A fairly unexpected but duly appreciated jewel hit the official website news feed recently, showing us the way NASA envisions futuristic interplanetary vacation posters. At least for when that will be a thing of the day. Once again, this is the work of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory situated in Pasadena, California. The same group of people has been responsible for a huge amount of recent marketing and other means of delicately trying to grasp people’s attention towards the importance of space travel.
Only recently they released a video of a regular day at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including a tour of it. They also showed how future astronauts train and prepare for potential space missions. They seem to be on a spree, possibly part of NASA’s attempt to open the eyes of the public in the direction of space discovery.
It is known that NASA recently made a statement, saying that the funds necessary for both manned missions they want to undertake – another landing on the Moon as well as a trip to Mars – are incredibly high and unfortunately unrealistic to achieve. Because of that, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will have to only settle for one or the other to be performed in the next 20 years. Considering one mission of this scale would cost roughly half a trillion dollars, NASA is turning to the public and also attempting to obtain financial help from federal funds.
The posters that made their way to the internet as part of the Visions of the Future series in an attempt to spark interest of the public towards the world that we would live in if space travelling and vacations would become a reality. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory visual strategist Dan Goods talked about the style that was chosen for the posters as being inspired from what science fiction artists and writers saw the future to be like in mid 20th century.
And as a matter of fact, most of them do look like excellent book cover ideas for Robert A. Heinlein book revisions. The 14 posters depict different destinations, and to each their very respective traits and most known features.
That way, you are invited to experience the charm of gravity assist on an aligned series of gas giants as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, something that happens only every 175 years, invited to visit the already historic (by then) sites of Mars, the last celestial body to be known to have water on it – Ceres, the icy Europa or the colorful auroras of Jupiter. Otherworldly destinations make their appearance too, listing Kepler-15B, the planet that orbits around two suns, the ‘red Earth’ from another solar system or places such as the rogue planet PSO J318.5-22 – the one that doesn’t orbit a sun.
You can find all the posters available for download here.
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