Go to Space, Be on a Poster

March 18, 2010 10:48 AM

To promote mission awareness, NASA authorizes the creation of posters. Some may look familiar. Via Gizmodo.
posted by Atreides (24 comments total)

um... well, I'm not the target audience, I guess.
If they'd done some parodic social realism posters, I'd have been all over that.
posted by ardgedee at 10:56 AM on March 18, 2010 [2 favorites]

The ones here look like brainwashees of the Heaven's Gate cult.
posted by Joe Beese at 10:57 AM on March 18, 2010

They need to get Tyler Stout to do a poster.
posted by hellojed at 11:04 AM on March 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Joe Beese: That's not the reference. Don't watch enough crappy movies eh?
posted by Justinian at 11:07 AM on March 18, 2010

I saw this elsewhere first and they were being made fun of there too. I think they are awesome.
posted by DU at 11:07 AM on March 18, 2010

I think they're hilarious. If they're going for "funny", they got it. If they're going for serious, um.
posted by Justinian at 11:08 AM on March 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

ardgedee - You mean like this?
posted by contessa at 11:12 AM on March 18, 2010

Ha, I have a tshirt of the Atlantis 125 one. I think they're brilliant.
posted by Skorgu at 11:13 AM on March 18, 2010

I'm pretty certain these aren't meant to be taken seriously.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:13 AM on March 18, 2010

Are they not allowed to look at each other, like the Disney Princesses?
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:20 AM on March 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Reminded me of Pose as a team, because shit just got real. Shit doesn't get any realer than going out in space, I'm glad they got the chance to pose as a team. I think the posters are great.
posted by amethysts at 11:21 AM on March 18, 2010

Although some of them are really Photoshop of Horrors.
posted by amethysts at 11:22 AM on March 18, 2010

These would be OK, I guess, if NASA didn't already have an amazingly rich iconographic history to draw from.

But, yeah. Just like Star Trek! Hurr, hurr!
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:24 AM on March 18, 2010

Ah, Heaven's Gate. Did you know their website is still active? And the domain is good through 2011. But if you're looking for a similar domain, why not try these? (screencap from Whois.net - I like "heavensbarrier.com" and "heavens-meansofaccess.com" as alternatives).
posted by filthy light thief at 11:25 AM on March 18, 2010

I must be rrrrrrreally out of the friggin' loop seeing as I can't identify a few of the references. I mean, this is NASA, promoting mission awareness; the references probably aren't underground alternative bleedin' cutting edge type stuff. If you're like me - male, 34, European, interested in American pop culture - you should be able to identify them all, right? Yet I cannot for the life of me... For example, what's this riffing on?
posted by soundofsuburbia at 11:25 AM on March 18, 2010

Justinian: "Joe Beese: That's not the reference. Don't watch enough crappy movies eh?"

No, I recognized it as the Armageddon poster. But instead of suggesting heroic resolve, their expressions suggest some mixture of vacant and crazy.
posted by Joe Beese at 11:26 AM on March 18, 2010

Fucking amateurs...
posted by Pollomacho at 11:32 AM on March 18, 2010

Somewhere out there, there's a science teacher that thinks these posters will make them seem more hip and with-it to their students.
posted by box at 11:56 AM on March 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

Somewhere there is a really nerdy science student future MeFite that secretly covets his/her teacher's awesome poster.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:01 PM on March 18, 2010

These would be OK, I guess, if NASA didn't already have an amazingly rich iconographic history to draw from.

Yeah. I remember when movies desperately tried to be as cool as NASA.
posted by straight at 12:49 PM on March 18, 2010

Probably not the worst space posters I've seen.

damn, nasm doesn't have the "apollo 1: their lives are in your hands" north american quality & safety guidelines poster from very late 1966 online.
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 12:57 PM on March 18, 2010 [4 favorites]

Well, I thought they were cute.
posted by gc at 2:33 AM on March 19, 2010

I think if you look at these more as "silly, often self-mocking posters full of in-jokes that are mainly intended to hang on walls in NASA offices and are only publically available because some people might find them amusing" and less as some kind of serious attempt to make astronauts look like fake movie stars, they are fine.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:17 AM on March 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Self-promotion has always been a big part of NASA's mission: their agency is a luxury and they know it. Whoever did STS 116 should have been taken out and shot -- the 'shopping on the hair is just plain awful.

I feel kind of badly for STS92-116. The folks before that had nothing, which is probably better than having "your" poster on the trophy wall at home and goin', "yeah, well, money was tight back then and PowerPoint was all we could afford." (I almost chose this one as Most Awful before I made the connection and went to hell for thinking "floating flame balls, no shit...")
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:55 PM on March 19, 2010