In 1992 NASA had a flurry of PR about the “First Lunar Outpost” concept which would see the US return to the moon using large lunar landers launched by a single Saturn V derived heavy lifter. A fair deal of concept art was released; much of it used the relatively new technology of computer generated imagery. Five of these images recently appeared on ebay as 16X20 prints; what the heck, I went ahead and bought them. They arrived today and I was pleasantly surprised at the production quality. They weren’t simply printouts glued to cheap foamcore, but instead are very glossy, hard plastic bonded to higher quality foamcore.
I believe I’ll have these professionally scanned and made available to APR Patrons/subscribers.
4 responses to “First Lunar Outpost artwork”
Didn’t they throw away the plans for the Saturn V or the F-1 before this? Or was this when they figured out they were gone?
The Sat V blueprints being discarded is a bit of a myth; the blueprints still exist in accessible microfilm. However, all of the *tooling* was gone. Additionally, the design called for the use of mechanisms (servos, valves, electrical bits, etc.) and materials that were no longer in production. Restarting production would have cost as much as designing a new rocket from scratch.
Thanks for the clarification!
This was Mike Griffin’s baby before Ares V/SLS
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uSZtnRJzSBA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_HLLV