In 1983, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration spent $22,700 — over $67,851 in 2023 dollars — to seek out composers and artists to create art and music for a future space station.
Senator William Proxmire, a former Democrat from Wisconsin, awarded NASA his monthly Golden Fleece Award for this creative waste of taxpayers’ money.
According to Proxmire, the purpose of this grant was to “examine the possibility of using artists and the arts in a NASA space station in the future.” A member of NASA’s Space Station Task Force defended this grant, stating that NASA was looking to spruce up space stations for theoretical future tourists.
Specifically, the purpose of the grant was to “survey existing literature in a broad range of disciplines on the interactions of arts and science, and their cross influences,” as well as “solicit and summarize opinions from a broad range of scientists and artists who have expressed interest in utilizing space as a medium for art endeavor.” Finally, the grant authorized researchers to “potentially solicit brief proposals from artists interested in this area and summarize these for further consideration by NASA.”
Examples of space art included, but were not limited to, composer fellowships in space, arrangements of materials in zero gravity that would be visible from Earth, and interior and exterior designers for the space station itself.
As Proxmire noted, while NASA may have been sincere in its intentions, spending money the U.S. doesn’t have to study and plan theoretical space art installations on space stations that don’t exist is just plain “luney.”
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