From this post on Boing Boing:

Perhaps the most poignant personal artifact left on the lunar surface was a Polaroid photograph, deposited by Charlie Duke on Apollo 16. According to NASA the picture was “taken by Loudy Benjamin, is shrink-wrapped and contains a message on the back which reads ‘This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.’ Underneath the message are the signatures of his wife and kids. (NASA Photo AS16-117-18841.)”

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Reader comment: Karl adds:

Markus Mehring has an essay on this photo at Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, along with a rectifed closeup version of the picture. And here’s Duke’s photo in context with the other photos on the same Hasselblad roll.

Technorati tags: Space Science Science Fiction SF Writing Blog Blogs

From this post on Boing Boing:

Until now, I didn’t know that there is a sculpture of a man on the Moon. The only piece of art on the moon (depending, we suppose, on one’s definition of art) is a 3″-tall aluminum sculpture titled “Fallen Astronaut.” It was created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck and installed by Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott, along with a plaque bearing the names of the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the service of space exploration.

In 1972, against the crew and NASA’s wishes, Van Hoeydonck created 950 signed replicas of “Fallen Astronaut” and sold them for $750 a piece.

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Technorati tags: Space Science Science Fiction SF Writing Blog Blogs

Dreams of Space is a lovely gallery of illustrations about space from children’s books published between 1883 and 1974. Seen here is the cover of Space, Time and Rockets (1952), illustrated by AK Bilder.

Technorati tags: Space Science Science Fiction SF Writing Blog Blogs

To all Shufflers,

We’ve just launched SiteShuffle version 2, and it’s got a whole bunch of new functionality for which our users have been asking.

New functionality includes:

1. Drag and drop sortable favicons on the Load Page;

2. Full NANOSITE functionality (there’s one up for Boing Boing) that will be portable to mobile devices;

3. A SiteShuffle Toolbar (which is really cool, ’cause you can sort through your favicons without having to reload);

4. And a fully-fleshed out “furniture” section, including SiteShuffle “Merchandise” and “API Documentation”.

Spread the word! Please!

And, if you’ve got a site, please put up the SiteShuffle button:

http://siteshuffle.com/button

We’d really appreciate your feedback on all the new functionality.

Thanks!

Technorati tags: Space Science Science Fiction SF Writing Blog Blogs

From Boing Boing:

According to NASA, “A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made.” Here are more than a dozen of them. Ah, the good ol’ daze of Gerard O’Neill’s High Frontiers and Timothy Leary’s rallying call of SMI²LE (Space Migration, Intelligence Increase, Life Extension).
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Technorati tags: Space Science Science Fiction SF Writing Blog Blogs