I've been thinking about starfield's "nasapunk" thing and like that's a dumb ass name for the aesthetic, but I feel like there is something of value in there. For one it's pretty interesting that the entire bit seems to be taking military realist scifi and removing the military elements, which is a pretty fascinating vision of the future and where power lies in said future. And unlike other retrofuturistic aesthetic revivals like, ray gun gothic or alien style 70s industrial scifi, the nasa aesthetic is not the a past generation's ๐ท๐ช๐ด๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ of the future, it was an element of present reality in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s when stuff like the space shuttle and the iss were actively being developed and in the news all the time, but then stopped being a reality when public science funding evaporated in the late aughts. And I don't think starfield is really going to interrogate the loaded context of it's cool spaceship go brr aesthetic, but it's also an interesting who else is getting in on this aesthetic cause it's just like starfield, the "realistic(?)" buzz lightyear reboot that nobody saw, and matt damon's the martian, i guess? Like there's something here, but so far the only people compelled enough by the nasa aesthetic are so milquetoast and uninterested in the deeper implications of this nostalgia-futurism.
i'd almost call it function-first-futurism, where you get things that are designed for practicality first
but i haven't seen enough of starfield to speak to it. The real term for it, if you want to find the good art and the good discourse around it, would generally be cassettepunk/cassette futurism
The current Russian-model space suit on the ISS is the Orlan-MKS, the 6th revision to a 46-year-old space suit meant for use on the moon. Pictured left is the Orlan-D, the 1977 model. Pictured middle is the Orlan-MKS, the newest, released in 2017. 40 years, and the aesthetics largely haven't changed, just materials, reflective/absorptive pigments, and the interface from the suit to the support. These suits can operate on the surface of something -- a spacecraft, a moon, etc, and also tethered on EVA.
Pictured right, is the NASA Extravehicular Mobility Unit
it's a teeny spaceship made into a backpack and upper torso, that you then dock your pants, helmet, and gloves to. It, too, will likely only have modules added, but the overall aesthetic will be the same.
I don't have much of a point here -- The hard part is knowing how to make it look like nothing's really happened to a design for 50 years... 150+ years in the future.
