May 292015
 

From a 1977 Rockwell brochure touting the forthcoming benefits to be expected from the era of space industrialization that the Shuttle was soon to usher in:

rockwell 77 space industrialization

Note that some of the illustrations here were constantly re-tasked. For example, the image in upper right with the cop and the bad guy: here is shows the advantages of the Lunetta, lighting up scary urban areas at night, allowing The Man to spot and chase down criminals. But in other publications, the same small painting was used to show other advantages of space industrialization, nothing to do with Lunetta. Not shown in *this* illustration is the police officers right hand. Elsewhere, the image is published with him holding his hand sort of in front of his face, as if he was wearing a Dick Tracey-esque two-way video/radio watch… because that’s what he was wearing (same sort of thing shown in the center-left image on the right-hand page). Space technology would, it was claimed, allow police officers to carry small, easily portable communications devices of effectively unlimited range, unlike the bulky and short-ranged walkie-talkies they had at the time.

Admittedly, it was a crazy, far-out notion of the future.

 Posted by at 11:29 pm