CANADA: Perhaps people within SpaceX and NASA are a little sad about the end of “Mad Men,” because recently both organizations have taken to imagining the distant future of space tourism via travel posters in the style of a bygone era.
First, NASA opened its speculative “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” online in January. Then, on Friday, SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk shared a few of their own stylized posters featuring fantasy adventures to Mars. The posters imagine trips to some of the Red Planet’s spectacular features, including its continent-wide Grand Canyon called Valles Marineris and the tallest mountain in the solar system, the Everest-dwarfing Olympus Mons.
Currently, SpaceX is focused on making deliveries to the International Space Station and perfecting reusable rockets, but Musk has openly discussed his hopes of sending people to Mars as soon as the 2020s. NASA’s current goal is to send astronauts there in the 2030s. Other organizations like Mars One are aiming to get to the Red Planet even sooner, though there’s reason to doubt such optimistic timelines. Oddly, the author of the best-selling novel “The Martian,” is among the most pessimistic Mars boosters — he sees us arriving there in the 2050s.
Flip through the gallery below to check out the latest visions of distant future space tourism — from NASA, SpaceX and even a creative Etsy seller — as it might have been pitched in the only slightly distant past.
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