a pile of rubble. It's
big enough to be round from its own gravity. The only object in the asteroid
belt with that status, actually.

> That would imply that the ground/rocks etc literally floats away in space

Yea, but they considered that and planned accordingly. The entire station is
underground and the surface is heavily reinforced.

------
kirion25
For 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
Sidenote: Rick Guidice also did art for Atari's gaming systems.

[http://rickguidice.com/illustration/atariart.html](http://rickguidice.com/illustration/atariart.html)

------
marktangotango
Some 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)

~~~
musha68k
Dreams of Elysian Fields.

None of these Arks are going to support billions.

~~~
tomp
Unless we terraform a planet, we'll need domes (artificial habitats with roofs
filled with air) anyways. The difference between a planetary and space
settlement is then just the (reinforced) floor, and you gain having 0 delta-v
launch costs.

~~~
lmm
> The difference between a planetary and space settlement is then just the
> (reinforced) floor, and you gain having 0 delta-v launch costs.

Anywhere intended for long-term habitation needs to be surrounded by 5m of
metal or 10m of dirt (or a proper magnetosphere), and even a small amount of
gravity can make life a lot more convenient in terms of having an up and down
direction, not having to sleep next to a fan etc.

To my mind somewhere like Phobos makes the most sense for the first space
colonies - enough dirt available to build things, not enough delta-v cost to
matter.

------
_iyig
O’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.

~~~
SolarNet
Gundam continues to mix these gritty realistic space ideas with cool fighting
robots. I wish more sci-fi shows would do this.

------
douglaswlance
I 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.

------
ncmncm
Alexis 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)

------
planktonite
There’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.

~~~
manigandham
In the book/TV series "The Expanse", they actually spin up massive asteroids
and live inside tunnels, effectively like a ring but made of rock, to offset
the fact that it doesn't have enough gravity otherwise. Neat concept, although
will likely end in failure.

~~~
crdoconnor
In reality those asteroids would tear themselves to pieces when spun up.

------
matt-attack
I’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.

~~~
ajlburke
One 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.

------
manigandham
Love 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=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=never+built+los+angeles&tbm=isch)

------
benj111
How '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.

~~~
philwelch
Until Kennedy radically accelerated the schedule for the first moon landing
and set that as a singular goal, the plans for the space program involved
almost as much infrastructure building as exploration. Here's a 1955
television program where Wernher von Braun presents an earlier, more
complicated plan for a Moon mission, complete with a nuclear-powered toroidal
space station:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY)

~~~
reidacdc
That's a great find. A noteworthy (to me) feature was the height of the orbit
-- they're at ~1000 miles above the Earth's surface. This indicates that they
were unaware of the Van Allen belts, which makes sense, in 1955, no artificial
satellites had yet been launched.

Edit: Also noticed the dramatized mission has a "free-return" trajectory, no
maneuver required at the moon to get back to Earth.

~~~
philwelch
They also had a lot of enthusiasm for nuclear energy. Apollo itself used fuel
cells and the later space stations all used solar power.

------
JKCalhoun
Loved 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
No 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.

------
JKCalhoun
So optimistic. I loved the 70's. It was what drew me into the idea of a "brave
new future" (no sarcasm intended).

------
empressplay
Higher resolution images are available from
[http://marsforthemany.com/news/technology/space-station-
art-...](http://marsforthemany.com/news/technology/space-station-art-from-
the-1970s/)

------
spiffistan
I 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
Robert 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/2015/10/0037-0...](http://www.mccallstudios.com/includes/uploads/2015/10/0037-005_the_prologue_and_the_promise.jpg)

------
fallingfrog
Hey 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.

------
jboles
This 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_...](https://archive.org/details/Usborne_Book_of_the_Future_1979_pointlessmuseum)

------
tigerlily
Some 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/033...](https://www.amazon.com/Facts-about-Space-Mark-
Lambert/dp/0330267299)

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.

------
kristianp
Many 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_Colon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space)

------
pi-victor
You 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
This 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)

------
madengr
I 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_im...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1848566980/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_5?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1)

------
vhodges
And for modern space art: [http://spacehabs.com/](http://spacehabs.com/)

------
fallingfrog
I 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

------
dredmorbius
The 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
I had that book. I was in 7th grade when it was published.

------
CapitalistCartr
People 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
Well, 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
Presumably 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
There’s no reason to think they’d only orbit Earth!

------
gshubert17
The 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.

------
Nr7
I 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.

------
duxup
I always loved how the show Babylon 5 used a similar design for their space
station.

------
davidw
I grew up reading kids sci-fi with those kinds of pictures... makes me
nostalgic!

------
z3t4
I 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.

------
mackal
I 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

------
ohiovr
What do they do with all the single use plastic containers?

------
p1necone
These images make me want to play space orbital sim city.

------
Animats
Plus 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".

------
jotm
The Russians had good art too: [https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-soviet-artists-
imagined-communis...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-soviet-artists-imagined-
communist-life-in-space-1558140402)

Sadly reality is never that good

~~~
philwelch
I like how they have helicopters on the moon. I guess it might make sense if
you're in a dome filled with air.

~~~
lthemick
Probably not, unless those rotors we're spinning really slowly; you wouldn't
need nearly as powerful a helicopter in such a weak gravity...

------
lowlevel
I remember seeing these in some book when I was a kid... pre-internet...
thanks for sharing.

------
dalys
This reminds of Larry Niven's Ringworld! Although not identical
configurations.

------
sandworm101
I remember having books with such art as a little kid. Im so old.

------
le3dh4x0r
This needs some syd mead

------
buboard
Obligatory 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)

------
kwccoin
Is the cylinder design related to the Rama?

------
mauflows
as seen in Halo and Mass Effect

------
jotm
And 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
It 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.

------
m23khan
to 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?

