NASA anniversary: space colony illustrations for life after Earth

NASA’s illustration of a future space colony.NASA Ames Research Center

This Sunday, July 29, 2018, marks the 60th anniversary of NASA’s establishment as a US government agency, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act, its founding legislation.

Nearly two decades later, NASA was already envisioning what post-Earth communities in space could look like.

In the 1970s, physicists from Princeton University, the NASA Ames Research Center, and Stanford University created fantastical illustrations of massive orbiting cities for life after Earth. The scientists imagined a worse-case scenario in which our planet would be destroyed, and humankind would move to space.

Take a look at these designs, unearthed by The Public Domain Review.