On the 24th of December 1979 the first Ariane rocket took off from the French Guyane Space Centre.
It is one of the greatest space programs so far with a 190 successful launches and only 9 failures.
Yes, Europe can tackle big projects and be a top player in high tech.
Let’s hope that the Brits (who finally get their own Space Agency just recently to replace the old one) rejoin Ariane soon.
UFO is a very cheesy British TV series from the 1970’s – it has everything a 12-year-old boy needs: explosions, great machinery, heroes and women in skimpy dresses.
Still 40 years later UFO is quite watchable for the targeted audience – and fat old bastards like me.
To my great horror there will be a "serious" remake (more here). Anyone remember the terrible Thunderbirds remake?
Since Galactica proved to be such a success and money maker we can expect many old series turned into zombies to make some more cold hard cash.
Why is Hollywood so afraid of new stories?
Playing Grand Theft Auto back then required you to have a lot more imagination and a lot less electricity and money.
This amazing design is from Verner Panton and one of his Environments (check the page for this design and search for the video link). He designed this 1970 for a furniture fair in Cologne titled "How will we be living tomorrow".
So funny how all that futuristic concept art from the 1960’s and 1970’s all got it so wrong – except for Mr Kubrick’s amazing movie "2001". His conservative and dry Bauhaus-like vision prevailed.
Still I like the design above. Looks groovy and comfy, should be a great hit in a nightclub or chill out area. No drugs needed, just some nice ambient music and a few drinks to drift off …
BBC News: Kung Fu star Carradine found dead and Obituary
And another one of my childhood heroes departs this planet. David Carradine was amazing in "Kung Fu", which introduced many Westerners to the more serious and spiritual aspects of Martial Arts – in contrast to all those cheesy action movies before.
David Carradine was often wasted in many bad movies himself, but somehow he kept his dignity and aura of the Kung Fu Master.
Rest in peace O-Sensei!
Art Documentary from 1972 – Episode 1/4
From Wikipedia:
Ways of Seeing was a 1972 BBC television series created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb, that gave rise to a later book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images.
No, it’s not my new office. This is just a painful design accident. All these organic designs have almost all disappeared by now. Round shapes are mostly useless and very unpractical in a square world.
And plastic is such an ugly material for daily use and work on. Wooden desks at least suck away your sweat and age beautifully. But I am sure that plastic monstrosity above was a great mouse pad – even before mice were invented.
*Thanks to Edosan for giving me eye cancer*
BBC News: NASA’s 50 years in Space (Videos)
The dogmatic search for a better future was the driving force of the 20th century.
Let’s go back to the Age of Enlightenment that was driven by new insights and lofty goals for humanity. It was the time of colonialism, conquests and the true start of globalization. Although under the brutal direction of European Colonials the world was for the first time completely explored, connected and aware of each other.
Excuse me, we are nice colonists and are looking for a place to build a spaceport.
But it was also the Age of Humanitarianism, when we realized that King & Country were not eternal and that humanity needed better tools and ideals to guide itself into the future. One outcome of this new Idealism was the French Revolution as well as the United States of America – a totally new way to govern modern societies.
Compared to the former religious societies our Forefathers suddenly had “mental space” for a different and better future. Under Religion and Royals there was no “improving” future as we know it today. There was only the continuation of yesterday until Judgement Day. Any change driven by human ideas was considered blasphemy and unnecessary – since everything was nicely arranged in God’s perfect plan.
Move aside God – we need space for the future …
The Industrial Age of the 19th Century with it’s incredible social and scientific achievements where the ultimate proof that “God was dead” (Nietzsche) and that the nation state transcended Religion and Kings. The eternal plan was scraped, finally there was a Future and the mental space for real progress.
Already in the early Industrial Age authors like Jules Verne established many modern visions of a technological future: underwater cities, submarines, flying machines, rockets and interplanetary travel. All based on the work of daring scientists and engineers.
New political and social sciences radically changed western cultures: Psychology, Socialism, Mass Production, Consumerism and Individualism transformed the old Democracies into new powerful nation states.
He didn’t built any rockets, but he was one of many important fathers of modern science.
All new political ideas like Socialism, Communism and a new modern (Market) Capitalism were based new insights and sciences available at the time. Even Fascism got many of it’s ideas from science, especially from Darwinism and most of all Social Darwinism – which lead to the dreadful science of Eugenics.
Small side note: Social Darwinism has actually not invented by him – it was rather based on Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton work. It was first just a very convenient way to justify Colonialism and the Class System.
Sorry, your nose is too big to be an Aryan or an Astronaut.
Nevertheless – Science was established as the ultimate method to build a better life. Our future depended on better science and technology. Our Forefathers were delighted and enchanted by all the exciting new discoveries.
Already in the 1920’s and 1930’s a new kind of Futurism swept through America, Europe and some parts of Asia. Freud’s psychology fascinated people all over the western world and the although the great Depression was a terrible event for everybody modern Consumerism started to thrive in that time too.
Modern Consumerism always demanded High Tech.
But there was also a cultural Futurism (not to be confused with the Italian Futurism). Thanks to new forms of Mass Media (especially comics, radio and cinemas) science fiction presented a glorious technological future to the masses. Hero’s like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and many others showed the way to the Future – first as comics, then as radio serials and later as movies.
Interestingly enough: early science fiction (in literature and on the screen) adopted Democracy and Humanitarianism as the ultimate choice for any lifeform. Technology and science as tools to archive the best way of life. This message is ultimately portrayed in the movie “Things to Come” (1936).
I am sure evil Ming’s military never faced NASA’s budget cuts!
The terrible conflicts of ideas first dismantled the old colonial powers in WWI and WWII. Both wars showed that science and technology was the ultimate weapon. The future belonged to flying machines, atomic power and electronics.
Many weapons invented in WWII are still stranger then (science) fiction like flying saucers. But the Cold War fathered even stranger and more futuristic machinery: like the atomic bomber, killer satellites or stealth fighters.
The space age already started with Wernher von Braun and his terrible V-2 rocket in 1942. But this was really only the beginning …
There is one small reason for NASA’s existence: Sputnik.
In the 1950’s rockets and spacemen were already deeply embedded into the public’s mind through science fiction and popular science. But on October 4, 1957 it all become real with the launch of Sputnik. Hardly a year later the Americans founded NASA on July 29, 1958. The space age finally took off with full power.
Once again the chimps got there before us!
From the 1950’s till the mid 1980’s popular culture and media was shaped by science, technology and science fiction. From Sputnik to the Space Shuttle and from Captain Kirk to Star Wars – it was the Age of happy technology and unlimited possibilities.
Star Wars 1977 not only my personal turning point in my childhood …
Every boys dream was to become an Astronaut. Being smart or even being a Scientist was considered cool. Building stuff that actually worked was even cooler. Toys like chemistry sets, rocket kits or ever complex LEGO machinery were best sellers.
Totally out of fashion today: being an Astronaut. Not as cool as being a Rapper or Supermodel.
I was born 1967 – I was two years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Too young to really watch it. But I do remember that I watched every bit of “space anything”, science fiction or scientific program on the telly.
Until the mid 1980’s my generation grew up on a positive vision of the future, science and technology. Sure – already in the 1970’s the Hippies questioned our modern lifestyle – but it was not until the start and success of the green movement that this positive and uncritical vision was replaced with a more darker, distrusting and often strangely esoteric vision of the future.
I am still in my heart a spaceman, but I guess that era is over.
Amazingly to me we seem to learnt very little or nothing from the oil crises of 1973. Especially because in the 1980’s the oil prices went down like a rock and everything seemed fine.
Europe always had higher taxes on petrol, so we naturally built and drove smaller cars. The US went “el gigante” as usual and feel in love with SUVs, Hummers and other thirsty vehicles.
So from 1973 to 2008 we wasted precious THIRTYFIVE years to seriously reduce our global consumption and develop alternatives. It is simply amazing how much time we wasted fiddling around with small stuff instead of pushing ahead.
The idea of peak oil (maximum production followed by gradual decline) is hardly new itself – a certain Mister King Hubbert published this very idea in 1956. And that oil isn’t a renewable resource has been bloody obvious since we built cars.
Once again: it is shocking that all these high-tech countries like USA, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, etc. have so little to show so little progress in terms of energy independence.
Germany is currently world leader in solar and wind energy, but we hardly use these technologies. Instead all industrial nations talk about using extensively atomic power. But it is once again a short term solution, since the world’s reserve of plutonium ain’t that big either.
It all comes down to money, not intelligence or logic in the end. We could have done more, but we didn’t. We still are doing not enough. We will only speed up our development when the price of petrol rises even higher and our laziness will become unaffordable.
But I am seriously afraid that we won’t even react than. Instead we simply “agree” with lesser comfort and don’t mind millions of people starving, because oil is also important for food production.
Cultures and civilizations are not very good in reacting to slow changes and threats. They simply adapt without overcoming the threat.
So peak oil might also imply peak civilization – unless some egghead saves our global asses from decline with a brilliant invention. But our culture won’t be the first nor the last to maybe disappear, slowly rott or “sleep away” …
Living near Italy I never liked the sphagetti disco music, but Georgio is an exception, because he had a great and unique sound (which already was very "techno" and the video also has many images later seen in many rave clips).
Still … very Italian .. but he later made it big time in Hollywood.
Just because you stuffed tons of drugs into yourself and had loads of sex doesn’t mean you really changed anything … duuuude …
The Hippies of the 70’s just turned into enormously demanding prosumers in the 80’s. Just buying with more awareness green and spiritual crap is still buying crap …
I just found these clips and remixes from Wonder Woman. Since I didn’t grew up in the US of A I wasn’t ‘blessed’ witch such a highly intellectual TV series.
But I am sure it makes great masturbation fodder if you are twelve years old, male and free porn on from the Internet hasn’t yet been invented.
Excellent cover design – especially considering that this was 1973 and Photoshop didn’t exist.
Taken from here. What a nightmare of a room! That was definitely before Ikea was hip all over the world.
Thank you Lisa for that mad catch!
Think this is 60’s / 70’s design. Weird colors. Weird composition. Weird Guy – and I am sure pretty weird music as well.
This is such a great combination of hippie statement and ugly 70’s design. Although banning bras might be a good thing …
If your life started in such a colour nightmare you are entitled to at least two good therapists! I think a lot of interior designers of the seventies deserve to be shot.
With a fainting horror I remember wearing something similar in my youth. Fashion sucks – when your mom buys it …
Big Jim was huge in the 1970’s till early 1980’s – finally a more sophisticated doll for the guys. An action hero – not just a military figure (toy soldiers had been around forever). Big Jim and his ‘offsprings’ could do amazing stuff – like there karate chops when you pressed the button on his back and the bulging biceps.
Today Big Jim seems completely forgotten and compared to todays superpowered robots and combat creatures he looks almost like a pacifist.
More? Big Jim @ Wikipedia and article on BigRedToyBox.com
I need one of these – maybe including the yummy content with a more decent haircut. Maybe it’s simply a big tennis ball with a female midget. How knows? The seventies were a strange decade. I have not much love for designer chairs. Most of them suck, are overpriced and very uncomfy. I prefer a simple old school chair or a bit more modern knee chair (you sit in a kneeling position – very nice for the back).
Now I perfectly understand why people took so many drugs in the 60’s and 70’s. This would be the perfect outfit for any anti-idol-contest today.
