kcarroll (11/30/82)
It will come as a surprise to some, but NASA has long demonstrated an appreciation of the arts. Certainly during the 60's, they went to a fair amount of trouble to introduce various painters and graphic artists to all aspects of the space program, on the principle that history was being made, and that it would be nice to have artists there to record it for posterity. I've seen a number of the paintings that were produced at the time, including one by Norman Rockwell (i think) of Gus Grissom (I think) suiting up. Unfortunately, I can't remember just >where< I saw these paintings; some, however, ought to be in a book titled "The National Air and Space Museum", a marvelous picture-book tour through that museum. I'm not sure what the current state of NASA's art program is; however, rumour has it that they are considering reserving a berth on a future shuttle flight for an artist of some sort, for the same reason as before. Fact has it that Jeanette Robinson, the wife of SF writer Spider Robinson, is actively seeking to fill that berth. She dances professionally, and co-wrote a novel (Stardance) which described dancing in zero-g; she plans to see what sort of a dance she coold do in the shuttle's cargo bay. At the moment, she's looking around for a cheap supplier of pressure-suits (although the pressureless space-suit that's been discussed for the last couple of weeks would surely be more appropriate for dancing (once it's developed) than the standard NASA-issue suit...) -Kieran A. Carroll