Artifacts From A Previously Undiscovered Space Program

March 18, 2009 5:40 PM

So you go to be spaceman. If the space race had taken a few different turns, we might have ended up with a historical exhibit that looked like the one cooked up by the American Dream Technical Institute.

Currently on display in Portland, Maine. Stroll on by for a look at the full-size spaceship, advertisements and other ephemera of the non-existent do-it-yourself space movement of the 1950s.

All artifacts are helpfully explained by text panels, which (somewhat less helpfully) were taken from a 1959 book on space, translated into Russian with Systran, then pushed back through Systran into English.

via SPACE Gallery.

posted by mikepop (6 comments total)

This is beyond awesome. Also, gotta love those SYSTRAN text panels. This whole thing feels very Philip K. Dick. Or some sort of sequel to The Gernsback Continuum by William Gibson.
posted by Kattullus at 6:29 PM on March 18, 2009

The only really implausible part of this is that it claims that someone was actually able to build a transportation machine that'd been advertised in the back pages of a Mechanix-like magazine.

(OK, many of the vacuum-cleaner-powered hovercraft probably worked OK. But you have to push those along with your leg like a scooter.)
posted by dansdata at 6:56 PM on March 18, 2009

Those placards are hilarious! Very cool. Even bomb of bug will make.
posted by Xoebe at 7:23 PM on March 18, 2009

Reading those is make my brain hurt.
posted by intermod at 8:48 PM on March 18, 2009

Thank you for posting this! I love this type of vintage aesthetic.

Over the winter I bought 5 2' tall stainless steel letters from Randy (for my kitchen decor, of course) and found him to be just as cool in person as one would expect from his art.
posted by suki at 7:36 AM on March 19, 2009

Crap. Now I want to build a spaceship.
posted by vertigo25 at 11:43 AM on March 21, 2009