This is what the 80s looked like in 1971.

Check out these images and get lost in Dreams of Space.

I was at a Smithsonian event last year, a talk about space food, during which I learned that astronaut ice cream has only ever been into space once, and that they regularly send the spacepeople up there with a shitload of shrimp cocktail, which is disgusting. Sort it out, NASA. Nobody likes that, and for a futuristic ‘space’ agency, your culinary knowledge would get you laughed out of an Apollo 7 tiki pool party.

The interesting thing was that the woman was speaking about how the space shuttles and space stations can be stocked with food and water, and pretty much admitting that the next moon mission is really just a trial run for a Mars mission, which is really a recon mission for establishing colonies there. I wish I’d recorded it so that in 2025, I could play back the lecture on whatever future-antique I’d used, and we could all have a good laugh. And in the event that this website is still around in 2025 or 2050, then get this: we will not have colonies on Mars anytime soon, but I do feel hopeful about the constant replenishment of future retrofuturist ideas and images. Without anachronism, we’d all be stuck in the far-less-interesting ‘real’ future.

I just wanted to share this post over at Snarkmarket. What Robin Sloan wants is what we wanted when we came up with Chaos Thaoghaire, only we didn’t articulate it in exactly the same way. Something performative along with something generative, she says. No audiences allowed, we said. Everyone’s a participant. Stories are shared and new stories are made, and then we’ve got something for the web, and maybe someone would like to pay us to do this, so we can have three squares a day without having to go to prison to get them. What Robin wants may not be what we get, but what is true is that the future of media (and I include in this all the various forms of interaction and storytelling) will be something that we want. It will happen because we want it. Someone will figure out a model that will make it pay for itself, and we’ll all get what we want. And it’s always nice to see that there are other people on the same page we are. Even if it’s not ultimately the way to the moon, we can enjoy the trip.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that no matter how much we rationalise or legitimise Chaos Thaoghaire, what we really want is to see your nasty side and hear your filthiest, most horrible secrets. Ok, so that, too.

Fine, mostly that.

Anyway, here’s a picture of a relieved Buzz Aldrin. Second-place might be the first loser, but not when you’ve been holding it since Houston.