I’ve always thought images like these are great. The artists have quite an imagination.

What a great post. I love the old ideas of what people thought the future held. For example, 2001: A Space Odyssey. How different it all turned out eh?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a astronaut and I used to continuously check out this particular book on space that included these exact illustrations as well as several other illustrations which depicted what sorts of possible alien lifeforms could live on each planet in our solar system (i.e. for Jupiter their were these super thin membrane blimp shaped creatures that floated in the gas).

Seeing these illustrations totally brings me back – I wonder if I can find that book anywhere…

There was a big smudge on the scanner when the intern scanned all of these, its really ugly. Come one NASA.

I wonder if we could have built one of these instead of fighting the Iraq war.

Thanks a lot for posting these. Again, the blog proves to be an amazing resource.

Thanks and Greetings from NJ. Keep us posted on the F5 Fest in New York, exciting!

crazy. this is what i pictured in my head while reading the Rama books.

that second image up is a crazy looking perspective…I guess that’s how life in a tube in the vacuum of space would look though.

So awesome. They remind me of the movie Silent Running.

Thinks these are cool, have you guys seen Raymond Lowey’s work for NASA? mainly for SpaceLab? They has some originals in the Cold War Modern exhibit at the Vitoria and Albert Museum and they blew my mind.

Hey scott, i just check out some of Ray Loweys stuff for NASA. pretty amazing sketches, found them here: http://tomdesign.co.uk/blog/?cat=175

@Jesse J. Anderson
Funny, the part of the book you describe about the blimp-creatures on Jupiter perfectly matches yet another Arthur C. Clarke story called A Meeting With Medusa. And I agree, Kevin, those images have Rama written all over them!

totally lydia,

clarke references the cloud/blimp creatures in 2001 (or was it 2010) also, when dave bowman flies thru the universe. flies thru jupiter and sees “cloud animals” fighting each other. totally nerdy yet awesome.

p.s. David Fincher is slated to direct the movie of Rendezvous with Rama. :-)

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[...] So I am totally stealing a blog subject because I thought it was rad and I thought some of you would find it interesting.  A blog by ISO50 told about a selection of 1970’s Nasa images released recently that showed artists renderings of  future dwellings in space, or ideas of us settling in space.  I assume it was regarding what we would do when our earth becomes uninhabitable. Check out the original post here. [...]

The 4th pic from the top definitely looks inspired by the Rama book. I’m willing to bet it started off as an illustration for it even!

[...] link to NASA, via: iso50 [...]

[...] Space Colony 1970 [...]

[...] For the 3 images up here: the first one we’ve tried to replicate for an album cover for Shigeto, the second one always grabbed me and made want to put blurry dust spots on everything, the third one is perfect looking, if you could see it on a large screen it’s just stunning in detail, i wish i would illustrate like that, reminds me of Scott’s post a few weeks ago with the space colony. [...]