May 252009
I gather than in the days before the internet, a “Worlds Fair” was an event of some note. And it seems that in those long-gone Before Times, NASA actually had interesting things to show people, with actual plans for the future. Huh.
5 Responses to “NASA at the New York Worlds Fair”
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And in the “Space” pavillion there was a full scale Martin lifting body suspended in the air docking with a space station. Great days.
It would be nice if the United States would host another World’s Fair. I think the last World’s Fair here was in New Orleans in 1984.
Do they even *have* “Worlds Fairs” anymore?
Nope, but Aimee Mann wrote a wonderfully haunting song about the 1939 one: http://mog.com/music/Aimee_Mann/Whatever/Fifty_Years_After_the_Fair
Pat
I remember seeing this exhibit when I was 8 years old. I was already a space nut at the time so it was incredibly impressive. Other notable exhibits were the GM Motorama and the IBM pavilion with the elevated theater in the shape of a Selectric type ball.
Yes there are still world’s fairs and of course, a French-domiciled entity to administer them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_International_Expositions
Under the new system, major Universal expositions are held every five years (Shanghai 2010 and Milan 2015), with smaller fairs fitted in between the majors. Houston, New York, and San Francisco are bidding for the 2020 fair, but since we did not pay our $25,000 dues to the BIE, we’re probably out of the running.
If we still had guys like Robert Moses (or Jim Webb) running things, we could do what Moses did in ’64 and run a huge fair without BIE sanction. That would probably not meet with approval from the Obamanauts though.